It is not as bad as you say, as far as the pestering goes. Macs let you specify how often they check for updates. You can go with daily, weekly, or whenever.
Yes, that's for the OS. But every application has its own update mechanism. And since there's not standard package or update system on the Mac, they're all different and can't be controlled centrally. There isn't even a standard way of removing applications or finding out what's installed.
On the flip side, what if you have Google word processor for ChromeOS version 10 and Google decides that version 11 is so much better they are going to switch everyone over to it right away?
Major, disruptive version changes like that are a disease of Windows and OS X. Google introduces features very gradually, does live testing with labs, and lets you turn new features off. Most people don't even notice the changes.
Also, there's nothing Google-specific about Chrome OS; you can use it with other service providers or your own in-home server.
So, there could be policy/mechanism issues related to Google ChromeOS app updates too. Just different ones, is all.
They're not just different, they are clearly much less frequent and much less disruptive.
The fish contains indigestible fats; as such, it has about the same effect as eating large amounts of Olestra: it's laxative and leads to oily "leakage".
"The US FDA has warned consumers about potential mislabeling of oilfish [same thing applies to Escolar], but has concluded that any laxative side effects that occur are uncomfortable at worst and pose no health risk."
In my experience, even the best "hard" science fiction usually ends up having lots of problems. Often, they do a nice job on some particular aspect of physics, fudge the rest of physics, and then completely fall apart on economics, sociology, biology, and evolution. Or vice versa.
As for Nightfall, I find it implausible that any technical civilization would be surprised for the concept of "darkness" or that it or the appearance of stars would cause it to fall apart. Civilizations tend to die of much more banal problems.
There's a good chance that this kind of biochemistry is universal; the universe is full of the kind of stuff that our DNA and proteins are made from, but we haven't observed a lot of other complex chemicals elsewhere.
So, Microsoft is now imitating Apple's moniker. Of course, it's b.s. from both Microsoft and Apple: when you buy their systems, you get an OS and a bunch of accessory applications. You then need to install the application software you actually want to use. And then you can get ready for being pestered constantly by applications that want to update themselves, security warnings, and all that other crap that comes with desktop OSes.
Phones have been hard wired to contracts for years now,
That doesn't make it right. In fact, in many countries, what Apple is doing with the iPhone is illegal and Apple must sell them without a contract, or unlocked with a contract.
I'll bet a cookie that the terms of the service agreement let Apple & AT&T do more or less what ever they want with what is legally still their hardware.
Legally? Are you kidding? You paid for the phone, it's yours. Yes, even with a contract, because if you break the contract (or the phone), you have to pay the difference. It's your phone.
the iPhone is only unique in that its popular so people actually care
And that seems like the perfect opportunity to get something changed in the US phone market, because the US cell phone market is extremely inefficient and overpriced. And Apple, far from changing this, has been perpetuating the problem.
It's not really Microsoft's job to make sure the patent isn't bogus.
Oh, yes, it is. You are supposed to know the field you're filing in. And if you knowingly claim to have invented something when you haven't, it's fraud.
I suggest that we fine the USPTO reviewers who granted the patent.
What have they ever done to you? I suggest we let people sue companies like Microsoft over invalid patents: you file an invalid patent, you're liable for treble damages, based on what licensing revenues you extracted and what impact you may have had on the market. Giving lawyers a financial incentive to invalidate bad patents would stop this nonsense quickly.
If the source code is missing, there's a good chance that (1) the software will stop getting developed at some point, or (2) the authors will charge for it at some point. Either of those possibilities is a big risk to users. Availability of source code reduces my risk, and that's not an "abstract" feature, it's something that affects me every day.
With the Gimp, I can be certain that it will be here 10 years from now and that I don't have to deal with the hassles of installing and upgrading commercial software.
but the thing is that I don't do professional graphics work
Professional graphics work rarely requires very complicated editing. It's much cheaper to take the picture right in the first place than to spend half an hour in Photoshop trying to fix it up.
Perhaps people whose minds has been warped by using it for many years don't notice anymore, but its user interface is horrendously unintuitive and cluttered. And Photoshop fanboys tend to be uncritical and uninformed; when Photoshop was 8bit only, hey, no "professional" would ever need anything better, when it got 16bit editing, all of a sudden, any app that didn't support that was "crap".
