This nearly makes me wish for some sort of fossil fuel "poison" that could corrupt the stuff on a vast scale easily enough. Just drop it in supply lines or at oil rigs and watch prices rise.
That's not a good analogy because humans (and most animals, for that matter) are instinctively protective of their children. Don't expect rationality to factor in this.
Destroying the Earth for a billion dollars, however, is pure and simple greed.
Nothing. I live in a place where over 90% of our electricity comes from hydro. We use electricity to heat. We buy most of our food local, if only because it tastes better. We recycle a very large fraction of what we throw away. I have minimized my car trips to the absolute minimum, using bus and subway for 95% of my commute.
If there's one thing I can't blame myself about, it's wasteful pollution.
Alternatively, since there is a much more varied competition where no one browser can assess sufficient domination to create its own spinoff tech, we'll just see a normalization of browser support and a generally better standard which is agreed upon by consensus as opposed to chosen by a single company. Any gimmic would be virtually impossible to push without support from other browser vendors, at which point you might as well just get it in the spec.
I also don't see how exactly you could ever trust Adobe alone more than Mozilla, Opera, Google, the W3C and others, all watching their backs.
AMD has another problem: its own Phenom line. For all intents and purposes, an older and dirt cheap Phenom II X4 will more than please 99% of the population. For the remaining 1%, performance is an important criterion, at which point they'll probably go for a top-of-the-line Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processor since they're rebuilding every three years anyways, negating the upgrade discounts on AMD's platform.
That AMD is refocusing its strategy towards APUs and possibly teaming up with ARM should be a telltale sign that things are looking dire on the x86 front for them. That's truly a shame, since at the height of their game they could challenge Intel toe-to-toe easily, which is probably what ended up fostering Intel's tick-tock process and the arrival of the Core series (ie very, very good news for consumers). Whether you like AMD or Intel, you need both strong for capitalism to do its job.
Err, no. The old reactors are not unsafe because they're old, they're unsafe because the *designs* are old and are inherently unsafe. The newest designs cannot go into meltdown no matter how much you try.
Old PCs should run with software from the same era. You can't expect today's software to run on hardware from 10 years ago, or else why stop there? Why not ask for Windows 7 to run on a 486? OSX on an Apple II?
As for Atoms, they have no problem running Windows 7 or the latest Linux distros.
Wait... You think the DOE is not necessary anymore with the looming energy crisis and all the talks about global warming? And when is education ever NOT necessary?..
On top of that, all of this is just cents compared to the overall budget, yet the sacred cows like the DOD never get cut.
The stupid are used by the corrupt to achieve their goal. What better way to promote something you want than to find someone gullible enough to swallow your excuse whole and support it with all their will?
So basically, as soon as Apple does something, nobody's allowed to do it anymore?
Maybe if you bothered to look at Samsung's products before the iPad and iPhone, as well as other competitors, you'd be surprised to note Apple hasn't invented the rounded rectangle.
If you read the post properly, you'll notice that it'll be in the next generation of WP and Android devices. It's rather logical that neither Google nor Microsoft has said anything about it thus far since they haven't announced any device running on said OS. We're expecting them momentarily, at least for ICS, but it's not there yet.
The marketing push will start when devices are announced, assuming they have something ready.
Most Slashdot reactions are not skepticism, they are knee-jerk reactions over information that challenges their vision of things. Actual skepticism would involve attempting to verify claims as opposed to dismissing them outright.
On the flip side, the "sane" resolution would be for Apple's design patents to be nulled. While I agree with the judge here, I hate the fact it gives Apple reason to keep bullying because it's working. You should never be able to disrupt competition through such tenuous accusations (not even condemnations, mere accusations are enough!).
Indie gaming is but a fraction of the business. If you look at console games, you'll note that the price point is now roughly between 60 and 70 dollars, whereas it was 50 a generation or two ago. This can be attributed in part to inflation, but not entirely.
