There is a problem when the definition of 'climatologist' is effectively 'someone who studies the effects of AGW and recommends policy to mitigate it'. A scientist should understand the proper ordering of cause and effect. A scientist would understand the difference between real debate and rigging the game to ensure a predetermined outcome.
There is a point where the case would be settled to the point where it would be more like flat earthers wanting a seat at the table to draw maps. But we ain't even close to that sort of certainty.
I looked at some of those 'climate models' once. Oh. My. God. A few hundred sample points to model the entire Earth? I actually saw one that crappy, the best aren't all that much better. I don't care how much calculating you do on each point, when total resolution is that low I really doubt anything useful can be taken from such a model about next week, next century isn't even a joke.
The problem is we still don't have the ability to model anything as complicated as the Earth's climate. We don't even have good enough data to input into a model if we had one. We only have semi-reliable temp data for less than a century on most of the world, humidity, rainfall, cloudcover/sunlight and pressure data are even worse. And a century is nothing when trying to understand longterm trends. The proxies used to attempt to make up for that lack of primary data is a very rough substitute. So anyone who even tries to make definitive statements at this point should be instanly suspected of being a quack.
Now combine with the hard reality that it is painfilly obvious to anyone who looks at the history of the 20th Century that this is a case of a solution in search of a justification and the politicization of science we are dealing with here makes perfect sense. It makes sense but it still pisses me off how easy it was to make scientists betray science in the name of power and funding. We have real problems, many of them ecological, and we need scientists we can trust to help solve them. But I don't trust em at this point. I'm as pissed as I suspect the average Catholic is at the priests molesting kids. A trusted institution turned out to be rotten to the core and in need of a major cleansing and instead getting a whitewash and a 'nothing to see here, move along.'
I'm looking at the size of the data it is capturing directly off the wire via a CableCard based tuner. The tuner's estimate of the bitrate matches what Myth is recording. QAM256 can pack a lot of bits onto a 6MHz channel and my cable system only multiplexes three HD streams onto one or ten SD streams. My cable system is still entirely Mpeg2 based so these streams are going to be somewhat larger at the same rough quality compared to typical Internet streams using H.264. The bottom line is if you tried to stream at the bitrates the cable company is broadcasting you would hit the cap so fast it would be silly. Better compression only makes up for some of the difference, then picture quality drops into the crapper.
It is a tablet OS. Yes on x86 (at least) you can still get to a mostly functional desktop sans start button but Metro is a tablet interface moreso than GNOME3. Metro is the future of Windows and the cornerstone of their Marketplace. How long do you expect them to keep putting effort into maintaining the legacy interface?
What you seem to want really isn't posible. You can't just mix and match in one part of a major subsystem and you certainly can't mix Debian and Fedora packages beyond the very end user applications that have no connections into the different plumbing that seperates the two trees of development and that basically static link everything.
You seem enamoured with the Android package system without undertanding it. Android packages work because they are very restricted in what they can do. For example, they must be Java; that means they cannot alter any of the system level components. So replacing part of GNOME would be like replacing the native binary parts of Android, which an.apk can't attempt. They also work because there is only one Android line and it is carefully kept backward compatible. While Linux distros can upgrade from one major version to another entirely via the package system you could never upgrade from Android 2.2 to 2.3 via the Play Store. The OS components involved simply aren't part of the package manager on Android. The kernel on most devices isn't even in a file.
Every few weeks some kid shows up on a Linux forum demanding that we rebuild everything to support a binary only cross distro 'app' model. Usually with notes about how much more successful Windows or OS X is and attributing that success to this binary model. Not happening. The reason we have different distros is because they aren't all alike except for the package manager, each is trying new things. If a consensus emerges that one has really done something right the others of course adopt it but there is no central planner and we don't want one. Good luck convincing a Gentoo ricer to adopt binary packaging and a strict binary API. Systemd or sysV init? PulseAudio, ALSA, ESD, ARTS or OSS?
Feel free to create yet another distro and show us all how it should be done, that is of course where the existing ones came from. And maybe you will succeed in attracting a following and eventually some of your ideas will migrate.
If you aren't using a dock you just need to find something else that does change. For example you might have luck looking in/proc/acpi/button/lid/LID. Failing that just look for the presence of your external keyboard, pointer (lsusb) or display (xrandr). Once you can detect the states you need to react to the rest is pretty easy.
Notice I have the extra flip to 1024x768 for two seconds, that was trial and error when I found some versions of GNOME had problems in the past resizing from the internal to the external display under certain conditions I never bothered fully understanding. The panel at the bottom would get lost and that going really small and back up made it work. It is just a workaround, you can probably drop those two lines.
Here is a hint. It is one of the strengths of Linux from a certain way of looking at it.