On the whole, Photoshop and Gimp are pretty comparable, with each having some advantages over the other. At this point, Gimp actually beats Photoshop in terms of usability (since it uses all standard UI components) and extensibility. Photoshop has some additional powerful plug-ins available, but most people don't need those.
Too powerful for normal users, too limited for power users.
The Gimp is just fine for power users. Not only does it have all the standard functionality that such software should have, it has an excellent plug-in and scripting system. I'm sorry die-hard Photoshop users have a hard time figuring out how to do things in the Gimp, but that's not the Gimp's problem... Photoshop's UI is hardly intuitive either.
Image editing is still way behind Windows and Mac OSX
I don't think so. Gimp/Photoshop aside, there is a lot more image processing available on Linux out of the box than on those other platforms.
It's not just "stupid and obvious", there is plenty of prior art, and it follows from standard engineering principles.
Point is, it's not an attempt on something already claimed by someone.
Yes, it is. If sparklines are public domain and updating graphs dynamically is public domain, then so is the (obvious) combination. The technique belongs to all of us.
So, Microsoft isn't just stealing from another inventor here, they are stealing from all of us, which is even worse.
The real problem is the lack of breeder reactors. Without them, we're only using a few percent of the energy contained in Uranium. It's a waste far worse than what we're doing with fossil fuels.
Why aren't we using breeder reactors? Because the US declared a few decades back that they are a proliferation risk. Why the US decided that isn't clear, since they really aren't.
Their angle is that they are scared. Google Android is eating their lunch on the mobile front. Other platforms, tools, and services are making Windows and Office less and less relevant.
You're going to see more open source releases from Microsoft as the company is trying to avoid falling completely by the wayside. IBM was the same way when they lost their monopoly.
The problem is that an internet website is considered to be a new publication every time someone visits the site.
Yes, that is the problem, and Germany insists on that. That's why Germany insists that archives alter their content.
according to the stupid laws that don't know anything about the internet.
And how do you propose to change that? If it's in an archive and it's accessible in real time, it gets incorporated into search results, people can link it, etc. It really is like it is being published again and again.
There's nothing wrong with the way the German law is applied to the Internet--it works as intended. The problem is with what the German law wants to accomplish, namely rewriting the past in the minds of the people of today.
If we could magically turn prisoners into nice, well-adjusted members of society, we could let them go. However, we can't, so we keep them locked up because nobody has figured out anything better to do with them.
So, lets us say that this person just happens to be able to do great things, and they also just happened to have a lapse of judgment and killed someone.
In that case, they can be pardoned. But that's very rare.
The "common sense" or logical point of view would be to figure out how to actually rehabilitate the individual, otherwise society is worse off in the long run
Utilitarian arguments don't work: given a limited educational budget, we're far better off investing our money in our children than in rehabilitation. The only reason to attempt rehabilitation is on compassionate grounds.
Killers kill and people steal because they do not understand the damage that they do... If they were, and still did the crime, that would mean they truly didn't care and are therefore mentally ill.
That's what "something fundamentally wrong with their sense of decency and compassion" means. Whether you call that "mental illness" or not doesn't matter. Mental illness doesn't automatically exculpate people. Even when it does, it only means locking people up in a mental institution instead of prison. Either way, people can't be trusted. Mental illness, in particular, often has a high probability of recurrence despite treatment.
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Prius cars don't use lithium. They use nickle and hydride
Nickle is quite bad for the environment. Lithium isn't really, it just takes a lot of energy to extract.
It is not as bad as you say, as far as the pestering goes. Macs let you specify how often they check for updates. You can go with daily, weekly, or whenever.
Yes, that's for the OS. But every application has its own update mechanism. And since there's not standard package or update system on the Mac, they're all different and can't be controlled centrally. There isn't even a standard way of removing applications or finding out what's installed.
On the flip side, what if you have Google word processor for ChromeOS version 10 and Google decides that version 11 is so much better they are going to switch everyone over to it right away?
