And why should I care when Windows may have had the feature? We aren't talking about Windows. We are talking about linux, and more specifically a problem he is having with Ubuntu. That is all. The thing is, Ubuntu is the distribution that is working on and pushing desktop issues. It is tough because, as you say, nobody has really cared about the desktop on linux since...never. So there are rough spots and deep architectural issues that have to be dealt with. But the Ubuntu devs are doing what they can with their resources, and the development has been very fast. A lot of nice new state-of-the-art features are being incorporated at a quick rate. It's progress. A mature desktop OS isn't going to just spring up overnight. And some features will get more priority than others due to the nature of the process.
So I find it more helpful to look at the improvement that is being made, deal with the issues that remain, and move on, rather than dwell on all the ways it differs with respect to Windows. And really, if Windows is what you like you should use that. I don't. I hate it, so I use linux. But nobody says you need to be like me, so just use what you like. Unless you have a need or a desire to be using linux, don't. Which I think is the point of the article.
Some advanced OS you've got there.
Seriously, don't get me into a discussion about all of the things I find lacking in Windows. It has nothing to do with being "advanced" or not. It has to do with priorities in development and general philosophy. Windows is strong in the desktop because Microsoft has made it their singular focus for the last 30 years, and the commercial incentive helps as well. Desktop linux has not had the benefit of that, but it is still progressing nicely and the bugs will get ironed out eventually.
Uhhh...don't know about that one or even if it's one of the supported packages. But I do know applications can still opt to use Alsa directly, so you should be able to get sound to work without a Pulseaudio patch.
So there's no bug report for this in either the Kubuntu or Ubuntu launchpad. If you really want it fixed, I would suggest filing a bug report. I don't imagine dual monitor configurations is a typical test case they run through. If you just want to complain though, well....
I had to run a control panel from the command line using sudo in order to make it keep my dual monitor preferences as recently as last year.
As recently as last year.... So one year ago (it's November). That's at least two versions back, maybe three. You should try it again. I am especially impressed with latest 10.10. I wasn't sure if I would like it, but I do. There are always a few bugs...sound in particular was annoying while all the Pulseaudio nonsense was being sorted out. But I haven't had a problem yet with the latest version. I don't have dual monitors, so can't vouch for that.
Also, "has a few rough spots" does not equate to "broken for end users." I've installed Ubuntu for plenty of people, and yes there have been occasional hiccups that I've had to help them fix, but completely usable. They're not going to delete their Windows partition any time soon, but they are happy booting into and using Ubuntu for various things.
I used to work in a Windows engineering department. I supported 1000+ servers and numerous enterprise-level applications. It was a full-time job. Can you guess why I didn't want to double my workload by supporting Mac users as well?
Well, if it is as you say, 200 people out of 30,000 people and 10 servers out of 1000+ servers wouldn't "double your workload." It's your job to support your users. So stop whining about it and do it. If you need more help or maybe a training workshop, fine, ask management for that. But don't say it can't be done.
it will do things like (before registering itself in DNS) reverse-lookup the IP it gets from DHCP, and silently rename the computer it's running on to the entry it finds, regardless of whether that's a good idea or not.
Not a DNS expert, but I'm pretty sure this is a standard practice. If Windows doesn't do it, that's a Windows issue (probably because they like to use their crappy NetBios crap instead), not a Mac OS X discrepancy.
I partly blame MS for that, because SMB shouldn't allow it in the first place if it's going to cause issues for Windows clients, but OS X is the only client OS I know of that allows it.
OS X uses Samba, so any client that uses Samba will do the same thing (BSD, linux, Solaris, etc). The only other client would be Windows, so that's kind of an odd statement. If you want an example of Windows quirkiness, how about the automatic sending of login credentials to shares without asking, and then dealing with the subsequent lockout when they don't work...because Windows will just keeping sending them over and over again, without asking the user, until the server locks you out for too many failed login attempts. Most annoying Windows file sharing problem ever.