Attaching and detaching a display from a laptop is something no DE is ever going to make 'just work' for everyone. You use case might sometimes be just what the developer was thinking, others you will lose. On the 'other' platforms you just live with it, we have options. On my laptop the F7 key is silkscreened with display/panel in blue, meaning Fn+F7 is the approved way and what would work on the 'other' OS. So to make it easy to remember I bound CTRL-F7 to a script.
It examines the state of the dock and doesn't try to 'do the right thing' for anyone and everyone, it does exactly what [I] want for either state. With only a little more work (when I get a spare round tuit) I'll extend it to look at the VGA port and deal with the presence of a projector automagically. Yes I means I have to hit a hot key when the automatics do the wrong thing (almost every time) but it means I always get what I want and it beats filing bug reports that get closed WONTFIX when the distro goes out of support and just bitching about it being broken.
Don't feed the troll. They feed on your sense of outrage. And that one isn't even very skilled... doing it as an AC is so lame. That guy would have to study and try a lot harder just to make it up to the GNAA's low standards.
At least when I decide to go atrolling I try to at least launch some good threads with it. After all, karma doesn't accumulate much beyond excellent and I can bounce from terrible back to excellent in short enough order.:) Why not be a prankster once in a while?
GNOME was a good thing until version 3. It changed everything. The warning signs were there for years before. The attitude of a few dictating what was 'best' for the users, even when the users were screaming NO! NO! NO! started with the GNOME2 rewrite. They finally listened to some of the loudest arguments that time and restored enough functionality that it could become the standard Free Desktop.
GNOME3 turned that stupid up to eleven though, putting it a whole different category. It is explicitly declared it OK if any/all existing users leave, a pure "my way to the highway" deal. It is pretty much accepted that it is unusable on a standard desktop with a mouse and this isn't debatable as an issue in need of repair. The only rational explanation is that somehow, someone in that project assumes they are going to get an OEM preload deal on tablets somewhere. But GNOME's hardware requirements are higher than Android so it won't be some low end creep into the market through the back door deal, it will have to be on somebody's mid to top end hardware. Maybe RedHat has struck the deal in secret already and we are all going to be in awe of their mad negotiating skills. But it isn't the way to bet.
Or perhaps they assume that Win8 will force everyone to accept touchscreens and everything running maximized... even on 27" displays... so they just want to be there first, like how Compiz was doing the Vista eye candy a year or so before Vista shipped. Doubtful. If Win8 doesn't quickly get a recognizable default desktop on desktop class hardware users will just insist on Win7. Everything doesn't benefit from a touchscreen, keyboards and mice still have a place and aren't likely to go the way of the dodo anytime soon.
Guess if the article is right about the number of active devs left it really doesn't matter anymore because there doesn't appear to be enough left to rewrite their way out the the GNOME Shell disaster. Several of the alternates have similar manpower except KDE which has much more. It was a good desktop, it will be missed.
> Eh - T-Mobile has a $30/mo unlimited data and text plan...
T-Mobile won't sign up customers in my zip code. No towers so all traffic would be roaming. But yea, they had a $100/yr voice/text plan at least a year ago.
> Most of the stuff on Netflix is HD where as cable is all highly compressed HD which looks like crap.
You must have a terrible cable system. I'm deep in flyover country and I get good HD streams. Broadcast channels appear to be full bitrate and even channels like FoxNewsHD and CNNHD at 10+Mbps. Rates no streaming provider is going to reliably send. And even if they could the cap would limit you to an hour or so of daily viewing at those bitrates. Netflix is usually much lower rate streaming balanced a bit by h264 vs Mpeg2.
> Alot of it is blown up cropped as well.
Eh? I see movies reedited into 16:9 instead of the original movie aspect on some channels but no blown up or cropped outside of IFC. Sure you aren't having equipment issues between the aspect controls on your cable box and your tv colliding? I use MythTV + a CableCard tuner so of course it usually does the right thing without touching anything, most people have more button mashing to do to battle the black bars the HD transition cursed us with.
Stop whining about the government being needed. Just shop a little and then stop bundling a loan into your monthly cell bill for the iPhone (or top of the line Android). I only pay $100/year for 2000 minutes or texts, work the math out to get the monthly. I supplied my own handset though, they aren't expensive at all if you know where to shop and don't need the latest features. Now AT&T has a cheap ass GoPhone you can get a similar $100/yr plan on.
Oh, you want Gigs of Internet bandwidth crammed into scarce wireless spectrum the cell carriers are spending Sagans annually to continually upgrade to ever faster speeds and still can't keep up? Pay up sucka, that tech ain't cheap yet but if you guys keep paying long enough you will finance a network that will eventually be big enough, widespread enough and finally cheap enough for me to get a data plan.