Major, disruptive version changes like that are a disease of Windows and OS X. Google introduces features very gradually, does live testing with labs, and lets you turn new features off. Most people don't even notice the changes.
Also, there's nothing Google-specific about Chrome OS; you can use it with other service providers or your own in-home server.
So, there could be policy/mechanism issues related to Google ChromeOS app updates too. Just different ones, is all.
They're not just different, they are clearly much less frequent and much less disruptive.
The fish contains indigestible fats; as such, it has about the same effect as eating large amounts of Olestra: it's laxative and leads to oily "leakage".
"The US FDA has warned consumers about potential mislabeling of oilfish [same thing applies to Escolar], but has concluded that any laxative side effects that occur are uncomfortable at worst and pose no health risk."
The correct plural form of deus ex machina is deii ex machina
No, it's not. The regular plural of "deus" is "dei". Rare, irregular plurals are "di" and "dii".
Deus-ex-machinas is a reasonable plural of deus-ex-machina in English; I recommend hyphenation.
OMG, they dont seem to teach anything in Latin classes
Apparently not. Neither do they seem to teach English very well.
In my experience, even the best "hard" science fiction usually ends up having lots of problems. Often, they do a nice job on some particular aspect of physics, fudge the rest of physics, and then completely fall apart on economics, sociology, biology, and evolution. Or vice versa.
As for Nightfall, I find it implausible that any technical civilization would be surprised for the concept of "darkness" or that it or the appearance of stars would cause it to fall apart. Civilizations tend to die of much more banal problems.
There's a good chance that this kind of biochemistry is universal; the universe is full of the kind of stuff that our DNA and proteins are made from, but we haven't observed a lot of other complex chemicals elsewhere.
their approval of the way Windows 7 just works
So, Microsoft is now imitating Apple's moniker. Of course, it's b.s. from both Microsoft and Apple: when you buy their systems, you get an OS and a bunch of accessory applications. You then need to install the application software you actually want to use. And then you can get ready for being pestered constantly by applications that want to update themselves, security warnings, and all that other crap that comes with desktop OSes.
Stop shouting, I can hear you. I'll get off your lawn.
There is nothing in Chrome OS that forces you to connect to Google; so, you can leave your stuff on your own servers as well.
Phones have been hard wired to contracts for years now,
That doesn't make it right. In fact, in many countries, what Apple is doing with the iPhone is illegal and Apple must sell them without a contract, or unlocked with a contract.
I'll bet a cookie that the terms of the service agreement let Apple & AT&T do more or less what ever they want with what is legally still their hardware.
Legally? Are you kidding? You paid for the phone, it's yours. Yes, even with a contract, because if you break the contract (or the phone), you have to pay the difference. It's your phone.
the iPhone is only unique in that its popular so people actually care
And that seems like the perfect opportunity to get something changed in the US phone market, because the US cell phone market is extremely inefficient and overpriced. And Apple, far from changing this, has been perpetuating the problem.
It's not really Microsoft's job to make sure the patent isn't bogus.
Oh, yes, it is. You are supposed to know the field you're filing in. And if you knowingly claim to have invented something when you haven't, it's fraud.
I suggest that we fine the USPTO reviewers who granted the patent.
What have they ever done to you? I suggest we let people sue companies like Microsoft over invalid patents: you file an invalid patent, you're liable for treble damages, based on what licensing revenues you extracted and what impact you may have had on the market. Giving lawyers a financial incentive to invalidate bad patents would stop this nonsense quickly.
If the source code is missing, there's a good chance that (1) the software will stop getting developed at some point, or (2) the authors will charge for it at some point. Either of those possibilities is a big risk to users. Availability of source code reduces my risk, and that's not an "abstract" feature, it's something that affects me every day.
With the Gimp, I can be certain that it will be here 10 years from now and that I don't have to deal with the hassles of installing and upgrading commercial software.
I realize that it's limited in comparison
In what way?
but the thing is that I don't do professional graphics work
Professional graphics work rarely requires very complicated editing. It's much cheaper to take the picture right in the first place than to spend half an hour in Photoshop trying to fix it up.
