On my netbook (small screen, etc.) I just browse in full screen mode most of the time. Mousing to the top edge of the screen brings my tabs and navigation bar into view, pressing F11 instantly brings me back to familiarity.
Obviously not an option if you have an ultra-large widescreen and use everything in windowed mode so you can make good use of your space. But then I don't see the handful of pixels taken up by the URL bar being in THAT much demand if you've got a screen like that.
Assuming competition works properly, hopefully services like Last.fm will exercise their commercial right and discontinue their product on Apple's device; after all, if Apple's terms aren't commercially viable, they can stop using their platform.
If Android (/Windows/Blackberry/whatever) can present a platform that IS commercially viable, Last.fm can continue to develop for those platforms. That might make these platforms seem more desirable, in this one way, than iOS. If Apple find the situation uncomfortable, they'll revise their terms. That's competition in action.
If there is something in the mix that might stop the above playing out, then it's time to break out the anti-trust laws. Otherwise, might as well let the markets sort it out.
There's a difference between "popular" and "best". That's always been known. The most popular films are not the best films, the best music is not the most popular. A Ford Focus is more popular than a Ferrari Enzo (for a variety of reasons, not least of which is price); doesn't necessarily make it the better car.
Android is more popular than iOS. That might be because there are more Android products to choose from, or it might be because of the price, or it might or might not be seen as the better designed or more functional platform, or it might or might not have more "cool factor". But regardless, it is more popular.
That old chestnut assumes that every alien civilization screams into space on a decent spectrum of frequencies from the moment it's possible to the moment they go extinct. Thanks to more precise satellite-based transmissions and high-speed cabling, humanity's "radio age" seems to be coming to an end already, only a century after it really began.
And let's not even get started on whether we'd recognise an alien radio transmission as distinct from the the hissing void in the first place.
Assuming every civilization goes quite quiet after only a 100 year noisy period, and bearing in mind we've only really been listening out for it for a few decades, most of which time we had rubbish antiquated (from a modern perspective) equipment, it's not really that shocking that we've not heard from any neighbours yet.
And anyway, I'd still be thrilled to find space-mould, or better yet, space-simple-multi-cellular-organisms, if intelligent life isn't near by. That would still be earth-shatteringly fantastic.
It seems to be working for Google (who, like Microsoft, have released software that other companies bundle with their own hardware), and for ARM/Qualcomm/etc. (who, like Intel, have released harware that other companies utilise in their own devices).
Indeed, our Intel-equivalents (in this instance ARM + Samsung) are the producers of components used in Apple's highly succesful devices. And indeed, our Microsoft-equivalent (Google with Android) is allegedly now outselling Apple's products (an interesting mirror of the Microsoft/Apple battle for the desktop computing space).
I'm not sure the paradigms have shifted as far as we might like to think.
Not to criticise you (I'm sure plenty of people think similarly) but it's sad that that's the way people view these sorts of places these days.
I visited the island Jersey a few years back, which has a sort of 60s-Britain-meets-modern-France vibe. I remember a cafe where there were school kids playing chess, and old guys playing cards, and people reading books, and a guy doing paperwork with a laptop. I'm sure they were only buying as many drinks as they wanted, but they all seemed pretty settled in. A lot of continental Europe is similar. Britain has (or possibly "had") a similar sort of thing going on with its pub culture; it wasn't so long ago that pubs were a place to meet, play games, sing, generally socialise (and where incidentally drinks were served). I still happily spend an afternoon or evening in a pub with a book or complimentary newspaper or my smartphone, making a couple of drinks last, occasionally chatting with the locals. Unfortunately more people seem to have your attitude now- pubs are for eating, drinking, and leaving. More's the shame.
Just another symptom of commoditising all aspects of life, I suppose.
Believe it or not, high taxes are not a deterrent to working. You still pick the best paying job, and you still save your money for things you want to buy, and you still invest or save or spend what you have.
Further, tax rates like that are common around the world. The rates are similar throughout the EU, for example, and taxation in China or Russia or India is little different (when they're collected). A low tax regime is not a necessity for a country to be competitive- it's about the whole package.
Nokia have suffered by letting their R&D- specifically as fay as Symbian is concerned- slip behind the competition. But in general, they have 2 great operating systems to play with, which they've invested heavily in bringing up to scratch. Symbian had developer issues, and that was supposed to be fixed with Qt etc.. MeeGo was an unpolished gem in the perfect position to tackle the pocket computer market, especially considering the new trend in tablets. MeeGo also had the support of several other huge players- not least Intel.
