Ah, but fortunately "pissing all over it" in the Linux world means the original is still there, safe, secure, and quite unaffected.
Well, except where Ubuntu has submitted significant bug fixes back the Debian. If that's "pissing all over" something, then I need to start getting pissed on.
This is how Linux works. Everyone gets to play with copies of the same code. Some people play with it one way, some people play with it another. Everyone who pays attention sees opportunities to adapt what others are doing, or do the same thing a different way they feel is better.
It's like kids in a sandbox. As long as everyone gets to play with all the sand, various kids watch and learn from each other. One child adds a little water and says "look! I can model this!" Other children either emulate it and optimize sand/water ratios for various types of modeling, decide that modeling sand isn't their thing and go about their business, or (in the case of comments like the one I am replying to) scream "THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU DO WITH SAND!!!! STOP THAT!! YOU'RE WRONG!!! WET SAND IS WRONG!!! SAND SHOULD BE PURE!!!"
You can't do anything bad to a Linux distro unless you somehow corrupt its master source management tool. You can make your own copy, and you can do something with it that the original author might not like, but since the "original author" is using a codebase that is the result of the work of many thousands of people over decades, no one person gets to dictate what constitutes proper use, and what constitutes pissing all over it. As long as all of the users comply with the appropriate licensing requirements behind the code they are using (GPL, LGPL, trademarks on specific distro names, artwork copyright, etc), the original author has no say over how his or her code is eventually adapted and applied.
That's what "Open Source" means. Anyone can do anything they want with the source, and as long as they share their work when asked, no one can tell them not to. Not Linus Torvalds, and certainly not user "dunng808" at Slashdot.
This is a serious question. Not buying a product and advising anyone who will listen to do the same is one thing, but how exactly does one provide negative feedback to an Free Software project?
First, an apology: I've really worked hard to keep this post from sounding confrontational, and it's honestly intended not to be. However, some of my wording might not express this as clearly as I'd like. None of this is meant to offend you, or to criticize your opinions or preferences in any way.
The ideal answer is to find a distro that fits your needs, then donate effort or money toward forwarding the project you agree with. I mean this without intending offense when I say that there are plenty of other excellent penguins in the sea, and you will find one that is right for you.
Canonical apparently is not, based on your own comments. They accept feedback, they react to it, but they also need to make decisions, and not all of those decisions are going to agree with what everyone who uses their product wants. Their stated goal is to be easy to use and support as much hardware and software (including codecs) as they possibly can. This is what they do.
Canonical is not made up of GPL purists, nor are they made up of OSS purists. They've never, ever claimed to be, and I don't think they should be. They are made up of a group that is trying to make Linux a viable, useful alternative for people who would have a stroke if they had to pull up a command line, and what everything they want to do supported out of the box. Their target market wants MP3. They want ATI/nVidia binary support. They want H.264. And they want it all legal and legit. Which means it's a perfectly logical decision for Canonical to license these technologies where they need to.
There are many hundreds people with varying levels of comfort with (pick your topic: GPL/binaries/FOSS/IP-protected stuff) who have their own distros, and they've refused to install all the stuff they don't like. Many of those folks also work hard on reproducing or even reverse-engineering open source drivers and codecs of their own to avoid closed source and patent-protected stuff. Much of that goes to clean up other distros, even Ubuntu, which to a Linux purist is a poxy whore from the wrong side of the tracks, but to the average Linux newbie is a safe haven from CLI hell. Neither is wrong.
Canonical is forwarding the Linux movement in their own way, which is to get a copy of something that non-techies can live with on their desktops. And that includes support for things that people want to use. Things like MP3, H.264, FAT, NTFS, Adobe Acrobat, Flash, and the list goes on. That means a dumbed-down desktop, lots of GUI tools, a "user privilege escalation" (SUDO) model, and a lot of things that give Linux or GPL or OSS purists the screaming heebie jeebies. And that is exactly as it should be - Linux is FREEDOM, and not everyone should be forced into the same exact model.
What stick does one wield if monetary punishment is not a viable option?
You don't. Unless you've somehow contributed, you don't have any leverage with someone who's given you something for free with no conditions attached.
Canonical is making what they think people want. They have a reporting system, and people use it a lot. Just look at the angst and gnashing of teeth surrounding the "moved window controls to left" issue. They do accept feedback on their decisions. But not everyone agrees on everything all the time. Sometimes, a lead developer just says "you know what? I'm the head asshole in charge, I'm doing the work here, and I'm going to wade in and shut down this long discussion because it's my project, and I occasionally get to call the shots, and this is the way it's gonna be."
This is more about how communities communicate to the 'executive' team to produce a product that folks can be happy with.
What sets netbooks apart from laptops is that you sacrifice speed and screen size for battery life and portability. "Cheap" (as in shitty construction from shitty parts) is found in all form factors, and you tend to get what you pay for. For the same build quality, you'll tend to get netbooks cheaper than laptops primarily because the netbook requires fewer components, uses a slower processor, and has a smaller screen. But you can still find good quality netbooks just as easily as you can find crappy laptops, and vice versa.
"Netbook" may be a bullshit term, but it's here, and it accurately describes a niche of products. They used to be called "ultraportables" or "subnotebooks" when they first came out in the 90's, and there's still so much overlap between the "netbook" niche and the "subnotebook" niche to make any distinction pretty much meaningless. The basic theory is that a netbook will tend to sacrifice even more power than a subnotebook because it's designed to connect to servers to do most of the heavy lifting, and it really shouldn't have a lot of storage, but most have plenty of power to run local apps and tons of storage.