So that's really the important part right there that you're mentioning. The Hadiths that you reference in your link are not part of the Quran. Some sects of Islam consider them more of a holy text than others. If you want to be really fundamentalist (in the literal, not pejorative, sense of the word) about it, though, the Hadiths are not formally a part of Islam because they are unauthenticated accounts of what somebody thought Muhammad was saying at some point. In other words, they are easily used in situations where one wants to interpret to coincide with ones political motives, yet hard to attribute to an actual teaching of Muhammad. Like you say, it's about the bad leaders.
Teaching seems like a similar set of constraints to me. Every student may be different, and standardized tests scores may not be the whole picture. But like a development budget, standardized tests do capture an important piece of information.
Yeah, you would think that, but it's not. It's more analogous to "how many lines of code did you write this quarter? What, only 10,000 lines of code. Well, Bob over here wrote 12,000, so he's obviously working harder and better than you. You're fired." How would you like it if a local newspaper decided to publish your coding statistics and advocate that you be fired because you're not as productive as the guy you sits in the next cubicle over?
Should there be improvements in education and teaching quality? Yes. Does that involve a discussion about what the problems with attempts to find the solutions? Yes. Does it involve an attack on the local teachers with demands of "improve now or else?" No. That's not how to get a better education system for our children.
The problem I see is that rather than try to improve the objective measures available, they're trying to sink the use of such measures.
Yes, that's a problem. I often find myself critical of the teacher's unions, but also somewhat sympathetic. The problem is, we have created an "us vs. them" situation, where we are divided into two camps. The teachers feel alienated and unsupported by the community at large, and criticized heavily for their "job performance" despite the lack of tools, resources, funding, research, and analysis to help improve the school system. We have to solve this problem before we can really move forward.
What is comes down to is, it's a lot more complicated than that. There isn't a single parameter (taxes) that determines economic growth or recession. Some models may predict it, but that doesn't mean they are accurate. Here is a link I posted in another comment thread,
Not really for anybody with a brain and a pair of working eyes. There is a strong correlation of lower taxes and economic prosperity throughout history of USA and the world.
Uh, no, it isn't that clear cut. If you think it is, show me the data. This argumentum ad populum, not supported by any real data. Here are two analyses, with data, that do not support your above statement.
Static bundling trades a small amount of space for a huge amount of usability
Well, you're right, it's not really about space anymore. The problem is really one of distribution and security. If every add-on package has to bundle their own libz.so, then a security bug in libz requires every package to recompile and update instead of just a core system library. One of the strengths of linux, in my opinion, is the superb management of critical security updates. And also, when you start getting into dependencies other than small libraries, like python distributions and glx versions, static bundling quickly becomes a big mess to manage and keep up-to-date.
If we don't like option (3), then the only other option is to have a fixed, well-known baseline of packages that are always installed and always the same version on every distribution.
I don't think this is really true. What you need is consistent versioning and good information about what the packages are capable of doing. There is no technical reason a third-party app can't say, "requires zlib>=1.0" using some standard descriptor and query. The problem is each distribution names the library differently, and each distribution versions the library differently. So simply agreeing on a standard way to describe what packages are available on the system would go a long way toward supporting cross-compatibility.
Cross-distribution of core libraries is a more difficult situation, because every distribution installs and configures them differently. But it's not a problem for third-party apps. You just need a way for applications installed in/opt to know where to look for shared libraries, and be able to get them from the distribution's repository when necessary.
While I like the point you are trying to make--I love linux and have been using it exclusively for many years--this is a bad example. A.deb distributed by somebody, unless specifically tailored to the distribution+version you are using, will quickly put you in dependency hell if you install by this method. This has long been a problem with linux. The solution has been to package as much as possible in the repositories, but it's not a complete solution. Something needs to be done to facilitate cross-distribution packaging. Several ideas have been proposed in the past, but none have really come to any fruition, sadly.
