Because if you have efficient button and icon design, you don't need menu trees and your dependence on language (and all the misunderstandings it creates) is decreased by an order of magnitude. Just have a British Person ask an American where a boot is if you want a good example.
This comment brought to you by someone who has never had to give directions over the phone, or try to figure out what the person on the other end is looking at as the two of you play an impromptu game of inverse pictionary. Icons are just fine, but icons + labels are better and have very few downsides.
Your example is terrible because most British cars have the driver side and passenger side in a reverse layout from American cars. If you're doing that, you can relabel the error light 'boot open' instead of 'trunk open'.
1. I agree with the fact that having more articles about software releases would be nice. However, software itself has generally made its way to 'rolling releases', making version milestones less common. Additionally, there's the paradox that if software is large enough for a release to be relevant, most people already know. If it's not large enough, an article would be of questionable utility.
2. Agreed with this.
3. Also agreed, and these do happen (see the sizeable discussion about the end of the Cassini mission). I pose a genuine question though - how many scientific advances that are front-page-of-Slashdot worthy are made with any frequency? It's entirely possible that I'm ignorant on this front, but I submit that science has gotten a bit more iterative or niche-based, and that there are fewer articles because there are fewer headline-earning breakthroughs.
4. DeCSS is completed software, and present discs are using more sophisticated encryption methods. I'm unaware of an OSS Blu-Ray decryption tool. There are the occasions when a court case makes waves, but with a lot of the trail blazed on these fronts, again, less news about them.
5. Definitely agreed here, but I think societally there are far fewer people for whom 'because I could' is a reason to do anything anymore. It's a topic of its own as to why the adventurous project spirit seems to be endangered in our current climate, but I would like to see more from those who still have it.
6. Star Wars and Star Trek topics still regularly come up. However, post-Disney acquisition of Star Wars and Marvel, and post-paywalling of Star Trek, there's a bit less news that requires Slashdot, so much as 'a pulse' to find out. With CBS making it all but impossible for some of the more prominent fan films to continue ("Continues", "Phase II", and others) after the Axanar debacle, they too became less newsworthy.
7. Ask Slashdot suffers a bit from the rising sea level. Questions that are beginner to intermediate level commonly get met with "RTFM" or an LMGTFY link, rather than individuals taking the time to provide information anyway. Advanced level questions are usually niche specific to the point where fewer people can answer them. With more information generally available by asking Aunt Google or more specialized forums (Spiceworks, StackOverflow, forums.$PRODUCT.com, even Reddit), Ask Slashdot is in a bit of a tight place.
8. Agreed on this one, but I'm also wondering if Steam has helped be that place, with curators and lots of indie games, it's possible to get information and discussions on games elsewhere.
9. I like the idea of user-submitted content, but consider the population of Slashdot at this point. There are 1.3 million accounts before mine, and mine is nearly a decade old. As much as user submitted content that doesn't have an upstream source would be interesting (I would be interested on the Slashdot take on a few of my blog posts), I think it would be incredibly difficult for even full-time editors to go through the deluge of content of that nature and figure out what's worth posting vs. what isn't. Also, there are plenty of AMAs on Reddit.
10. I think you answered your own question - Geeks in Space was a 'podcast' before 'podcasts' were a thing. Now, you can find a dozen podcasts of varying quality on basically any topic. Some complement Youtube channels, Twitch feeds, or other forms of self-broadcast media. I submit that the reason the podcast is gone is because thousands of people are doing it better.
11. Jon Katz is a bit before my time. Bennett Hasselton is not. I'm kinda fine with the lack of editorial content, because editorials themselves assume a top-down narrative sort of situation, rather than the more egalatarian layout that is "the comments section".
TL;DR - I agree on a number of these fronts. However, I similarly submit that one of the major problems is that there is simply less news for nerds.
Why would I want to drive to the store to buy a digital file on a disc (which might not even be in stock) instead of downloading it or streaming it from the comfort of my home? I already have beer and popcorn kernels at home.
Yes it pushes the limits of current home internet in many US locales for streaming, but that's a solvable problem with better home internet or pre-downloading.
1. I'm not saying that there are exactly zero people who would find this useful. I'm saying that the market of people for whom are those who meet these qualifiers:
Have a device capable of playing back 4K video at a level where there is a visible quality improvement over 1080p,
Have a 100mbit internet plan,
Care specifically about watching a film in 4K rather than 1080p
In the case of the Disney films specifically, be willing to pay more than $20 for the 4K version,
In the case of the Disney films specifically, be willing to use a separate service than what they're already using,
Not be willing to wait for Amazon to ship it, or run to Target to buy it on Blu-Ray, especially when the Blu-Ray disc will likely have higher quality than the download and take less time to acquire.
It just seems like a very niche market.
2. Most stores put their inventories online and can be checked. Most stores also still accept phone calls and will put a desired item on the side for you if you ask. 3. Obviously one does not *have* to purchase beer and popcorn. 4. Since 720p and 1080p movies are generally viable to stream or download on even 15mbit internet, and the summary implies that Disney is likely to retain the HD releases (but not UHD) on iTunes, the question is whether the impluse-watching that precludes an Amazon order or a Target run must also be in 4K, or if HD is 'good enough' under those circumstances. 5. For someone with a Slashdot UID lower than mine, it's surprising you haven't come across any of the literally hundreds of discussions about the fact that internet quality in the US varies greatly from "multiple gigabit providers" to "satellite or dial-up", depending on where you live. If getting everyone - or even 95% -
the aforementioned 15mbit internet speeds were a 'solvable problem', there would be headway in that respect. I agree that the issue is some combination of monetary and political, but it sadly is in the hands of politicians, rather than technicians, making it 'solvable' in the same way getting across the Atlantic in a speedboat is 'doable'.
I don't think much of the pushback has to do with the fact that the difference isn't visible. The issue has more to do with whether people are going to try and use a different service at a higher price and less convenience to get 4K versions of Disney content.
It's an interesting question. I'm wagering that most parents aren't going to be willing to spend more for a 4K version of Moana when their kids are probably just as happy with the SD version, to be frank. As long as Disney sells the HD versions for $20 a pop, I'm sure that won't be a big loss. On the other hand, the Marvel and Star Wars properties lend themselves to 4K releases, but wouldn't enthusiasts prefer Blu-Ray discs to digital files at that point? I mean, assuming 60mbit download speeds (the standard tier from my cable company), it's nearly two hours to download a 50GB file, more than enough time for lots of people to drive to Target, buy a Blu-Ray for the sameish price as Disney wants for a 4K download, some popcorn, and a case of beer, and come home. Also, 50GB movies add up pretty quickly; it would take less than a dozen to fill up the hard disks for most standard Mac configurations. iTunes is required still due to the DRM (ruling out the use of Plex or other streaming server solutions), so a library of any consequence is going to require an external hard disk or three connected to a desktop with iTunes running. "Play via streaming!" seems obvious, but iTunes doesn't seem to allow that (admittedly, the Apple TV might). Even if it did, the bandwidth requirements for 4K streaming are rather high, making repeated viewings an uphill battle for Apple justify using as an avenue of first resort without Netflix's levels of peering. Now, the storage could be eased obviously, if the Apple 4K files are smaller than the selection I came across on TPB, but if Apple compresses more than a little bit, the resolution improvement becomes a tradeoff of higher compression, and again starts to favor Blu-Ray. For those who want to view a film on impulse, I would imagine that the HD releases are 'good enough'.
tl;dr: Disney content seems to me like something that would be 'good enough' in 1080p for most people. Between the transfer times and storage requirements for 4K iTunes downloads that aren't too heavily compressed to cease to justify the higher resolution, Blu-Ray probably still serves that niche better than downloads.
My exact quote: "The color separation makes it clear when you've cleared the 'new message' in the thread, as does the stylized header"
Yes. That's a function of the mail client and not the email itself.
At some level, whether by markup styling or the use of the ">" character, the e-mail body is where the information regarding what's new vs. what isn't is designated.
For the third time, I'm referring to the fact that replies generally start with a different text style than the rest of the thread when reading an e-mail in a window which shows a message,
Perhaps in pieces of crap like Outlook that don't care about email standards, but they don't look any different in any real email client. Any email client that changes the body of the email based on read or unread status is broken, period.
You've yet to name what you consider a "real e-mail client", and you're still missing my point. The body doesn't change its formatting based on whether a message is 'read' or 'unread', but rather an e-mail containing the text of several prior messages over the course of an e-mail exchange is shown with different formatting. So, changing the color of the text in an e-mail is "broken" because it alters the data contained within the message, but adding ">" characters with each iteration as plaintext messages do (i.e. changing the message data) is fine?