Instead they're going to ditch their 2 existing OSs, just as they're almost competitive again, and go with the untested entity that is WP7? Crazy talk. WP7 hasn't exactly been getting rave reviews itself; if they really wanted to hop on another company's bandwagon, they might as well have just used Android like almost all of their rivals.
Good news for MS though, I suppose. I hope they don't throw it away with their usual ass-hattery. If they can make a good fist of WP7 (which will mean needing to get off of iOSs coat-tails), there might be hope for their ARM/Win8 shenanigans yet.
Crikey, 8.25%? Income Tax? No wonder the budget doesn't balance.
Base rate income tax in the UK is 20%. If you earn £40,000, it's 40%. If you earn £150,000, it's 50%. I also pay National Insurance tax (about £80 + 1% of my monthly earnings over £850) and Council Tax (about £2000 a year, based on the size of my house (a 3 bed terrace)). There's also a collection of various other taxes (VAT, road tax, excise, Stamp Duty, etc.).
I'm not complaining though- I get an absolute butt load of state-provided freebies out of that. Texas provides some of those freebies to its citizens too (from maintained roads to state schools), but they're not exactly cheap.
Exactly like the USA, yes. The point is that the thing TFA is describing when it talks about "private space industry" is not the same thing as the national space agencies, which have large elements of "private" companies, but operate wholly differently to what is being described.
I recall a reading a quote from some Activision guy stating that Guitar Hero was "the future of the music industry", and that it was a key new way that people would enjoy music. It sounded like a crock of shit then, and its only got funnier over time.
Shame they ragged it to death so quickly, rather than letting have a long, low intensity lifespan that we could still be enjoying today.
I bought a Nokia for £10. On pay as you go it's free to receive calls and texts, and while not exactly cheap for outgoing calls/texts it's hardly extortionate compared to my (largely neglected) landline. It also has a frickin torch built in, and about a week battery life on standby. It's my backup phone at the moment, but it did perfectly good duty as my main phone for about 6 months.
If you have any need of a mobile phone at all, you don't need to get ripped off. Just don't buy a blinking iPhone and you'll be fine.
If the US drops support for Mubarak it will show to other supported dictators (Pakistan, SA etc) that US-support is limited when it comes to popular uprisings. Anti-government groups will use this weakness to topple their governments and dictators will have to choose between force or surrender.
Ah yes, we can't be having those dastardly anti-government peasants overthrowing dictators and establishing democracies. To be seen to be supporting that would be disastrous for a country like the US! What do you think it is, the home of the free or something?
When there's a nasty anti-US dictator in charge, it's vaguely excusable to depose them and replace them with a pro-US dictator, I suppose. But when a population is clearly and articulately, en masse, demanding democracy, it ceases to be excusable to prop up a dictator.
I was under the impression that: 1) Energia's biggest shareholder was the Russian state. 2) It's biggest and most important customers are all state space agencies, who fund, oversee and regulate all projects to within an inch of their lives.
So a private company only very loosely- not really the same thing as is suggested in TFA.
They probably *are* two different operations. The tech support will be a big call centre somewhere, where minimum-wagers are told to read a script and log responses in boxes and end calls in an average of 4.5 minutes. Network development will be done by actual qualified staff in a real office somewhere, for a real salary.
Some of the poor support guys might one day get promoted to something better, and sometimes the network devs will need to support the customer facing areas of the business in some ways. But if it's anything like every company I've ever seen, the two branches will have little to do with each other.
You could see it as being a win-win-win situation.
MS wins, in their guise as a backer of h.264, by extending support for their pet format. As you say, they also get some (in their case much needed) kudos too.
Google wins, because their browser gets h.264 support without them having to support a single line of code, or pay a penny in licensing fees (as and when they get implemented; MS will have to pick up that bill as it would be their "product" that implements support),
User wins, as they get support for more things in more browsers. With all of the big developers "extending" each other's browsers to support their pet projects, the net affect is everything being supported on all reasonably extensible platforms.
Left wing bias in the media? I wish the UK had that problem.
Established right wing newspapers in the UK: The Sun, The Daily Star, The Daily Express, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Financial Times, The Times.
Established left wing or centrist papers: The Daily Mirror, The Guardian, The Independent. The latter two are the two daily nationals with the smallest circulation.
It's beside the point though. American conceptions of "left wing" are hilariously out. American's like to think of the Republicans as the right wing party, Democrats as the left wing one, and their flag-bearing media supporters as similarly right/left aligned. In Europe, the Democrats would be considered a conservative right wing party, the Republicans a hard right wing one. God only knows how you'd classify the Tea Party supporters; "hard right" somehow doesn't seem enough.