The build quality of my wife's Asus eee is quite good. It's plastic, of course, but it feels like durable stuff. It gets around 8 hours of real-life-real-use battery, it weighs almost nothing, and there are very few things it does noticeably slower than our dual-core 3GHZ desktop beast.
Yes, they've moved from a nice low-power SSD back to a spinning drive to save a few bucks, which was a bit disappointing, but it's still a solid little bugger, doesn't generate a lot of heat, and it still lasts all day with no need for a recharge. It's no replacement for a desktop or even a laptop, but it's not meant to be. It fills that niche between "portable as a cell phone" and "powerful as a laptop" quite nicely, and for a lot of people it's all the computer they really need on a day-in-day-out basis, and can be carried around a hell of a lot easier, and you're not constantly looking for a power plug when you do carry it.
I didn't buy it because it was cheaper than a laptop, I bought it because it is more portable and holds a charge longer, and because any laptop on the market today is to big, too clumsy, runs out of power too fast, heats up too much, and has more power than you need for what my wife wanted it for - casual surfing, maintaining a few HTML websites, and keeping up with Facebook.
Resolution needs to be appropriate for screen size. Pixel density is what counts for clarity. 1024x768 is a pretty much optimal 10-inch screen resolution. More pixels would simply sharpen the image beyond the human eye's ability to perceive the difference, and drive the costs way up.
Even my much-beloved Asus eeePC netbook "only" has 1024x600 pixels, and I've never thought, "gee, if they could just have made the screen clearer by cramming more pixels into this 10.1-inch LCD". In order to see an individual pixel, I'd pretty much need a magnifying glass as it is. And the iPad's screen has even higher resolution than my eeePC.
I have occasionally thought that I'd like a larger screen, and at that point I'd need a higher resolution, and I wouldn't have a netbook any more - I'd have a laptop. But for ten inches diagonal, the resolution is well-chosen.
Plus, 1024x768 is still more than 4:3 720p resolution and damned close to 16:9 720p! Think about that next time you watch a 720p video on a 40" screen - the lowly iPad and eeePC have almost the same screen resolution - you just have to hold them closer to see them clearly. (I'll let someone else do the oblig XKCD on this one).
The Nokia 5800 sells for about $250 unlocked, no need for a data plan even on AT&T, and qualifies for the $15/month data plan if you really want one. We just upgraded my wife's Blackberry to one (because we never got a data plan for it, and without a data plan the Blackberry is just a really nice cell phone).
The 5800's got a 3mpix camera, plus a second low-res camera on front for video conferencing, WiFi (that your carrier cannot disable!), replaceable battery, real multitasking, upgradeable memory, etc. The resistive screen even means you can use a stylus (and one is built in), which is a godsend for fat-fingered people like me. Even includes free voice prompted turn-by-turn directions (with offline maps so you don't need a data plan to use it as a GPS). Symbian runs a lot of free and low-cost apps too, and they don't have to go through the Reality Distortion Field for you to run them.
Honestly, after using resistive and capacitive screens, I prefer resistive. The Nokia's on-screen keyboard is a lot smaller, but I can actually type on it even without the stylus, and with the stylus I do pretty well. With my iPod Touch, if the app can't rotate 90 degrees (which many still cannot) I usually just give up on anything longer than about 10 characters, because I'm just going to screw it up.
The screen is a tad smaller than the iPhone, and it's a good bit thicker, so it honestly does lack some of the "cool shiny" factor of the iPhone/iPodTouch, but my wife just got one and she's very happy with it. She has a fully-functional smartphone without a data plan.
As God Is My Witness, I Will Never Buy A Locked Phone Again!
As a notebook user who knows several other notebook users, and is also a tablet (iPod Touch) user who knows other tablet users, not just "no" but "hell no". The devices may seem identical on the surface, but they are fundamentally different tools for fundamentally different uses.
Don't get me wrong, I own an iPod Touch (won it in a contest) and I love the thing for what it does, and there have been many occasions where I've thought, "you know, something like this with about a 10 inch screen would be utterly brilliant!". So I understand the demographic and applications of the iPad fairly well.
But when it came to a portable device, I chose a netbook. I use it for a lot more than iPhone-type games, web browsing, and e-books. Well, OK, most of my stuff technically qualifies as "web browsing" but a lot of it involves typing (case in point, what I'm doing right now). The difference between a tablet and a netbook is in the ability to interact. I can have a video conference on my netbook. I can type whole paragraphs on it. I can't sit comfortably on the couch and watch a movie on it, nor can I do a crossword puzzle easily on it. Reading books on it is frustrating - especially while sitting up in bed - it's too heavy and the damn keyboard gets in the way.
I see the iPad as cutting into the Netbook demographic because Apple is the first to introduce a somewhat affordable and (within strict limits) very functional tablet that doesn't completely suck, and many of the tablet demographic have been going to Netbooks because they are close enough, not because they are what they actually want. Now that there's a completely-non-sucking tablet out there, the tablet-desiring demographic is discovering that they need not be encumbered by a keyboard and a form factor that doesn't quite suit them, and they can buy precisely what they do want. They just have to put up with the compromises of a closed ecosystem, but that isn't as much of a downside for a tablet as it is for a netbook anyway - you use a tablet more for passive consumption, not so much for interaction.
So, netbook sales are not being "destroyed". They will drop, though. The demand is adjusting to account for the simple fact that not everyone who bought a netbook last year really wanted a netbook. Some of them really wanted a tablet, but they settled for a netbook because it was the closest thing that they could find. Now that the tablet niche has been competently filled with an affordable device, the netbook niche will see a loss of some of these crossover sales.