A commercial distributor, currently, is left with only a few less desirable options: 1) Package for every possible distribution+version they can. 2) Package for only one or a few specific distribution+versions and state this clearly on the download page. 3) Statically bundle everything to prevent the need to worry about dependencies, which defeats the purpose of using a package manager in the first place.
Uh, pulling up and having a civil chat with someone is not accusing them of a crime and hauling them off to jail. It's the police officer's job. He can only do what any other person could possibly do, which is estimate the likelihood of a scenario based on the available evidence and then investigate. After investigation it will be easier to assess whether further suspicion is warranted. That's exactly what the police officer did, and the grandparent had to spend no more than a few minutes talking to him. Why is that contrary to American ideals? Do you feel it necessary to be an asshole with every public encounter you make?
Actually, doctors do get fired for it, although it might not happen as often as it should. My dad used to work in a department responsible for overseeing patient safety, and yes, doctors would get in trouble on a regular basis for doing some pretty incredible things (pushing a patient off the exam table is one that comes to mind).
Except that "lives are at stake" is likely to actually be true. Do you have a specific example of where "the way I want to" is actually arbitrary?
Most cases, actually. There are established medical procedures accepted by the medical community for most cases, and hospitals have whole departments dedicated to documenting and monitoring the use of those protocols by doctors. A doctor absolutely cannot, despite what he may like, do it "the way he wants to." It's a liability for the hospitals, and they won't tolerate it. House is not a realistic portrayal of the way a real hospital works. The problem is a lot of doctors, like a lot of slashdotters, think they're too smart to have to follow the rules. When they do, they get caught by the nurse, or the pharmacist, or the technician, or whoever else is working with them, and they often get fired for it. A degree is great and it means you have a certain amount of training and expertise, but it doesn't exempt you from the need to follow protocols and rely on the people around you for help and advice.
Oh yeah and to "troll" further, there is only one way to lay out the window control buttons that makes any sense: Close on left, minimize and maximize on right.
That certainly is a troll. Where do you get that idea? There are plenty of themes with that configuration.
Maybe. But playing dirty is not necessary for profitability. That is what shareholders ultimately want to see. Profitability. Nothing more, nothing less. I think it would take an awful stretch for Google to get to the point where it was no longer profitable.
Competition, of course, is necessary. That's why Google keeps the details of Pagerank and other critical algorithms a trade secret. The company's future plans, for the most part, are a trade secret. Their web applications are free to use, but not freely redistributable. They have terms of service agreements with respect to their embeddable web objects. Etc etc....
They don't just give everything away. That is certainly not a sustainable company. Like you say, they will have to improve their customer service infrastructure if they want to sell support in a big way and that will be an expensive investment. However, Google has made plenty of expensive investments. I'm pretty sure they will manage just fine.
They compete fiercely with Yahoo!/Bing, but they don't do things that are ethically questionable. Google for Yahoo and you will see an entire page of search results pointing to the Yahoo website, along with suggested related searches. They could have obscured these results and made them less useful, but they didn't. Heck, a search for Bing even has a sponsored ad on the results page. Do they do this because they are nice? No. They do it because they know it is important for the integrity of their company. Playing dirty might accomplish some short-term gains, but it would hurt them in the long-run.
Bottom line is: their shareholders trust them, because, first of all, they buy into their vision and mission statement. And second, Google has demonstrated success several times over even with fairly risky new ventures (eg: youtube). Also, don't forget that Larry and Sergey still own a majority share of the company. They aren't going to lose control any time soon.
I'm not wound up with anything. I'm happy with what I have seen and continue to see month after month, even after the IPO, from Google. I'm just not so cynical. I don't believe anything has to happen. People make choices. They don't have to do anything just because everybody else does. And so far Google has proved that point. If they change, I will be disappointed, but so far I don't see any reason to give up on optimism.
I'll keep saying what I've always said ever since my original post "I dont believe Google to be evil today" but you keep saying I do.
Except that's not what you were saying in the beginning. It is what you are saying now because you have to admit they haven't actually done anything yet to be considered evil.
