I wouldn't say it's supposed to be funny. It's just supposed to be true.
We as a nation haven't really cared what the Constitution has said since - well, if we're honest, ever. It has all these great ideals and concepts in them that we don't live up to and never have. (It also has things like blacks being 3/5ths of a person, so I wouldn't say the entire thing is perfect. But that's what amendments are supposed to correct, not flat-out ignoring it.)
Bradley Manning's treatment has already been called out as inhumane. It may turn out to be legal, which would be a failing of our laws and justice system. People have been protesting it all along, and fuck all has happened, because not enough people care and the majority seem to think Manning "deserves" his treatment.
So, yeah, I don't have anything left to do but just cynically try and laugh at the whole thing. It won't really accomplish anything, but neither will anything else.
See? Torture does get results! So many people here keep saying torture never produces anything, this clearly proves you wrong! Torture does work to generate confessions!
But really, the difference between these two parties is pretty cosmetic.
Actually, I was more focused on the "CA" part of "D-CA" than the "D" - since, as you point out, it's the state that the politician's from that determines which company they serve. D or R, if it's "CA," that means "film/record industry." TX would mean oil, and NY means finance.
If it were anything other than a D or R that might mean something, but D or R, you're never going to hear any politician from CA interested in useful IP reform.
Bingo. I was hoping that, even after seeing "(D-CA)", this would be someone talking about making IP laws sane.
Nope.
This is all about "strengthening" them because they're "ineffective."
Really all you need to know is this bit from Rep. Chu's own press release:
The motion picture industry has a strong economic presence in Rep. Chu's current district. According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), $437 million is paid by their member studios to local businesses, and almost 140,000 jobs are in direct film and television in Los Angeles County.
UPS and FedEx may not be perfect, but at least their tracking software works
To add another anecdote to the fire, just yesterday I received a package from the USPS that the tracking software said would arrive last week, and that apparently never left their sorting facility as far as the tracker was concerned.
Actually, the train of events that showed up on the tracker was:
1. Shipping information received 2. Package sorted through facility. 3. Package received by USPS from the shipper. (The day after the previous one where it was "sorted.")
Then nothing, until the package arrived over a week later.
Although it was fun seeing the "estimated arrival time" not change days after it was supposed to arrive.
But, hey, they only slightly damaged the contents of the package, just some minor cosmetic damage. Plus, unlike a previous package shipped via the USPS, this one actually arrived...
They stopped supporting future versions of Java - namely, Java 7. They still support Java 6.
In theory, by now, Java 6 support should have been dropped and Java 6 should no longer be updated at all. However, due to problems with Java 7, and compatibility issues between Apple Java and Oracle Java on Mac OS X, Java 6 lives on and is still being updated.
The Apple update to Java 6 was delivered through Software Update by Apple as an OS update. Java 6 is still done by Apple. At some point, Apple will drop support for Java entirely and the only way to run Java on Mac OS X will be to install it from Oracle.
In fact, this should have happened already. But it hasn't, yet. The next version of Mac OS X will presumably drop support for Apple's Java entirely, but as of today, it still lives on, and patches for it still come from Apple.
You do realize that Apple has handed over Java support on OSX back to Oracle, right?
For Java 7, yes, Apple doesn't support that. For Java 6, they still do. The Apple version of Java still exists, was vulnerable to the Java 0-day, and missed the patches that fixed it that were first released a couple of weeks ago. Their fix was instead to just disable applets entirely, which is great unless your IT department requires an applet to use their wi-fi network. (Seriously.)
And, yes, there are still some Mac OS X apps that require Apple's version of Java, because it's not completely compatible with Oracle's version of Java.
However, it turns out that Java itself was updated today, and that Apple's Java patch includes today's Oracle patch, so it may turn out that the flaw being exploited wasn't patched at all until today. (The article claims it was exploiting a flaw that was patched at the start of the month - a patch that never made it to Apple's version of Java.)
Quick recap: Apple is not supporting Java 7. They are still supporting Java 6, which is still living on because not all Mac OS X Java apps support Java 7.
The fix to patch the vulnerability and remove the malware if it's there is available today.
The keyword there is "today." The actual Java patch was available earlier, it's just Apple only bothered patching their version of Java until - well, after they got bitten by the vulnerability, apparently. Apple had been content to just say "applets are no longer supported" and leave it at that.
