By large-scale software development I meant doing software development over large code bases. It is significantly different to work on a standalone toy project than to work on millions of lines of code with many other people.
Sorry, my misunderstanding.:)
I am curious, though: how is it different (other than rigorous standardization of interfaces?) Those millions of lines of code are still written one line / one module / one object at a time, are they not? Really curious, because I don't code for work, just for play sometimes. I do have a CS undergraduate degree, but my career went in other directions...
I can see how maybe having the ability to quickly track down and correct problem areas in a huge volume of code would be a valued skill for a senior programmer, one that perhaps wouldn't involve a lot of base code generation, just good troubleshooting and logic skills. And the ability to puzzle out someone else's spaghetti code, of course:)
Being good at large-scale software development or at writing robust device drivers will not make you better at doing trivial programming tasks. You must be a clueless manager to think that because someone is a better programmer he can piss code 4 times faster. The problem lies in the fact that those tests do not highlight your skills at all. Since whether you'll go to next stage of the hire or not depends on how good you did at that test, this is really an issue. The most important thing that decides whether a software developer will choose to work for you is whether he feels valuable and useful to your projects. If you're asking him to do monkey coding, he'll just go look elsewhere.
Yet I'm sure there are 'senior' programmers (at least on their CV) out there who simply can't parse so-called 'monkey' coding. Not so good if one of the duties of the job they're applying for is to oversee coding output from junior programmers. It's true that faster programming does not equal better programming (especially if one sacrifices thorough commenting and documentation for speed), however such simple skill tests with very generous time frames are a useful check that the prospective candidate's knowledge isn't all academic or focused in one area, that they're still able to step back and apply basic coding skills to a simple problem, even if they're a bit rusty. If the interviewers are asking for fully optimized code within five minutes, or only have a single solution in mind and won't accept alternate working solutions: well, do you really want to work there in that case?
As for the large scale project development skills...sounds like you're talking more about project management and integration ability. If that's what they're hiring you to do, and they don't actually expect you to see or work directly with code, then they probably wouldn't opt to include this test. They should instead have some situational questions: "what would you do if...?", "how would you approach this personnel problem?" or "How would you apportion resources if this happened?"
Overall, I see this as a quick way to avoid hiring PHB's, if the interviewers use it correctly. It shows that the candidate didn't just learn a bunch of buzzwords to support their CV, and it proves that they have the mental flexibility to step back from what they do every day and dig back into that undergraduate course material to produce something simple again. By no means should this be the be-all or end-all of the interview process, it should simply be one checkbox in the list of evaluation criteria.
If you only care about those basic things, you hire a junior engineer. When you pay 3 to 4 times more for a senior engineer, you do it because the person has significant experience and his achievements show he knows his field probably better than your interviewers.
If you were to hire a worldwide known Linux kernel expert, would you make him take a stupid C programming test?
Oh, so what, English professors don't enjoy doing crossword puzzles?
C'mon, it's a quick verification test, to show that you really do know your shit. If it bugs you enough, then flex your awesome programmatic muscles and code three or four separate solutions in the time given, all properly commented and with associated documentation...that'll shut them up, won't it?
CV's are *often* pumped up past the point of recognition, and they really have no way of knowing how much direct coding involvement you had with anything you put on there. Even if you put 'senior programmer for X and Y', well, I've known companies where the 'senior' programmer on a project really acted more like a project manager, and rarely touched or generated any code themselves. This is a quick, measurable check for them, to be sure you have the skills you claim to have, and it should be a fun little exercise for you.
Just walking away comes across as either cowardly or childish. If you see such minor tasks as 'beneath' you somehow, then it probably doesn't bode well for your attitude in the workplace, either.
Female circumcision. Yes, it's barbaric, but no less so than the crime of rape.
To be clear, I meant that these extreme punishments should be applied for extreme cases: violent rape, rape where the victim is incapacitated in any way (drunk, drugged, etc.), repeat offenders and pedophiles. IMO jail time would still be appropriate for 'consensual' statutory rape cases (i.e., an adult seduces an underage teen or vice-versa, or an adult sleeps with a teen without knowing they are underage) unless it's a repeat offense.
While the death penalty cannot undo what was done to someone, we as a society can no longer continue to coddle people who refuse to live with the basic bounds of society. There isn't something new in not raping, murdering, shooting, tealing from, beating or otherwise doing something to someone, and people such as this who have no regard for others do not deserve any sympathy or regard from the rest of society.
I've always thought that the most appropriate penalty for a 100%, beyond-a-doubt conviction of rape should be castration, and not this namby-pamby chemical castration either, simply chop off their balls. With or without anesthetic, depending on the circumstances of the crime.
Not only does that prevent them from further propagating their potentially defective DNA to the next generation (placing nature vs nurture arguments aside), it also provides a lifelong reminder of the consequences of their crime every time they take a piss or have a shower.
