Personally, I have found the buttons to be meaningless and totally non-descriptive. Words do a much better (and more consistent!) job of explaining what a task is supposed to do rather than a picture. For example, how does one distinguish between single spacing, 1.5 spacing and double spacing using an image? The icons are about 30 pixels square, and the image is basically just a series of vaguely shaded lines. On the other hand, it makes a lot more sense to me to click on the Format menu, then Paragraph, then find the Spacing portion of the dialog box. There are some things you just can't express using images (much less images which are less than a centimeter in size) that you can using words for directing workflow in a complex program like a document typesetter. I also take issue with the way things are organized, but I can't really give a concrete example - it's been years since I've used Office anyways.
I think the appeal of the ribbon is not cause it's better but because it caters to people who don't spend any effort thinking about how they can do what they want to. Usability, organization and workflow suffer as a result. This is why a disproportionately large fraction of/.ers hate it while pretty much everyone else likes it.
I agree with the sibling post by RMingin. By not voting, you are telling the corrupt politicians that they can get away with it. Personally, I'd use that vote as a way of making a statement of no confidence in the Democratic/Republican nominations by voting for a third party candidate.
Think about it - if you don't vote for a third party candidate, they'll have no chance of winning. If they have no chance of winning, you won't vote for a third party candidate. See the problem? So you might as well go out there and make your voice heard, no matter how small it is.
First problem: someone has to govern this pool. Why? Well you need someone to determine if a member of the pool has broken the rules or not (ie. peed in the pool). So who's going to govern this pool? First, it'll probably be a lawyer, but on top of that, it'll probably end up being whoever has the largest stake in the pool (so in your case, it'll be Google/IBM). This means that their competitors (say, MS and Apple) probably aren't going to end up joining because there's no reason in hell why they'd want to piss their patents away to their competitors.
Second problem: a lot of the people you'd like joining the pool still seem to like them quite a lot, even if they're also getting trolled constatnly. Go out and ask MS or Apple - they'll gladly put up with trolls since they're rolling bank if it allows them to crush their competitors.
Perhaps it could work if it reaches a critical mass, but even if it does, you still have the problems of the pool breaking down from the inside. Fact of the matter is, we sorta did have that kind of situation before the companies started suing each other, when there was a gentlemen's agreement of sorts that they wouldn't sue. They someone upset the apple cart (*cough* Apple *cough*) and all hell broke loose. So say you make your pool, then we're back to where we started - and as it already happened, all it has to do is break down from the inside.
The only way we can get rid of software patents is to have engineers write the rules (or at least have a say in them). But since the world is currently run by MBAs and lawyers, that'll never happen. On the bright side, a country of lawyers and businesspeople is unsustainable since they don't produce anything. It doesn't help that the US has such great disdain for education, so it'll get no better until their economy collapses.
Much harder to successfully bribe several provinces than it is to bribe one government entity; particularly true if your lobbyist already own said entity.
This is why a defensive strategy is insufficient. We have to strike back and get our legislation protecting the internet in before they get theirs to kill it. We need legistlation which will put America's Copyright Crusade to a stop.
If the RIAA gets to the government before people do, it'll be over. If we our vote across before they do, then they are gonna be the ones fighting back. The way to win the fight isn't to stay standing when you're pushed - it's by pushing the other guy down and keeping him there.
I've gotten a lot of technical support emails on my job. Since I'm going to respond to their emails anyways, I take the extra 5 minutes to find a good place for it on our wiki, copy the email text, delete the names and do the little extra wiki markup. I mean, my emails are basically a form of documentation and since it takes very little extra time, I get both jobs done at once. Better yet, it means that if someone asks me the same question later, I can just show them the link and don't have to rewrite the email, so in the long run it saves time. And believe it or not, there are a few good Samaritans out there that will also update the page with their own experiences. So if you're going to support someone, you might as well document it as you go.
They don't really report on the severity of the issue (haven't read TFA). Who knows, it could be something as minor as a window malfunction or a defective cupholder. I remember the AC would stop working in my old station wagon - not a show-stopper, but still a problem. There's so many things that can go wrong, I wonder if even half of those 92 problems are even significant or something you couldn't get by without.