I have Java enabled on my Mac in the browser. Not because I want it enabled, mind you, but because IT requires it to be enabled because some of the software IT requires demand the Java plugin under non-Windows operating systems. (This also kills the plan I use under Windows of using 32-bit Firefox and only the 64-bit JDK, which means I get the JDK I need for my job but not a Java plugin that even can run in my browser.)
Since the only reason I have a Mac in the first place is to work on a completely useless but very buzzword-friendly iPad app, I'd imagine that I could quite easily have gotten infected, as Java has to be enabled in order to run IT-required Java applets. (Applets that are only needed because there are no Mac versions of certain IT-required software, and the fact that IT only allows Macs on their network at all due to the stupid requirement by Apple that iOS apps can only be written using them. IT will be very happy once Apple finally gets around to killing Mac OS X in a couple of years.)
This is why from the left we get laws against inciting racial hatred, but from the right we get "free speech zones".
Free Speech Zones were an invention of the (drum roll please) Democratic party, way back in the 1980s. At the time, they wanted to keep protestors away from their convention.
Granted, their use has been greatly expanded recently, first by (drum roll again) the Democratic party during their convention. Again. The 2004 DNC was the first time the "free speech zones" were moved into areas where protestors weren't even visible from the area where the people being protested were.
The Republican party uses them also, but let's remember where they started and who expanded them: with the Democratic party.
Of course, people from outside the US would point out that Democrats are hardly "left" so I suppose you have a point anyway (the free speech zones at the DNC were explicitly to keep liberal protestors away) but when you use the term "free speech zone" I have to assume you're referring to the designated protest areas originally created by the Democratic Party for using during the DNC.
Hopefully the ability to accurately tell time. But with the way phones these days work at making calls, I won't hold out much hope.
Funny you should mention it, because the iPhone keeps horrible time. Which is weird, because as I understand it, GPS requires accurate timekeeping, which means that anything with a GPS chip in it can get a very accurate time. I know that my GPS-enabled camera is capable of setting its own time off of GPS.
The iPhone, on the other hand, ignores its own GPS chip in favor - well, who knows. Apple doesn't say. All I know is that the reported iPhone time is generally anywhere from a couple of seconds to over a minute off the time reported from an NTP-synced computer.
If they're planning on making it just be a "smaller iPhone" then it probably really will be a watch that can't keep accurate time.
What would the killer feature of a "smart watch" be? That depends on who's using it. So the ultimate killer feature would be the ability to use any app from any source, without restriction. That way each person would find their own killer app.
I think we all know the iWatch, if it ever exists, won't do that.
No, I know next to nothing about the state of JavaFX. If you want me to talk to you about server-side features of Java, including some new Java 7 features I'm still not using because I have to stick with Java 6 for the foreseeable future due to IT overzealousness, that I can talk about.
If Oracle was serious about pushing JavaFX as a replacement for Swing, they've sure done a shit job of it. It was an optional install up until what, JDK 7u6 or so?
Of course, the last time I did a GUI in Java, I didn't use JavaFX or Swing or event the AWT: I used SWT. Because it uses native widgets and it manages to be slightly less horrible than Swing. Still horrible, mind you, but at least not completely terrible.
Most of my current Java work deals with servlets, though, so I'm not exactly up to date on Java GUI technologies. Especially ones that were originally sold as a way to revive applets.
Huh, who knew. Last I checked, JavaFX was built on top of Swing. Apparently that may have changed with 2.0.
Or maybe not. I can't tell.
But one thing seems pretty clear from screenshots: your JavaFX applications will fit in with the native desktop just about as well as your Swing applications did. Which is to say, "not at all."
"Heh, look at this idiot: RT Damn you American Express!!!!! I do not want a 4th Monkey!!!!!!! #monkey #ihateae" (Monkey has been charged to your account)
Except last I checked, iOS 6.1 contains security fixes, a few of which are not related to blocking jailbreaking.
So your choices are apparently "useful battery life" or "able to browse webpages safely." Sounds about normal for Apple, since this isn't the first upgrade that completely killed battery life for most users.
As far as I can tell, the Flash updater only bothers to check for an update when the computer first boots.
Because everyone here constantly reboots their computer, right? I mean, it's not like most computers have sleep modes, and that most people just leave the OS running so they don't have to wait for it to boot. Clearly everyone constantly reboots their computer, once per day, to allow the Adobe Flash Updater to check for updates.
While we're complaining about Google search, I'd like to complain about them removing the feature to block domains from showing up in search. I wanted to block out results from w3schools.com because they're never useful, so I went and found the block sites options and then re-ran the search and... got the same fucking useless w3schools.com results!