If they don't know how and when to properly use their toys, take them away for good. Second offense (it is medically possible, apparently) = penectomy.
OMG! Imagine how many years have been wasted to like, fucking Atlas Shrugged man.. If everyone who read it took like, 30 hours to read it that'd be like, a million years in wasted man hours. Whaooo...
That's nothing, I *weep* to think of the millions of man-years (not to mention IQ points) wasted by the Twilight series...
Those books are indeed full of vampires...time vampires!
... 152.1 man-years is not the same thing as 152.1 years. And since that's still being split across 8 million people, it ends up still coming out to that same old 10 minutes per person. Many of them would simply have to be happening simultaneously, of course.
Actually, whether it's in parallel or in series makes no difference to the bottom line cost.
Sure, if I am running a project and assign 10 resources to a task I can (theoretically*) complete the task ten times faster than I could if only one resource were assigned...but the cost remains the same. I still must pay for the hours worked on the project, whether it's all to one person, or multiple smaller amounts to many people.
IMHO, the one pertinent question this article fails to ask is: what is the collective benefit derived from using the software after the EULA has been processed? How much time is saved per user every day by using this software vs. other options? That savings *should* more than offset the 'cost' of reading through the EULA: if it doesn't, then they should seriously be exploring other options...
*Assuming spherical resources in a vacuum:o) by which I mean that adding people to a task causes no increase in overhead for that task (management, co-ordinationn, bathroom-break-time, electricity for those extra consoles, training time required, etc.). *sigh*, would be nice...
Why would I care to have a flexible phone? What does this give me that a regular phone doesn't? These won't be "foldable" like a dollar bill so it won't go in my wallet. I doubt it would be durable enough to be indestructible so, again, why?
Maybe a phone you can wear on your wrist, like an uber-geeky bracer? I'm picturing a form factor like one of those 'snap' bracelets, that remain rigid until you tap them against something, then they curl around whatever you tap them against. Want to work with the full screen? Just pull it off your wrist and go.
True, the (presumably rigid) battery pack and processor compartment would have to be pretty compact and cool-running to make this comfortable, but there are definitely some cool possibilities available for this tech...combine this with some sort of kinesthetic charging capabilities, and it could be impressive indeed:)
How would they differentiate between people walking along the street with their phones in their pocket and BT-enabled cars driving along the same street, if all they're basing the collection on is the device MAC address?
If you want people to switch you need to give them a reason. Make it lighter, faster, and features regular MS office doesn't have.
Under the same token Mozilla failed in the face of IE 6 too. It was not until they fixed the horrible Netscape rendering bugs (which were worse than IE 6 even) and made a "Firefox" fork that had tabs, security, and a much quicker and better renderer that people switched.
Hmmm...a tabbed word processor / spreadsheet application. I like it!
I think you're on to something there...I know once I found a tabbed PDF viewer, I dropped Adobe Reader like a (not so) hot potato...
Another feature for open source devs to lure userbase: integrated file comparison tools, so one can quickly review only the differences between two (or three) revisions of the same file (maybe with some buffering 'context' content shown, like in Google search results). I know they *try* to do this with the 'Track Changes' feature, but that is limited and often disabled when you need it most. Bonus points if it allowed the user to select 'Option A' , 'Option B' or 'Option C' for each area that was different and merge them to create a new, combined file with the best of everything, leaving identical areas unchanged. I know there are third party tools that will do this, but an integrated solution would be fine indeed...
And IMHO, feel free to stick the ribbon somewhere painful and unhygenic. I sincerely dread the day when my workplace migrates to the new MSOffice platform: we're still on 2003, and AFAIK it's for that very reason. I have had a reluctant taste of what teh ribbon can offer in AutoCAD, and it is still maddeningly useless to me after over a year of occasional-to-frequent use. If they decide to make the ribbon optional in Office, more power to them. Forcing it? Forget it. I'll be using LibreOffice instead and only opening Word briefly to test compatibility before sending it out. I have serious, grown-up things to do, and fighting with the UI ain't one of them.
Good luck carrying 1000+ ebooks around in your pocket, like I do on my S2 (or reading them in the dark at night so you don't keep the other half awake). Along with a multitude of movies, music, comics, audio-books, news-feeds AND internet browsing, etc, etc! Oh, it's also a phone too I think...
The thing is, you can only read one book at a time. I know you can have several different books on the go, but almost no one literally reads a page in one book, then half a page in the next, a couple of lines in a third, then back to the first for another page.
I'm talking about reading for pleasure, of course. Obviously if you're doing serious research then it's a different story, as it is for reference/text books.
Indeed, but I believe the GP's point was that he/she can bring many, many more books along everywhere they go, so they are never stuck for something to read. Do you bring your paper novel along to read while standing in line at the post office or grocery store? For vacations how many books do you have to bring along, and how much room / weight do they take up in your luggage?