Geeks identified themselves (or were identified by others) by their hobbies, interests, fictions, and humour, all of which were different from what the "mainstream" people occupied themselves with. The fictions are now best-sellers, the hobbies are widely enjoyed, the interests are more generally interesting, and the humour is printed across the chest of hot women (and men) everywhere. It''s not so much that geekiness has gone mainstream- it's that the mainstream has gotten geekier.
And surely that's what all (sane) geeks have always wanted? Every time you've frustratedly tried to explain some cunning new technology breakthrough to an acquaintance, and been baffled by how bored they seem- didn't you wish they found it as fascinating as you? Didn't you always want more people to tell jokes that you found funny, and your favourite directors/authors/publishers to have more money to spend on your favourite projects? I never plan on changing myself to match the rest of society, in terms of what I like and what I'm interested in- but if the rest of the world could busy itself aligning to me, that'd be just grand.
TFA seems to be confusing "geek" with "clever". You can like football and still suck at it, or like rock and be tone-deaf; being good at something isn't pre-requisite to it being your most favourite thing.
On the other hand, once the "geekdom" of the 20th century has become the mainstream of the 21st, undoubtedly new subcultures will crop up on the fringe. Maybe you can call that "the new geekdom" if you like, but you'd be clutching at straws. It will be it's own thing, and maybe it'll catch on one day too.
I know it's never likely to be popular on these message boards, but I've actually been having a good experience with Microsoft Security Essentials on the one machine I've tried it on. I've got other machines with AVG Free and avast! on, and MSE has come across relatively simple and light-weight. I'm told it has reviewed pretty well in AV testing too.
Not that I have any complaints from any of the main free AV programmes I've used, but it's nice to see another decent option in the line up.
Thanks, I enjoyed those two Wikipedia links. AV being on the political agenda in the UK (as mentioned, a referendum being on the horizon), and my college gov't & politics classes seeming a fair while back, it does me good to read up on it again.
In democratic terms, almost nothing is new any more; most things have been tried somewhere first, and the effects should be there for all to observe.
Slashdot Mirror
F11.
On my netbook (small screen, etc.) I just browse in full screen mode most of the time. Mousing to the top edge of the screen brings my tabs and navigation bar into view, pressing F11 instantly brings me back to familiarity.
Obviously not an option if you have an ultra-large widescreen and use everything in windowed mode so you can make good use of your space. But then I don't see the handful of pixels taken up by the URL bar being in THAT much demand if you've got a screen like that.
Assuming competition works properly, hopefully services like Last.fm will exercise their commercial right and discontinue their product on Apple's device; after all, if Apple's terms aren't commercially viable, they can stop using their platform.
If Android (/Windows/Blackberry/whatever) can present a platform that IS commercially viable, Last.fm can continue to develop for those platforms. That might make these platforms seem more desirable, in this one way, than iOS. If Apple find the situation uncomfortable, they'll revise their terms. That's competition in action.
If there is something in the mix that might stop the above playing out, then it's time to break out the anti-trust laws. Otherwise, might as well let the markets sort it out.
There's a difference between "popular" and "best". That's always been known. The most popular films are not the best films, the best music is not the most popular. A Ford Focus is more popular than a Ferrari Enzo (for a variety of reasons, not least of which is price); doesn't necessarily make it the better car.
Android is more popular than iOS. That might be because there are more Android products to choose from, or it might be because of the price, or it might or might not be seen as the better designed or more functional platform, or it might or might not have more "cool factor". But regardless, it is more popular.
That old chestnut assumes that every alien civilization screams into space on a decent spectrum of frequencies from the moment it's possible to the moment they go extinct. Thanks to more precise satellite-based transmissions and high-speed cabling, humanity's "radio age" seems to be coming to an end already, only a century after it really began.
And let's not even get started on whether we'd recognise an alien radio transmission as distinct from the the hissing void in the first place.
Assuming every civilization goes quite quiet after only a 100 year noisy period, and bearing in mind we've only really been listening out for it for a few decades, most of which time we had rubbish antiquated (from a modern perspective) equipment, it's not really that shocking that we've not heard from any neighbours yet.
And anyway, I'd still be thrilled to find space-mould, or better yet, space-simple-multi-cellular-organisms, if intelligent life isn't near by. That would still be earth-shatteringly fantastic.
It seems to be working for Google (who, like Microsoft, have released software that other companies bundle with their own hardware), and for ARM/Qualcomm/etc. (who, like Intel, have released harware that other companies utilise in their own devices).
Indeed, our Intel-equivalents (in this instance ARM + Samsung) are the producers of components used in Apple's highly succesful devices. And indeed, our Microsoft-equivalent (Google with Android) is allegedly now outselling Apple's products (an interesting mirror of the Microsoft/Apple battle for the desktop computing space).