Of course! But kindly tell that to the tens of millions of non-Firefox users when "clicking a link" works just fine now.
I don't have to tell them anything. This is a fact. Your excuse that we need enhanced email so that cutting and pasting a URL will work is wrong. We don't need that.
You're right. Actual HTML links don't require cutting/pasting. They just open. Your solution to the inconsistency of links with line breaks is either URL shortening (which has never been abused *eyeroll*) or have all the browsers work like firefox.
So, what's your preferred term for "e-mail with a binary attachment but which lacks formatting or markup"?
I don't know what semantic game you are trying to play here. Your claim that "non-plain-text email" means "isn't email" is patent bullshit.
Okay, I'll try phrasing it a different way. There are three possibilities at play here: 1. E-mails with HTML/CSS markup and other nonstandard stuff. 2. E-mails with ASCII messages and binary attachments. 3. E-mails with ASCII messages only.
We both agree that #1 is not 'plaintext e-mail' and that #3 is, but #2 is where the lack of clarity is.
Because in your haste to tell me to stop being stupid, you managed to prove my point. There is ambiguity in the term.
You seem to be the only person I've ever heard think that "non-plain-text email" means "not email". Most of the people with a brain understand that "non-plain-text email" means it is email that isn't plain text. There is no ambiguity.
See above.
Great! You should have no problem getting the millions of Outlook users to migrate over to your superior e-mail client..
Game over. Knowing that Outlook is a defective email client doesn't imply any need to convert nimrods who like defective email clients.
At this point, I'm sensing the vibe you're being angry just for the sake of being angry. First, you still haven't named a mail client you believe is better. Second, if Outlook is a defective mail client, then it would need to be replaced if going back to plaintext communications is going to be a matter of course. I'm asking how you would address the fact that a "defective e-mail client" is amongst the most commonly used, and it sounds like your way to address it is "l
1. I was not referring to whether a new e-mail was bold or not, but how text is shown within an e-mail.
No, you were pretty specific as to "clearing" the new mail in the thread, and this has nothing to do with what the email itself looks like. If you have an email client that changes the email itself to show status, then you have a very very poor email client. But we already know that.
My exact quote: "The color separation makes it clear when you've cleared the 'new message' in the thread, as does the stylized header"
For the third time, I'm referring to the fact that replies generally start with a different text style than the rest of the thread when reading an e-mail in a window which shows a message, along with its replies, in reverse chronological order. Perhaps it wasn't perfectly worded, but that it what I was referring to, from the beginning. Whether it's better or worse than the countless ">" symbols that are used in text-only messages is subjective, but the color change in the message body is no less an effective way of performing the same task.
3. So the way *your* mail scanner functions is the baseline for how things should work?
I said nothing about how my "mail scanner" works. I told you of how at least one of them DOES work, and why that makes one-time reset links useless. There goes your excuse for non-plain-text email based on "password reset links", if they weren't already made meaningless by the ability to copy and paste the plain text URL representation.
Okay, so apparently there are issues with single use links when they go through whatever spam filter you're referencing but not using. That must be why most of such e-mails I've received have a 24-hour expiration, or there is some magical pixie dust in MS Forefront, Google Postini, Barracuda, SpamAssassin, Scrollout, and Symantec SMG that make them work just fine. Either this nameless, unused filter is the standard by which such messages must comply, or the fact that this method has been implemented by basically every forum and online service I've ever used makes the issue on the side of the filter for all practical purposes.
4. Firefox handles them wonderfully.
Which is proof that there is no inherent problem with line breaks in a copy/paste URL. Sheesh, if you knew anything, you ought to at least realize that "\n" is not a valid character in a URL and EVERY web client should be able to ignore them.
Of course! But kindly tell that to the tens of millions of non-Firefox users when "clicking a link" works just fine now.
The Google search bar / MSN search bar / WhateverBrowserHijacker search bar is a different story,
You don't paste a URL into a SEARCH BAR, you nimrod. It's a URL.
Excuse you. I'm poignantly aware of the difference between the two. I also happen to provide desktop support to other people, and I'm very good at it because I observe how *they* interact with computers. Step outside your ivory tower and see that 90% of computer users don't know the difference anymore. It's a sad reality that pains me as much as it pains you, but the fact of the matter is that those people have passwords too, those people need them reset, and if you have the rude, condescending attitude with them that you do with someone who at least somewhat agrees with you, then it's unsurprising that your view on the topic is comprised solely of your own.
and the number of people who think that's an address bar vastly outnumber Firefox users.
Nimrods don't know how to use their browsers, film at 11.
I appreciate the assist from Altrag below. As much as I very much wish that everybody had an understanding of UI conventions, the fact is, once again, that nimrods use computers, and nimrods have browsers an
1. The popularity of Twitter and Slack is based primarily on their ability to handle synchronous communication, in which e-mail lacks. Moreover, while it's not possible to change the font on Twitter (dunno about Slack), Twitter does allow for links, images, and embedded videos, functions plaintext e-mail does not provide. Would Twitter still be popular without these abilities? That's a good question indeed, but neither Twitter nor Slack are long-form means of communication.
2. Yes, they're annoying and a waste of resources. Unfortunately, you could say that regarding just about anything...including our Slashdot discussion, since all of those points apply to those who would read our dialogue and not see any value within it.
3. The computer-to-TV transformation has been going on for some time, but I would argue that at least with PCs, the end user still has root access, at least for now. Mobile computing devices are a far greater threat in that respect.
4. I was sufficiently successful in expressing myself in plaintext that it warranted a response. As someone who still camps out in IRC and Usenet, I agree with you. However, in a culture where memes and reaction gifs are means of expressing one's self, to readily ignore the existence of these things is not to stem the tide, but to ensure that proposed changes are less palatable.
1. I was not referring to whether a new e-mail was bold or not, but how text is shown within an e-mail. The format changes when reading an e-mail body consisting of a multi-message thread is, in fact, a function of the e-mail formatting.
2. No, images don't *have* to be inline. However, there's a reason why many tutorials use that format - the format itself is useful.
3. So the way *your* mail scanner functions is the baseline for how things should work? What's your suggestion for a password reset methodology that isn't a greater security risk?
4. Firefox handles them wonderfully. The Google search bar / MSN search bar / WhateverBrowserHijacker search bar is a different story, and the number of people who think that's an address bar vastly outnumber Firefox users.
5. I very much do know what I'm talking about. The point I was getting at, if you're going to be pedantic about it, is that "plain text e-mail" can mean "if it's not text, it's not e-mail", akin to how PINE mail and other terminal-based mail clients functioned. It can also refer simply to the text formatting, inclusive of MIME attachments and indicating a lack of HTML/RTF formatting. I was speaking of the latter, but wished to acknowledge the existence of the former.
6. Outlook is far from an exemplary piece of software, but I'm hard pressed to point to a locally-installed mail client with a greater marketshare. Now, we can certainly argue that Microsoft's way of extending it is far from ideal, but it's not like Gmail is any less guilty of adhering to standards and both AOL and Yahoo had their EEE days when they had the lion's share of e-mail users, so it's not like extending e-mail beyond the specs is an evil reserved only for Microsoft. Whether good practice or not, Outlook is very much a part of corporate environments and is used by millions of people every day. Thunderbird and Evolution may well be 'standards compliant', but my entire point is that the original e-mail standards are insufficient for most modern uses. I can't say I "like" Outlook, but treating it like it's irrelevant is of no assistance, either.
The folks at Dartmouth may well be correct in that plaintext e-mail is safest. However, does that really make it the best solution anymore?
Look, I've got "that secretary" who uses borderline-illegible script fonts on stationery and ConstantContact blasts annoy me, as well. HTML mail does indeed have its downside and I don't disagree that it opens up at least some amount of security holes.
At the same time, plaintext e-mail has its faults, too. The color separation makes it clear when you've cleared the 'new message' in the thread, as does the stylized header. Inline image embedding is abused by marketers, but it makes it far easier to send tutorials or support requests via screenshot sequences. Yes, clickable links are a security risk, but that's how password reset e-mails work now. Do you really expect users to copy the complete URL into the address bar without an issue? If there's a line break in there, you're really screwed.
All of that hasn't even begun to address attachments, because technically it is possible for mail attachments to count as both a part of plaintext e-mails and not. Attachments are a mess, but we've stopped allowing people to e-mail executable files, for the most part. The attachment file types themselves, however, are a mess. Outlook cries wolf at *every* attachment, which makes it "the dialog box to ignore" - itself a UI problem of its own faults. The fact that the last few ransomware attacks I took care of were sourced from a malicious ActiveX payload on a Word document is only as stupid as the fact that there is still a whole lot of software that depends on ActiveX and Macros to function. If Microsoft is too easy a target, then Adobe has some splanin' to do when it comes to the fact that javascript can be embedded into a PDF. I've only seen it ever legitimately used for calculations and validations; is it really that hard to have a dedicated software function for that? The list of such issues is quite extensive, but I think my case on this point is made.
