This is the most intelligent and succinct comment on Slashdot I’ve ever read. If I had mod points, I’d give em to you, but instead you’ll have to settle for this compliment, and that I’m copying this into my “slashdot wisdom” note in Google Keep.:)
When are you guys going to start a revolution with your pea-shooters? I heard that is why you need them: to protect us from a tyrannical government. So...when?
If it's ever necessary, it will happen the same way it did last time. Citizens with guns, mostly ex-military and led by ex-military, will take military armories on the first day of the war. Military bases are gun-free zones, after all. (Yes, really, a soldier can't even carry his own personal gun on base.)
Half the militia that fought the British troops in the Battles of Lexington and Concord were exactly the cliche - bunches of dumb, poorly trained hicks all related to one another. But half weren't, and they accomplished something.
If you don't know US history, it might surprise you that the war started when the governor sent troops to confiscate military-style weapons from the populace. Didn't work out well for him, in the end.
You can’t hear or see it, but a tear rolled down my cheek as I read this, while the sounds of patriotic drums and flutes played in my head. You also can’t see my salute, but it’s there!
No amount of self-defence training and no guns can save you from someone who wants to kill you.
And yet guns (with and without owners seriously trained in self defense strategies, tactics, and legalities) are legally and constructively used hundreds of thousands of times every year to prevent violent assault or to mitigate one in progress. Guns have saved the lives of countless people that someone else wanted to kill.
OP speaks true. But as a front-end developer, what other machine am I supposed to buy that can do all of the following?
Terminal/iTerm (for NPM/anything)
Adobe Creative Suite
Other macOS-specific design/development apps
Decent font management
Decent mail/calendar clients
Relative software stability
Windows 10 has come a long way with its Linux integration re: command line, but I've yet to find anything that comes close to approximating Font Book or LinoType Explorer X.
Same here. OSX is the only reason I asked for a Macbook for my last upgrade at work rather than a PC. The rest of the designers and developers are on Lenovo laptops, and we have one sad Mac Mini around for when we need to compile for Xcode. Back in 2009 when I graduated design school, Macs were the de-facto standard for designers. They still get a lot of developer love...Adobe's XD software still runs best on macOS, and the super-popular Sketch app is Mac-only. Most of the well-known front end developers that I follow are on Macbooks. Apple's brand and software is still running on the inertia it built up over the last 10 years, although I have to wonder how long that will last.
I used to say that between the superior keyboard shortcuts and availability of Quicksilver I was twice as quick at normal tasks on a Mac as on a PC. Nowadays, with the Windows Key and superior window management in Windows 10, I'm not so sure.
It's not a bad plot when described that way. The problem is that it takes a curated look across a half dozen films to come up with it, and in the meantime we're distracted with terrible dialog and acting. The prequels suggested the errors of the Jedi maybe twice in their entiretyâ"and one time it came from an evil sith lord!
The sequels have been more obvious with that plot line, but unfortunately they're just as poorly written.
Jesus Christ. Just...just...hold on. Let me set down my drink.
No, a gun is purposely built and designed to fire a projectile. A slingshot is designed to do the same thing, so is a BB gun, so is a potato gun.
A drill is purposely built to twist things, but I so happen to make bookcases with one. Guns so happen to kill people. Kind of what they're good at. Next.
I can attest that none of my weapons have come to life and spontaneously gone out and shot something or someone.
That's great, but not everyone is as responsible with their firearms as you are. Nor can you guarantee they will be just because you stand by your philosophy.
The AR-15 is not a military weapon, it is not fully automatic and is not used by the military
Then what is it, exactly? You go hunting with that thing?
One last thing, I don't know of anywhere in the US (at least no state I"ve lived in) that requires any form of training in order to drive a car or get a license.
I'm not sure where you've lived, but everywhere I've been, they don't let you behind a wheel without having gone through Driver's Ed.
Your gun to car analogy has issues. Cars are a necessity for most Americans, whereas guns are recreational or defense tools for those who live in high-crime areas with little confidence in the response time for police. Or people who just think that maybe, at some point in time, they might be.
Arm yourself — police have no obligation to defend you [nytimes.com]
So goes the current Libertardian tripe. "Look, a judge says they constitutionally don't have to help you! I guess none of them will now! We better all go buy our own guns! Don't tread on me!!"
The next time you're in a serious accident, or someone on the street is chasing you, remember to forget 911. They're not under any obligation to help you, right?