Perhaps people whose minds has been warped by using it for many years don't notice anymore, but its user interface is horrendously unintuitive and cluttered. And Photoshop fanboys tend to be uncritical and uninformed; when Photoshop was 8bit only, hey, no "professional" would ever need anything better, when it got 16bit editing, all of a sudden, any app that didn't support that was "crap".
On the whole, Photoshop and Gimp are pretty comparable, with each having some advantages over the other. At this point, Gimp actually beats Photoshop in terms of usability (since it uses all standard UI components) and extensibility. Photoshop has some additional powerful plug-ins available, but most people don't need those.
The word has a fairly long history and association with homoerotic bondage
I have never heard that, and I would make a wild guess that most of the people who actually know that wouldn't be offended by it...
Too powerful for normal users, too limited for power users.
The Gimp is just fine for power users. Not only does it have all the standard functionality that such software should have, it has an excellent plug-in and scripting system. I'm sorry die-hard Photoshop users have a hard time figuring out how to do things in the Gimp, but that's not the Gimp's problem... Photoshop's UI is hardly intuitive either.
Image editing is still way behind Windows and Mac OSX
I don't think so. Gimp/Photoshop aside, there is a lot more image processing available on Linux out of the box than on those other platforms.
ZFS isn't a synchronization solution, it's just a file system.
The problem isn't technology it's biology: brain surgery is risky and it will remain risky in 2020.
It's not just "stupid and obvious", there is plenty of prior art, and it follows from standard engineering principles.
Point is, it's not an attempt on something already claimed by someone.
Yes, it is. If sparklines are public domain and updating graphs dynamically is public domain, then so is the (obvious) combination. The technique belongs to all of us.
So, Microsoft isn't just stealing from another inventor here, they are stealing from all of us, which is even worse.
The real problem is the lack of breeder reactors. Without them, we're only using a few percent of the energy contained in Uranium. It's a waste far worse than what we're doing with fossil fuels.
Why aren't we using breeder reactors? Because the US declared a few decades back that they are a proliferation risk. Why the US decided that isn't clear, since they really aren't.
Well, that's your choice.
I'm not particularly afraid of dying, but I'm also not afraid of living and experiencing new things.
As long as I'm reasonably healthy, I would like to go on. When I am seriously injured or sick, just let me die quickly.
Their angle is that they are scared. Google Android is eating their lunch on the mobile front. Other platforms, tools, and services are making Windows and Office less and less relevant.
You're going to see more open source releases from Microsoft as the company is trying to avoid falling completely by the wayside. IBM was the same way when they lost their monopoly.
The problem is that an internet website is considered to be a new publication every time someone visits the site.
Yes, that is the problem, and Germany insists on that. That's why Germany insists that archives alter their content.
according to the stupid laws that don't know anything about the internet.
And how do you propose to change that? If it's in an archive and it's accessible in real time, it gets incorporated into search results, people can link it, etc. It really is like it is being published again and again.
There's nothing wrong with the way the German law is applied to the Internet--it works as intended. The problem is with what the German law wants to accomplish, namely rewriting the past in the minds of the people of today.
If we could magically turn prisoners into nice, well-adjusted members of society, we could let them go. However, we can't, so we keep them locked up because nobody has figured out anything better to do with them.
Now, what was your point again?
So, lets us say that this person just happens to be able to do great things, and they also just happened to have a lapse of judgment and killed someone.
In that case, they can be pardoned. But that's very rare.
The "common sense" or logical point of view would be to figure out how to actually rehabilitate the individual, otherwise society is worse off in the long run
Utilitarian arguments don't work: given a limited educational budget, we're far better off investing our money in our children than in rehabilitation. The only reason to attempt rehabilitation is on compassionate grounds.
Killers kill and people steal because they do not understand the damage that they do ... If they were, and still did the crime, that would mean they truly didn't care and are therefore mentally ill.
That's what "something fundamentally wrong with their sense of decency and compassion" means. Whether you call that "mental illness" or not doesn't matter. Mental illness doesn't automatically exculpate people. Even when it does, it only means locking people up in a mental institution instead of prison. Either way, people can't be trusted. Mental illness, in particular, often has a high probability of recurrence despite treatment.