Ultimately, the fact that HTML mail is as ubiquitous as it is has to do with the fact that e-mail as it was originally designed (plaintext, 80x25) is no longer meeting the needs of most people who use it. However, its extensibility is amongst the reasons why e-mail is still as heavily used as it is, long after its contemporaries (IRC, Usenet, others) have faded into niche roles while e-mail is still mainstream.
Meanwhile, most free e-mail providers are pretty good at filtering malicious e-mails, spam filters for on-prem mail filters have reached a pretty good level of maturity, so there are plenty of safeguards in place that have brought the danger down significantly, to the point where e-mail is one piece of the vector rather than the vector itself, and has been for some time.
I pose this question to the Slashdotters who agree with the Dartmouth researchers: Whenever sweeping legislation or military action comes up around here, a post based on Ben Franklin's thoughts regarding trading liberty for security are almost invariably stated, and frequently modded up to a +4 or +5. Now that the "liberty for security" question is on the other foot, when we're discussing trading liberty (more useful e-mail) for security, why does the mindset seem to be flipped? I'm not saying free-for-all e-mail with no spam filters or blacklists are ideal, but I am saying that for all of the ways that e-mail gets abused, it's gotten to the point where it is all but guaranteed to prompt the user before causing trouble, if it gets through the IP blacklists, keyword blacklists, attachment filters, virus scanners, default mail client settings, attachment warnings, application warnings, and UAC prompts...I doubt plaintext would have solved the issue in itself. To champion a function regression in the name of 'security' sounds like the kind of mindset which, according to Franklin, deserves neither liberty nor security.
>but if the winds are only 73MPH instead of the required 75MPH, we're debating semantics
Either a thing is a thing, or it is not. This is not semantics.
From the stand point of insurance companies (who have different legal obligations for 'hurricanes' than 'tropical depressions'), you are correct. My point was that exposing trees and buildings to sustained 73mph winds is going to do basically the same damage to those trees and buildings as 75mph winds will. It's not like a utility pole is going to check precise wind speeds before determining if it is going to stay standing or not.
Also, the only reason for the extensive damage was because it hit one of the most populated areas in the world.
Legally speaking, yes, it was not considered a 'hurricane' at the time, but if the winds are only 73MPH instead of the required 75MPH, we're debating semantics. Additionally, it was the duration of the storm that was similarly a problem; it covered a massive area and thus it spent plenty of time battering the area. Yes, the damage costs were indeed due to the northeast being a population center, but "extensive damage" is still "extensive damage". I very much remember standing in a gas line shortly thereafter.
The whole situation is a grey area; if it doesn't involve conflicts of interest currently, it easily can, and also causes difficulties regarding equality of education.
Let's assume this teacher is absolutely the best possible scenario: she personally looks through products to see if they are a good fit for the classroom and selects the products that best fit the curriculum. She teaches in terms of principle rather than product ("this is an IDE" vs. "This is Visual Studio"), takes nothing for herself and solely accepts materials for the students / classroom, has the blessing of her superintendent, and sends a letter home to the parents disclosing all of this to the parents whenever such a product enters the classroom. Excellent. Few people would have a problem with this, myself included. Materials need to come from somewhere, and the less parents are nickel-and-dimed for things, the better. Teachers have one less thing to worry about, parents have a starting point to teach their children about advertising, lessons are complemented by things that would need to be purchased anyway, and a company somewhere gets good PR for helping students. Everybody wins.
The problem is that, while those specific circumstances would be perfectly fine, the concern is the precedent being set whereby teachers receive materials, teach how to use the product rather than the principles behind it, take money under the table for doing so, and don't disclose any of it. We see this already in schools; students frequently learn Microsoft Word rather than word processing, or Gmail, not e-mail. Math classes require TI-8x calculators; the textbooks aren't written for Casio. When the line between "sanctuary of learning" and "yet another venue of advertising" become blurred, we find ourselves on a road where this is the logical conclusion.
Advertising to children is a topic unto itself because advertising to children ultimately is a means of spending their parents' money, not their own. Additionally, while high schoolers have at least some notion of how advertising works in aggregate, younger children (especially under the age of 8) have trouble separating "advertisements" from "content"; they will literally sing commercial jingles with all the passion of their favorite song without grasping the difference. This is why cereal ads have the "part of a complete breakfast" product shot thrown in, even though no child in the history of humanity has sat down to eat cereal, toast, eggs, fruit, and a huge glass of milk. It's also why websites and mobile apps have the "ask a parent" disclaimer added, and shows targeted to minors cannot have product placement. It's a topic of intense and continual scrutiny as the ease with which one can manipulate a child is a near perfect match for the desires of advertisers. The fact that the companies providing materials in TFS are targeting "influential" and "well-liked" teachers speaks fairly clearly regarding their intentions.
If the classroom is allowed to become another venue for advertising to children, we find ourselves opening up a huge can of worms. For starters, we would then have some classrooms stocked with materials bearing advertisements. Since the point of the advertising is for the companies to make money, they're not going to target low-income or poorly funded schools (paradoxically, the ones who would most benefit from those materials), they're going to provide those materials to the most influential teachers in districts who have the most money to spend on the products, thus furthering the divide between elite schools and poorly funded ones. Over time, it's entirely possible that products (and by extension their companies) start influencing curricula. It's bad enough that Pearson has as much influence in education as they do, but at the very least their business is education. To open
Most devices won't receive any updates even if they are totally compromised, because that's how much of a shit the vendors give about their customers. Only devices getting updates anyway will get locked back down.
Ordinarily, yes. But these vulnerabilities have the potential of removing the vendor's ability to retain control over the devices and allowing users to obtain root access on phones that previously did not have that capability..so I have a gut feeling the vendors will be coming out of the woodwork on this.
Recently, I've been enjoying Toxikk; their tagline is "frag like it's 1999". My one complaint about its single player / campaign mode is that it seems like the difficulties can use some tweaking - enemies either thoroughly ignore your existence, or the next difficulty up, they'll become champion marksmen who never miss...but it's still fun, there is a free version, the only DLC is the paid version, and it supports LAN play if you roll that way.
Also supporting LAN play, and also costing $0, is Unreal Tournament. Epic Games has moved to a content store model as well as using it as a springboard for engine and dev tools licensing, so the game itself is free. It supports LAN play, the bots are pretty well balanced, and although the map selection is a bit sparse at the moment, they've been consistently adding them as the game has progressed. I've found it to be a bit faster paced than UT2004 or UT3, but about on par with Q3A. Both this and Toxikk greatly benefit from a half decent GPU. While you don't need quad TitanX cards to get a good framerate, I wouldn't recommend either on Intel GPUs.
From the FOSS department, Alien Swarm is half decent. It lacks the polish of the first two games, and there are relatively few players if you enjoy playing online against randos, but as far as open source games go, and at a cost of $0, I've been pretty happy with it.
If you're looking for something less twitchy-shooty, the first two Trine games are highly recommended. From indie studio Frozenbyte, these two games are gorgeously animated, have simple-yet-challenging game mechanics, aren't ridiculously long, and are generally enjoyable. While they lack solid replay value due to the puzzles lacking wide varieties of solutions, there's usually at least two and they regularly go on sale on Steam.
I'll echo other recommendations for Mass Effect as well; though it has its problem spots the characters are wonderful and the trilogy is thoroughly enjoyable and well worth the invested time. Every so often I'll pull up Civ 5; though I'm not very good at it, its complexity keeps my mind working. Batman: Arkham Asylum is also recommended, and if you haven't played Bioshock, it's well worth it. None of these games are 'new', and many haven't aged perfectly in terms of graphics or game mechanics, but the fact that they are still being recommended 5-10 years later shows that there are more than a few redeeming qualities for them.
When 'real life' doesn't keep me busy, there's no shortage of video games with which a fellow "late 90's / early 00's" fan can find enjoyment.
Shocking as this may be, there are more than a handful of people who are okay with running an ever-so-slightly-out-of-date version of an OS. I cannot point to a single Android feature since Jelly Bean that I would miss.
1. Virtually all of those things are optional. Winamp, even its current iteration, has a very granular custom installer. It's possible to do a 20mb installation that does exactly what you're looking for, down to the 2.x default skin with no flyout UI elements. 2. VLC...the application with all its codecs internally bundled, video stream reading, video transcoding, font cache building, alarm clock setting VLC whose kitchen sink installation is twice the size of Winamp as is it's startup time...that's your example of small, tight code? Don't get me wrong, I do like VLC and its ability to play basically everything, but let's not confuse "inefficient code" with "minimalist UI".