Doesn't mean the market for netbooks is going away. It just means that there's a giant pent-up demand for non-sucking tablets, so Apple moved a lot of units based on that pent-up demand. Netbooks will still sell to people who want netbooks, but they won't sell to people who want tablets any more.
Not only the localization but the sheer volume. Given that this has been going on since April 20, that's about 16 days. At an estimated 5,000 barrels a day, we're at about 80,000 barrels so far. That means that in just over two weeks, this one spill has released about 2/3 of the annual natural seepage for the entire Northern Gulf. Even if the 5000 barrel/day estimate is inflated, this one disaster is making an extremely significant increase to the natural seepage.
But localization is also important. This large amount of oil is now concentrated in a relatively small area. The Northern Gulf, which has to absorb 120,000 barrels a year, is over 600,000 square miles. So each square mile has to absorb, on average, about 0.2 barrels of oil per year. Obviously seepages are not evenly spread out, but they aren't usually concentrated too much.
Now zoom in to the affected area. It's very tiny compared to the whole of the Northern Gulf (the slick is currently between 2000 and 4000 square miles depending on where you get your data, though it's going to spread), and let's be clear that this small area now contains, after 16 days, two thirds of the annual amount naturally released in the entire Northern Gulf. With, unfortunately, more to come. At 80,000 barrels released, each square mile now contains about 20-40 barrels. That's 100-200 times the normal rate released annually per square mile.
Sure, the slick will spread, and slowly decrease its concentration as it does. But at the moment any areas it hits will hit at a 20 barrel per square mile concentration of mostly floating oil. That's a thick, visible layer. It will thin out as it spreads, but it's going to have to get a lot thinner before it reaches anything short of "devastating" for any areas of shoreline it hits, or any fisheries it impacts. A whole lot thinner.
More important even than the concentration and magnitude (at least as far as humans are concerned) is the location. The Chandeleur Island chain might offer some protection, but this could ruin fisheries for the entire coasts of Mississippi and Alabama for some time, and significantly impact the salt marshes and estuaries around New Orleans. This may be "deep water offshore" drilling, but it's close enough to shore that much of the Gulf's fisheries could be affected in the coming weeks and months. As it thins, the damage on new shoreline it hits will lessen, but any shoreline hit in the near future is going to be really affected.
I've researched the Eye-Fi units, and some of the newer ones claim to automatically clear off images once they've verified that the copy is complete.
About the only real issue is power. Most cameras in that class could take maybe a few hundred non-flash images (and the Eye-Fi is probably going to cut into that BIG TIME) and can't take external power supplies easily.
As far as I know, the only people really crying for this are ICANN (because it's a lot of money when a new TLD comes out) and the US Congress (because no one can resist a good useless "Save The Children!" move to garner votes). A few pornographers are also smart enough to know that this makes their sites easier to find, so I'm sure there's some crocodile tears behind their "Oh, no, think of our industry! Oh, goodness, please don't pass this!" Because they are hoping that the people voting on this hate them enough that they'll do whatever the pornographers tell them NOT to do. Next up: "Please don't send us buckets of unmarked bills! PLEASE!"
Those with extreme religion hate it because it "promotes porn", in the same way that teaching kids how to use condoms "promotes underage sex". In other words, for once, they are doing the right thing, albeit for the wrong reasons. The real reason to hate.xxx is because it simply won't do anything.
Actually, maybe that's a reason to like it. Congresscritters get their happy-happy vote, the religious zealots have a new enemy to hate and maybe it'll distract them for a while, and in the end nothing changes.
Probably make your webcam take a picture of you masturbating and put it on the Internet. When you complain, Google will remind you that privacy doesn't exist on the Internet.:)
Right, because all of those are US-controlled domains, controlled by a single unified body with a codified ruleset, following a specific minted charter since the instant they were created.
You can keep non-porn out of.xxx if you make that the charter of.xxx and have someone screen all the sites to make sure none of them are child-friendly.
You cannot force all porn INTO.xxx, because you're talking about defining porn, then taking all other domains owned by every country in the world and applying that definition to all of them.
So if we pick "no titties" as the Line That Shall Not be Crossed, then Europe's going to be pissed because it's too puritanical, and Iran's going to be pissed because you can show bikinis.
Laws drafted by whom? Enforcing rules decided by whom? And covering whom? Iran cannot pass a law that a US business operating in its own country, so if Iran wants the Victoria's Secret catalog moved to.xxx, we can inform them of how much sand they have and suggest they go pound it. Neither can Canada. Hell, New Hampshire can't even pass a law that tells a company in Maine how to do business within Maine's borders. The US similarly can't tell European countries that titties are not OK any more.
We are a world of hundreds of countries, each made up of hundreds or thousands of municipalities, and we can't even get uniform rules of what constitutes "porn" within the same family in some cases.
Just try to get the respective governments of Las Vegas and Texarkana to agree on where the line is. If you can manage that, you're about 1/1,000,000 of the way toward working out an international standard. Good. Luck. With. That.
Downsides:
- It's utterly useless, since pornographers will not stop using their existing domains.
- It will have the opposite of the desired effect (assuming your intentions are puritanical), since the.xxx will be an additional route to find porn.
- It will cost both pornographers and businesses real money (The CEO of Ford is not about to allow ford.xxx to be an active domain with smut on it!).
- It will start international debates on what constitutes porn. Said debates will cost a lot of time, effort, etc and are societal differences that will probably remain unresolvable. Who is forced there?
And, yes, I hear some of you out there saying, "but there's clearly a line that can be drawn!".