Don't get me wrong, I love the feel of a paper book as much as the next guy, and prefer that for around-the-home reading where I can quickly grab a new book when I'm done the old one. But, with my husband and I both being fairly avid readers on our down time, I tried ebook readers for our vacations as soon as they came down to a price range and functionality that I liked and we loved them. More room/weight for souvenirs! I also find that having a book on the go on my phone (I read in parallel, 2 or 3 books at a time depending on where I am) lets me amuse myself during tedious waiting times (e.g., dentist office) without having to remember to pack a book along, or find space for it in my pockets. And let's face it, the magazines in the dentist's office are abysmal, there's only so much Good Housekeeping one can stand...or slashdot, for that matter:)
There's nothing wrong with that. All those free services can go. They'll be replaced by other free services from new companies that will abide by the rules and still think they can make a profit, by doing what their customers want instead of what they don't want. Moreover, if open source has taught us anything, it's that high quality free stuff still gets made by people who just want to be proud to help advance the human race.
So let the data collecting leeches die a well deserved death. We don't need them.
Woww...I really can't believe the mod carnage I'm seeing on this forum. Seems like a lot of 'vested interests' are spamming with their mod points today...
For example, what's 'over-rated' about the quoted comment? Seems to me it's well written, not factually incorrect or profane, and quite reasonable. Oh, riiight, it expresses sentiments that the advertising industry really doesn't want people to think about. In other words, 'over-rated' is mod-code for 'STFU, you're threatening our bloated and obscene profit margins!'
All right, do your worst mod-trolls *braces*, my karma can TAKE it!:P
Where I live, I cannot travel from my home to my work without losing the (supposedly city-wide) crappy 'free' WiFi signal almost as soon as I leave either place.
But mostly people are loading media where they work or live. Point, me.
I have travelled all over the world and not had an issue getting WiFi if I needed it.
Perhaps you should get out more and think about how people really use devices.
How well does that work for you on road trips? There's only so long that I can linger over a mochachino at Starbucks before going completely mental...and I am absolutely not anal (or, admittedly, organized) enough to pre-plan my entire road trip playlist beforehand! Me, I just pack along extra SD cards with more songs/videos from my library instead...a quick swap and I'm chilling to classic rock instead of alternative, or watching sci-fi instead of comedy.
I can only cite how I use my devices, and AFAIK that's for pretty much the typical things people use devices for: playing music and video, taking and looking at pics and (of course!) playing absorbing little games. Oh, and reading ebooks, although those don't really add to the storage crunch at all, being so relatively tiny.
My phone is used mostly to surf the interweb, youtube, email, twitter (but not FB, eww), etc., and with that, I still typically use well over 2 GB a month of my 5GB plan. I couldn't even imagine what I would be pulling if my music and video came from the cloud instead...yikes.
Oh yes, you definitely don't live in Australia or New Zealand, do you? Friends and I took a trip down that-a-way a couple of years ago, and let me tell you, unless you really like McDonalds and StarryBucks, there's no such thing as free wifi anywhere. Heck, all of the hotels and campsites we stayed at had a charge-by-time or (usually) charge-by-MB access fee to use their WiFi. The airports charged for the wifi, fer chrissake. It really sucked, since I brought some shiny toys along and planned on Skype'ing back home fairly regularly, but we hardly ever could (you know how much data Skype uses? it's goofy) I'm just glad for those SD cards, or we would have gone batty listening to the same 30 albums or so...I know, I know, FWP:)
Frankly, ipad comparison is hilarious. Surface has the industry standard microSD port. Just put in another 32 gigs. Costs something around 30€ at the moment.
With ipad, you're SOL.
You can only use that space on the SD card for data. You cannot use it to store apps.
Can you use it to store app data, though? Stuff like static resources, save games, etc.? Seems to me that would be the bulk of an app's size, wouldn't it(?) And if you can, is there a performance lag?
Haven't had a chance to play with one yet, I've been curious about this...
Nor does it change the fact that once my SD card is in the device I can forget about it.
Please explain how you can "forget about" a separate storage that you must manage. This I think is the most terrible of your deceptions, misleading people to think having an SD card is equivalent to more base storage. It is not true for any user, as it adds complexity to how you deal with media. I don't know if you are technically ignorant of this fundamental problem but it seems unlikely with this being Slashdot, so I can only assume you are being willfully deceptive as to this point.
Okay, yer right wrong on that one, mate.
I can only speak about what I know, so I will reference the (apparently evil IYO) Android platform, since I've never used a Surface device. For all the Android devices I own (phone, several tablets) as well as the devices I help others with (mostly Android phones), the 'external' storage is indeed plug-and-forget. It auto-mounts when the device is turned on, I can shift the bulk of most of my app storage to the SD card with no drop in usability for the apps in question, and as for media? I simply had to open my camera app settings and tell it to save to the external storage instead of local storage. My Gallery app has no problem parsing the external and internal storage together and showing me everything.