Good, nice to learn some people still get all you can eat Internet. Here the choice is AT&T's 200GB cap or Suddenlink's 250GB cap.
As for nothing on at night, that is what my MythTV is for.
But with a CableCard in a Homerun Prime I get the full bitsream and they are pushing some bits on cable for HD. 4-6GB/hr fills up hard drives but it looks so much better than standard def I hate to record that if I can help it.
But ya know what? Cable HD looks really good and most movies would fit on a DVD9 without the commercials. Really makes ya wonder if BluRay was really worth it. They could have just tweaked DVD.
Lets do the math. The most my ISP (Suddenlink) will sell is 250GB/mo at up to 15mbps. Put two TVs in a home, that is pretty minimal these days. So you can't expect to stream more than six or seven Mb/s and have any hope of keeping a second set going. Now an hour of HD programming on my MythTV system scarfs down GB/hr when recording HD and perhaps one GB/hr for standard def.
Add it up and if you stream you are going to settle for a lot lower quality and still be watching the bandwidth counter the last part of the month. The bandwidth caps ended cord cutting as a viable tactic for any home where the TV runs a lot, i.e. children are involved.
Read the article. Valve certainly hopes they can continue to sell most of their volume on Windows but they are stating on the record the Linux port is a hedge against a future where that won't be possible.
If you think about it, it is almost certain that Steam on Windows is a dead product as soon as the lockdown hits x86. In a world of a single vendor app store Steam is, by definition, forbidden.
Notice that, for now, Apple isn't even discussing locking OS X. They understand that step is an outright declaration of WAR! on a lot of the existing ecosystem. MIcrosoft is taking a huge risk but they pretty much have to because Win8 is one OS vs iOS and OS X.
Remember, that line didn't even work out for Vader and he had Star Destroyers and millions of clone troopers at his command. If you have the upper hand you can sometimes force people to accept a one sided deal. But if you go beyond that and keep changing the terms on it eventually everyone figures out they might as well take their chances because they are hosed anyway. You have to leave them some hope of survival.
I especially liked how the article has this:
"This even may reduce the long-term success of iCloud and the platform lock-in it could bring for Apple. Only App Store apps can use iCloud, but many Mac developers can’t or won’t use it because of the App Store’s political instability."
Anyone who would write that, in the context of it being a good thing!, is obviously a Kool-Aid drinker. When you are driving those people away it is a warning sign.
Imagine how badly Microsoft is going to bungle this same gambit. Notice how Valve is already running for the exits? Uh huh, good times ahead for everyone!
Sigh. Some people never learn to deal with the while cause vs effect thing. People in low crime environments don't usually carry, people who do live in areas with crime do, people who have previously been a victim of a violent crime tend to carry more than those who haven't.
And for the record, I don't carry. Why? Because I live in a very low crime area. I do own a firearm but it stays in a case up on a high enough shelf in my bedroom that any visiting grandkids will be in serious trouble long before they plunder that far into places they know they shouldn't be.
That leaves suicide. Not a problem. If I ever decide that I need to off myself a firearm is probably the best and quickest way so why wouldn't I use the correct tool for that job? Better that than jumping into a wood chipper or something else messy. There are times when that really is the answer ya know. Not many, but there are some.
Then you are dumb. The odds of my being killed by a gun have almost no relationship to whether I own one myself. Assuming I'm not the sort of idiot who is likely enough to shoot myself by accident to raise those odds out of the statistical noise of course. The odds of dying by gunfire are mostly driven by how popular they are in crime and how much crime I'm likely to be experience.
Since you are dumb you probably should not own a gun, you might be the sort of idiot who would shoot themself. You probably should not vote or reproduce either but alas you probably do those things.
Ths whole article is just about the general topic of security theater, most 'security' products are rubbish and locks only stop the honest. If you think a $36 product is actually a 'safe', again I have to conclude that you should not reproduce. They sell them because, exactly as the article notes, people buy them to check off a box.
> The better plan is to sue Microsoft for abuse of their monopoly.
The old consent decree is long since expired. Good luck starting up a new round of lawsuits, Microsoft discovered lobbists after the last round so the DOJ isn't going to be bothering them again. So your plan is do nothing for years while a court case winds its way through the system and more then likely ends up going nowhere. Boy I'd love to take that plan to the stockholders meeting.
We have been hearing various people who should know better that "Redhat is the next MIcrosoft" and variations on that theme now for at least a decade. Guess Ubuntu should take it as a sign that they have 'made it' that the same is now being said of them.
Not saying I agree with either of their solution to the Kobayashi Maru (otherwise known as Secure Boot) problem, but calling them 'traitors' is a bit much. Especially since I can't rightly say I have a better plan and neither does Mr. deRaadt.