Fine. Let's do an informal poll. Everyone post the letter you feel represents the "minimum content" that would require moving someone's domain to.xxx - let's see if a small, technically-minded group from mostly free countries can decide uniformly what the standard should be.
None - Nothing should be moved. The internet should be free. A -- Violent/Kiddie Porn (sure, everyone hates violent porn!) B -- Playboy (umm, yeah, visible bush) C -- Jugs-type sites (topless only? That's OK in most of Europe, but not the US, right?) D -- Teenyweeniebikini sites (is there really a difference between 1/4" square of flesh-colored cloth and topless?) E -- Victoria's Secret (well, umm, it's, well, underwear, but don't tell me the pictures aren't there to appeal to men) F -- Sports Illustrated (regular bikini shots) G -- The Sears Catalog (also underwear, but certainly not as "porn" as Victoria's, but...) H -- Regular clothing catalogs with no underwear or bikinis (shows women's faces and the general shape of their bodies, right, that's porn in some countries!) I -- Zappos.com (there are pictures of women's ANKLES on there! Allah be praised we can be saved from that wanton smut!)
"Required" by whom? If 99% of all countries on this planet somehow came up with a unified standard (which is about as likely as a sober person having a conversation with a flying unicorn about the relative shades of pink found on elephants), passed unified international laws that required (we're leaving "fanciful" and getting into "what?"), it and had some mythical way of enforcing it (there is no Earthly term for how ridiculous that proposal is), pornographers would simply move their hosting plans to the 1% that don't, or start using IP addresses directly.
Reverse that argument. Who keeps everyone else out of everywhere else so adults-only stuff ends up in.xxx?
By that standard, making a.kid TLD and enforcing it is, well, child's play. It would be several hundred orders of magnitude easier, and several hundred orders of magnitude more effective. Which is to say, it would be only somewhat expensive and is only somewhat useless.
Trying to move everything "adult" into.xxx would require a massive, cooperative, coordinated effort between every country on the planet. We haven't managed to do that for far more important issues. And ongoing enforcement would be a huge, expensive pain in the ass.
Then the pornographers will just start using IP address.
Yes, we're in the US, not China. Oh, by the way, the Chinese have access to the.COM domain. What's the age of consent for porn there?
Companies can filter out the.xxx domains all they want. There's no effective international way to keep all the smut there, even if you could come up with an international definition for smut.
I think you'd find the US Government hard-pressed to force Playboy to give up its.com address, or to move all the nekkid bits to their.xxx domain and make.com a simple front end. That's a major, well-known, well-regulated, US-based company, operating under US law. Who's going to tell China that their citizens can't post porn in.com? How about.cn, their own domain?
The introduction of the domain is trivial, but its impact will be functionally meaningless. It's a great way for ICANN to sell off an assload of new domain names with almost no effort on their part. Other than that, it won't change jack shit. People looking for porn may use it, but their existing purveyors will still be on.com, same as it ever was.
Of course, the.com could also just serve as a simple redirect to a direct IP address, which means all your filters just went out the window.
ICANN will benefit, one-handed-surfers might find the content they want easier to find, but this won't really change anything.
We don't have an international standard of decency today on the Internet. If you want to host anything, you may do so provided you host it in a country where such things are legal. Playboy, Penthouse, and the other major sites aren't giving up their.com addresses, and those are the big players you can find.
I know this is all very old news, and will probably be tagged "redundant", but the introduction of a "smut zone" on the Internet raises all sorts of issues:
1. Who defines what is "smut"? Go to some countries, and seeing a woman's face unveiled could be considered "smut". In most of Europe, breasts are perfectly OK but bush or sausage-and-veg is right out. Some countries don't care at all. Who gets to decide which sites are OK for a.com,.org,.net,.us, etc domain and which need to be on.xxx?
(several decades pass)
2. OK, we've accomplished the impossible! Bully on us, we've defined the rules on who needs to go to.xxx, and we can now compel every website that meets that criteria to.. uhh.. OK, how do we do THAT? Tuvalu is now saying that.tv URLs can contain smut if you pay a premium for a domain. Oh, we need an international treaty so all countries in the world will enforce this ban for all domains but.xxx. Sheesh.
(several more decades pass)
3. OK, now every municipality in every county in every state in every region in every nation has agreed to turn over absolute control of their domains to a centralized morality body who, as we know, is incorruptible and unbribable in any way. Now all they need to do is find the smut, contact the author, and force them to move it to.xxx.
(several more decades pass)
4. Gee, turns out that porn is profitable, and ways to bypass filters are a key to greater profits. The 12,000,000 agents we've hired at a cost of tens of billions of dollars a year aren't even beginning to scratch the surface of the hundreds of thousands of "underground" web sites that come up EVERY DAY, so we'll start automated filtering and hire more people.
(several more decades pass)
5. SHIT!!! WHO KNEW YOU COULD JUST USE A GODDAM IP ADDRESS AND BYPASS DOMAIN NAMES?!?!?!?!?!
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but fortunately "pissing all over it" in the Linux world means the original is still there, safe, secure, and quite unaffected.
Well, except where Ubuntu has submitted significant bug fixes back the Debian. If that's "pissing all over" something, then I need to start getting pissed on.
This is how Linux works. Everyone gets to play with copies of the same code. Some people play with it one way, some people play with it another. Everyone who pays attention sees opportunities to adapt what others are doing, or do the same thing a different way they feel is better.