As an added bonus, if I drop my phone under a truck or in a toilet, well my precious dog photos are stored on a nice, non-volatile, easily-removeable microSD card. I have a high probability of being able to get them back even if I don't happen to have immediate access to teh internets, and I can copy them back over to my netbook in about 2 minutes.
Or, I can just retrieve them from ONLINE_CLOUD_STORAGE_PROVIDER of my choice (Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc...) if it happens when I am near my home WiFi. Yes, I do have to explicitly enable these backup services myself, but I actually prefer that to trusting 'the man' to do it for me. I back up what (and only what) I want to back up.
Just plain false. Cell data is expensive
You are wrong. Cell data is not that expensive; but more importantly in everyday life WiFi is pervasive. I have only a 2GB data plan but consume around 100-200 GB a month between two iOS devices.
I come nowhere near the limits of my data plan each month.
Again, you are trying to mislead by ignoring how real people use real devices.
Wow, privileged much? So, where do you live, Seoul? Tokyo? I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but unless you live in a metropolis, WiFi availability is most certainly *not* 'pervasive'. Where I live, I cannot travel from my home to my work without losing the (supposedly city-wide) crappy 'free' WiFi signal almost as soon as I leave either place. And since the speed of it is a joke, it's not even worth it to try, usually.
I like to use my devices on the go, and since I'm in Canada (and not Vancouver or Toronto), that means anything that's delivered over the air comes directly off my cell data plan. And in case you haven't heard, us Canucks pay through the nose for mobile data, especially roaming data.
Wifi is in no way ubiquitous enough in most of the world to make "the cloud" a viable alternative to local storage.
You go broad when you should go narrow. Sure if I am traveling across Africa WiFi might be harder to come by (having travelled there though you might be surprised). But In that case pre-loading an SD card before leaving home and is the same degree of trouble for iOS and Surface, and the dongle is hardly an issue to bring in an area where power will be more precious than anything.
But the people that actually can afford to buy a surface or iPad? You are in
Why can't a single core not be sped up when the others can't used? Intel already do that in their other processors based on workload and thermal envelope.
eg: 48 cores at 200MHz or 4 cores at 2GHz?
That's an interesting idea. Unfortunately, it looks like that technology currently only allows for about a 40% boost in speed per core (so from 200MHz to 280MHz, not 2GHz)
Now, I'm not sure if that's a hardware limitation or a thermal one: it may be that they *could* do a much wider variation in processor speeds if there was a good reason to do so. But again, overhead. Tracking projected thermal profiles (so as not to accidentally fry the customer's hand...or the device), monitoring and continually adjusting performance based on load for all of the cores will inevitably cut into the overall efficiency of the combined unit.
You understand that Google isn't just indexing but providing a means by which the content can be accessed without ever visiting the page that was indexed? There is little reason to visit the site unless you really want the "long form" and what the news web sites are finding is that more and more people simply don't need the "long form". They are perfectly happy with the snippet Google has generously provided.
The result of Google not listing them might be pretty bad, but having Google continuing to list them and have people bypass the site in favor of the snippet is probably worse.
Um, I rather doubt that.
In scenario two, they get X percent clickthrough based on those tantalizing snippets, from readers who actually will spend more time on their site than the snippet-browsers will (longer attention span, more interest in the subject under discussion, etc.). In scenario one, they get...0% clickthrough, and nobody knows they ever wrote anything on the subject at all.
Their entire user base would be comprised of people who have already bookmarked their site and enjoy spending time there, or new users generated through word of mouth advertising. Oh, and I suppose they could place some AdSense ads with Google (ouch, the irony, it burns) to try to drum up some traffic...
I would like to know how a chip with 48 cores compares to a chip with say 16 cores in terms of benchmarks. Surely with more cores each core is less powerful right?
I would think it would have to, unless we radically improve thermal dissipation technology first...or unless we find a way to break the first law of thermodynamics.
Hmmm...now that would be interesting, what if we developed a way to allow the heat generated by the core to help power the processor? Something like wrapping them in these nano-antennae solar panels, so the infrared wavelengths of generated heat directly produces electrical charge -> battery -> processor? Very interesting...and I could see it being possible, in 5-10 years. Sure. We're pretty bright little monkeys, and we do love our toys:)
Captain Tractor, a band who gets their namesake from that song, does an excellent cover of it as well.
That's true, although I like the original Arrogant Worms' version better. IMHO, they have a lot of good songs, check out their other (kinda) famous hit: Carrot Juice is Murder
Slashdot Mirror
By large-scale software development I meant doing software development over large code bases.
It is significantly different to work on a standalone toy project than to work on millions of lines of code with many other people.
Sorry, my misunderstanding. :)
I am curious, though: how is it different (other than rigorous standardization of interfaces?) Those millions of lines of code are still written one line / one module / one object at a time, are they not? Really curious, because I don't code for work, just for play sometimes. I do have a CS undergraduate degree, but my career went in other directions...