1. Their search results have gotten progressively worse of late. it's either so fuzzy as to have half the top results completely irrelevant, or "verbatim" won't come up with anything because of spacing or the literal order of words is incorrect. 2. Search for "driver download" and you'll get some very shady websites, many of which don't actually provide driver downloads...and they do nothing about it. Same for "teamviewer" and other legitimate tools that get hijacked by "your computer has a virus" websites. If they want to perpetuate the blurring between the URL bar and the search bar, that's fine, but literally nobody has Googled for teamviewer and been okay with the sketchy sites that rank very high. 3. Overall creepiness. They collect *a lot* of data, even if users go out of their way to avoid it. Though they *say* they'll be responsible with it (and to be fair, so far they appear to have done so), it's incredibly difficult to opt out of data collection, because so much of the web depends on them (go ahead, disable Google Fonts and Google AMP and see what happens to the internet...) 4. Questionable practices - preferring faster sites is understandable, defining 'faster' as 'using Google AMP' is shady. Ad blockers are one thing, but adding an ad blocker to a browser that has a controlling slice of the market when 90% of their revenue comes from ads is 90's Microsoft levels of monopoly. 5. E-mail is a great thing. Gmail has twisted it very heavily from being an analog of letter-based correspondence to being a de facto chat client, and twisting POP and IMAP to make it less practical to use a third party mail client, and require an obscurely placed setting to allow third party clients to connect via standard protocols...and it's not getting better. 6. Discontinuing useful services and changing UIs and APIs to make things less useful (Reader, iGoogle, their 1,001 chat clients, none of which are XMPP compliant anymore, the list goes on). 7. On Android specifically, mandating profitable things ('Play Store' must be on the first page) but not openness-based things (mandating unlocked bootloaders or that shipped apps can be removed if not a core function). Yes, they sell their reference phones, but if they're going to have requirements that are purely for profit reasons, there's no reason they can't mandate Samsung do the same thing.
Now yes, I know there are rebuts to most of these items, but collectively Google has a stranglehold on the internet advertising market and controls enough of the internet infrastructure that avoiding them is near impossible, I do expect better behavior out of them.
I was in a conference room at a law firm last month. Across the hall was a printer the size of a large refrigerator. It was printing and collating continuously for the entire two hours I was there. It looked like it was printing several pages per second.
I wonder if a human eye will ever look at even 1% of those pages.
Those that are looked at, will be looked at by lawyers...so 1% being seen by humans is still way too high.
The GP was a bit off on his examples, but the question is a bit more complicated. Refusing to sell a cake out of the display case because an individual is black/gay/Muslim/whatever, obvious discrimination, no question, both immoral and illegal. Events and work-for-hire, on the other hand, are where the ambiguity lies. If the cake bakers were asked to custom create a cake with swastikas for the neonazi rally, should they be allowed to refuse to take that job? I would agree that the bakery should be required to sell the neonazis a cake from the display case and a tube of red icing, but requiring them to enter a work-for-hire contract is, in my opinion, more ambiguous.
Bringing it back to the gay wedding scenario, the summary on the ACLU website is a bit vague on the difference between the two. The plaintiff in the case was indeed gay, making it a layup for a discrimination ruling to be made. The case would have been far more interesting if the plaintiff was straight, e.g. a caterer subcontracting a cake for a gay wedding. If the policy was "we don't make same sex wedding cakes, regardless of who asks", and both a straight person and an LGBTQ++ person received the same lack of service, then I would argue it's not 'discrimination' so much as 'a service that isn't offered', again, so long as the policy was posted and they're willing to sell an undecorated cake and a tube of frosting to that same person. Of course, it would have been really funny to watch the squirming that would take place if the cake was for "Alex and Taylor".
Just to ensure I don't get accused of comparing homosexuals to nazis, I'm explicitly not equating the two groups - and that's my entire point. Refusing service to a human is discrimination, and no, I'm not even a little bit in favor of doing so, to anyone. However, refusing to provide service to an *event*
or *ideological group* irrespective of the individual representative signatory is...apparently the same thing though, according to the state of Colorado? The "protected class" argument is tough - "neonazis are not a protected class" makes some sense because one can choose to cease being a nazi (and really, they should), but does that mean that a cake baker can refuse to make a swastika cake for a straight neonazi, but not a gay one (yes, I know...)? Moreover, the "protected class" argument is tenuous due to its seemingly inconsistent definition. It's not as simple as 'Things that cannot be changed about one's self', because the quoted list includes 'marital status', which is optional. Though presumably not an exhaustive list, it also doesn't list religion, meaning that they would be free to refuse to make a 'Happy Ramadan' cake as long as the person asking was a white Muslim?
This brings us full circle to GoDaddy - If the individual paying for the hosting account for the website fell within a protected class in tangential relation to the content of the website, does 'protected class' overrule 'objectionable content'? Does 'private company choosing who they do business with' overrule both? Neither? If "protected class" wins, then all the neonazis need to do is have a gay person sign up for the hosting account, and then Godaddy *has* to provide them service. If "private company" wins, then there is no such thing as a "protected class" as long as the content is sufficiently objectionable.
I can understand Palm's insistence on HTML/Javascript because the alternative at the time was writing to lower level APIs that would have limited their appeal. Additionally, that announcement was made at a time when Apple's like was "web apps are the future" and encouraged browser based functionality. It was a way of minimizing the effort to code for multiple platforms prior to IDEs handling the lion's share of the cross-compilation that would have otherwise been necessary. An inefficient use of resources for sure, but no one was going to bet the farm on Palm, either (well, except HP).
I think there was room for another monolithic vendor for two reasons. First, there were three tribes prior to the iPhone - WinMo, Blackberry, and Palm. Each had their pros and cons, but there was a solid three-horse race to be had at the time. Post iPhone, and I'd argue even up until Android's Ice Cream Sandwich release, there was still a niche to be had by dethroning Blackberry. If there was polished hardware tied to a good MDM that did the cross-device syncing in a self-hosted manner at 1/3 the price of BES with availability on every carrier and Palm were to be content holding a 20% niche marketshare, I think they could have held the business market that no one seemed to want to target. It'd be a tall order to get to a mature level in a short period, but HP wasn't doing anything groundbreaking at the time anyway.
WebOS's timing wasn't nearly as bad as its execution.
WebOS came to light in 2009. Apple's App Store was only a year old, Android was still trying to find its footing, Microsoft was busy with their first revamp of WinMo, and Blackberry still owned the business market. Android being the second horse in the mobile race was far from determined at that point.
WebOS's first problem was that it was Sprint-only. Carrier exclusivity is a relic of a bygone era *now*, but nobody was switching to Sprint for a Palm phone. It might have done better at Verizon, but Sprint was a bad move. Next up, their app ecosystem was incompatible. Now sure, webOS was such a radical departure from PalmOS that it's unsurprising there wasn't compatibility, and even though Palm's days were clearly numbered at the time, they made no attempt to leverage whatever ecosystem it did have. The market was ripe for a Blackberry competitor; BES was overpriced and overcomplicated, but it would be another year or two before Activesync was supported on either iOS or Android, and more comprehensive MDM features for either were still very immature.
The place where the ball was really dropped, however, was the hardware. The Palm Pre couldn't stand up to *anything*. They had very high insurance claim rates, and very high return rates, because they couldn't handle real-world usage at all. They tried cramming a Blackberry-reminiscent keyboard into a thinner frame, and the screen was too small for a virtual keyboard to be a good idea. The mobile browser was okay, but wasn't Safari, and even if it were, mobile websites weren't much of a thing at that point.
Once HP bought Palm, they promised "WebOS Everywhere", and it really would have been a great preinstallation environment for their laptops - anyone remember the 'Quickplay' idea that HP tried but took longer to boot than actual-Windows? WebOS was well ahead of its time in the context of competing with Chromebooks, and the idea of seamlessly moving between devices was the kind of thing HP could have executed better than anyone under those circumstances. However, I think you're spot on with the "CEO Revolving Door" being its undoing. Apotheker seemed to think that 'tablets == massive profits', and didn't leave the Touchpad on the shelf for even two months before scrapping it because it didn't sell like the iPad.
Had WebOS launched alongside an MDM software stack (maybe even including five free CALs with a server purchase), run on phones that didn't bruise like a cantaloupe, mastered the seamless cross-device data sharing that was demonstrated at their keynote, and done so with some support from the top...it's entirely possible that we would have a three horse race right now.
Slashdot Mirror
Because if you have efficient button and icon design, you don't need menu trees and your dependence on language (and all the misunderstandings it creates) is decreased by an order of magnitude. Just have a British Person ask an American where a boot is if you want a good example.