It's like kids in a sandbox. As long as everyone gets to play with all the sand, various kids watch and learn from each other. One child adds a little water and says "look! I can model this!" Other children either emulate it and optimize sand/water ratios for various types of modeling, decide that modeling sand isn't their thing and go about their business, or (in the case of comments like the one I am replying to) scream "THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU DO WITH SAND!!!! STOP THAT!! YOU'RE WRONG!!! WET SAND IS WRONG!!! SAND SHOULD BE PURE!!!"
You can't do anything bad to a Linux distro unless you somehow corrupt its master source management tool. You can make your own copy, and you can do something with it that the original author might not like, but since the "original author" is using a codebase that is the result of the work of many thousands of people over decades, no one person gets to dictate what constitutes proper use, and what constitutes pissing all over it. As long as all of the users comply with the appropriate licensing requirements behind the code they are using (GPL, LGPL, trademarks on specific distro names, artwork copyright, etc), the original author has no say over how his or her code is eventually adapted and applied.
That's what "Open Source" means. Anyone can do anything they want with the source, and as long as they share their work when asked, no one can tell them not to. Not Linus Torvalds, and certainly not user "dunng808" at Slashdot.
This is a serious question. Not buying a product and advising anyone who will listen to do the same is one thing, but how exactly does one provide negative feedback to an Free Software project?
First, an apology: I've really worked hard to keep this post from sounding confrontational, and it's honestly intended not to be. However, some of my wording might not express this as clearly as I'd like. None of this is meant to offend you, or to criticize your opinions or preferences in any way.
The ideal answer is to find a distro that fits your needs, then donate effort or money toward forwarding the project you agree with. I mean this without intending offense when I say that there are plenty of other excellent penguins in the sea, and you will find one that is right for you.
Canonical apparently is not, based on your own comments. They accept feedback, they react to it, but they also need to make decisions, and not all of those decisions are going to agree with what everyone who uses their product wants. Their stated goal is to be easy to use and support as much hardware and software (including codecs) as they possibly can. This is what they do.
Canonical is not made up of GPL purists, nor are they made up of OSS purists. They've never, ever claimed to be, and I don't think they should be. They are made up of a group that is trying to make Linux a viable, useful alternative for people who would have a stroke if they had to pull up a command line, and what everything they want to do supported out of the box. Their target market wants MP3. They want ATI/nVidia binary support. They want H.264. And they want it all legal and legit. Which means it's a perfectly logical decision for Canonical to license these technologies where they need to.
There are many hundreds people with varying levels of comfort with (pick your topic: GPL/binaries/FOSS/IP-protected stuff) who have their own distros, and they've refused to install all the stuff they don't like. Many of those folks also work hard on reproducing or even reverse-engineering open source drivers and codecs of their own to avoid closed source and patent-protected stuff. Much of that goes to clean up other distros, even Ubuntu, which to a Linux purist is a poxy whore from the wrong side of the tracks, but to the average Linux newbie is a safe haven from CLI hell. Neither is wrong.
Canonical is forwarding the Linux movement in their own way, which is to get a copy of something that non-techies can live with on their desktops. And that includes support for things that people want to use. Things like MP3, H.264, FAT, NTFS, Adobe Acrobat, Flash, and the list goes on. That means a dumbed-down desktop, lots of GUI tools, a "user privilege escalation" (SUDO) model, and a lot of things that give Linux or GPL or OSS purists the screaming heebie jeebies. And that is exactly as it should be - Linux is FREEDOM, and not everyone should be forced into the same exact model.
What stick does one wield if monetary punishment is not a viable option?
You don't. Unless you've somehow contributed, you don't have any leverage with someone who's given you something for free with no conditions attached.
Canonical is making what they think people want. They have a reporting system, and people use it a lot. Just look at the angst and gnashing of teeth surrounding the "moved window controls to left" issue. They do accept feedback on their decisions. But not everyone agrees on everything all the time. Sometimes, a lead developer just says "you know what? I'm the head asshole in charge, I'm doing the work here, and I'm going to wade in and shut down this long discussion because it's my project, and I occasionally get to call the shots, and this is the way it's gonna be."
This is more about how communities communicate to the 'executive' team to produce a product that folks can be happy with.
Most of their target market is not going t
You're quite welcome. I hereby release the term under Creative Commons. :)
What sets netbooks apart from laptops is that you sacrifice speed and screen size for battery life and portability. "Cheap" (as in shitty construction from shitty parts) is found in all form factors, and you tend to get what you pay for. For the same build quality, you'll tend to get netbooks cheaper than laptops primarily because the netbook requires fewer components, uses a slower processor, and has a smaller screen. But you can still find good quality netbooks just as easily as you can find crappy laptops, and vice versa.
"Netbook" may be a bullshit term, but it's here, and it accurately describes a niche of products. They used to be called "ultraportables" or "subnotebooks" when they first came out in the 90's, and there's still so much overlap between the "netbook" niche and the "subnotebook" niche to make any distinction pretty much meaningless. The basic theory is that a netbook will tend to sacrifice even more power than a subnotebook because it's designed to connect to servers to do most of the heavy lifting, and it really shouldn't have a lot of storage, but most have plenty of power to run local apps and tons of storage.
The build quality of my wife's Asus eee is quite good. It's plastic, of course, but it feels like durable stuff. It gets around 8 hours of real-life-real-use battery, it weighs almost nothing, and there are very few things it does noticeably slower than our dual-core 3GHZ desktop beast.