I can see how maybe having the ability to quickly track down and correct problem areas in a huge volume of code would be a valued skill for a senior programmer, one that perhaps wouldn't involve a lot of base code generation, just good troubleshooting and logic skills. And the ability to puzzle out someone else's spaghetti code, of course :)
Sounds like someone's been reading Vatta's War by Elizabeth Moon... :)
Being good at large-scale software development or at writing robust device drivers will not make you better at doing trivial programming tasks. You must be a clueless manager to think that because someone is a better programmer he can piss code 4 times faster.
The problem lies in the fact that those tests do not highlight your skills at all. Since whether you'll go to next stage of the hire or not depends on how good you did at that test, this is really an issue. The most important thing that decides whether a software developer will choose to work for you is whether he feels valuable and useful to your projects. If you're asking him to do monkey coding, he'll just go look elsewhere.
Yet I'm sure there are 'senior' programmers (at least on their CV) out there who simply can't parse so-called 'monkey' coding. Not so good if one of the duties of the job they're applying for is to oversee coding output from junior programmers. It's true that faster programming does not equal better programming (especially if one sacrifices thorough commenting and documentation for speed), however such simple skill tests with very generous time frames are a useful check that the prospective candidate's knowledge isn't all academic or focused in one area, that they're still able to step back and apply basic coding skills to a simple problem, even if they're a bit rusty. If the interviewers are asking for fully optimized code within five minutes, or only have a single solution in mind and won't accept alternate working solutions: well, do you really want to work there in that case?
As for the large scale project development skills...sounds like you're talking more about project management and integration ability. If that's what they're hiring you to do, and they don't actually expect you to see or work directly with code, then they probably wouldn't opt to include this test. They should instead have some situational questions: "what would you do if...?", "how would you approach this personnel problem?" or "How would you apportion resources if this happened?"
Overall, I see this as a quick way to avoid hiring PHB's, if the interviewers use it correctly. It shows that the candidate didn't just learn a bunch of buzzwords to support their CV, and it proves that they have the mental flexibility to step back from what they do every day and dig back into that undergraduate course material to produce something simple again. By no means should this be the be-all or end-all of the interview process, it should simply be one checkbox in the list of evaluation criteria.
If you only care about those basic things, you hire a junior engineer.
When you pay 3 to 4 times more for a senior engineer, you do it because the person has significant experience and his achievements show he knows his field probably better than your interviewers.
If you were to hire a worldwide known Linux kernel expert, would you make him take a stupid C programming test?
Oh, so what, English professors don't enjoy doing crossword puzzles?
C'mon, it's a quick verification test, to show that you really do know your shit. If it bugs you enough, then flex your awesome programmatic muscles and code three or four separate solutions in the time given, all properly commented and with associated documentation...that'll shut them up, won't it?
CV's are *often* pumped up past the point of recognition, and they really have no way of knowing how much direct coding involvement you had with anything you put on there. Even if you put 'senior programmer for X and Y', well, I've known companies where the 'senior' programmer on a project really acted more like a project manager, and rarely touched or generated any code themselves. This is a quick, measurable check for them, to be sure you have the skills you claim to have, and it should be a fun little exercise for you.
Just walking away comes across as either cowardly or childish. If you see such minor tasks as 'beneath' you somehow, then it probably doesn't bode well for your attitude in the workplace, either.
What happens when the rapist is a woman?
It may not happen often, but it happens.
Female circumcision. Yes, it's barbaric, but no less so than the crime of rape.
To be clear, I meant that these extreme punishments should be applied for extreme cases: violent rape, rape where the victim is incapacitated in any way (drunk, drugged, etc.), repeat offenders and pedophiles. IMO jail time would still be appropriate for 'consensual' statutory rape cases (i.e., an adult seduces an underage teen or vice-versa, or an adult sleeps with a teen without knowing they are underage) unless it's a repeat offense.
While the death penalty cannot undo what was done to someone, we as a society can no longer continue to coddle people who refuse to live with the basic bounds of society. There isn't something new in not raping, murdering, shooting, tealing from, beating or otherwise doing something to someone, and people such as this who have no regard for others do not deserve any sympathy or regard from the rest of society.
I've always thought that the most appropriate penalty for a 100%, beyond-a-doubt conviction of rape should be castration, and not this namby-pamby chemical castration either, simply chop off their balls. With or without anesthetic, depending on the circumstances of the crime.
Not only does that prevent them from further propagating their potentially defective DNA to the next generation (placing nature vs nurture arguments aside), it also provides a lifelong reminder of the consequences of their crime every time they take a piss or have a shower.
If they don't know how and when to properly use their toys, take them away for good. Second offense (it is medically possible, apparently) = penectomy.
...this guy's counter counter terrorism ploy?
Nice!
OMG! Imagine how many years have been wasted to like, fucking Atlas Shrugged man.. If everyone who read it took like, 30 hours to read it that'd be like, a million years in wasted man hours. Whaooo...