To state that "Google cares about its users "is ridiculous,
I never said that. I was making the case that it contributes to the community and follows ethical business practices. What they do in the future remains untold, but what they are doing now is good.
Its the nature of the beast Google's no different.
There is nothing "natural" about being greedy and corrupt corporate whore-mongers. You can choose to be that way, looking only at your short term gains, or you can choose to have a longer term vision. Plenty of companies choose the former, but that doesn't mean it is inevitable.
Completely speculative. Wait until they actually do something with it before complaining about it. It would be difficult for them to do something without anybody noticing, and everybody would switch really quick if they did.
Of course its speculative, this is my opinion your reading. More importantly, why do they do it? list the possible advantages of giving free DNS server access. I can only think of two things here a) capturing the hosts people look up for data mining (privacy) and b) the other is control possibly being able to create their own rules in DNS one day, heck if they get enough people out there to use the DNS whats to stop them from creating the.google TLD?
Ok, well, you're free to live in your paranoid world. But the rest of us are fine with it until they actually do something evil.
provide an example (even just one would be good), otherwise it is just rumor and anecdote, which is worthless
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Greenbaum/?p=130
A zdnet blog? Seriously? This is just more speculative Google ranting. Show me an actual example of Google taking your document and selling it somebody. To save you some time...you won't find it because it hasn't happened.
You mean when you use on their free services, they index the data you put into their service for the purpose of advertising. Yes, and they are very clear about that. No, it is not evil. There are other free services you can use if you don't like that, and if you think they are being more honest than Google about what they are doing with your data.
They do sneaky stuff, not dumbass blatant in-your-face selling. Take a Adsense on a standard account for example, I've never seen the corporate accounts or what Google Certified SEO people get, but they use keyword specific information to help invite bidders on certain keywords, is this really a favor for the bidder? No, its an advantage for Google because it insights a more competitive bidding environment, a higher bidding environment means more money for them. So, if they do that at the lower level of the playing field, what are they doing at the bigger end of town?
And what is wrong with that exactly? They are bargaining for the best price they can get. Not sneaky or evil. They are selling a product, not being an altruistic cuddly bear.
All optional programs. None of them required to use any of the Google web services. None of them sneakily bundled with other apps that trick you into installing them (I'm looking at you Yahoo! toolbar). None of them hijack your browser and redirect everything through Google (I'm looking at you Bing toolbar). Also, they are very clear about what they are indexing. Some have very customizable options. All of them can be blocked completely with a good firewall.
I dont think I insinuated any thing like this, I said Google can and does track your web activity, I didn't accuse them of hijacking, etc. They track your information and all these applications help them to do it and they do a good job of it. Disabling Web History helps, it doesnt stop it.
Your avg Joe isn't configuring their firewall to block Google etc, its okay for the Geek but not everyone else.
No, you are insinuating that Google is evil. I am pointing out that they are not, that Google's competitors are far more evil. Like I said, the programs are optional, not forced on you in any way, and are clear about what they are tracking. If you have a problem with it, don't use the programs. The simple fact that they do it doesn't make them evil. It's their business, and they don't try to hide that from people.
Look, does Google do everything perfectly? No. If you are going to criticize them, China is a good topic. But they are a good company. They seek profit, ye
I don't disagree that we know little about protein folding. I'm just not so sure the findings in this paper help much. We can already model water as bulk solvent with varying properties--sometimes just a dielectric, other times with complex hydrodynamic properties. In the end, though, protein folding is a computational problem. We need better algorithms and/or models with fewer computational steps if we are going to further our understanding. Models that increase the number of computational steps (like this one) won't help much.
It may help us to understand other properties of water, though, such as the solubilities of non-ionic organic compounds and azeotropic effects of certain organic solvents.