I guess the ability to block domains from search results has also been removed, which is extremely annoying when you have a block list that tries to get rid of those useless sites that are only good at SEO and not providing information.
I'm sure there are enough that I feel fairly confident in my advice to just not install Java unless you really, really need it. Which, unless you're a developer or a Minecraft addict, you really don't.
So I have the JDK installed, but the plugin disabled. (Well, I have the 64-bit JDK installed and use 32-bit Firefox, which works well enough on that front.)
"You know that feature you've been using for years and you said it's what makes Macs better, Windows does that now, too. So, see, Windows doesn't suck."
Right click.
Also true preemptive multitasking and virtual memory.
I've never heard an OSX user claim Windows 7 is better. Especially on a portable where the gestures on OSX make it absolutely the best experience out there, if you bother to learn it.
You are aware that with just about every current Windows laptop out there for the past, oh, couple of years at least, those gestures work too? Either people figured out how to work around Apple's patents or Apple finally decided to license them, as it was solely multitouch patents blocking Windows from doing it before.
Although I will admit that I've never heard an Apple fanboi admit that Windows is the better OS, even when they end up spending all their time in a Windows 7 VM because they can't actually do everything they need to do for their job on OS X.
Plus, there's that whole thing where Apple beat Microsoft at "tabletizing" their desktop OS. How's that Launchpad thing they forced on everyone going? You know, the Windows 8 start screen without live tiles and without touch support.
Or the notification center you access by swiping from the edge of the screen. Except, again, no touch support, so instead you have to swipe from the edge of the trackpad, something that happens accidentally so frequently that it's just obnoxious.
Apple beat Microsoft to their own version of "Metro" but for whatever reason, no one gives Apple crap about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't say it's supposed to be funny. It's just supposed to be true.
We as a nation haven't really cared what the Constitution has said since - well, if we're honest, ever. It has all these great ideals and concepts in them that we don't live up to and never have. (It also has things like blacks being 3/5ths of a person, so I wouldn't say the entire thing is perfect. But that's what amendments are supposed to correct, not flat-out ignoring it.)
Bradley Manning's treatment has already been called out as inhumane. It may turn out to be legal, which would be a failing of our laws and justice system. People have been protesting it all along, and fuck all has happened, because not enough people care and the majority seem to think Manning "deserves" his treatment.
So, yeah, I don't have anything left to do but just cynically try and laugh at the whole thing. It won't really accomplish anything, but neither will anything else.
Oh please, we all know the Constitution is "just a piece of paper" and "isn't a suicide pact."
You expect our government to follow the rules that they're bound by? What do you think we are, civilized? We're Americans, fuck yeah!
See? Torture does get results! So many people here keep saying torture never produces anything, this clearly proves you wrong! Torture does work to generate confessions!
But really, the difference between these two parties is pretty cosmetic.
Actually, I was more focused on the "CA" part of "D-CA" than the "D" - since, as you point out, it's the state that the politician's from that determines which company they serve. D or R, if it's "CA," that means "film/record industry." TX would mean oil, and NY means finance.
If it were anything other than a D or R that might mean something, but D or R, you're never going to hear any politician from CA interested in useful IP reform.
Bingo. I was hoping that, even after seeing "(D-CA)", this would be someone talking about making IP laws sane.
Nope.
This is all about "strengthening" them because they're "ineffective."
Really all you need to know is this bit from Rep. Chu's own press release:
The motion picture industry has a strong economic presence in Rep. Chu's current district. According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), $437 million is paid by their member studios to local businesses, and almost 140,000 jobs are in direct film and television in Los Angeles County.
UPS and FedEx may not be perfect, but at least their tracking software works
To add another anecdote to the fire, just yesterday I received a package from the USPS that the tracking software said would arrive last week, and that apparently never left their sorting facility as far as the tracker was concerned.
Actually, the train of events that showed up on the tracker was:
1. Shipping information received
2. Package sorted through facility.
3. Package received by USPS from the shipper. (The day after the previous one where it was "sorted.")
Then nothing, until the package arrived over a week later.
Although it was fun seeing the "estimated arrival time" not change days after it was supposed to arrive.
But, hey, they only slightly damaged the contents of the package, just some minor cosmetic damage. Plus, unlike a previous package shipped via the USPS, this one actually arrived...
Not exactly.
They stopped supporting future versions of Java - namely, Java 7. They still support Java 6.