PC gaming has it easier thanks to Steam and its competitors driving prices down, but new releases still hit the 60 dollars mark often enough.
There's no denying that there are a lot of similarities between the two. The only thing I'll say is, however, that the comparisons made on this site sound a little biased. For instance, have a look at this shot of the F700: http://static.phonesreview.co.uk/wp-content/phoneimages/2008/02/f700.jpg
How the hell is that not "silver rounded edges" and "a black face"? And this is supposedly Samsung's design before the iPhone, so it shouldn't have been inspired by it. It's not that much of a stretch to have Samsung build off their previous phones while taking some inspiration from its competitors (and everyone does that, in every field). You can clearly recognize the front button of the F700 on the SGS2 for instance, or the grilled speaker at the top.
The icon comparison is even worse. I'll grant the phone app and the contacts app (even though the phone is just Google's reversed on a background), but the rest are very different. The SMS icon is Google's, even, and the music player icon reminds me more of Windows Media Player than iTunes. It's also not as if most of these icons could be done in a billion different ways. They're representative of their purpose.
All of this, to me, sounds like a whole load of horseshit. Look at the phone from any angle and you'll find that it's different from the iPhone. I hope Samsung can make something more unique, for their own brand image's good, but I don't think all of this is grounds enough to actually ban sales of the damn thing. This is just Apple taking advantage of the patent system to deny competition.
I'll withhold saying anything about tablets since I have no interest in them and to me they all look alike. Otherwise, flame me all you want but I really hate things like these which present opinions as facts.
Honestly, the name "OpenOffice.org" probably caused way more confusion than the shift to LibreOffice would ("is it a website?"). LibreOffice already appears in the first page for "open office" on Google, and if OOo dies completely, it'll quickly climb up to the first spot.
Will Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 stay separated actually? I wouldn't be surprised at all to have repos host Gnome as just "Gnome", with 3 overriding 2 unless you specifically hunt down for version 2. Considering how Gnome 3 is just about as bad as Unity, it'll probably soon be a pain to get a functional desktop environment on Ubuntu.
Quite like #! myself, as it's basically Debian (previously was based on Ubuntu actually) with Openbox and tint2 preinstalled, with Xfce optionally instead of Openbox. Might not be a large distro, but it works just fine, is quite lightweight and doesn't appear to be prone to going "shiny" anytime soon.
As usual, I feel somewhat obligated to post up AnandTech's review, which always seems much more in-depth and polished than almost all the sites out there:
I can live with the sometimes dodgy comment system, the abusable moderation, etc. Honestly, it's not perfect but it's far more palatable than 99% of the systems out there like Disqus or flat comment systems without any moderation.
However, if article selection keeps dropping, the site WILL die. The quality of the submissions is what makes or breaks a site like Slashdot, and even I feel like it's been declining of late (I'm not usually picky on things and hate people with nostalgia overload). Many articles are submitted by employees of the sites they're posted on and are of dubious value overall, often requiring commenters to give better links. If a paper is covered, good luck finding the actual link to said paper. Many times, summaries are incredibly biased and show that the editors plain and simply did not "edit", they simply took the thing from the firehose, ran a spellcheck (sometimes forgetting that step) and put it up on the main page. I find that unacceptable. If the editors are overloaded, which I would find surprising unless they happen to do a lot more work than is readily apparent, then find more editors. Perhaps implement some sort of election system for junior editors, where unpaid or paid members of the community get promoted to editor status. Anything to raise editing quality. I'd rather have a submission rewritten or denied than have horribly biased or even misleading summaries crop up on the main page.
Slashdot is one of the few sites where I can expect serious, insightful discussions in the comment threads. I wouldn't want this to die because the submissions stop fuelling said discussions.
Slashdot Mirror
This nearly makes me wish for some sort of fossil fuel "poison" that could corrupt the stuff on a vast scale easily enough. Just drop it in supply lines or at oil rigs and watch prices rise.