Yes, they've moved from a nice low-power SSD back to a spinning drive to save a few bucks, which was a bit disappointing, but it's still a solid little bugger, doesn't generate a lot of heat, and it still lasts all day with no need for a recharge. It's no replacement for a desktop or even a laptop, but it's not meant to be. It fills that niche between "portable as a cell phone" and "powerful as a laptop" quite nicely, and for a lot of people it's all the computer they really need on a day-in-day-out basis, and can be carried around a hell of a lot easier, and you're not constantly looking for a power plug when you do carry it.
I didn't buy it because it was cheaper than a laptop, I bought it because it is more portable and holds a charge longer, and because any laptop on the market today is to big, too clumsy, runs out of power too fast, heats up too much, and has more power than you need for what my wife wanted it for - casual surfing, maintaining a few HTML websites, and keeping up with Facebook.
"Too much of a good thing is not a good thing".
Right, but most of them are based on pretty off-the-shelf parts, and Linux is a free upgrade from either XP or SevenStarter. :)
Ubuntu Netbook Remix is pretty cool, and quite good at netbookery.
Resolution needs to be appropriate for screen size. Pixel density is what counts for clarity. 1024x768 is a pretty much optimal 10-inch screen resolution. More pixels would simply sharpen the image beyond the human eye's ability to perceive the difference, and drive the costs way up.
Even my much-beloved Asus eeePC netbook "only" has 1024x600 pixels, and I've never thought, "gee, if they could just have made the screen clearer by cramming more pixels into this 10.1-inch LCD". In order to see an individual pixel, I'd pretty much need a magnifying glass as it is. And the iPad's screen has even higher resolution than my eeePC.
I have occasionally thought that I'd like a larger screen, and at that point I'd need a higher resolution, and I wouldn't have a netbook any more - I'd have a laptop. But for ten inches diagonal, the resolution is well-chosen.
Plus, 1024x768 is still more than 4:3 720p resolution and damned close to 16:9 720p! Think about that next time you watch a 720p video on a 40" screen - the lowly iPad and eeePC have almost the same screen resolution - you just have to hold them closer to see them clearly. (I'll let someone else do the oblig XKCD on this one).
The Nokia 5800 sells for about $250 unlocked, no need for a data plan even on AT&T, and qualifies for the $15/month data plan if you really want one. We just upgraded my wife's Blackberry to one (because we never got a data plan for it, and without a data plan the Blackberry is just a really nice cell phone).
The 5800's got a 3mpix camera, plus a second low-res camera on front for video conferencing, WiFi (that your carrier cannot disable!), replaceable battery, real multitasking, upgradeable memory, etc. The resistive screen even means you can use a stylus (and one is built in), which is a godsend for fat-fingered people like me. Even includes free voice prompted turn-by-turn directions (with offline maps so you don't need a data plan to use it as a GPS). Symbian runs a lot of free and low-cost apps too, and they don't have to go through the Reality Distortion Field for you to run them.
Honestly, after using resistive and capacitive screens, I prefer resistive. The Nokia's on-screen keyboard is a lot smaller, but I can actually type on it even without the stylus, and with the stylus I do pretty well. With my iPod Touch, if the app can't rotate 90 degrees (which many still cannot) I usually just give up on anything longer than about 10 characters, because I'm just going to screw it up.
The screen is a tad smaller than the iPhone, and it's a good bit thicker, so it honestly does lack some of the "cool shiny" factor of the iPhone/iPodTouch, but my wife just got one and she's very happy with it. She has a fully-functional smartphone without a data plan.
As God Is My Witness, I Will Never Buy A Locked Phone Again!
As a notebook user who knows several other notebook users, and is also a tablet (iPod Touch) user who knows other tablet users, not just "no" but "hell no". The devices may seem identical on the surface, but they are fundamentally different tools for fundamentally different uses.
Don't get me wrong, I own an iPod Touch (won it in a contest) and I love the thing for what it does, and there have been many occasions where I've thought, "you know, something like this with about a 10 inch screen would be utterly brilliant!". So I understand the demographic and applications of the iPad fairly well.
But when it came to a portable device, I chose a netbook. I use it for a lot more than iPhone-type games, web browsing, and e-books. Well, OK, most of my stuff technically qualifies as "web browsing" but a lot of it involves typing (case in point, what I'm doing right now). The difference between a tablet and a netbook is in the ability to interact. I can have a video conference on my netbook. I can type whole paragraphs on it. I can't sit comfortably on the couch and watch a movie on it, nor can I do a crossword puzzle easily on it. Reading books on it is frustrating - especially while sitting up in bed - it's too heavy and the damn keyboard gets in the way.
I see the iPad as cutting into the Netbook demographic because Apple is the first to introduce a somewhat affordable and (within strict limits) very functional tablet that doesn't completely suck, and many of the tablet demographic have been going to Netbooks because they are close enough, not because they are what they actually want. Now that there's a completely-non-sucking tablet out there, the tablet-desiring demographic is discovering that they need not be encumbered by a keyboard and a form factor that doesn't quite suit them, and they can buy precisely what they do want. They just have to put up with the compromises of a closed ecosystem, but that isn't as much of a downside for a tablet as it is for a netbook anyway - you use a tablet more for passive consumption, not so much for interaction.
So, netbook sales are not being "destroyed". They will drop, though. The demand is adjusting to account for the simple fact that not everyone who bought a netbook last year really wanted a netbook. Some of them really wanted a tablet, but they settled for a netbook because it was the closest thing that they could find. Now that the tablet niche has been competently filled with an affordable device, the netbook niche will see a loss of some of these crossover sales.
Doesn't mean the market for netbooks is going away. It just means that there's a giant pent-up demand for non-sucking tablets, so Apple moved a lot of units based on that pent-up demand. Netbooks will still sell to people who want netbooks, but they won't sell to people who want tablets any more.
fudamental
Wascawwy piwates, steawing my intiwectuwal pwopewty.