I'm too lazy for all that lego building. If I needed to read punch cards I'd just find a scanner that would accept media that narrow and feed em through the ADF, feed that PDF into a script to pop apart the pages and then process the images.
Preach! The 2nd Amendment is all the 'license' an American needs. And every single human being who has ever trod the Earth has exactly the same inherent Right, it is only that most of the world is unfree and oppresses their people.
We just saw what 'gun free zones' are good for, shooting galleries. Sue the theater for not providing security! I don't mind turning in arms in a courthouse, there are enough cops there that it is a reasonable trade, random guns there probably are more likely to cause problems than not. Not so most other places, no armed guards + unarmed victims = advertising where it is safest to go on a rampage.
It won't stop here. Lots of physical things, many fairly easy to make, are kept out of general circulation. Not for much longer.
Think locksmithing. Download and 'print' an entire professional set. Print keys.
And if you think bongs and such haven't already been printed you aren't paying attention. Legislate shops all ya want, won't matter soon.
Probably can't print glassware anytime soon so that soft ban will last a bit longer. Remember when all us nerdy kids got a chemistry set? And then suddenly they all but disappeared? I want 3d printers good enough to bring em back. Getting some of the actual chemicals will still be a challenge.
Spare parts that aren't practical to large scale manufacture, won't it be great when we can haunt obscure websites for downloads of semi-legal scans of them and print them ourselves?
> If you knew what the other side was actually saying...
Actually I do follow both camps on most issues. First to know who is my enemy, then I continue to follow both to know thy enemy.
And if you follow the major threads of warmer thought, especially the UN/International conference crowd, you know every plan always begins with some sort of global carbon tax with trillions of dollars sloshing through the UN. The exact reasons why and where it is to be spent vary but it always starts with trillions and it always flows from the developed world to the developing world. Essentially because most of the world is unfree hellholes and the UN is a parliment of tyrants; the ones who would be getting all that cash vastly outvote the ones who would be expected to give. In the political reality of the UN it can't be any other way. The UN is a bizarro world where Iran and Cuba can sit in judgement of Human Rights.... and nobody is supposed to laugh.
Choose any/all of the following popular reasons for the flow. We have to give the lions share of the revenue from the carbon tax to the third world because A) it is unfair to forbid them to develop, B) social justice, C) economic justice, D) reparations for our raping their pristine environment, E) we must pay them off to use sustainable development, F) we must tax carbon to encourage the developed world to switch to green energy, the wealth must leave to make it painful, G) because they want it! Pay up sucka.
> Government investment in green tech on a larger scale, that's one way to go.
Except it probably isn't. None of the proposed techs can replace current demand, and demand is going to grow. None of them are close to profitable without massive subsidies. Money wasted in a time of huge deficits around the world. Attention diverted from directions that could be productive. Like...
> Nuclear is another, and despite what you think about "greenies", I'd bet that most people who've accepted the > AGW science would also accept nuclear solutions.
I have heard of a couple. True believers like the founder of Greenpeace, they believe it is a big enough problem to put aside the no-nuke signs over. But the vast majority aren't close to being willing. Yet another reason for distrusting their actual motives. If they really believed it was a matter of the importance they claim they should be willing to build modern safe(r) nuke plants. Worst case, nukes are a risk, AGW is supposed to be CERTAIN DOOM! I know which I would pick of that selection.
If greens were truly interested in using energy that didn't involve carbon, would they be a) protesting to build more hydro dams, or b) declaring "there will never be another one built." or c) doing b while trying to demolish existing ones. Hey, maybe there are some problems with hydro that fish ladders and such can't fix but I thought this was an EMERGENCY with CERTAIN DOOM! if we fail to act. When are their actions going to match the PR?
When actions do not match words you should always suspect deception or mental defect. I suspect more than a little of both.
> there's also been plenty of research and discussion about "climate engineering" based solutions
Only one problem. The world's economy is in the crapper. Not entirely sure we could afford a massive project if we had to deflect an asteroid right now. The only scenario where we would even try is if an overwhelming majority believed the warmer theory and then the UN wins and there won't be any money for a big project.
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There is a problem when the definition of 'climatologist' is effectively 'someone who studies the effects of AGW and recommends policy to mitigate it'. A scientist should understand the proper ordering of cause and effect. A scientist would understand the difference between real debate and rigging the game to ensure a predetermined outcome.
There is a point where the case would be settled to the point where it would be more like flat earthers wanting a seat at the table to draw maps. But we ain't even close to that sort of certainty.
I looked at some of those 'climate models' once. Oh. My. God. A few hundred sample points to model the entire Earth? I actually saw one that crappy, the best aren't all that much better. I don't care how much calculating you do on each point, when total resolution is that low I really doubt anything useful can be taken from such a model about next week, next century isn't even a joke.