I would say that the complete opposite is true. Intel has better IPC and IPW. Their branch predictors are the best in the business. The Achilles heel of AMD's fusion processors is the fact that they bundled a solid GPU with a mediocre CPU. Well it turns out that you can't really upgrade the CPU in a Llano rig. On the other hand, it's trivial to upgrade one of Intel's crappy integrated GPUs with a discrete card.
I mean, look at what the 3850 compares to in CPU-intensive benchmarks: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/2 - it's behind Wolfdale chips that were released 2 years earlier and aren't even available anymore. Let's just face it: AMD chips are terrible. That doesn't mean that they're a bad purchase - they're still great value. But you get what you pay for. Intel's technology is much more advanced. And honestly, I'm firmly in the don't-buy-from-Intel-cause-they're-evil camp. Thankfully I can build my own desktop, but a Linux-based AMD laptop is pretty much impossible to find.
But regulators on both sides of the pond went out of their way to warn Google not to abuse the patents, with the Justice Department comparing Google's patent statements unfavorably with what Justice views as more responsible statements made by Apple and Microsoft.
The fuck are they smoking? Am I missing something gigantic staring at me in the face? How is Google's record of 'patent statements' remotely close to being worse than those of Apple and Microsoft? Does the US DOJ actually look favorably down on Apple continuous patent 'I'll sue you out of business' hissy-fits? When has Google ever abused a patent? Has Google ever even attacked another company with patents?
In any case, what I'd love to see is for Google to create a pool with these patents (haven't they done this already?) where anyone who enters the pool consents to agree not to sue others in the same pool. It wouldn't do much to stop patent trolls though, unless they find a way to kick out members who support them. Am I dreaming? Or should a legitimately don't-be-evil company do this?
Patents are a system to reward innovation. And we certainly do see plenty of innovation in the phone market.
Don't confuse implementation for innovation. Apple hasn't invented a damn thing or come up with a single damn idea. They just implement it. Credit where it's due: Apple is the best in the business at implementation. But that does not warrant intellectual 'property.'
I have to say, for bulk file operations, nothing beats the command line. If you want to search for text in a bunch of files, there's not better way to do it. If you have data stored in a bunch of files and want to plot each one, you write a gnuplot script, go through each directory, plot it, return. Done. You want to convert all the files in a tree from jpg to png? Cake. Or converting video/audio formats, etc., etc.
But another huge advantage of using the CLI which goes unmentioned is that I can do it all at once without needing to interfere. If I have to find all files with a dialogue and then delete them after, that requires my waiting between the find phase, the sort phase, and the delete phase. I know that to most users, stuff like that doesn't make a difference. But it puts me a lot more at ease when I can just have something go automatically without waiting for me to intervene at every intermediate step. Even a matter of not having to wait 10 seconds to complete the task makes me feel a lot better.
I, for one, am very surprised that (to my knowledge, I'm an XFCE user) this isn't included in Gnome or KDE by default. This seems like a really basic functionality to me, though I haven't actually used a CD or ISO in years, I imagine there are many who do.
It doesn't matter where the money comes from, whether it's consumers or the people who make the software bundles. All their money still ends up coming from the consumers. If it's not the price of the PC that goes up, then it has to be the price of other services, which actual companies buy and then have to pass on those added costs onto consumers. The costs all trickle down, simply because MS is entitled to some amount of cash for every machine that is sold (Macs and the.5% of Linux PCs aside), even when Windows isn't used. Can someone PLEASE explain why MS should be getting all this money for nothing?
System76 and Zareason are two US vendors I've heard of which sell all Ubuntu machines. Debian also keeps a solid list of vendors here http://www.debian.org/distrib/pre-installed
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I have found the buttons to be meaningless and totally non-descriptive. Words do a much better (and more consistent!) job of explaining what a task is supposed to do rather than a picture. For example, how does one distinguish between single spacing, 1.5 spacing and double spacing using an image? The icons are about 30 pixels square, and the image is basically just a series of vaguely shaded lines. On the other hand, it makes a lot more sense to me to click on the Format menu, then Paragraph, then find the Spacing portion of the dialog box. There are some things you just can't express using images (much less images which are less than a centimeter in size) that you can using words for directing workflow in a complex program like a document typesetter. I also take issue with the way things are organized, but I can't really give a concrete example - it's been years since I've used Office anyways.