Slashdot Mirror
And why should I care when Windows may have had the feature? We aren't talking about Windows. We are talking about linux, and more specifically a problem he is having with Ubuntu. That is all. The thing is, Ubuntu is the distribution that is working on and pushing desktop issues. It is tough because, as you say, nobody has really cared about the desktop on linux since...never. So there are rough spots and deep architectural issues that have to be dealt with. But the Ubuntu devs are doing what they can with their resources, and the development has been very fast. A lot of nice new state-of-the-art features are being incorporated at a quick rate. It's progress. A mature desktop OS isn't going to just spring up overnight. And some features will get more priority than others due to the nature of the process.
So I find it more helpful to look at the improvement that is being made, deal with the issues that remain, and move on, rather than dwell on all the ways it differs with respect to Windows. And really, if Windows is what you like you should use that. I don't. I hate it, so I use linux. But nobody says you need to be like me, so just use what you like. Unless you have a need or a desire to be using linux, don't. Which I think is the point of the article.
Some advanced OS you've got there.
Seriously, don't get me into a discussion about all of the things I find lacking in Windows. It has nothing to do with being "advanced" or not. It has to do with priorities in development and general philosophy. Windows is strong in the desktop because Microsoft has made it their singular focus for the last 30 years, and the commercial incentive helps as well. Desktop linux has not had the benefit of that, but it is still progressing nicely and the bugs will get ironed out eventually.
Uhhh...don't know about that one or even if it's one of the supported packages. But I do know applications can still opt to use Alsa directly, so you should be able to get sound to work without a Pulseaudio patch.
So there's no bug report for this in either the Kubuntu or Ubuntu launchpad. If you really want it fixed, I would suggest filing a bug report. I don't imagine dual monitor configurations is a typical test case they run through. If you just want to complain though, well....
I had to run a control panel from the command line using sudo in order to make it keep my dual monitor preferences as recently as last year.
As recently as last year.... So one year ago (it's November). That's at least two versions back, maybe three. You should try it again. I am especially impressed with latest 10.10. I wasn't sure if I would like it, but I do. There are always a few bugs...sound in particular was annoying while all the Pulseaudio nonsense was being sorted out. But I haven't had a problem yet with the latest version. I don't have dual monitors, so can't vouch for that.
Also, "has a few rough spots" does not equate to "broken for end users." I've installed Ubuntu for plenty of people, and yes there have been occasional hiccups that I've had to help them fix, but completely usable. They're not going to delete their Windows partition any time soon, but they are happy booting into and using Ubuntu for various things.
I used to work in a Windows engineering department. I supported 1000+ servers and numerous enterprise-level applications. It was a full-time job. Can you guess why I didn't want to double my workload by supporting Mac users as well?
Well, if it is as you say, 200 people out of 30,000 people and 10 servers out of 1000+ servers wouldn't "double your workload." It's your job to support your users. So stop whining about it and do it. If you need more help or maybe a training workshop, fine, ask management for that. But don't say it can't be done.
it will do things like (before registering itself in DNS) reverse-lookup the IP it gets from DHCP, and silently rename the computer it's running on to the entry it finds, regardless of whether that's a good idea or not.
Not a DNS expert, but I'm pretty sure this is a standard practice. If Windows doesn't do it, that's a Windows issue (probably because they like to use their crappy NetBios crap instead), not a Mac OS X discrepancy.
I partly blame MS for that, because SMB shouldn't allow it in the first place if it's going to cause issues for Windows clients, but OS X is the only client OS I know of that allows it.
OS X uses Samba, so any client that uses Samba will do the same thing (BSD, linux, Solaris, etc). The only other client would be Windows, so that's kind of an odd statement. If you want an example of Windows quirkiness, how about the automatic sending of login credentials to shares without asking, and then dealing with the subsequent lockout when they don't work...because Windows will just keeping sending them over and over again, without asking the user, until the server locks you out for too many failed login attempts. Most annoying Windows file sharing problem ever.
Well, we agree it's stupid. But that doesn't mean a company wouldn't try it. Hey, if you can get them to settle out of court, it's a pretty big win.
SCO
why can't you use System|Preferences|Display?