The problem is we still don't have the ability to model anything as complicated as the Earth's climate. We don't even have good enough data to input into a model if we had one. We only have semi-reliable temp data for less than a century on most of the world, humidity, rainfall, cloudcover/sunlight and pressure data are even worse. And a century is nothing when trying to understand longterm trends. The proxies used to attempt to make up for that lack of primary data is a very rough substitute. So anyone who even tries to make definitive statements at this point should be instanly suspected of being a quack.
Now combine with the hard reality that it is painfilly obvious to anyone who looks at the history of the 20th Century that this is a case of a solution in search of a justification and the politicization of science we are dealing with here makes perfect sense. It makes sense but it still pisses me off how easy it was to make scientists betray science in the name of power and funding. We have real problems, many of them ecological, and we need scientists we can trust to help solve them. But I don't trust em at this point. I'm as pissed as I suspect the average Catholic is at the priests molesting kids. A trusted institution turned out to be rotten to the core and in need of a major cleansing and instead getting a whitewash and a 'nothing to see here, move along.'
I'm looking at the size of the data it is capturing directly off the wire via a CableCard based tuner. The tuner's estimate of the bitrate matches what Myth is recording. QAM256 can pack a lot of bits onto a 6MHz channel and my cable system only multiplexes three HD streams onto one or ten SD streams. My cable system is still entirely Mpeg2 based so these streams are going to be somewhat larger at the same rough quality compared to typical Internet streams using H.264. The bottom line is if you tried to stream at the bitrates the cable company is broadcasting you would hit the cap so fast it would be silly. Better compression only makes up for some of the difference, then picture quality drops into the crapper.
It is a tablet OS. Yes on x86 (at least) you can still get to a mostly functional desktop sans start button but Metro is a tablet interface moreso than GNOME3. Metro is the future of Windows and the cornerstone of their Marketplace. How long do you expect them to keep putting effort into maintaining the legacy interface?
What you seem to want really isn't posible. You can't just mix and match in one part of a major subsystem and you certainly can't mix Debian and Fedora packages beyond the very end user applications that have no connections into the different plumbing that seperates the two trees of development and that basically static link everything.
You seem enamoured with the Android package system without undertanding it. Android packages work because they are very restricted in what they can do. For example, they must be Java; that means they cannot alter any of the system level components. So replacing part of GNOME would be like replacing the native binary parts of Android, which an .apk can't attempt. They also work because there is only one Android line and it is carefully kept backward compatible. While Linux distros can upgrade from one major version to another entirely via the package system you could never upgrade from Android 2.2 to 2.3 via the Play Store. The OS components involved simply aren't part of the package manager on Android. The kernel on most devices isn't even in a file.
Every few weeks some kid shows up on a Linux forum demanding that we rebuild everything to support a binary only cross distro 'app' model. Usually with notes about how much more successful Windows or OS X is and attributing that success to this binary model. Not happening. The reason we have different distros is because they aren't all alike except for the package manager, each is trying new things. If a consensus emerges that one has really done something right the others of course adopt it but there is no central planner and we don't want one. Good luck convincing a Gentoo ricer to adopt binary packaging and a strict binary API. Systemd or sysV init? PulseAudio, ALSA, ESD, ARTS or OSS?
Feel free to create yet another distro and show us all how it should be done, that is of course where the existing ones came from. And maybe you will succeed in attracting a following and eventually some of your ideas will migrate.
If you aren't using a dock you just need to find something else that does change. For example you might have luck looking in /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID. Failing that just look for the presence of your external keyboard, pointer (lsusb) or display (xrandr). Once you can detect the states you need to react to the rest is pretty easy.
Notice I have the extra flip to 1024x768 for two seconds, that was trial and error when I found some versions of GNOME had problems in the past resizing from the internal to the external display under certain conditions I never bothered fully understanding. The panel at the bottom would get lost and that going really small and back up made it work. It is just a workaround, you can probably drop those two lines.
Here is a hint. It is one of the strengths of Linux from a certain way of looking at it.
Attaching and detaching a display from a laptop is something no DE is ever going to make 'just work' for everyone. You use case might sometimes be just what the developer was thinking, others you will lose. On the 'other' platforms you just live with it, we have options. On my laptop the F7 key is silkscreened with display/panel in blue, meaning Fn+F7 is the approved way and what would work on the 'other' OS. So to make it easy to remember I bound CTRL-F7 to a script.
It examines the state of the dock and doesn't try to 'do the right thing' for anyone and everyone, it does exactly what [I] want for either state. With only a little more work (when I get a spare round tuit) I'll extend it to look at the VGA port and deal with the presence of a projector automagically. Yes I means I have to hit a hot key when the automatics do the wrong thing (almost every time) but it means I always get what I want and it beats filing bug reports that get closed WONTFIX when the distro goes out of support and just bitching about it being broken.