In theory, by now, Java 6 support should have been dropped and Java 6 should no longer be updated at all. However, due to problems with Java 7, and compatibility issues between Apple Java and Oracle Java on Mac OS X, Java 6 lives on and is still being updated.
The Apple update to Java 6 was delivered through Software Update by Apple as an OS update. Java 6 is still done by Apple. At some point, Apple will drop support for Java entirely and the only way to run Java on Mac OS X will be to install it from Oracle.
In fact, this should have happened already. But it hasn't, yet. The next version of Mac OS X will presumably drop support for Apple's Java entirely, but as of today, it still lives on, and patches for it still come from Apple.
You do realize that Apple has handed over Java support on OSX back to Oracle, right?
For Java 7, yes, Apple doesn't support that. For Java 6, they still do. The Apple version of Java still exists, was vulnerable to the Java 0-day, and missed the patches that fixed it that were first released a couple of weeks ago. Their fix was instead to just disable applets entirely, which is great unless your IT department requires an applet to use their wi-fi network. (Seriously.)
And, yes, there are still some Mac OS X apps that require Apple's version of Java, because it's not completely compatible with Oracle's version of Java.
However, it turns out that Java itself was updated today, and that Apple's Java patch includes today's Oracle patch, so it may turn out that the flaw being exploited wasn't patched at all until today. (The article claims it was exploiting a flaw that was patched at the start of the month - a patch that never made it to Apple's version of Java.)
Quick recap: Apple is not supporting Java 7. They are still supporting Java 6, which is still living on because not all Mac OS X Java apps support Java 7.
The fix to patch the vulnerability and remove the malware if it's there is available today.
The keyword there is "today." The actual Java patch was available earlier, it's just Apple only bothered patching their version of Java until - well, after they got bitten by the vulnerability, apparently. Apple had been content to just say "applets are no longer supported" and leave it at that.
I have Java enabled on my Mac in the browser. Not because I want it enabled, mind you, but because IT requires it to be enabled because some of the software IT requires demand the Java plugin under non-Windows operating systems. (This also kills the plan I use under Windows of using 32-bit Firefox and only the 64-bit JDK, which means I get the JDK I need for my job but not a Java plugin that even can run in my browser.)
Since the only reason I have a Mac in the first place is to work on a completely useless but very buzzword-friendly iPad app, I'd imagine that I could quite easily have gotten infected, as Java has to be enabled in order to run IT-required Java applets. (Applets that are only needed because there are no Mac versions of certain IT-required software, and the fact that IT only allows Macs on their network at all due to the stupid requirement by Apple that iOS apps can only be written using them. IT will be very happy once Apple finally gets around to killing Mac OS X in a couple of years.)
This is why from the left we get laws against inciting racial hatred, but from the right we get "free speech zones".
Free Speech Zones were an invention of the (drum roll please) Democratic party, way back in the 1980s. At the time, they wanted to keep protestors away from their convention.
Granted, their use has been greatly expanded recently, first by (drum roll again) the Democratic party during their convention. Again. The 2004 DNC was the first time the "free speech zones" were moved into areas where protestors weren't even visible from the area where the people being protested were.
The Republican party uses them also, but let's remember where they started and who expanded them: with the Democratic party.
Of course, people from outside the US would point out that Democrats are hardly "left" so I suppose you have a point anyway (the free speech zones at the DNC were explicitly to keep liberal protestors away) but when you use the term "free speech zone" I have to assume you're referring to the designated protest areas originally created by the Democratic Party for using during the DNC.
And every economist in the world will tell you that austerity is the absolute worst way to get yourself out of a recession.
I keep on hearing this.
So what's your solution? Hyperinflation?
We don't have any other options. It's austerity or hyperinflation. Pick your poison.
Somehow, I think cutting needless spending is somewhat less likely to destroy our country.
Hopefully the ability to accurately tell time. But with the way phones these days work at making calls, I won't hold out much hope.
Funny you should mention it, because the iPhone keeps horrible time. Which is weird, because as I understand it, GPS requires accurate timekeeping, which means that anything with a GPS chip in it can get a very accurate time. I know that my GPS-enabled camera is capable of setting its own time off of GPS.
The iPhone, on the other hand, ignores its own GPS chip in favor - well, who knows. Apple doesn't say. All I know is that the reported iPhone time is generally anywhere from a couple of seconds to over a minute off the time reported from an NTP-synced computer.
If they're planning on making it just be a "smaller iPhone" then it probably really will be a watch that can't keep accurate time.