So that's really the important part right there that you're mentioning. The Hadiths that you reference in your link are not part of the Quran. Some sects of Islam consider them more of a holy text than others. If you want to be really fundamentalist (in the literal, not pejorative, sense of the word) about it, though, the Hadiths are not formally a part of Islam because they are unauthenticated accounts of what somebody thought Muhammad was saying at some point. In other words, they are easily used in situations where one wants to interpret to coincide with ones political motives, yet hard to attribute to an actual teaching of Muhammad. Like you say, it's about the bad leaders.
Teaching seems like a similar set of constraints to me. Every student may be different, and standardized tests scores may not be the whole picture. But like a development budget, standardized tests do capture an important piece of information.
Yeah, you would think that, but it's not. It's more analogous to "how many lines of code did you write this quarter? What, only 10,000 lines of code. Well, Bob over here wrote 12,000, so he's obviously working harder and better than you. You're fired." How would you like it if a local newspaper decided to publish your coding statistics and advocate that you be fired because you're not as productive as the guy you sits in the next cubicle over?
Should there be improvements in education and teaching quality? Yes. Does that involve a discussion about what the problems with attempts to find the solutions? Yes. Does it involve an attack on the local teachers with demands of "improve now or else?" No. That's not how to get a better education system for our children.
The problem I see is that rather than try to improve the objective measures available, they're trying to sink the use of such measures.
Yes, that's a problem. I often find myself critical of the teacher's unions, but also somewhat sympathetic. The problem is, we have created an "us vs. them" situation, where we are divided into two camps. The teachers feel alienated and unsupported by the community at large, and criticized heavily for their "job performance" despite the lack of tools, resources, funding, research, and analysis to help improve the school system. We have to solve this problem before we can really move forward.
What is comes down to is, it's a lot more complicated than that. There isn't a single parameter (taxes) that determines economic growth or recession. Some models may predict it, but that doesn't mean they are accurate. Here is a link I posted in another comment thread,
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-taxgrowth.htm
Not really for anybody with a brain and a pair of working eyes. There is a strong correlation of lower taxes and economic prosperity throughout history of USA and the world.
Uh, no, it isn't that clear cut. If you think it is, show me the data. This argumentum ad populum, not supported by any real data. Here are two analyses, with data, that do not support your above statement.
http://www.angrybearblog.com/2007/09/tax-rates-and-economic-growth-look-at.html
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-taxgrowth.htm
Static bundling trades a small amount of space for a huge amount of usability
Well, you're right, it's not really about space anymore. The problem is really one of distribution and security. If every add-on package has to bundle their own libz.so, then a security bug in libz requires every package to recompile and update instead of just a core system library. One of the strengths of linux, in my opinion, is the superb management of critical security updates. And also, when you start getting into dependencies other than small libraries, like python distributions and glx versions, static bundling quickly becomes a big mess to manage and keep up-to-date.
If we don't like option (3), then the only other option is to have a fixed, well-known baseline of packages that are always installed and always the same version on every distribution.
I don't think this is really true. What you need is consistent versioning and good information about what the packages are capable of doing. There is no technical reason a third-party app can't say, "requires zlib>=1.0" using some standard descriptor and query. The problem is each distribution names the library differently, and each distribution versions the library differently. So simply agreeing on a standard way to describe what packages are available on the system would go a long way toward supporting cross-compatibility.
Cross-distribution of core libraries is a more difficult situation, because every distribution installs and configures them differently. But it's not a problem for third-party apps. You just need a way for applications installed in /opt to know where to look for shared libraries, and be able to get them from the distribution's repository when necessary.
While I like the point you are trying to make--I love linux and have been using it exclusively for many years--this is a bad example. A .deb distributed by somebody, unless specifically tailored to the distribution+version you are using, will quickly put you in dependency hell if you install by this method. This has long been a problem with linux. The solution has been to package as much as possible in the repositories, but it's not a complete solution. Something needs to be done to facilitate cross-distribution packaging. Several ideas have been proposed in the past, but none have really come to any fruition, sadly.
A commercial distributor, currently, is left with only a few less desirable options:
1) Package for every possible distribution+version they can.