I'm not sure the paradigms have shifted as far as we might like to think.
Not to criticise you (I'm sure plenty of people think similarly) but it's sad that that's the way people view these sorts of places these days.
I visited the island Jersey a few years back, which has a sort of 60s-Britain-meets-modern-France vibe. I remember a cafe where there were school kids playing chess, and old guys playing cards, and people reading books, and a guy doing paperwork with a laptop. I'm sure they were only buying as many drinks as they wanted, but they all seemed pretty settled in. A lot of continental Europe is similar. Britain has (or possibly "had") a similar sort of thing going on with its pub culture; it wasn't so long ago that pubs were a place to meet, play games, sing, generally socialise (and where incidentally drinks were served). I still happily spend an afternoon or evening in a pub with a book or complimentary newspaper or my smartphone, making a couple of drinks last, occasionally chatting with the locals. Unfortunately more people seem to have your attitude now- pubs are for eating, drinking, and leaving. More's the shame.
Just another symptom of commoditising all aspects of life, I suppose.
Believe it or not, high taxes are not a deterrent to working. You still pick the best paying job, and you still save your money for things you want to buy, and you still invest or save or spend what you have.
Further, tax rates like that are common around the world. The rates are similar throughout the EU, for example, and taxation in China or Russia or India is little different (when they're collected). A low tax regime is not a necessity for a country to be competitive- it's about the whole package.
Nokia have suffered by letting their R&D- specifically as fay as Symbian is concerned- slip behind the competition. But in general, they have 2 great operating systems to play with, which they've invested heavily in bringing up to scratch. Symbian had developer issues, and that was supposed to be fixed with Qt etc.. MeeGo was an unpolished gem in the perfect position to tackle the pocket computer market, especially considering the new trend in tablets. MeeGo also had the support of several other huge players- not least Intel.
Instead they're going to ditch their 2 existing OSs, just as they're almost competitive again, and go with the untested entity that is WP7? Crazy talk. WP7 hasn't exactly been getting rave reviews itself; if they really wanted to hop on another company's bandwagon, they might as well have just used Android like almost all of their rivals.
Good news for MS though, I suppose. I hope they don't throw it away with their usual ass-hattery. If they can make a good fist of WP7 (which will mean needing to get off of iOSs coat-tails), there might be hope for their ARM/Win8 shenanigans yet.
Apologies. I find myself unable to use the term "flashlight" without getting unpleasant mental images of a certain lonely gentleman's plaything.
Crikey, 8.25%? Income Tax? No wonder the budget doesn't balance.
Base rate income tax in the UK is 20%. If you earn £40,000, it's 40%. If you earn £150,000, it's 50%. I also pay National Insurance tax (about £80 + 1% of my monthly earnings over £850) and Council Tax (about £2000 a year, based on the size of my house (a 3 bed terrace)). There's also a collection of various other taxes (VAT, road tax, excise, Stamp Duty, etc.).
I'm not complaining though- I get an absolute butt load of state-provided freebies out of that. Texas provides some of those freebies to its citizens too (from maintained roads to state schools), but they're not exactly cheap.
Sorry, but you DID NOT arbitrarily capitalize words. Your point is thus INVALID.
ftfy
Exactly like the USA, yes. The point is that the thing TFA is describing when it talks about "private space industry" is not the same thing as the national space agencies, which have large elements of "private" companies, but operate wholly differently to what is being described.
I recall a reading a quote from some Activision guy stating that Guitar Hero was "the future of the music industry", and that it was a key new way that people would enjoy music. It sounded like a crock of shit then, and its only got funnier over time.
Shame they ragged it to death so quickly, rather than letting have a long, low intensity lifespan that we could still be enjoying today.
I bought a Nokia for £10. On pay as you go it's free to receive calls and texts, and while not exactly cheap for outgoing calls/texts it's hardly extortionate compared to my (largely neglected) landline. It also has a frickin torch built in, and about a week battery life on standby. It's my backup phone at the moment, but it did perfectly good duty as my main phone for about 6 months.
If you have any need of a mobile phone at all, you don't need to get ripped off. Just don't buy a blinking iPhone and you'll be fine.
If the US drops support for Mubarak it will show to other supported dictators (Pakistan, SA etc) that US-support is limited when it comes to popular uprisings. Anti-government groups will use this weakness to topple their governments and dictators will have to choose between force or surrender.
Ah yes, we can't be having those dastardly anti-government peasants overthrowing dictators and establishing democracies. To be seen to be supporting that would be disastrous for a country like the US! What do you think it is, the home of the free or something?