That would probably trigger a reaction...
That's not a good analogy because humans (and most animals, for that matter) are instinctively protective of their children. Don't expect rationality to factor in this.
Destroying the Earth for a billion dollars, however, is pure and simple greed.
Nothing. I live in a place where over 90% of our electricity comes from hydro. We use electricity to heat. We buy most of our food local, if only because it tastes better. We recycle a very large fraction of what we throw away. I have minimized my car trips to the absolute minimum, using bus and subway for 95% of my commute.
If there's one thing I can't blame myself about, it's wasteful pollution.
Yes, because when in doubt, the best thing is to do absolutely nothing until we know for sure.
Alternatively, since there is a much more varied competition where no one browser can assess sufficient domination to create its own spinoff tech, we'll just see a normalization of browser support and a generally better standard which is agreed upon by consensus as opposed to chosen by a single company. Any gimmic would be virtually impossible to push without support from other browser vendors, at which point you might as well just get it in the spec.
I also don't see how exactly you could ever trust Adobe alone more than Mozilla, Opera, Google, the W3C and others, all watching their backs.
AMD has another problem: its own Phenom line. For all intents and purposes, an older and dirt cheap Phenom II X4 will more than please 99% of the population. For the remaining 1%, performance is an important criterion, at which point they'll probably go for a top-of-the-line Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processor since they're rebuilding every three years anyways, negating the upgrade discounts on AMD's platform.
That AMD is refocusing its strategy towards APUs and possibly teaming up with ARM should be a telltale sign that things are looking dire on the x86 front for them. That's truly a shame, since at the height of their game they could challenge Intel toe-to-toe easily, which is probably what ended up fostering Intel's tick-tock process and the arrival of the Core series (ie very, very good news for consumers). Whether you like AMD or Intel, you need both strong for capitalism to do its job.
Err, no. The old reactors are not unsafe because they're old, they're unsafe because the *designs* are old and are inherently unsafe. The newest designs cannot go into meltdown no matter how much you try.
Old PCs should run with software from the same era. You can't expect today's software to run on hardware from 10 years ago, or else why stop there? Why not ask for Windows 7 to run on a 486? OSX on an Apple II?
As for Atoms, they have no problem running Windows 7 or the latest Linux distros.
Yeah, and US retailers don't force game developers to censor themselves. They just won't stock AO games.
The market takes care of problems when it's already too late.
Wait... You think the DOE is not necessary anymore with the looming energy crisis and all the talks about global warming? And when is education ever NOT necessary?..
On top of that, all of this is just cents compared to the overall budget, yet the sacred cows like the DOD never get cut.
The stupid are used by the corrupt to achieve their goal. What better way to promote something you want than to find someone gullible enough to swallow your excuse whole and support it with all their will?
So basically, as soon as Apple does something, nobody's allowed to do it anymore?
Maybe if you bothered to look at Samsung's products before the iPad and iPhone, as well as other competitors, you'd be surprised to note Apple hasn't invented the rounded rectangle.
If you read the post properly, you'll notice that it'll be in the next generation of WP and Android devices. It's rather logical that neither Google nor Microsoft has said anything about it thus far since they haven't announced any device running on said OS. We're expecting them momentarily, at least for ICS, but it's not there yet.
The marketing push will start when devices are announced, assuming they have something ready.
Most Slashdot reactions are not skepticism, they are knee-jerk reactions over information that challenges their vision of things. Actual skepticism would involve attempting to verify claims as opposed to dismissing them outright.
On the flip side, the "sane" resolution would be for Apple's design patents to be nulled. While I agree with the judge here, I hate the fact it gives Apple reason to keep bullying because it's working. You should never be able to disrupt competition through such tenuous accusations (not even condemnations, mere accusations are enough!).
Indie gaming is but a fraction of the business. If you look at console games, you'll note that the price point is now roughly between 60 and 70 dollars, whereas it was 50 a generation or two ago. This can be attributed in part to inflation, but not entirely.