2) Package for only one or a few specific distribution+versions and state this clearly on the download page.
3) Statically bundle everything to prevent the need to worry about dependencies, which defeats the purpose of using a package manager in the first place.
Uh, pulling up and having a civil chat with someone is not accusing them of a crime and hauling them off to jail. It's the police officer's job. He can only do what any other person could possibly do, which is estimate the likelihood of a scenario based on the available evidence and then investigate. After investigation it will be easier to assess whether further suspicion is warranted. That's exactly what the police officer did, and the grandparent had to spend no more than a few minutes talking to him. Why is that contrary to American ideals? Do you feel it necessary to be an asshole with every public encounter you make?
Actually, doctors do get fired for it, although it might not happen as often as it should. My dad used to work in a department responsible for overseeing patient safety, and yes, doctors would get in trouble on a regular basis for doing some pretty incredible things (pushing a patient off the exam table is one that comes to mind).
Except that "lives are at stake" is likely to actually be true. Do you have a specific example of where "the way I want to" is actually arbitrary?
Most cases, actually. There are established medical procedures accepted by the medical community for most cases, and hospitals have whole departments dedicated to documenting and monitoring the use of those protocols by doctors. A doctor absolutely cannot, despite what he may like, do it "the way he wants to." It's a liability for the hospitals, and they won't tolerate it. House is not a realistic portrayal of the way a real hospital works. The problem is a lot of doctors, like a lot of slashdotters, think they're too smart to have to follow the rules. When they do, they get caught by the nurse, or the pharmacist, or the technician, or whoever else is working with them, and they often get fired for it. A degree is great and it means you have a certain amount of training and expertise, but it doesn't exempt you from the need to follow protocols and rely on the people around you for help and advice.
Oh yeah and to "troll" further, there is only one way to lay out the window control buttons that makes any sense: Close on left, minimize and maximize on right.
That certainly is a troll. Where do you get that idea? There are plenty of themes with that configuration.
No, just the 3d rendering acceleration. I know POV-Ray runs a lot faster on my computer than this demo appears to run.
Ok, is it just me, or does that demo look really slow. Are they using any hardware acceleration for this stuff?
Looks like they are working on a Cairo backend as well.
Maybe. But playing dirty is not necessary for profitability. That is what shareholders ultimately want to see. Profitability. Nothing more, nothing less. I think it would take an awful stretch for Google to get to the point where it was no longer profitable.
Competition, of course, is necessary. That's why Google keeps the details of Pagerank and other critical algorithms a trade secret. The company's future plans, for the most part, are a trade secret. Their web applications are free to use, but not freely redistributable. They have terms of service agreements with respect to their embeddable web objects. Etc etc....
They don't just give everything away. That is certainly not a sustainable company. Like you say, they will have to improve their customer service infrastructure if they want to sell support in a big way and that will be an expensive investment. However, Google has made plenty of expensive investments. I'm pretty sure they will manage just fine.
They compete fiercely with Yahoo!/Bing, but they don't do things that are ethically questionable. Google for Yahoo and you will see an entire page of search results pointing to the Yahoo website, along with suggested related searches. They could have obscured these results and made them less useful, but they didn't. Heck, a search for Bing even has a sponsored ad on the results page. Do they do this because they are nice? No. They do it because they know it is important for the integrity of their company. Playing dirty might accomplish some short-term gains, but it would hurt them in the long-run.
Bottom line is: their shareholders trust them, because, first of all, they buy into their vision and mission statement. And second, Google has demonstrated success several times over even with fairly risky new ventures (eg: youtube). Also, don't forget that Larry and Sergey still own a majority share of the company. They aren't going to lose control any time soon.
I'm not wound up with anything. I'm happy with what I have seen and continue to see month after month, even after the IPO, from Google. I'm just not so cynical. I don't believe anything has to happen. People make choices. They don't have to do anything just because everybody else does. And so far Google has proved that point. If they change, I will be disappointed, but so far I don't see any reason to give up on optimism.