Much as I hate Adobe, they’re a necessary evil when it comes to doing real work on many Macs.
Not entirely true, depending on your design industry sector. Raster and vector-based graphics editing will always be a necessity, but web designers can get away with focusing on the latter. That means programs like Sketch and Affinity Designer can fill in the gap quite nicely. Online raster-based photo editors like Pixlr can do your photo sizing and cropping for you, which is 80% of the job on the web. Chances are your clients are uploading their own photos, so it behooves you to have some sort of setup that takes your typical digital camera photo and sizes it properly for your home page "hero" headers.
I'm a designer and I use Adobe's CC suite, but mostly because I'm already familiar with Illustrator, InDesign, and PhotoShop. Along with Adobe's other apps, it gives me the potential to produce anything, even if I'm only using 10% of their apps, and could probably find alternatives.
As long as no one suggest using The Gimp. Fuck Gimp.
Last time I checked, there wasn't anything stopping someone from creating their own website and running BuddyPress/BBpress/vBulletin to voice their opinions with other like-minded individuals.
There was an internet before Facebook/Reddit/YouTube, people. You wanna play in their yard, you gotta play by their rules. Otherwise go buy your own damn house.
Everything FB does has been handled by other protocols, with FB's main advantage being a "one-stop shop". Messaging is handled by a slew of protocols. A "wall" is a web page that WordPress or similar can handle well. Web forums replace groups. For videos, an open S3 bucket is good for downloads, or perhaps someone just keeps a torrent seeded.
True, but we had these things before Facebook. Facebook beat out the rest of the market. It's simpler, the design is attractive, and it's where you can find everyone.
As a nerd, I liked the distributed services you mention. But if I want to organize events with people in real life or find things to do in my area, guess where I'm going to look.
Mod parent up! The EquiFax leak was even worse—it wasn't even opt-in. The best you could do is learn to freeze your credit and pray for the best.
The American psyche has learned to accept free gifts in the form of online software because what could be better than "free?" Okay: so maybe my generic information is getting stored on some monolithic benevolent company's servers somewhere, but so what? What are they going to do with my photos of me in my dinosaur costume?
Some small part of me wonders if the genesis of this cultural zeitgeist wasn't started by Napster...the internet is where you go to get "free stuff." You used to have to pay for email from the likes of Juno! Now the general public would scoff at the idea!
What I find fascinating is that all these witch hunts for nazis aren't occurring on public channels--these are private citizen users on privately-owned* social networks putting pressure on their operators to censor speech, which may or may not have any legal equivalency in the public sphere. It's purely business sense in whether the operators (YouTube, Twitter, what have you) choose to remove material that a vocal part of their user-base are objecting to. And that business sense is based on whether advertisers feel safe to spend their money. I think Penny Arcade's Jan 22 strip does a great job of reminding us what lies at the foundation of these tussles.
I.E. if alt right videos are bad for business, alt right videos get removed.
It's fascinating to me as a leftist that complaints of "witch hunts" are being pointed at these blue California tech companies...which are only responding to market forces. Which is the altar to which most card-carrying Republicans and Libertarians pray.
We Americans are in a transition phase in our society, and it'll be interesting to see what comes out of it.
*Alphabet is publicly traded, but the distinction I'm trying to make is public policy/law versus corporate policy.
Despite the purchase well over a year ago, and the existence of Microsoft ToDo, Wunderlist has still been available for download. I reinstalled it on my phone since it's still the best available. Maybe the number of installs will make MS hold on to it.
It's the same reason people bitch when a logo gets redesignedâ"most people hate change. It takes them out of their comfort zone.
I've used Linux minimally. My brief exposure to the previous Gnome3 desktop did leave me wondering: why the fuck are these titlebars so goddamned big? It was like the UI designers went âoeHmm, Windows has title bars. Let's do that.â and promptly left the design to rot. Granted, Windows and macOS still use titlebars, but they do a better job of visually merging them with the window chrome. It's a much more pleasing visual experience.
Gnome doesn't need to redesign the function of title bars so much as it needs to redesign the impression that they give. Let them serve their purpose, but visually let them take a back seat.
As a web designer, I'm all for accessible, progressively-enhanced websites. Everything should be accessible without JavaScript.
But I'm not going to waste my time designing for 0.5% of my client's audience just because they demanded so on a tech blog. And I'm definitely not going to waste my time designing for your use case, since analytics utilities are run using JavaScript.