This comment brought to you by someone who has never had to give directions over the phone, or try to figure out what the person on the other end is looking at as the two of you play an impromptu game of inverse pictionary. Icons are just fine, but icons + labels are better and have very few downsides.
Your example is terrible because most British cars have the driver side and passenger side in a reverse layout from American cars. If you're doing that, you can relabel the error light 'boot open' instead of 'trunk open'.
1. I agree with the fact that having more articles about software releases would be nice. However, software itself has generally made its way to 'rolling releases', making version milestones less common. Additionally, there's the paradox that if software is large enough for a release to be relevant, most people already know. If it's not large enough, an article would be of questionable utility.
2. Agreed with this.
3. Also agreed, and these do happen (see the sizeable discussion about the end of the Cassini mission). I pose a genuine question though - how many scientific advances that are front-page-of-Slashdot worthy are made with any frequency? It's entirely possible that I'm ignorant on this front, but I submit that science has gotten a bit more iterative or niche-based, and that there are fewer articles because there are fewer headline-earning breakthroughs.
4. DeCSS is completed software, and present discs are using more sophisticated encryption methods. I'm unaware of an OSS Blu-Ray decryption tool. There are the occasions when a court case makes waves, but with a lot of the trail blazed on these fronts, again, less news about them.
5. Definitely agreed here, but I think societally there are far fewer people for whom 'because I could' is a reason to do anything anymore. It's a topic of its own as to why the adventurous project spirit seems to be endangered in our current climate, but I would like to see more from those who still have it.
6. Star Wars and Star Trek topics still regularly come up. However, post-Disney acquisition of Star Wars and Marvel, and post-paywalling of Star Trek, there's a bit less news that requires Slashdot, so much as 'a pulse' to find out. With CBS making it all but impossible for some of the more prominent fan films to continue ("Continues", "Phase II", and others) after the Axanar debacle, they too became less newsworthy.
7. Ask Slashdot suffers a bit from the rising sea level. Questions that are beginner to intermediate level commonly get met with "RTFM" or an LMGTFY link, rather than individuals taking the time to provide information anyway. Advanced level questions are usually niche specific to the point where fewer people can answer them. With more information generally available by asking Aunt Google or more specialized forums (Spiceworks, StackOverflow, forums.$PRODUCT.com, even Reddit), Ask Slashdot is in a bit of a tight place.
8. Agreed on this one, but I'm also wondering if Steam has helped be that place, with curators and lots of indie games, it's possible to get information and discussions on games elsewhere.
9. I like the idea of user-submitted content, but consider the population of Slashdot at this point. There are 1.3 million accounts before mine, and mine is nearly a decade old. As much as user submitted content that doesn't have an upstream source would be interesting (I would be interested on the Slashdot take on a few of my blog posts), I think it would be incredibly difficult for even full-time editors to go through the deluge of content of that nature and figure out what's worth posting vs. what isn't. Also, there are plenty of AMAs on Reddit.
10. I think you answered your own question - Geeks in Space was a 'podcast' before 'podcasts' were a thing. Now, you can find a dozen podcasts of varying quality on basically any topic. Some complement Youtube channels, Twitch feeds, or other forms of self-broadcast media. I submit that the reason the podcast is gone is because thousands of people are doing it better.
11. Jon Katz is a bit before my time. Bennett Hasselton is not. I'm kinda fine with the lack of editorial content, because editorials themselves assume a top-down narrative sort of situation, rather than the more egalatarian layout that is "the comments section".
TL;DR - I agree on a number of these fronts. However, I similarly submit that one of the major problems is that there is simply less news for nerds.
Canada has had a number of successful technology companies, but they've all been plagued by mismanagement see...Corel
Hey, don't keep Corel in that list! They've acquired - and still sell - WordPerfect, Paradox, WinZip, and WinDVD. It's a retirement home for software.
Why would I want to drive to the store to buy a digital file on a disc (which might not even be in stock) instead of downloading it or streaming it from the comfort of my home? I already have beer and popcorn kernels at home.
Yes it pushes the limits of current home internet in many US locales for streaming, but that's a solvable problem with better home internet or pre-downloading.
1. I'm not saying that there are exactly zero people who would find this useful. I'm saying that the market of people for whom are those who meet these qualifiers:
It just seems like a very niche market.
2. Most stores put their inventories online and can be checked. Most stores also still accept phone calls and will put a desired item on the side for you if you ask.
3. Obviously one does not *have* to purchase beer and popcorn.
4. Since 720p and 1080p movies are generally viable to stream or download on even 15mbit internet, and the summary implies that Disney is likely to retain the HD releases (but not UHD) on iTunes, the question is whether the impluse-watching that precludes an Amazon order or a Target run must also be in 4K, or if HD is 'good enough' under those circumstances.
5. For someone with a Slashdot UID lower than mine, it's surprising you haven't come across any of the literally hundreds of discussions about the fact that internet quality in the US varies greatly from "multiple gigabit providers" to "satellite or dial-up", depending on where you live. If getting everyone - or even 95% -
the aforementioned 15mbit internet speeds were a 'solvable problem', there would be headway in that respect. I agree that the issue is some combination of monetary and political, but it sadly is in the hands of politicians, rather than technicians, making it 'solvable' in the same way getting across the Atlantic in a speedboat is 'doable'.
I don't think much of the pushback has to do with the fact that the difference isn't visible. The issue has more to do with whether people are going to try and use a different service at a higher price and less convenience to get 4K versions of Disney content.
It's an interesting question. I'm wagering that most parents aren't going to be willing to spend more for a 4K version of Moana when their kids are probably just as happy with the SD version, to be frank. As long as Disney sells the HD versions for $20 a pop, I'm sure that won't be a big loss. On the other hand, the Marvel and Star Wars properties lend themselves to 4K releases, but wouldn't enthusiasts prefer Blu-Ray discs to digital files at that point? I mean, assuming 60mbit download speeds (the standard tier from my cable company), it's nearly two hours to download a 50GB file, more than enough time for lots of people to drive to Target, buy a Blu-Ray for the sameish price as Disney wants for a 4K download, some popcorn, and a case of beer, and come home. Also, 50GB movies add up pretty quickly; it would take less than a dozen to fill up the hard disks for most standard Mac configurations. iTunes is required still due to the DRM (ruling out the use of Plex or other streaming server solutions), so a library of any consequence is going to require an external hard disk or three connected to a desktop with iTunes running. "Play via streaming!" seems obvious, but iTunes doesn't seem to allow that (admittedly, the Apple TV might). Even if it did, the bandwidth requirements for 4K streaming are rather high, making repeated viewings an uphill battle for Apple justify using as an avenue of first resort without Netflix's levels of peering. Now, the storage could be eased obviously, if the Apple 4K files are smaller than the selection I came across on TPB, but if Apple compresses more than a little bit, the resolution improvement becomes a tradeoff of higher compression, and again starts to favor Blu-Ray. For those who want to view a film on impulse, I would imagine that the HD releases are 'good enough'.
tl;dr: Disney content seems to me like something that would be 'good enough' in 1080p for most people. Between the transfer times and storage requirements for 4K iTunes downloads that aren't too heavily compressed to cease to justify the higher resolution, Blu-Ray probably still serves that niche better than downloads.
Ehh, I'm up for one more go-around...
My exact quote:
"The color separation makes it clear when you've cleared the 'new message' in the thread, as does the stylized header"
Yes. That's a function of the mail client and not the email itself.
At some level, whether by markup styling or the use of the ">" character, the e-mail body is where the information regarding what's new vs. what isn't is designated.
For the third time, I'm referring to the fact that replies generally start with a different text style than the rest of the thread when reading an e-mail in a window which shows a message,
Perhaps in pieces of crap like Outlook that don't care about email standards, but they don't look any different in any real email client. Any email client that changes the body of the email based on read or unread status is broken, period.
You've yet to name what you consider a "real e-mail client", and you're still missing my point. The body doesn't change its formatting based on whether a message is 'read' or 'unread', but rather an e-mail containing the text of several prior messages over the course of an e-mail exchange is shown with different formatting. So, changing the color of the text in an e-mail is "broken" because it alters the data contained within the message, but adding ">" characters with each iteration as plaintext messages do (i.e. changing the message data) is fine?
Of course! But kindly tell that to the tens of millions of non-Firefox users when "clicking a link" works just fine now.
I don't have to tell them anything. This is a fact. Your excuse that we need enhanced email so that cutting and pasting a URL will work is wrong. We don't need that.
You're right. Actual HTML links don't require cutting/pasting. They just open. Your solution to the inconsistency of links with line breaks is either URL shortening (which has never been abused *eyeroll*) or have all the browsers work like firefox.