I think the appeal of the ribbon is not cause it's better but because it caters to people who don't spend any effort thinking about how they can do what they want to. Usability, organization and workflow suffer as a result. This is why a disproportionately large fraction of /.ers hate it while pretty much everyone else likes it.
2) It's the US legal system.
FTFY
I agree with the sibling post by RMingin. By not voting, you are telling the corrupt politicians that they can get away with it. Personally, I'd use that vote as a way of making a statement of no confidence in the Democratic/Republican nominations by voting for a third party candidate.
Think about it - if you don't vote for a third party candidate, they'll have no chance of winning. If they have no chance of winning, you won't vote for a third party candidate. See the problem? So you might as well go out there and make your voice heard, no matter how small it is.
First problem: someone has to govern this pool. Why? Well you need someone to determine if a member of the pool has broken the rules or not (ie. peed in the pool). So who's going to govern this pool? First, it'll probably be a lawyer, but on top of that, it'll probably end up being whoever has the largest stake in the pool (so in your case, it'll be Google/IBM). This means that their competitors (say, MS and Apple) probably aren't going to end up joining because there's no reason in hell why they'd want to piss their patents away to their competitors.
Second problem: a lot of the people you'd like joining the pool still seem to like them quite a lot, even if they're also getting trolled constatnly. Go out and ask MS or Apple - they'll gladly put up with trolls since they're rolling bank if it allows them to crush their competitors.
Perhaps it could work if it reaches a critical mass, but even if it does, you still have the problems of the pool breaking down from the inside. Fact of the matter is, we sorta did have that kind of situation before the companies started suing each other, when there was a gentlemen's agreement of sorts that they wouldn't sue. They someone upset the apple cart (*cough* Apple *cough*) and all hell broke loose. So say you make your pool, then we're back to where we started - and as it already happened, all it has to do is break down from the inside.
The only way we can get rid of software patents is to have engineers write the rules (or at least have a say in them). But since the world is currently run by MBAs and lawyers, that'll never happen. On the bright side, a country of lawyers and businesspeople is unsustainable since they don't produce anything. It doesn't help that the US has such great disdain for education, so it'll get no better until their economy collapses.
Alternative is to set up/support a puppet company to sue for them. MS did this with SCO, I'm pretty sure I read about Apple doing this too..
But it's good practice, depending on which law students you know
Much harder to successfully bribe several provinces than it is to bribe one government entity; particularly true if your lobbyist already own said entity.
'May' is the key word here, my friend!
10.0 is twice the disk size as 3.6, but again it's going to be WAY faster, but perhaps not much different on the memory landscape.
10.0 has HTML5 support and a totally different, much faster JS engine. I'll give them a break if it takes up a little more diskspace.
This is why a defensive strategy is insufficient. We have to strike back and get our legislation protecting the internet in before they get theirs to kill it. We need legistlation which will put America's Copyright Crusade to a stop.
If the RIAA gets to the government before people do, it'll be over. If we our vote across before they do, then they are gonna be the ones fighting back. The way to win the fight isn't to stay standing when you're pushed - it's by pushing the other guy down and keeping him there.
I've gotten a lot of technical support emails on my job. Since I'm going to respond to their emails anyways, I take the extra 5 minutes to find a good place for it on our wiki, copy the email text, delete the names and do the little extra wiki markup. I mean, my emails are basically a form of documentation and since it takes very little extra time, I get both jobs done at once. Better yet, it means that if someone asks me the same question later, I can just show them the link and don't have to rewrite the email, so in the long run it saves time. And believe it or not, there are a few good Samaritans out there that will also update the page with their own experiences. So if you're going to support someone, you might as well document it as you go.
As anyone who has ever done research before would know, the name of the bill is a total fabrication. Good riddance.
That you, RMS?
They don't really report on the severity of the issue (haven't read TFA). Who knows, it could be something as minor as a window malfunction or a defective cupholder. I remember the AC would stop working in my old station wagon - not a show-stopper, but still a problem. There's so many things that can go wrong, I wonder if even half of those 92 problems are even significant or something you couldn't get by without.