#!/bin/bash
BUSDOCK=/sys/bus/platform/devices/dock.0/
DOCKED=`cat ${BUSDOCK}/docked`
if [ "$DOCKED" == 1 ] ; then
echo "Docked"
xrandr --output HDMI2 --auto --mode 1024x768 --rotate normal --pos 0x0 --primary --output VGA1 --off
sleep 2
xrandr --output HDMI2 --auto --rotate normal --pos 0x0 --primary \
--output LVDS1 --auto --right-of HDMI2 --set "scaling mode" "Full aspect"
fi
if [ "$DOCKED" == 0 ] ; then
echo "Undocked"
xrandr --output LVDS1 --auto --mode 1024x768 --set "scaling mode" "Full aspect" \
--primary --output HDMI2 --off --output VGA1 --off
sleep 2
xrandr --output LVDS1 --auto --set "scaling mode" "Full aspect" --primary
fi
Don't feed the troll. They feed on your sense of outrage. And that one isn't even very skilled... doing it as an AC is so lame. That guy would have to study and try a lot harder just to make it up to the GNAA's low standards.
At least when I decide to go atrolling I try to at least launch some good threads with it. After all, karma doesn't accumulate much beyond excellent and I can bounce from terrible back to excellent in short enough order. :) Why not be a prankster once in a while?
GNOME was a good thing until version 3. It changed everything. The warning signs were there for years before. The attitude of a few dictating what was 'best' for the users, even when the users were screaming NO! NO! NO! started with the GNOME2 rewrite. They finally listened to some of the loudest arguments that time and restored enough functionality that it could become the standard Free Desktop.
GNOME3 turned that stupid up to eleven though, putting it a whole different category. It is explicitly declared it OK if any/all existing users leave, a pure "my way to the highway" deal. It is pretty much accepted that it is unusable on a standard desktop with a mouse and this isn't debatable as an issue in need of repair. The only rational explanation is that somehow, someone in that project assumes they are going to get an OEM preload deal on tablets somewhere. But GNOME's hardware requirements are higher than Android so it won't be some low end creep into the market through the back door deal, it will have to be on somebody's mid to top end hardware. Maybe RedHat has struck the deal in secret already and we are all going to be in awe of their mad negotiating skills. But it isn't the way to bet.
Or perhaps they assume that Win8 will force everyone to accept touchscreens and everything running maximized... even on 27" displays... so they just want to be there first, like how Compiz was doing the Vista eye candy a year or so before Vista shipped. Doubtful. If Win8 doesn't quickly get a recognizable default desktop on desktop class hardware users will just insist on Win7. Everything doesn't benefit from a touchscreen, keyboards and mice still have a place and aren't likely to go the way of the dodo anytime soon.
Guess if the article is right about the number of active devs left it really doesn't matter anymore because there doesn't appear to be enough left to rewrite their way out the the GNOME Shell disaster. Several of the alternates have similar manpower except KDE which has much more. It was a good desktop, it will be missed.
> Eh - T-Mobile has a $30/mo unlimited data and text plan...
T-Mobile won't sign up customers in my zip code. No towers so all traffic would be roaming. But yea, they had a $100/yr voice/text plan at least a year ago.
> Most of the stuff on Netflix is HD where as cable is all highly compressed HD which looks like crap.
You must have a terrible cable system. I'm deep in flyover country and I get good HD streams. Broadcast channels appear to be full bitrate and even channels like FoxNewsHD and CNNHD at 10+Mbps. Rates no streaming provider is going to reliably send. And even if they could the cap would limit you to an hour or so of daily viewing at those bitrates. Netflix is usually much lower rate streaming balanced a bit by h264 vs Mpeg2.
> Alot of it is blown up cropped as well.
Eh? I see movies reedited into 16:9 instead of the original movie aspect on some channels but no blown up or cropped outside of IFC. Sure you aren't having equipment issues between the aspect controls on your cable box and your tv colliding? I use MythTV + a CableCard tuner so of course it usually does the right thing without touching anything, most people have more button mashing to do to battle the black bars the HD transition cursed us with.
> Same story applies to cell phones.
Stop whining about the government being needed. Just shop a little and then stop bundling a loan into your monthly cell bill for the iPhone (or top of the line Android). I only pay $100/year for 2000 minutes or texts, work the math out to get the monthly. I supplied my own handset though, they aren't expensive at all if you know where to shop and don't need the latest features. Now AT&T has a cheap ass GoPhone you can get a similar $100/yr plan on.