So, what's your preferred term for "e-mail with a binary attachment but which lacks formatting or markup"?
I don't know what semantic game you are trying to play here. Your claim that "non-plain-text email" means "isn't email" is patent bullshit.
Okay, I'll try phrasing it a different way. There are three possibilities at play here:
1. E-mails with HTML/CSS markup and other nonstandard stuff.
2. E-mails with ASCII messages and binary attachments.
3. E-mails with ASCII messages only.
We both agree that #1 is not 'plaintext e-mail' and that #3 is, but #2 is where the lack of clarity is.
Because in your haste to tell me to stop being stupid, you managed to prove my point. There is ambiguity in the term.
You seem to be the only person I've ever heard think that "non-plain-text email" means "not email". Most of the people with a brain understand that "non-plain-text email" means it is email that isn't plain text. There is no ambiguity.
See above.
Great! You should have no problem getting the millions of Outlook users to migrate over to your superior e-mail client..
Game over. Knowing that Outlook is a defective email client doesn't imply any need to convert nimrods who like defective email clients.
At this point, I'm sensing the vibe you're being angry just for the sake of being angry. First, you still haven't named a mail client you believe is better. Second, if Outlook is a defective mail client, then it would need to be replaced if going back to plaintext communications is going to be a matter of course. I'm asking how you would address the fact that a "defective e-mail client" is amongst the most commonly used, and it sounds like your way to address it is "l
1. I was not referring to whether a new e-mail was bold or not, but how text is shown within an e-mail.
No, you were pretty specific as to "clearing" the new mail in the thread, and this has nothing to do with what the email itself looks like. If you have an email client that changes the email itself to show status, then you have a very very poor email client. But we already know that.
My exact quote:
"The color separation makes it clear when you've cleared the 'new message' in the thread, as does the stylized header"
For the third time, I'm referring to the fact that replies generally start with a different text style than the rest of the thread when reading an e-mail in a window which shows a message, along with its replies, in reverse chronological order. Perhaps it wasn't perfectly worded, but that it what I was referring to, from the beginning. Whether it's better or worse than the countless ">" symbols that are used in text-only messages is subjective, but the color change in the message body is no less an effective way of performing the same task.
3. So the way *your* mail scanner functions is the baseline for how things should work?
I said nothing about how my "mail scanner" works. I told you of how at least one of them DOES work, and why that makes one-time reset links useless. There goes your excuse for non-plain-text email based on "password reset links", if they weren't already made meaningless by the ability to copy and paste the plain text URL representation.
Okay, so apparently there are issues with single use links when they go through whatever spam filter you're referencing but not using. That must be why most of such e-mails I've received have a 24-hour expiration, or there is some magical pixie dust in MS Forefront, Google Postini, Barracuda, SpamAssassin, Scrollout, and Symantec SMG that make them work just fine. Either this nameless, unused filter is the standard by which such messages must comply, or the fact that this method has been implemented by basically every forum and online service I've ever used makes the issue on the side of the filter for all practical purposes.
4. Firefox handles them wonderfully.
Which is proof that there is no inherent problem with line breaks in a copy/paste URL. Sheesh, if you knew anything, you ought to at least realize that "\n" is not a valid character in a URL and EVERY web client should be able to ignore them.
Of course! But kindly tell that to the tens of millions of non-Firefox users when "clicking a link" works just fine now.
The Google search bar / MSN search bar / WhateverBrowserHijacker search bar is a different story,
You don't paste a URL into a SEARCH BAR, you nimrod. It's a URL.
Excuse you. I'm poignantly aware of the difference between the two. I also happen to provide desktop support to other people, and I'm very good at it because I observe how *they* interact with computers. Step outside your ivory tower and see that 90% of computer users don't know the difference anymore. It's a sad reality that pains me as much as it pains you, but the fact of the matter is that those people have passwords too, those people need them reset, and if you have the rude, condescending attitude with them that you do with someone who at least somewhat agrees with you, then it's unsurprising that your view on the topic is comprised solely of your own.
and the number of people who think that's an address bar vastly outnumber Firefox users.
Nimrods don't know how to use their browsers, film at 11.
I appreciate the assist from Altrag below. As much as I very much wish that everybody had an understanding of UI conventions, the fact is, once again, that nimrods use computers, and nimrods have browsers an
1. The popularity of Twitter and Slack is based primarily on their ability to handle synchronous communication, in which e-mail lacks. Moreover, while it's not possible to change the font on Twitter (dunno about Slack), Twitter does allow for links, images, and embedded videos, functions plaintext e-mail does not provide. Would Twitter still be popular without these abilities? That's a good question indeed, but neither Twitter nor Slack are long-form means of communication.
2. Yes, they're annoying and a waste of resources. Unfortunately, you could say that regarding just about anything...including our Slashdot discussion, since all of those points apply to those who would read our dialogue and not see any value within it.
3. The computer-to-TV transformation has been going on for some time, but I would argue that at least with PCs, the end user still has root access, at least for now. Mobile computing devices are a far greater threat in that respect.
4. I was sufficiently successful in expressing myself in plaintext that it warranted a response. As someone who still camps out in IRC and Usenet, I agree with you. However, in a culture where memes and reaction gifs are means of expressing one's self, to readily ignore the existence of these things is not to stem the tide, but to ensure that proposed changes are less palatable.
1. I was not referring to whether a new e-mail was bold or not, but how text is shown within an e-mail. The format changes when reading an e-mail body consisting of a multi-message thread is, in fact, a function of the e-mail formatting.
2. No, images don't *have* to be inline. However, there's a reason why many tutorials use that format - the format itself is useful.
3. So the way *your* mail scanner functions is the baseline for how things should work? What's your suggestion for a password reset methodology that isn't a greater security risk?
4. Firefox handles them wonderfully. The Google search bar / MSN search bar / WhateverBrowserHijacker search bar is a different story, and the number of people who think that's an address bar vastly outnumber Firefox users.
5. I very much do know what I'm talking about. The point I was getting at, if you're going to be pedantic about it, is that "plain text e-mail" can mean "if it's not text, it's not e-mail", akin to how PINE mail and other terminal-based mail clients functioned. It can also refer simply to the text formatting, inclusive of MIME attachments and indicating a lack of HTML/RTF formatting. I was speaking of the latter, but wished to acknowledge the existence of the former.
6. Outlook is far from an exemplary piece of software, but I'm hard pressed to point to a locally-installed mail client with a greater marketshare. Now, we can certainly argue that Microsoft's way of extending it is far from ideal, but it's not like Gmail is any less guilty of adhering to standards and both AOL and Yahoo had their EEE days when they had the lion's share of e-mail users, so it's not like extending e-mail beyond the specs is an evil reserved only for Microsoft. Whether good practice or not, Outlook is very much a part of corporate environments and is used by millions of people every day. Thunderbird and Evolution may well be 'standards compliant', but my entire point is that the original e-mail standards are insufficient for most modern uses. I can't say I "like" Outlook, but treating it like it's irrelevant is of no assistance, either.
The folks at Dartmouth may well be correct in that plaintext e-mail is safest. However, does that really make it the best solution anymore?
Look, I've got "that secretary" who uses borderline-illegible script fonts on stationery and ConstantContact blasts annoy me, as well. HTML mail does indeed have its downside and I don't disagree that it opens up at least some amount of security holes.
At the same time, plaintext e-mail has its faults, too. The color separation makes it clear when you've cleared the 'new message' in the thread, as does the stylized header. Inline image embedding is abused by marketers, but it makes it far easier to send tutorials or support requests via screenshot sequences. Yes, clickable links are a security risk, but that's how password reset e-mails work now. Do you really expect users to copy the complete URL into the address bar without an issue? If there's a line break in there, you're really screwed.
All of that hasn't even begun to address attachments, because technically it is possible for mail attachments to count as both a part of plaintext e-mails and not. Attachments are a mess, but we've stopped allowing people to e-mail executable files, for the most part. The attachment file types themselves, however, are a mess. Outlook cries wolf at *every* attachment, which makes it "the dialog box to ignore" - itself a UI problem of its own faults. The fact that the last few ransomware attacks I took care of were sourced from a malicious ActiveX payload on a Word document is only as stupid as the fact that there is still a whole lot of software that depends on ActiveX and Macros to function. If Microsoft is too easy a target, then Adobe has some splanin' to do when it comes to the fact that javascript can be embedded into a PDF. I've only seen it ever legitimately used for calculations and validations; is it really that hard to have a dedicated software function for that? The list of such issues is quite extensive, but I think my case on this point is made.