I think you mean Jurassic Park.
The real-life kind of sequel
Hertz to Hertz, AMD makes a better processor.
I would say that the complete opposite is true. Intel has better IPC and IPW. Their branch predictors are the best in the business. The Achilles heel of AMD's fusion processors is the fact that they bundled a solid GPU with a mediocre CPU. Well it turns out that you can't really upgrade the CPU in a Llano rig. On the other hand, it's trivial to upgrade one of Intel's crappy integrated GPUs with a discrete card.
I mean, look at what the 3850 compares to in CPU-intensive benchmarks: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/2 - it's behind Wolfdale chips that were released 2 years earlier and aren't even available anymore. Let's just face it: AMD chips are terrible. That doesn't mean that they're a bad purchase - they're still great value. But you get what you pay for. Intel's technology is much more advanced. And honestly, I'm firmly in the don't-buy-from-Intel-cause-they're-evil camp. Thankfully I can build my own desktop, but a Linux-based AMD laptop is pretty much impossible to find.
Exactly - because the billionaires are entitled to their profits even when their models are obsoleted by better technologies.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/regulators-to-google-you-can-buy-motorola-but-we-still-dont-trust-you.ars
FTA:
But regulators on both sides of the pond went out of their way to warn Google not to abuse the patents, with the Justice Department comparing Google's patent statements unfavorably with what Justice views as more responsible statements made by Apple and Microsoft.
The fuck are they smoking? Am I missing something gigantic staring at me in the face? How is Google's record of 'patent statements' remotely close to being worse than those of Apple and Microsoft? Does the US DOJ actually look favorably down on Apple continuous patent 'I'll sue you out of business' hissy-fits? When has Google ever abused a patent? Has Google ever even attacked another company with patents?
In any case, what I'd love to see is for Google to create a pool with these patents (haven't they done this already?) where anyone who enters the pool consents to agree not to sue others in the same pool. It wouldn't do much to stop patent trolls though, unless they find a way to kick out members who support them. Am I dreaming? Or should a legitimately don't-be-evil company do this?
Anything can be patented if you add to the end, 'on a phone.'
Patents are a system to reward innovation. And we certainly do see plenty of innovation in the phone market.
Don't confuse implementation for innovation. Apple hasn't invented a damn thing or come up with a single damn idea. They just implement it. Credit where it's due: Apple is the best in the business at implementation. But that does not warrant intellectual 'property.'
I have to say, for bulk file operations, nothing beats the command line. If you want to search for text in a bunch of files, there's not better way to do it. If you have data stored in a bunch of files and want to plot each one, you write a gnuplot script, go through each directory, plot it, return. Done. You want to convert all the files in a tree from jpg to png? Cake. Or converting video/audio formats, etc., etc.
But another huge advantage of using the CLI which goes unmentioned is that I can do it all at once without needing to interfere. If I have to find all files with a dialogue and then delete them after, that requires my waiting between the find phase, the sort phase, and the delete phase. I know that to most users, stuff like that doesn't make a difference. But it puts me a lot more at ease when I can just have something go automatically without waiting for me to intervene at every intermediate step. Even a matter of not having to wait 10 seconds to complete the task makes me feel a lot better.
Well I have the perfect machine for you
I, for one, am very surprised that (to my knowledge, I'm an XFCE user) this isn't included in Gnome or KDE by default. This seems like a really basic functionality to me, though I haven't actually used a CD or ISO in years, I imagine there are many who do.
Wrong. You don't get it.
It doesn't matter where the money comes from, whether it's consumers or the people who make the software bundles. All their money still ends up coming from the consumers. If it's not the price of the PC that goes up, then it has to be the price of other services, which actual companies buy and then have to pass on those added costs onto consumers. The costs all trickle down, simply because MS is entitled to some amount of cash for every machine that is sold (Macs and the .5% of Linux PCs aside), even when Windows isn't used. Can someone PLEASE explain why MS should be getting all this money for nothing?
System76 and Zareason are two US vendors I've heard of which sell all Ubuntu machines. Debian also keeps a solid list of vendors here http://www.debian.org/distrib/pre-installed