Oh, you want Gigs of Internet bandwidth crammed into scarce wireless spectrum the cell carriers are spending Sagans annually to continually upgrade to ever faster speeds and still can't keep up? Pay up sucka, that tech ain't cheap yet but if you guys keep paying long enough you will finance a network that will eventually be big enough, widespread enough and finally cheap enough for me to get a data plan.
Good, nice to learn some people still get all you can eat Internet. Here the choice is AT&T's 200GB cap or Suddenlink's 250GB cap.
As for nothing on at night, that is what my MythTV is for.
But with a CableCard in a Homerun Prime I get the full bitsream and they are pushing some bits on cable for HD. 4-6GB/hr fills up hard drives but it looks so much better than standard def I hate to record that if I can help it.
But ya know what? Cable HD looks really good and most movies would fit on a DVD9 without the commercials. Really makes ya wonder if BluRay was really worth it. They could have just tweaked DVD.
Lets do the math. The most my ISP (Suddenlink) will sell is 250GB/mo at up to 15mbps. Put two TVs in a home, that is pretty minimal these days. So you can't expect to stream more than six or seven Mb/s and have any hope of keeping a second set going. Now an hour of HD programming on my MythTV system scarfs down GB/hr when recording HD and perhaps one GB/hr for standard def.
Add it up and if you stream you are going to settle for a lot lower quality and still be watching the bandwidth counter the last part of the month. The bandwidth caps ended cord cutting as a viable tactic for any home where the TV runs a lot, i.e. children are involved.
Read the article. Valve certainly hopes they can continue to sell most of their volume on Windows but they are stating on the record the Linux port is a hedge against a future where that won't be possible.
If you think about it, it is almost certain that Steam on Windows is a dead product as soon as the lockdown hits x86. In a world of a single vendor app store Steam is, by definition, forbidden.
Notice that, for now, Apple isn't even discussing locking OS X. They understand that step is an outright declaration of WAR! on a lot of the existing ecosystem. MIcrosoft is taking a huge risk but they pretty much have to because Win8 is one OS vs iOS and OS X.
Yea, you are right. I was in a hurry so do I still have to turn in my geek card?
Remember, that line didn't even work out for Vader and he had Star Destroyers and millions of clone troopers at his command. If you have the upper hand you can sometimes force people to accept a one sided deal. But if you go beyond that and keep changing the terms on it eventually everyone figures out they might as well take their chances because they are hosed anyway. You have to leave them some hope of survival.
I especially liked how the article has this:
"This even may reduce the long-term success of iCloud and the platform lock-in it could bring for Apple. Only App Store apps can use iCloud, but many Mac developers can’t or won’t use it because of the App Store’s political instability."
Anyone who would write that, in the context of it being a good thing!, is obviously a Kool-Aid drinker. When you are driving those people away it is a warning sign.
Imagine how badly Microsoft is going to bungle this same gambit. Notice how Valve is already running for the exits? Uh huh, good times ahead for everyone!
Sigh. Some people never learn to deal with the while cause vs effect thing. People in low crime environments don't usually carry, people who do live in areas with crime do, people who have previously been a victim of a violent crime tend to carry more than those who haven't.
And for the record, I don't carry. Why? Because I live in a very low crime area. I do own a firearm but it stays in a case up on a high enough shelf in my bedroom that any visiting grandkids will be in serious trouble long before they plunder that far into places they know they shouldn't be.
That leaves suicide. Not a problem. If I ever decide that I need to off myself a firearm is probably the best and quickest way so why wouldn't I use the correct tool for that job? Better that than jumping into a wood chipper or something else messy. There are times when that really is the answer ya know. Not many, but there are some.
Someone didn't RTFA. The gun safe in question was issued by a police dept for the safekeeping of service weapons. Those tend to be 'hot'.
> Well... yes actually that is what it's saying.
Then you are dumb. The odds of my being killed by a gun have almost no relationship to whether I own one myself. Assuming I'm not the sort of idiot who is likely enough to shoot myself by accident to raise those odds out of the statistical noise of course. The odds of dying by gunfire are mostly driven by how popular they are in crime and how much crime I'm likely to be experience.
Since you are dumb you probably should not own a gun, you might be the sort of idiot who would shoot themself. You probably should not vote or reproduce either but alas you probably do those things.
Ths whole article is just about the general topic of security theater, most 'security' products are rubbish and locks only stop the honest. If you think a $36 product is actually a 'safe', again I have to conclude that you should not reproduce. They sell them because, exactly as the article notes, people buy them to check off a box.
> The better plan is to sue Microsoft for abuse of their monopoly.