That's nothing, I *weep* to think of the millions of man-years (not to mention IQ points) wasted by the Twilight series...
Those books are indeed full of vampires...time vampires!
... 152.1 man-years is not the same thing as 152.1 years. And since that's still being split across 8 million people, it ends up still coming out to that same old 10 minutes per person. Many of them would simply have to be happening simultaneously, of course.
Actually, whether it's in parallel or in series makes no difference to the bottom line cost.
Sure, if I am running a project and assign 10 resources to a task I can (theoretically*) complete the task ten times faster than I could if only one resource were assigned...but the cost remains the same. I still must pay for the hours worked on the project, whether it's all to one person, or multiple smaller amounts to many people.
IMHO, the one pertinent question this article fails to ask is: what is the collective benefit derived from using the software after the EULA has been processed? How much time is saved per user every day by using this software vs. other options? That savings *should* more than offset the 'cost' of reading through the EULA: if it doesn't, then they should seriously be exploring other options...
*Assuming spherical resources in a vacuum :o) by which I mean that adding people to a task causes no increase in overhead for that task (management, co-ordinationn, bathroom-break-time, electricity for those extra consoles, training time required, etc.). *sigh*, would be nice...
Why would I care to have a flexible phone? What does this give me that a regular phone doesn't? These won't be "foldable" like a dollar bill so it won't go in my wallet. I doubt it would be durable enough to be indestructible so, again, why?
Maybe a phone you can wear on your wrist, like an uber-geeky bracer? I'm picturing a form factor like one of those 'snap' bracelets, that remain rigid until you tap them against something, then they curl around whatever you tap them against. Want to work with the full screen? Just pull it off your wrist and go.
True, the (presumably rigid) battery pack and processor compartment would have to be pretty compact and cool-running to make this comfortable, but there are definitely some cool possibilities available for this tech...combine this with some sort of kinesthetic charging capabilities, and it could be impressive indeed :)
How would they differentiate between people walking along the street with their phones in their pocket and BT-enabled cars driving along the same street, if all they're basing the collection on is the device MAC address?
I didn't think there were that many people in Canada. Isn't it mostly populated by sheep and bears?
It's bare sheep...we need that wool for toques, dammit!
If you want people to switch you need to give them a reason. Make it lighter, faster, and features regular MS office doesn't have.
Under the same token Mozilla failed in the face of IE 6 too. It was not until they fixed the horrible Netscape rendering bugs (which were worse than IE 6 even) and made a "Firefox" fork that had tabs, security, and a much quicker and better renderer that people switched.
Hmmm...a tabbed word processor / spreadsheet application. I like it!
I think you're on to something there...I know once I found a tabbed PDF viewer, I dropped Adobe Reader like a (not so) hot potato...
Another feature for open source devs to lure userbase: integrated file comparison tools, so one can quickly review only the differences between two (or three) revisions of the same file (maybe with some buffering 'context' content shown, like in Google search results). I know they *try* to do this with the 'Track Changes' feature, but that is limited and often disabled when you need it most. Bonus points if it allowed the user to select 'Option A' , 'Option B' or 'Option C' for each area that was different and merge them to create a new, combined file with the best of everything, leaving identical areas unchanged. I know there are third party tools that will do this, but an integrated solution would be fine indeed...
And IMHO, feel free to stick the ribbon somewhere painful and unhygenic. I sincerely dread the day when my workplace migrates to the new MSOffice platform: we're still on 2003, and AFAIK it's for that very reason. I have had a reluctant taste of what teh ribbon can offer in AutoCAD, and it is still maddeningly useless to me after over a year of occasional-to-frequent use. If they decide to make the ribbon optional in Office, more power to them. Forcing it? Forget it. I'll be using LibreOffice instead and only opening Word briefly to test compatibility before sending it out. I have serious, grown-up things to do, and fighting with the UI ain't one of them.
Good luck carrying 1000+ ebooks around in your pocket, like I do on my S2 (or reading them in the dark at night so you don't keep the other half awake). Along with a multitude of movies, music, comics, audio-books, news-feeds AND internet browsing, etc, etc! Oh, it's also a phone too I think...
The thing is, you can only read one book at a time. I know you can have several different books on the go, but almost no one literally reads a page in one book, then half a page in the next, a couple of lines in a third, then back to the first for another page.
I'm talking about reading for pleasure, of course. Obviously if you're doing serious research then it's a different story, as it is for reference/text books.
Indeed, but I believe the GP's point was that he/she can bring many, many more books along everywhere they go, so they are never stuck for something to read. Do you bring your paper novel along to read while standing in line at the post office or grocery store? For vacations how many books do you have to bring along, and how much room / weight do they take up in your luggage?