Or maybe I misunderstood, and the word is a contraction of the acronym "FUD" and the word "MENTAL". :)
Not only the localization but the sheer volume. Given that this has been going on since April 20, that's about 16 days. At an estimated 5,000 barrels a day, we're at about 80,000 barrels so far. That means that in just over two weeks, this one spill has released about 2/3 of the annual natural seepage for the entire Northern Gulf. Even if the 5000 barrel/day estimate is inflated, this one disaster is making an extremely significant increase to the natural seepage.
But localization is also important. This large amount of oil is now concentrated in a relatively small area. The Northern Gulf, which has to absorb 120,000 barrels a year, is over 600,000 square miles. So each square mile has to absorb, on average, about 0.2 barrels of oil per year. Obviously seepages are not evenly spread out, but they aren't usually concentrated too much.
Now zoom in to the affected area. It's very tiny compared to the whole of the Northern Gulf (the slick is currently between 2000 and 4000 square miles depending on where you get your data, though it's going to spread), and let's be clear that this small area now contains, after 16 days, two thirds of the annual amount naturally released in the entire Northern Gulf. With, unfortunately, more to come. At 80,000 barrels released, each square mile now contains about 20-40 barrels. That's 100-200 times the normal rate released annually per square mile.
Sure, the slick will spread, and slowly decrease its concentration as it does. But at the moment any areas it hits will hit at a 20 barrel per square mile concentration of mostly floating oil. That's a thick, visible layer. It will thin out as it spreads, but it's going to have to get a lot thinner before it reaches anything short of "devastating" for any areas of shoreline it hits, or any fisheries it impacts. A whole lot thinner.
More important even than the concentration and magnitude (at least as far as humans are concerned) is the location. The Chandeleur Island chain might offer some protection, but this could ruin fisheries for the entire coasts of Mississippi and Alabama for some time, and significantly impact the salt marshes and estuaries around New Orleans. This may be "deep water offshore" drilling, but it's close enough to shore that much of the Gulf's fisheries could be affected in the coming weeks and months. As it thins, the damage on new shoreline it hits will lessen, but any shoreline hit in the near future is going to be really affected.
I've researched the Eye-Fi units, and some of the newer ones claim to automatically clear off images once they've verified that the copy is complete.
About the only real issue is power. Most cameras in that class could take maybe a few hundred non-flash images (and the Eye-Fi is probably going to cut into that BIG TIME) and can't take external power supplies easily.
Still, a very interesting thought.
As far as I know, the only people really crying for this are ICANN (because it's a lot of money when a new TLD comes out) and the US Congress (because no one can resist a good useless "Save The Children!" move to garner votes). A few pornographers are also smart enough to know that this makes their sites easier to find, so I'm sure there's some crocodile tears behind their "Oh, no, think of our industry! Oh, goodness, please don't pass this!" Because they are hoping that the people voting on this hate them enough that they'll do whatever the pornographers tell them NOT to do. Next up: "Please don't send us buckets of unmarked bills! PLEASE!"
Those with extreme religion hate it because it "promotes porn", in the same way that teaching kids how to use condoms "promotes underage sex". In other words, for once, they are doing the right thing, albeit for the wrong reasons. The real reason to hate .xxx is because it simply won't do anything.
Actually, maybe that's a reason to like it. Congresscritters get their happy-happy vote, the religious zealots have a new enemy to hate and maybe it'll distract them for a while, and in the end nothing changes.
http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/oilspill/
Some good maps there, but it leads me to an interesting question...
Select ONLY the "Observed Spill 5/4/2010". Then tell me, doesn't it look like a flamingo is about to attack Florida?
The Birds Get Their Revenge.
big city sewage
Sure does add a new definition to "trickle charging" a battery, doesn't it?
Probably make your webcam take a picture of you masturbating and put it on the Internet. When you complain, Google will remind you that privacy doesn't exist on the Internet. :)
Right, because all of those are US-controlled domains, controlled by a single unified body with a codified ruleset, following a specific minted charter since the instant they were created.
You can keep non-porn out of .xxx if you make that the charter of .xxx and have someone screen all the sites to make sure none of them are child-friendly.
You cannot force all porn INTO .xxx, because you're talking about defining porn, then taking all other domains owned by every country in the world and applying that definition to all of them.
So if we pick "no titties" as the Line That Shall Not be Crossed, then Europe's going to be pissed because it's too puritanical, and Iran's going to be pissed because you can show bikinis.
Laws drafted by whom? Enforcing rules decided by whom? And covering whom? Iran cannot pass a law that a US business operating in its own country, so if Iran wants the Victoria's Secret catalog moved to .xxx, we can inform them of how much sand they have and suggest they go pound it. Neither can Canada. Hell, New Hampshire can't even pass a law that tells a company in Maine how to do business within Maine's borders. The US similarly can't tell European countries that titties are not OK any more.
We are a world of hundreds of countries, each made up of hundreds or thousands of municipalities, and we can't even get uniform rules of what constitutes "porn" within the same family in some cases.
Just try to get the respective governments of Las Vegas and Texarkana to agree on where the line is. If you can manage that, you're about 1/1,000,000 of the way toward working out an international standard. Good. Luck. With. That.
1. ICANN...
2. Makes...
3. ??? how much? A LOT of...
4. PROFIT!
Downsides: .xxx will be an additional route to find porn.
- It's utterly useless, since pornographers will not stop using their existing domains.