PC gaming has it easier thanks to Steam and its competitors driving prices down, but new releases still hit the 60 dollars mark often enough.
There's no denying that there are a lot of similarities between the two. The only thing I'll say is, however, that the comparisons made on this site sound a little biased. For instance, have a look at this shot of the F700:
http://static.phonesreview.co.uk/wp-content/phoneimages/2008/02/f700.jpg
How the hell is that not "silver rounded edges" and "a black face"? And this is supposedly Samsung's design before the iPhone, so it shouldn't have been inspired by it. It's not that much of a stretch to have Samsung build off their previous phones while taking some inspiration from its competitors (and everyone does that, in every field). You can clearly recognize the front button of the F700 on the SGS2 for instance, or the grilled speaker at the top.
The icon comparison is even worse. I'll grant the phone app and the contacts app (even though the phone is just Google's reversed on a background), but the rest are very different. The SMS icon is Google's, even, and the music player icon reminds me more of Windows Media Player than iTunes. It's also not as if most of these icons could be done in a billion different ways. They're representative of their purpose.
All of this, to me, sounds like a whole load of horseshit. Look at the phone from any angle and you'll find that it's different from the iPhone. I hope Samsung can make something more unique, for their own brand image's good, but I don't think all of this is grounds enough to actually ban sales of the damn thing. This is just Apple taking advantage of the patent system to deny competition.
I'll withhold saying anything about tablets since I have no interest in them and to me they all look alike. Otherwise, flame me all you want but I really hate things like these which present opinions as facts.
Honestly, the name "OpenOffice.org" probably caused way more confusion than the shift to LibreOffice would ("is it a website?"). LibreOffice already appears in the first page for "open office" on Google, and if OOo dies completely, it'll quickly climb up to the first spot.
Will Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 stay separated actually? I wouldn't be surprised at all to have repos host Gnome as just "Gnome", with 3 overriding 2 unless you specifically hunt down for version 2. Considering how Gnome 3 is just about as bad as Unity, it'll probably soon be a pain to get a functional desktop environment on Ubuntu.
Quite like #! myself, as it's basically Debian (previously was based on Ubuntu actually) with Openbox and tint2 preinstalled, with Xfce optionally instead of Openbox. Might not be a large distro, but it works just fine, is quite lightweight and doesn't appear to be prone to going "shiny" anytime soon.
As usual, I feel somewhat obligated to post up AnandTech's review, which always seems much more in-depth and polished than almost all the sites out there:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested
Which TFA? Link spam is in full force here.
We all know how... defensive Apple is with its portfolio.
This more than anything else.
I can live with the sometimes dodgy comment system, the abusable moderation, etc. Honestly, it's not perfect but it's far more palatable than 99% of the systems out there like Disqus or flat comment systems without any moderation.
However, if article selection keeps dropping, the site WILL die. The quality of the submissions is what makes or breaks a site like Slashdot, and even I feel like it's been declining of late (I'm not usually picky on things and hate people with nostalgia overload). Many articles are submitted by employees of the sites they're posted on and are of dubious value overall, often requiring commenters to give better links. If a paper is covered, good luck finding the actual link to said paper. Many times, summaries are incredibly biased and show that the editors plain and simply did not "edit", they simply took the thing from the firehose, ran a spellcheck (sometimes forgetting that step) and put it up on the main page. I find that unacceptable. If the editors are overloaded, which I would find surprising unless they happen to do a lot more work than is readily apparent, then find more editors. Perhaps implement some sort of election system for junior editors, where unpaid or paid members of the community get promoted to editor status. Anything to raise editing quality. I'd rather have a submission rewritten or denied than have horribly biased or even misleading summaries crop up on the main page.
Slashdot is one of the few sites where I can expect serious, insightful discussions in the comment threads. I wouldn't want this to die because the submissions stop fuelling said discussions.