Don't get me wrong, I love the feel of a paper book as much as the next guy, and prefer that for around-the-home reading where I can quickly grab a new book when I'm done the old one. But, with my husband and I both being fairly avid readers on our down time, I tried ebook readers for our vacations as soon as they came down to a price range and functionality that I liked and we loved them. More room/weight for souvenirs! I also find that having a book on the go on my phone (I read in parallel, 2 or 3 books at a time depending on where I am) lets me amuse myself during tedious waiting times (e.g., dentist office) without having to remember to pack a book along, or find space for it in my pockets. And let's face it, the magazines in the dentist's office are abysmal, there's only so much Good Housekeeping one can stand...or slashdot, for that matter :)
Can't track me if I don't accept your cookies.
Do you load images? (tracking pixels)
Do you use flash? ('super' cookies)
etc.
There's nothing wrong with that. All those free services can go. They'll be replaced by other free services from new companies that will abide by the rules and still think they can make a profit, by doing what their customers want instead of what they don't want. Moreover, if open source has taught us anything, it's that high quality free stuff still gets made by people who just want to be proud to help advance the human race.
So let the data collecting leeches die a well deserved death. We don't need them.
Woww...I really can't believe the mod carnage I'm seeing on this forum. Seems like a lot of 'vested interests' are spamming with their mod points today...
For example, what's 'over-rated' about the quoted comment? Seems to me it's well written, not factually incorrect or profane, and quite reasonable. Oh, riiight, it expresses sentiments that the advertising industry really doesn't want people to think about. In other words, 'over-rated' is mod-code for 'STFU, you're threatening our bloated and obscene profit margins!'
All right, do your worst mod-trolls *braces*, my karma can TAKE it! :P
Where I live, I cannot travel from my home to my work without losing the (supposedly city-wide) crappy 'free' WiFi signal almost as soon as I leave either place.
But mostly people are loading media where they work or live. Point, me.
I have travelled all over the world and not had an issue getting WiFi if I needed it.
Perhaps you should get out more and think about how people really use devices.
How well does that work for you on road trips? There's only so long that I can linger over a mochachino at Starbucks before going completely mental...and I am absolutely not anal (or, admittedly, organized) enough to pre-plan my entire road trip playlist beforehand! Me, I just pack along extra SD cards with more songs/videos from my library instead...a quick swap and I'm chilling to classic rock instead of alternative, or watching sci-fi instead of comedy.
I can only cite how I use my devices, and AFAIK that's for pretty much the typical things people use devices for: playing music and video, taking and looking at pics and (of course!) playing absorbing little games. Oh, and reading ebooks, although those don't really add to the storage crunch at all, being so relatively tiny.
My phone is used mostly to surf the interweb, youtube, email, twitter (but not FB, eww), etc., and with that, I still typically use well over 2 GB a month of my 5GB plan. I couldn't even imagine what I would be pulling if my music and video came from the cloud instead...yikes.
Oh yes, you definitely don't live in Australia or New Zealand, do you? Friends and I took a trip down that-a-way a couple of years ago, and let me tell you, unless you really like McDonalds and StarryBucks, there's no such thing as free wifi anywhere. Heck, all of the hotels and campsites we stayed at had a charge-by-time or (usually) charge-by-MB access fee to use their WiFi. The airports charged for the wifi, fer chrissake. It really sucked, since I brought some shiny toys along and planned on Skype'ing back home fairly regularly, but we hardly ever could (you know how much data Skype uses? it's goofy) I'm just glad for those SD cards, or we would have gone batty listening to the same 30 albums or so...I know, I know, FWP :)
Frankly, ipad comparison is hilarious. Surface has the industry standard microSD port. Just put in another 32 gigs. Costs something around 30€ at the moment.
With ipad, you're SOL.
You can only use that space on the SD card for data. You cannot use it to store apps.
Can you use it to store app data, though? Stuff like static resources, save games, etc.? Seems to me that would be the bulk of an app's size, wouldn't it(?) And if you can, is there a performance lag?
Haven't had a chance to play with one yet, I've been curious about this...
Duude... Just. Stop. Digging.
Nor does it change the fact that once my SD card is in the device I can forget about it.
Please explain how you can "forget about" a separate storage that you must manage. This I think is the most terrible of your deceptions, misleading people to think having an SD card is equivalent to more base storage. It is not true for any user, as it adds complexity to how you deal with media. I don't know if you are technically ignorant of this fundamental problem but it seems unlikely with this being Slashdot, so I can only assume you are being willfully deceptive as to this point.
Okay, yer right wrong on that one, mate.
I can only speak about what I know, so I will reference the (apparently evil IYO) Android platform, since I've never used a Surface device. For all the Android devices I own (phone, several tablets) as well as the devices I help others with (mostly Android phones), the 'external' storage is indeed plug-and-forget. It auto-mounts when the device is turned on, I can shift the bulk of most of my app storage to the SD card with no drop in usability for the apps in question, and as for media? I simply had to open my camera app settings and tell it to save to the external storage instead of local storage. My Gallery app has no problem parsing the external and internal storage together and showing me everything.