I'll keep saying what I've always said ever since my original post "I dont believe Google to be evil today" but you keep saying I do.
Except that's not what you were saying in the beginning. It is what you are saying now because you have to admit they haven't actually done anything yet to be considered evil.
To state that "Google cares about its users "is ridiculous,
I never said that. I was making the case that it contributes to the community and follows ethical business practices. What they do in the future remains untold, but what they are doing now is good.
Its the nature of the beast Google's no different.
There is nothing "natural" about being greedy and corrupt corporate whore-mongers. You can choose to be that way, looking only at your short term gains, or you can choose to have a longer term vision. Plenty of companies choose the former, but that doesn't mean it is inevitable.
Completely speculative. Wait until they actually do something with it before complaining about it. It would be difficult for them to do something without anybody noticing, and everybody would switch really quick if they did.
Of course its speculative, this is my opinion your reading. More importantly, why do they do it? list the possible advantages of giving free DNS server access. I can only think of two things here a) capturing the hosts people look up for data mining (privacy) and b) the other is control possibly being able to create their own rules in DNS one day, heck if they get enough people out there to use the DNS whats to stop them from creating the .google TLD?
Ok, well, you're free to live in your paranoid world. But the rest of us are fine with it until they actually do something evil.
provide an example (even just one would be good), otherwise it is just rumor and anecdote, which is worthless
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Greenbaum/?p=130
A zdnet blog? Seriously? This is just more speculative Google ranting. Show me an actual example of Google taking your document and selling it somebody. To save you some time...you won't find it because it hasn't happened.
You mean when you use on their free services, they index the data you put into their service for the purpose of advertising. Yes, and they are very clear about that. No, it is not evil. There are other free services you can use if you don't like that, and if you think they are being more honest than Google about what they are doing with your data.
They do sneaky stuff, not dumbass blatant in-your-face selling. Take a Adsense on a standard account for example, I've never seen the corporate accounts or what Google Certified SEO people get, but they use keyword specific information to help invite bidders on certain keywords, is this really a favor for the bidder? No, its an advantage for Google because it insights a more competitive bidding environment, a higher bidding environment means more money for them. So, if they do that at the lower level of the playing field, what are they doing at the bigger end of town?
And what is wrong with that exactly? They are bargaining for the best price they can get. Not sneaky or evil. They are selling a product, not being an altruistic cuddly bear.
All optional programs. None of them required to use any of the Google web services. None of them sneakily bundled with other apps that trick you into installing them (I'm looking at you Yahoo! toolbar). None of them hijack your browser and redirect everything through Google (I'm looking at you Bing toolbar). Also, they are very clear about what they are indexing. Some have very customizable options. All of them can be blocked completely with a good firewall.
I dont think I insinuated any thing like this, I said Google can and does track your web activity, I didn't accuse them of hijacking, etc. They track your information and all these applications help them to do it and they do a good job of it. Disabling Web History helps, it doesnt stop it.
Your avg Joe isn't configuring their firewall to block Google etc, its okay for the Geek but not everyone else.
No, you are insinuating that Google is evil. I am pointing out that they are not, that Google's competitors are far more evil. Like I said, the programs are optional, not forced on you in any way, and are clear about what they are tracking. If you have a problem with it, don't use the programs. The simple fact that they do it doesn't make them evil. It's their business, and they don't try to hide that from people.
Look, does Google do everything perfectly? No. If you are going to criticize them, China is a good topic. But they are a good company. They seek profit, ye
I don't disagree that we know little about protein folding. I'm just not so sure the findings in this paper help much. We can already model water as bulk solvent with varying properties--sometimes just a dielectric, other times with complex hydrodynamic properties. In the end, though, protein folding is a computational problem. We need better algorithms and/or models with fewer computational steps if we are going to further our understanding. Models that increase the number of computational steps (like this one) won't help much.
It may help us to understand other properties of water, though, such as the solubilities of non-ionic organic compounds and azeotropic effects of certain organic solvents.