Ultimately, the fact that HTML mail is as ubiquitous as it is has to do with the fact that e-mail as it was originally designed (plaintext, 80x25) is no longer meeting the needs of most people who use it. However, its extensibility is amongst the reasons why e-mail is still as heavily used as it is, long after its contemporaries (IRC, Usenet, others) have faded into niche roles while e-mail is still mainstream.
Meanwhile, most free e-mail providers are pretty good at filtering malicious e-mails, spam filters for on-prem mail filters have reached a pretty good level of maturity, so there are plenty of safeguards in place that have brought the danger down significantly, to the point where e-mail is one piece of the vector rather than the vector itself, and has been for some time.
I pose this question to the Slashdotters who agree with the Dartmouth researchers: Whenever sweeping legislation or military action comes up around here, a post based on Ben Franklin's thoughts regarding trading liberty for security are almost invariably stated, and frequently modded up to a +4 or +5. Now that the "liberty for security" question is on the other foot, when we're discussing trading liberty (more useful e-mail) for security, why does the mindset seem to be flipped? I'm not saying free-for-all e-mail with no spam filters or blacklists are ideal, but I am saying that for all of the ways that e-mail gets abused, it's gotten to the point where it is all but guaranteed to prompt the user before causing trouble, if it gets through the IP blacklists, keyword blacklists, attachment filters, virus scanners, default mail client settings, attachment warnings, application warnings, and UAC prompts...I doubt plaintext would have solved the issue in itself. To champion a function regression in the name of 'security' sounds like the kind of mindset which, according to Franklin, deserves neither liberty nor security.
The purpose of humans is to be entertained.
The purpose of humans is to be consumed by the robots.
So, in other words, synthetics will always rebel against organics?
Star Child, is that you?
>but if the winds are only 73MPH instead of the required 75MPH, we're debating semantics
Either a thing is a thing, or it is not. This is not semantics.
From the stand point of insurance companies (who have different legal obligations for 'hurricanes' than 'tropical depressions'), you are correct. My point was that exposing trees and buildings to sustained 73mph winds is going to do basically the same damage to those trees and buildings as 75mph winds will. It's not like a utility pole is going to check precise wind speeds before determining if it is going to stay standing or not.
Sandy wasn't a hurricane when it made landfall.
Also, the only reason for the extensive damage was because it hit one of the most populated areas in the world.
Legally speaking, yes, it was not considered a 'hurricane' at the time, but if the winds are only 73MPH instead of the required 75MPH, we're debating semantics. Additionally, it was the duration of the storm that was similarly a problem; it covered a massive area and thus it spent plenty of time battering the area. Yes, the damage costs were indeed due to the northeast being a population center, but "extensive damage" is still "extensive damage". I very much remember standing in a gas line shortly thereafter.
What's the concern? Please state it clearly.
The whole situation is a grey area; if it doesn't involve conflicts of interest currently, it easily can, and also causes difficulties regarding equality of education.
Let's assume this teacher is absolutely the best possible scenario: she personally looks through products to see if they are a good fit for the classroom and selects the products that best fit the curriculum. She teaches in terms of principle rather than product ("this is an IDE" vs. "This is Visual Studio"), takes nothing for herself and solely accepts materials for the students / classroom, has the blessing of her superintendent, and sends a letter home to the parents disclosing all of this to the parents whenever such a product enters the classroom. Excellent. Few people would have a problem with this, myself included. Materials need to come from somewhere, and the less parents are nickel-and-dimed for things, the better. Teachers have one less thing to worry about, parents have a starting point to teach their children about advertising, lessons are complemented by things that would need to be purchased anyway, and a company somewhere gets good PR for helping students. Everybody wins.
The problem is that, while those specific circumstances would be perfectly fine, the concern is the precedent being set whereby teachers receive materials, teach how to use the product rather than the principles behind it, take money under the table for doing so, and don't disclose any of it. We see this already in schools; students frequently learn Microsoft Word rather than word processing, or Gmail, not e-mail. Math classes require TI-8x calculators; the textbooks aren't written for Casio. When the line between "sanctuary of learning" and "yet another venue of advertising" become blurred, we find ourselves on a road where this is the logical conclusion.
Advertising to children is a topic unto itself because advertising to children ultimately is a means of spending their parents' money, not their own. Additionally, while high schoolers have at least some notion of how advertising works in aggregate, younger children (especially under the age of 8) have trouble separating "advertisements" from "content"; they will literally sing commercial jingles with all the passion of their favorite song without grasping the difference. This is why cereal ads have the "part of a complete breakfast" product shot thrown in, even though no child in the history of humanity has sat down to eat cereal, toast, eggs, fruit, and a huge glass of milk. It's also why websites and mobile apps have the "ask a parent" disclaimer added, and shows targeted to minors cannot have product placement. It's a topic of intense and continual scrutiny as the ease with which one can manipulate a child is a near perfect match for the desires of advertisers. The fact that the companies providing materials in TFS are targeting "influential" and "well-liked" teachers speaks fairly clearly regarding their intentions.
If the classroom is allowed to become another venue for advertising to children, we find ourselves opening up a huge can of worms. For starters, we would then have some classrooms stocked with materials bearing advertisements. Since the point of the advertising is for the companies to make money, they're not going to target low-income or poorly funded schools (paradoxically, the ones who would most benefit from those materials), they're going to provide those materials to the most influential teachers in districts who have the most money to spend on the products, thus furthering the divide between elite schools and poorly funded ones. Over time, it's entirely possible that products (and by extension their companies) start influencing curricula. It's bad enough that Pearson has as much influence in education as they do, but at the very least their business is education. To open
Most devices won't receive any updates even if they are totally compromised, because that's how much of a shit the vendors give about their customers. Only devices getting updates anyway will get locked back down.
Ordinarily, yes. But these vulnerabilities have the potential of removing the vendor's ability to retain control over the devices and allowing users to obtain root access on phones that previously did not have that capability..so I have a gut feeling the vendors will be coming out of the woodwork on this.
Well, if Redmond gets hit with a nuke from N.Korea, then ReactOS is the only way we'll still get updates to Windows in the near future.
Did you just seriously give everyone an upside to nuclear war with North Korea?
Recently, I've been enjoying Toxikk; their tagline is "frag like it's 1999". My one complaint about its single player / campaign mode is that it seems like the difficulties can use some tweaking - enemies either thoroughly ignore your existence, or the next difficulty up, they'll become champion marksmen who never miss...but it's still fun, there is a free version, the only DLC is the paid version, and it supports LAN play if you roll that way.
Also supporting LAN play, and also costing $0, is Unreal Tournament. Epic Games has moved to a content store model as well as using it as a springboard for engine and dev tools licensing, so the game itself is free. It supports LAN play, the bots are pretty well balanced, and although the map selection is a bit sparse at the moment, they've been consistently adding them as the game has progressed. I've found it to be a bit faster paced than UT2004 or UT3, but about on par with Q3A. Both this and Toxikk greatly benefit from a half decent GPU. While you don't need quad TitanX cards to get a good framerate, I wouldn't recommend either on Intel GPUs.
From the FOSS department, Alien Swarm is half decent. It lacks the polish of the first two games, and there are relatively few players if you enjoy playing online against randos, but as far as open source games go, and at a cost of $0, I've been pretty happy with it.
If you're looking for something less twitchy-shooty, the first two Trine games are highly recommended. From indie studio Frozenbyte, these two games are gorgeously animated, have simple-yet-challenging game mechanics, aren't ridiculously long, and are generally enjoyable. While they lack solid replay value due to the puzzles lacking wide varieties of solutions, there's usually at least two and they regularly go on sale on Steam.
I'll echo other recommendations for Mass Effect as well; though it has its problem spots the characters are wonderful and the trilogy is thoroughly enjoyable and well worth the invested time. Every so often I'll pull up Civ 5; though I'm not very good at it, its complexity keeps my mind working. Batman: Arkham Asylum is also recommended, and if you haven't played Bioshock, it's well worth it. None of these games are 'new', and many haven't aged perfectly in terms of graphics or game mechanics, but the fact that they are still being recommended 5-10 years later shows that there are more than a few redeeming qualities for them.
When 'real life' doesn't keep me busy, there's no shortage of video games with which a fellow "late 90's / early 00's" fan can find enjoyment.
Shocking as this may be, there are more than a handful of people who are okay with running an ever-so-slightly-out-of-date version of an OS. I cannot point to a single Android feature since Jelly Bean that I would miss.
1. Virtually all of those things are optional. Winamp, even its current iteration, has a very granular custom installer. It's possible to do a 20mb installation that does exactly what you're looking for, down to the 2.x default skin with no flyout UI elements.