When there's a nasty anti-US dictator in charge, it's vaguely excusable to depose them and replace them with a pro-US dictator, I suppose. But when a population is clearly and articulately, en masse, demanding democracy, it ceases to be excusable to prop up a dictator.
I was under the impression that:
1) Energia's biggest shareholder was the Russian state.
2) It's biggest and most important customers are all state space agencies, who fund, oversee and regulate all projects to within an inch of their lives.
So a private company only very loosely- not really the same thing as is suggested in TFA.
They probably *are* two different operations. The tech support will be a big call centre somewhere, where minimum-wagers are told to read a script and log responses in boxes and end calls in an average of 4.5 minutes. Network development will be done by actual qualified staff in a real office somewhere, for a real salary.
Some of the poor support guys might one day get promoted to something better, and sometimes the network devs will need to support the customer facing areas of the business in some ways. But if it's anything like every company I've ever seen, the two branches will have little to do with each other.
The title says "air space". A bit weird, but basically accurate.
You could see it as being a win-win-win situation.
MS wins, in their guise as a backer of h.264, by extending support for their pet format. As you say, they also get some (in their case much needed) kudos too.
Google wins, because their browser gets h.264 support without them having to support a single line of code, or pay a penny in licensing fees (as and when they get implemented; MS will have to pick up that bill as it would be their "product" that implements support),
User wins, as they get support for more things in more browsers. With all of the big developers "extending" each other's browsers to support their pet projects, the net affect is everything being supported on all reasonably extensible platforms.
Left wing bias in the media? I wish the UK had that problem.
Established right wing newspapers in the UK: The Sun, The Daily Star, The Daily Express, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Financial Times, The Times.
Established left wing or centrist papers: The Daily Mirror, The Guardian, The Independent. The latter two are the two daily nationals with the smallest circulation.
It's beside the point though. American conceptions of "left wing" are hilariously out. American's like to think of the Republicans as the right wing party, Democrats as the left wing one, and their flag-bearing media supporters as similarly right/left aligned. In Europe, the Democrats would be considered a conservative right wing party, the Republicans a hard right wing one. God only knows how you'd classify the Tea Party supporters; "hard right" somehow doesn't seem enough.
It's pretentious clap-trap, is what it is.
Geeks identified themselves (or were identified by others) by their hobbies, interests, fictions, and humour, all of which were different from what the "mainstream" people occupied themselves with. The fictions are now best-sellers, the hobbies are widely enjoyed, the interests are more generally interesting, and the humour is printed across the chest of hot women (and men) everywhere. It''s not so much that geekiness has gone mainstream- it's that the mainstream has gotten geekier.
And surely that's what all (sane) geeks have always wanted? Every time you've frustratedly tried to explain some cunning new technology breakthrough to an acquaintance, and been baffled by how bored they seem- didn't you wish they found it as fascinating as you? Didn't you always want more people to tell jokes that you found funny, and your favourite directors/authors/publishers to have more money to spend on your favourite projects? I never plan on changing myself to match the rest of society, in terms of what I like and what I'm interested in- but if the rest of the world could busy itself aligning to me, that'd be just grand.
TFA seems to be confusing "geek" with "clever". You can like football and still suck at it, or like rock and be tone-deaf; being good at something isn't pre-requisite to it being your most favourite thing.
On the other hand, once the "geekdom" of the 20th century has become the mainstream of the 21st, undoubtedly new subcultures will crop up on the fringe. Maybe you can call that "the new geekdom" if you like, but you'd be clutching at straws. It will be it's own thing, and maybe it'll catch on one day too.
I know it's never likely to be popular on these message boards, but I've actually been having a good experience with Microsoft Security Essentials on the one machine I've tried it on. I've got other machines with AVG Free and avast! on, and MSE has come across relatively simple and light-weight. I'm told it has reviewed pretty well in AV testing too.
Not that I have any complaints from any of the main free AV programmes I've used, but it's nice to see another decent option in the line up.
Most countries have some equivalent to a cease and desist letter; basically a threat to legal action in a civil court.
Most hosting companies would probably chicken out when they receive a C&D on Sony headed paper, legally watertight or not.
Thanks, I enjoyed those two Wikipedia links. AV being on the political agenda in the UK (as mentioned, a referendum being on the horizon), and my college gov't & politics classes seeming a fair while back, it does me good to read up on it again.
In democratic terms, almost nothing is new any more; most things have been tried somewhere first, and the effects should be there for all to observe.
Lifespan of most computers being, what, 5 years? 10?
Wouldn't take long for a decent swathe of the word's install base to move to a new technology, assuming it's worth it.