As an added bonus, if I drop my phone under a truck or in a toilet, well my precious dog photos are stored on a nice, non-volatile, easily-removeable microSD card. I have a high probability of being able to get them back even if I don't happen to have immediate access to teh internets, and I can copy them back over to my netbook in about 2 minutes.
Or, I can just retrieve them from ONLINE_CLOUD_STORAGE_PROVIDER of my choice (Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc...) if it happens when I am near my home WiFi. Yes, I do have to explicitly enable these backup services myself, but I actually prefer that to trusting 'the man' to do it for me. I back up what (and only what) I want to back up.
Just plain false. Cell data is expensive
You are wrong. Cell data is not that expensive; but more importantly in everyday life WiFi is pervasive. I have only a 2GB data plan but consume around 100-200 GB a month between two iOS devices.
I come nowhere near the limits of my data plan each month.
Again, you are trying to mislead by ignoring how real people use real devices.
Wow, privileged much? So, where do you live, Seoul? Tokyo? I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but unless you live in a metropolis, WiFi availability is most certainly *not* 'pervasive'. Where I live, I cannot travel from my home to my work without losing the (supposedly city-wide) crappy 'free' WiFi signal almost as soon as I leave either place. And since the speed of it is a joke, it's not even worth it to try, usually.
I like to use my devices on the go, and since I'm in Canada (and not Vancouver or Toronto), that means anything that's delivered over the air comes directly off my cell data plan. And in case you haven't heard, us Canucks pay through the nose for mobile data, especially roaming data.
Wifi is in no way ubiquitous enough in most of the world to make "the cloud" a viable alternative to local storage.
You go broad when you should go narrow. Sure if I am traveling across Africa WiFi might be harder to come by (having travelled there though you might be surprised). But In that case pre-loading an SD card before leaving home and is the same degree of trouble for iOS and Surface, and the dongle is hardly an issue to bring in an area where power will be more precious than anything.
But the people that actually can afford to buy a surface or iPad? You are in
Why can't a single core not be sped up when the others can't used? Intel already do that in their other processors based on workload and thermal envelope.
eg: 48 cores at 200MHz or 4 cores at 2GHz?
That's an interesting idea. Unfortunately, it looks like that technology currently only allows for about a 40% boost in speed per core (so from 200MHz to 280MHz, not 2GHz)
Now, I'm not sure if that's a hardware limitation or a thermal one: it may be that they *could* do a much wider variation in processor speeds if there was a good reason to do so. But again, overhead. Tracking projected thermal profiles (so as not to accidentally fry the customer's hand...or the device), monitoring and continually adjusting performance based on load for all of the cores will inevitably cut into the overall efficiency of the combined unit.
Do you mean that Google, and only, is being singled out for such treatment? How is that justified?
IDK, maybe because they have fistfuls, bucketfuls and bathtubfuls of cash?
seems to have worked for Samsung Galaxy Note with the plastic stylus...
The multitude of companies making money selling cheap styluses for other android and apple touchscreen devices are also doing it.
Sure...if you like writing with a squishy crayon. I prefer my pens actually pointy, k thx.
You understand that Google isn't just indexing but providing a means by which the content can be accessed without ever visiting the page that was indexed? There is little reason to visit the site unless you really want the "long form" and what the news web sites are finding is that more and more people simply don't need the "long form". They are perfectly happy with the snippet Google has generously provided.
The result of Google not listing them might be pretty bad, but having Google continuing to list them and have people bypass the site in favor of the snippet is probably worse.
Um, I rather doubt that.
In scenario two, they get X percent clickthrough based on those tantalizing snippets, from readers who actually will spend more time on their site than the snippet-browsers will (longer attention span, more interest in the subject under discussion, etc.). In scenario one, they get...0% clickthrough, and nobody knows they ever wrote anything on the subject at all.
Their entire user base would be comprised of people who have already bookmarked their site and enjoy spending time there, or new users generated through word of mouth advertising. Oh, and I suppose they could place some AdSense ads with Google (ouch, the irony, it burns) to try to drum up some traffic...
I would like to know how a chip with 48 cores compares to a chip with say 16 cores in terms of benchmarks. Surely with more cores each core is less powerful right?
I would think it would have to, unless we radically improve thermal dissipation technology first...or unless we find a way to break the first law of thermodynamics.
Hmmm...now that would be interesting, what if we developed a way to allow the heat generated by the core to help power the processor? Something like wrapping them in these nano-antennae solar panels, so the infrared wavelengths of generated heat directly produces electrical charge -> battery -> processor? Very interesting...and I could see it being possible, in 5-10 years. Sure. We're pretty bright little monkeys, and we do love our toys :)
Captain Tractor, a band who gets their namesake from that song, does an excellent cover of it as well.
That's true, although I like the original Arrogant Worms' version better. IMHO, they have a lot of good songs, check out their other (kinda) famous hit: Carrot Juice is Murder
For the Canucks in the crowd, check out Canada's Really Big and We Are the Beaver :o)