The old consent decree is long since expired. Good luck starting up a new round of lawsuits, Microsoft discovered lobbists after the last round so the DOJ isn't going to be bothering them again. So your plan is do nothing for years while a court case winds its way through the system and more then likely ends up going nowhere. Boy I'd love to take that plan to the stockholders meeting.
We have been hearing various people who should know better that "Redhat is the next MIcrosoft" and variations on that theme now for at least a decade. Guess Ubuntu should take it as a sign that they have 'made it' that the same is now being said of them.
Not saying I agree with either of their solution to the Kobayashi Maru (otherwise known as Secure Boot) problem, but calling them 'traitors' is a bit much. Especially since I can't rightly say I have a better plan and neither does Mr. deRaadt.
I'm too lazy for all that lego building. If I needed to read punch cards I'd just find a scanner that would accept media that narrow and feed em through the ADF, feed that PDF into a script to pop apart the pages and then process the images.
> No gun license required?
Preach! The 2nd Amendment is all the 'license' an American needs. And every single human being who has ever trod the Earth has exactly the same inherent Right, it is only that most of the world is unfree and oppresses their people.
We just saw what 'gun free zones' are good for, shooting galleries. Sue the theater for not providing security! I don't mind turning in arms in a courthouse, there are enough cops there that it is a reasonable trade, random guns there probably are more likely to cause problems than not. Not so most other places, no armed guards + unarmed victims = advertising where it is safest to go on a rampage.
It won't stop here. Lots of physical things, many fairly easy to make, are kept out of general circulation. Not for much longer.
Think locksmithing. Download and 'print' an entire professional set. Print keys.
And if you think bongs and such haven't already been printed you aren't paying attention. Legislate shops all ya want, won't matter soon.
Probably can't print glassware anytime soon so that soft ban will last a bit longer. Remember when all us nerdy kids got a chemistry set? And then suddenly they all but disappeared? I want 3d printers good enough to bring em back. Getting some of the actual chemicals will still be a challenge.
Spare parts that aren't practical to large scale manufacture, won't it be great when we can haunt obscure websites for downloads of semi-legal scans of them and print them ourselves?
Good times ahead.
> If you knew what the other side was actually saying...
Actually I do follow both camps on most issues. First to know who is my enemy, then I continue to follow both to know thy enemy.
And if you follow the major threads of warmer thought, especially the UN/International conference crowd, you know every plan always begins with some sort of global carbon tax with trillions of dollars sloshing through the UN. The exact reasons why and where it is to be spent vary but it always starts with trillions and it always flows from the developed world to the developing world. Essentially because most of the world is unfree hellholes and the UN is a parliment of tyrants; the ones who would be getting all that cash vastly outvote the ones who would be expected to give. In the political reality of the UN it can't be any other way. The UN is a bizarro world where Iran and Cuba can sit in judgement of Human Rights.... and nobody is supposed to laugh.
Choose any/all of the following popular reasons for the flow. We have to give the lions share of the revenue from the carbon tax to the third world because A) it is unfair to forbid them to develop, B) social justice, C) economic justice, D) reparations for our raping their pristine environment, E) we must pay them off to use sustainable development, F) we must tax carbon to encourage the developed world to switch to green energy, the wealth must leave to make it painful, G) because they want it! Pay up sucka.
> Government investment in green tech on a larger scale, that's one way to go.
Except it probably isn't. None of the proposed techs can replace current demand, and demand is going to grow. None of them are close to profitable without massive subsidies. Money wasted in a time of huge deficits around the world. Attention diverted from directions that could be productive. Like...
> Nuclear is another, and despite what you think about "greenies", I'd bet that most people who've accepted the
> AGW science would also accept nuclear solutions.
I have heard of a couple. True believers like the founder of Greenpeace, they believe it is a big enough problem to put aside the no-nuke signs over. But the vast majority aren't close to being willing. Yet another reason for distrusting their actual motives. If they really believed it was a matter of the importance they claim they should be willing to build modern safe(r) nuke plants. Worst case, nukes are a risk, AGW is supposed to be CERTAIN DOOM! I know which I would pick of that selection.
If greens were truly interested in using energy that didn't involve carbon, would they be a) protesting to build more hydro dams, or b) declaring "there will never be another one built." or c) doing b while trying to demolish existing ones. Hey, maybe there are some problems with hydro that fish ladders and such can't fix but I thought this was an EMERGENCY with CERTAIN DOOM! if we fail to act. When are their actions going to match the PR?
When actions do not match words you should always suspect deception or mental defect. I suspect more than a little of both.
> there's also been plenty of research and discussion about "climate engineering" based solutions
Only one problem. The world's economy is in the crapper. Not entirely sure we could afford a massive project if we had to deflect an asteroid right now. The only scenario where we would even try is if an overwhelming majority believed the warmer theory and then the UN wins and there won't be any money for a big project.