2. VLC...the application with all its codecs internally bundled, video stream reading, video transcoding, font cache building, alarm clock setting VLC whose kitchen sink installation is twice the size of Winamp as is it's startup time...that's your example of small, tight code? Don't get me wrong, I do like VLC and its ability to play basically everything, but let's not confuse "inefficient code" with "minimalist UI".
What's so horrible about google?
1. Their search results have gotten progressively worse of late. it's either so fuzzy as to have half the top results completely irrelevant, or "verbatim" won't come up with anything because of spacing or the literal order of words is incorrect.
2. Search for "driver download" and you'll get some very shady websites, many of which don't actually provide driver downloads...and they do nothing about it. Same for "teamviewer" and other legitimate tools that get hijacked by "your computer has a virus" websites. If they want to perpetuate the blurring between the URL bar and the search bar, that's fine, but literally nobody has Googled for teamviewer and been okay with the sketchy sites that rank very high.
3. Overall creepiness. They collect *a lot* of data, even if users go out of their way to avoid it. Though they *say* they'll be responsible with it (and to be fair, so far they appear to have done so), it's incredibly difficult to opt out of data collection, because so much of the web depends on them (go ahead, disable Google Fonts and Google AMP and see what happens to the internet...)
4. Questionable practices - preferring faster sites is understandable, defining 'faster' as 'using Google AMP' is shady. Ad blockers are one thing, but adding an ad blocker to a browser that has a controlling slice of the market when 90% of their revenue comes from ads is 90's Microsoft levels of monopoly.
5. E-mail is a great thing. Gmail has twisted it very heavily from being an analog of letter-based correspondence to being a de facto chat client, and twisting POP and IMAP to make it less practical to use a third party mail client, and require an obscurely placed setting to allow third party clients to connect via standard protocols...and it's not getting better.
6. Discontinuing useful services and changing UIs and APIs to make things less useful (Reader, iGoogle, their 1,001 chat clients, none of which are XMPP compliant anymore, the list goes on).
7. On Android specifically, mandating profitable things ('Play Store' must be on the first page) but not openness-based things (mandating unlocked bootloaders or that shipped apps can be removed if not a core function). Yes, they sell their reference phones, but if they're going to have requirements that are purely for profit reasons, there's no reason they can't mandate Samsung do the same thing.
Now yes, I know there are rebuts to most of these items, but collectively Google has a stranglehold on the internet advertising market and controls enough of the internet infrastructure that avoiding them is near impossible, I do expect better behavior out of them.
I was in a conference room at a law firm last month. Across the hall was a printer the size of a large refrigerator. It was printing and collating continuously for the entire two hours I was there. It looked like it was printing several pages per second.
I wonder if a human eye will ever look at even 1% of those pages.
Those that are looked at, will be looked at by lawyers...so 1% being seen by humans is still way too high.
The GP was a bit off on his examples, but the question is a bit more complicated. Refusing to sell a cake out of the display case because an individual is black/gay/Muslim/whatever, obvious discrimination, no question, both immoral and illegal. Events and work-for-hire, on the other hand, are where the ambiguity lies. If the cake bakers were asked to custom create a cake with swastikas for the neonazi rally, should they be allowed to refuse to take that job? I would agree that the bakery should be required to sell the neonazis a cake from the display case and a tube of red icing, but requiring them to enter a work-for-hire contract is, in my opinion, more ambiguous.
Bringing it back to the gay wedding scenario, the summary on the ACLU website is a bit vague on the difference between the two. The plaintiff in the case was indeed gay, making it a layup for a discrimination ruling to be made. The case would have been far more interesting if the plaintiff was straight, e.g. a caterer subcontracting a cake for a gay wedding. If the policy was "we don't make same sex wedding cakes, regardless of who asks", and both a straight person and an LGBTQ++ person received the same lack of service, then I would argue it's not 'discrimination' so much as 'a service that isn't offered', again, so long as the policy was posted and they're willing to sell an undecorated cake and a tube of frosting to that same person. Of course, it would have been really funny to watch the squirming that would take place if the cake was for "Alex and Taylor".
Just to ensure I don't get accused of comparing homosexuals to nazis, I'm explicitly not equating the two groups - and that's my entire point. Refusing service to a human is discrimination, and no, I'm not even a little bit in favor of doing so, to anyone. However, refusing to provide service to an *event*
or *ideological group* irrespective of the individual representative signatory is...apparently the same thing though, according to the state of Colorado? The "protected class" argument is tough - "neonazis are not a protected class" makes some sense because one can choose to cease being a nazi (and really, they should), but does that mean that a cake baker can refuse to make a swastika cake for a straight neonazi, but not a gay one (yes, I know...)? Moreover, the "protected class" argument is tenuous due to its seemingly inconsistent definition. It's not as simple as 'Things that cannot be changed about one's self', because the quoted list includes 'marital status', which is optional. Though presumably not an exhaustive list, it also doesn't list religion, meaning that they would be free to refuse to make a 'Happy Ramadan' cake as long as the person asking was a white Muslim?
This brings us full circle to GoDaddy - If the individual paying for the hosting account for the website fell within a protected class in tangential relation to the content of the website, does 'protected class' overrule 'objectionable content'? Does 'private company choosing who they do business with' overrule both? Neither? If "protected class" wins, then all the neonazis need to do is have a gay person sign up for the hosting account, and then Godaddy *has* to provide them service. If "private company" wins, then there is no such thing as a "protected class" as long as the content is sufficiently objectionable.
We're halfway there =).
I can understand Palm's insistence on HTML/Javascript because the alternative at the time was writing to lower level APIs that would have limited their appeal. Additionally, that announcement was made at a time when Apple's like was "web apps are the future" and encouraged browser based functionality. It was a way of minimizing the effort to code for multiple platforms prior to IDEs handling the lion's share of the cross-compilation that would have otherwise been necessary. An inefficient use of resources for sure, but no one was going to bet the farm on Palm, either (well, except HP).
I think there was room for another monolithic vendor for two reasons. First, there were three tribes prior to the iPhone - WinMo, Blackberry, and Palm. Each had their pros and cons, but there was a solid three-horse race to be had at the time. Post iPhone, and I'd argue even up until Android's Ice Cream Sandwich release, there was still a niche to be had by dethroning Blackberry. If there was polished hardware tied to a good MDM that did the cross-device syncing in a self-hosted manner at 1/3 the price of BES with availability on every carrier and Palm were to be content holding a 20% niche marketshare, I think they could have held the business market that no one seemed to want to target. It'd be a tall order to get to a mature level in a short period, but HP wasn't doing anything groundbreaking at the time anyway.
WebOS's timing wasn't nearly as bad as its execution.
WebOS came to light in 2009. Apple's App Store was only a year old, Android was still trying to find its footing, Microsoft was busy with their first revamp of WinMo, and Blackberry still owned the business market. Android being the second horse in the mobile race was far from determined at that point.
WebOS's first problem was that it was Sprint-only. Carrier exclusivity is a relic of a bygone era *now*, but nobody was switching to Sprint for a Palm phone. It might have done better at Verizon, but Sprint was a bad move. Next up, their app ecosystem was incompatible. Now sure, webOS was such a radical departure from PalmOS that it's unsurprising there wasn't compatibility, and even though Palm's days were clearly numbered at the time, they made no attempt to leverage whatever ecosystem it did have. The market was ripe for a Blackberry competitor; BES was overpriced and overcomplicated, but it would be another year or two before Activesync was supported on either iOS or Android, and more comprehensive MDM features for either were still very immature.
The place where the ball was really dropped, however, was the hardware. The Palm Pre couldn't stand up to *anything*. They had very high insurance claim rates, and very high return rates, because they couldn't handle real-world usage at all. They tried cramming a Blackberry-reminiscent keyboard into a thinner frame, and the screen was too small for a virtual keyboard to be a good idea. The mobile browser was okay, but wasn't Safari, and even if it were, mobile websites weren't much of a thing at that point.
Once HP bought Palm, they promised "WebOS Everywhere", and it really would have been a great preinstallation environment for their laptops - anyone remember the 'Quickplay' idea that HP tried but took longer to boot than actual-Windows? WebOS was well ahead of its time in the context of competing with Chromebooks, and the idea of seamlessly moving between devices was the kind of thing HP could have executed better than anyone under those circumstances. However, I think you're spot on with the "CEO Revolving Door" being its undoing. Apotheker seemed to think that 'tablets == massive profits', and didn't leave the Touchpad on the shelf for even two months before scrapping it because it didn't sell like the iPad.
Had WebOS launched alongside an MDM software stack (maybe even including five free CALs with a server purchase), run on phones that didn't bruise like a cantaloupe, mastered the seamless cross-device data sharing that was demonstrated at their keynote, and done so with some support from the top...it's entirely possible that we would have a three horse race right now.