- It will have the opposite of the desired effect (assuming your intentions are puritanical), since the
- It will cost both pornographers and businesses real money (The CEO of Ford is not about to allow ford.xxx to be an active domain with smut on it!).
- It will start international debates on what constitutes porn. Said debates will cost a lot of time, effort, etc and are societal differences that will probably remain unresolvable. Who is forced there?
And, yes, I hear some of you out there saying, "but there's clearly a line that can be drawn!".
Fine. Let's do an informal poll. Everyone post the letter you feel represents the "minimum content" that would require moving someone's domain to .xxx - let's see if a small, technically-minded group from mostly free countries can decide uniformly what the standard should be.
None - Nothing should be moved. The internet should be free.
A -- Violent/Kiddie Porn (sure, everyone hates violent porn!)
B -- Playboy (umm, yeah, visible bush)
C -- Jugs-type sites (topless only? That's OK in most of Europe, but not the US, right?)
D -- Teenyweeniebikini sites (is there really a difference between 1/4" square of flesh-colored cloth and topless?)
E -- Victoria's Secret (well, umm, it's, well, underwear, but don't tell me the pictures aren't there to appeal to men)
F -- Sports Illustrated (regular bikini shots)
G -- The Sears Catalog (also underwear, but certainly not as "porn" as Victoria's, but...)
H -- Regular clothing catalogs with no underwear or bikinis (shows women's faces and the general shape of their bodies, right, that's porn in some countries!)
I -- Zappos.com (there are pictures of women's ANKLES on there! Allah be praised we can be saved from that wanton smut!)
"Required" by whom? If 99% of all countries on this planet somehow came up with a unified standard (which is about as likely as a sober person having a conversation with a flying unicorn about the relative shades of pink found on elephants), passed unified international laws that required (we're leaving "fanciful" and getting into "what?"), it and had some mythical way of enforcing it (there is no Earthly term for how ridiculous that proposal is), pornographers would simply move their hosting plans to the 1% that don't, or start using IP addresses directly.
Reverse that argument. Who keeps everyone else out of everywhere else so adults-only stuff ends up in .xxx?
By that standard, making a .kid TLD and enforcing it is, well, child's play. It would be several hundred orders of magnitude easier, and several hundred orders of magnitude more effective. Which is to say, it would be only somewhat expensive and is only somewhat useless.
Trying to move everything "adult" into .xxx would require a massive, cooperative, coordinated effort between every country on the planet. We haven't managed to do that for far more important issues. And ongoing enforcement would be a huge, expensive pain in the ass.
Then the pornographers will just start using IP address.
Yes, we're in the US, not China. Oh, by the way, the Chinese have access to the .COM domain. What's the age of consent for porn there?
Companies can filter out the .xxx domains all they want. There's no effective international way to keep all the smut there, even if you could come up with an international definition for smut.
I think you'd find the US Government hard-pressed to force Playboy to give up its .com address, or to move all the nekkid bits to their .xxx domain and make .com a simple front end. That's a major, well-known, well-regulated, US-based company, operating under US law. Who's going to tell China that their citizens can't post porn in .com? How about .cn, their own domain?
The introduction of the domain is trivial, but its impact will be functionally meaningless. It's a great way for ICANN to sell off an assload of new domain names with almost no effort on their part. Other than that, it won't change jack shit. People looking for porn may use it, but their existing purveyors will still be on .com, same as it ever was.
Of course, the .com could also just serve as a simple redirect to a direct IP address, which means all your filters just went out the window.
ICANN will benefit, one-handed-surfers might find the content they want easier to find, but this won't really change anything.
Compelled by whom, exactly?
We don't have an international standard of decency today on the Internet. If you want to host anything, you may do so provided you host it in a country where such things are legal. Playboy, Penthouse, and the other major sites aren't giving up their .com addresses, and those are the big players you can find.
I know this is all very old news, and will probably be tagged "redundant", but the introduction of a "smut zone" on the Internet raises all sorts of issues:
1. Who defines what is "smut"? Go to some countries, and seeing a woman's face unveiled could be considered "smut". In most of Europe, breasts are perfectly OK but bush or sausage-and-veg is right out. Some countries don't care at all. Who gets to decide which sites are OK for a .com, .org, .net, .us, etc domain and which need to be on .xxx?
(several decades pass)
2. OK, we've accomplished the impossible! Bully on us, we've defined the rules on who needs to go to .xxx, and we can now compel every website that meets that criteria to.. uhh.. OK, how do we do THAT? Tuvalu is now saying that .tv URLs can contain smut if you pay a premium for a domain. Oh, we need an international treaty so all countries in the world will enforce this ban for all domains but .xxx. Sheesh.
(several more decades pass)
3. OK, now every municipality in every county in every state in every region in every nation has agreed to turn over absolute control of their domains to a centralized morality body who, as we know, is incorruptible and unbribable in any way. Now all they need to do is find the smut, contact the author, and force them to move it to .xxx.
(several more decades pass)
4. Gee, turns out that porn is profitable, and ways to bypass filters are a key to greater profits. The 12,000,000 agents we've hired at a cost of tens of billions of dollars a year aren't even beginning to scratch the surface of the hundreds of thousands of "underground" web sites that come up EVERY DAY, so we'll start automated filtering and hire more people.
(several more decades pass)
5. SHIT!!! WHO KNEW YOU COULD JUST USE A GODDAM IP ADDRESS AND BYPASS DOMAIN NAMES?!?!?!?!?!
(Did I miss anything there?)
4. Profit?
He's all out of crisps and their dorm room is a shorter walk than the shops?