What would the killer feature of a "smart watch" be? That depends on who's using it. So the ultimate killer feature would be the ability to use any app from any source, without restriction. That way each person would find their own killer app.
I think we all know the iWatch, if it ever exists, won't do that.
No, I know next to nothing about the state of JavaFX. If you want me to talk to you about server-side features of Java, including some new Java 7 features I'm still not using because I have to stick with Java 6 for the foreseeable future due to IT overzealousness, that I can talk about.
If Oracle was serious about pushing JavaFX as a replacement for Swing, they've sure done a shit job of it. It was an optional install up until what, JDK 7u6 or so?
Of course, the last time I did a GUI in Java, I didn't use JavaFX or Swing or event the AWT: I used SWT. Because it uses native widgets and it manages to be slightly less horrible than Swing. Still horrible, mind you, but at least not completely terrible.
Most of my current Java work deals with servlets, though, so I'm not exactly up to date on Java GUI technologies. Especially ones that were originally sold as a way to revive applets.
Huh, who knew. Last I checked, JavaFX was built on top of Swing. Apparently that may have changed with 2.0.
Or maybe not. I can't tell.
But one thing seems pretty clear from screenshots: your JavaFX applications will fit in with the native desktop just about as well as your Swing applications did. Which is to say, "not at all."
"Heh, look at this idiot: RT Damn you American Express!!!!! I do not want a 4th Monkey!!!!!!! #monkey #ihateae"
(Monkey has been charged to your account)
Except last I checked, iOS 6.1 contains security fixes, a few of which are not related to blocking jailbreaking.
So your choices are apparently "useful battery life" or "able to browse webpages safely." Sounds about normal for Apple, since this isn't the first upgrade that completely killed battery life for most users.
Because that would involve watching MSNBC or CNN, and no one, not even a liberal, is dumb enough to do that.
As far as I can tell, the Flash updater only bothers to check for an update when the computer first boots.
Because everyone here constantly reboots their computer, right? I mean, it's not like most computers have sleep modes, and that most people just leave the OS running so they don't have to wait for it to boot. Clearly everyone constantly reboots their computer, once per day, to allow the Adobe Flash Updater to check for updates.
While we're complaining about Google search, I'd like to complain about them removing the feature to block domains from showing up in search. I wanted to block out results from w3schools.com because they're never useful, so I went and found the block sites options and then re-ran the search and... got the same fucking useless w3schools.com results!
I guess the ability to block domains from search results has also been removed, which is extremely annoying when you have a block list that tries to get rid of those useless sites that are only good at SEO and not providing information.
3. Confused. How many more are there?
I'm sure there are enough that I feel fairly confident in my advice to just not install Java unless you really, really need it. Which, unless you're a developer or a Minecraft addict, you really don't.
So I have the JDK installed, but the plugin disabled. (Well, I have the 64-bit JDK installed and use 32-bit Firefox, which works well enough on that front.)
Yeah, I think the Coulton version is really kind of funny.
I've also never made it more than about 30 seconds or so into it, I dunno. It doesn't take long to get the joke and it's really fucking boring.
In that sense, maybe Coulton should be glad Glee didn't blame him for the arrangement...
"You know that feature you've been using for years and you said it's what makes Macs better, Windows does that now, too. So, see, Windows doesn't suck."
Right click.
Also true preemptive multitasking and virtual memory.
I've never heard an OSX user claim Windows 7 is better. Especially on a portable where the gestures on OSX make it absolutely the best experience out there, if you bother to learn it.
You are aware that with just about every current Windows laptop out there for the past, oh, couple of years at least, those gestures work too? Either people figured out how to work around Apple's patents or Apple finally decided to license them, as it was solely multitouch patents blocking Windows from doing it before.
Although I will admit that I've never heard an Apple fanboi admit that Windows is the better OS, even when they end up spending all their time in a Windows 7 VM because they can't actually do everything they need to do for their job on OS X.
Plus, there's that whole thing where Apple beat Microsoft at "tabletizing" their desktop OS. How's that Launchpad thing they forced on everyone going? You know, the Windows 8 start screen without live tiles and without touch support.
Or the notification center you access by swiping from the edge of the screen. Except, again, no touch support, so instead you have to swipe from the edge of the trackpad, something that happens accidentally so frequently that it's just obnoxious.
Apple beat Microsoft to their own version of "Metro" but for whatever reason, no one gives Apple crap about it.