Censorship is unacceptable in a democracy. Unfortunately, the price of freedom is watching your country devolve into a mess of propaganda and messaging designed to exaserbate the fears and anger of the lowest common denominator.
George Carlin had it right: it's one big, entertaining show. Might as well grab some popcorn.
Progressive Web Apps are not a replacement for native applications. They are exactly what they claim to be: web apps. If you design your web app by the strictures of PWAs and don't mess with actually declaring it a PWA, well then...you're just left with a nice, fast, regular web app. If your web app requires an internet connection to work (think Twitter, Yelp, etc) then how is this any more draconian than just adding a shortcut to your home screen?
PWA's make a lot of sense when you think about the current state of app development. As a customer, why should I spend twice the amount of money to have an Android app and an iOS app developed when I could just have it written once in JS/CSS/HTML, use PhoneGap/Cordova to wrap it and package it into the App Stores? In fact, why should I mess with the app stores at all when I can just write a PWA? Do you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to prepare and get an app through the approval process?
People are using the mobile web for more an more things every day. Long live the PWA, I say. (Just not for everything!)
Mozilla has been stating loudly for YEARS that they would be moving on from the old add-ons. Here's an official post from them in August 2015 about beginning to move in the direction of web extensions: https://blog.mozilla.org/addon...
For a browser to compete, it has to be fast, and it has to be safe. Web Extensions tick box #2.
2009 was a good year for Macbook Pro serviceability. They still had removable batteries, and even made note of how accessible the hard drive was right next to it so you could replace it later. I believe the RAM was accessible as well.
The reason developers flock to Macs is simply to not have to deal with Windows. Thankfully, 2015 models are still available, and Microsoft still sells Windows 8.1 >:-}
Bullcrap. I loved my old 2007 Macbook Pro (until it was stolen), but even with a brand new battery, that guy never got more than 3.5 hours of screen-on time. That's with doing regular web browsing, Photoshop, Illustrator, and web development. I severely doubt your Powerbook was doing any better, except in nostalgia land.
The best thing to happen to laptops in the past decade were the efficiency gains made within the last few generations of Intel processors, and God bless them for that. Typing this on a 2014 Macbook Air I bought on Craigslist, which I can actually take with me without toting a power brick. The power issues the new crop of Macbook Pros are having is perplexing at the very least, and more likely just completely irresponsible on the part of the engineering and testing teams.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the most intelligent and succinct comment on Slashdot I’ve ever read. If I had mod points, I’d give em to you, but instead you’ll have to settle for this compliment, and that I’m copying this into my “slashdot wisdom” note in Google Keep. :)
When are you guys going to start a revolution with your pea-shooters? I heard that is why you need them: to protect us from a tyrannical government. So...when?
If it's ever necessary, it will happen the same way it did last time. Citizens with guns, mostly ex-military and led by ex-military, will take military armories on the first day of the war. Military bases are gun-free zones, after all. (Yes, really, a soldier can't even carry his own personal gun on base.)
Half the militia that fought the British troops in the Battles of Lexington and Concord were exactly the cliche - bunches of dumb, poorly trained hicks all related to one another. But half weren't, and they accomplished something.
If you don't know US history, it might surprise you that the war started when the governor sent troops to confiscate military-style weapons from the populace. Didn't work out well for him, in the end.
You can’t hear or see it, but a tear rolled down my cheek as I read this, while the sounds of patriotic drums and flutes played in my head. You also can’t see my salute, but it’s there!
No amount of self-defence training and no guns can save you from someone who wants to kill you.
And yet guns (with and without owners seriously trained in self defense strategies, tactics, and legalities) are legally and constructively used hundreds of thousands of times every year to prevent violent assault or to mitigate one in progress. Guns have saved the lives of countless people that someone else wanted to kill.
...citation needed.
1. Advertisements/crapware/junk. Don't include crap. Don't put little things to interact with the user for stupid reasons.
I’ve been using W10 for over a year and have never seen an ad. Of course, I customized my start menu without the Windows Store app.
3. Cloud drive storage by default.
Also have never run into this.
4. Microsoft logins by default.
It is literally one click to skip this. Apple does the exact same thing with iCloud whenever you update your Mac.
You make valid points otherwise, but as someone who came from a “never Win10” camp, it is annoying to continue to see the FUD.
OP speaks true. But as a front-end developer, what other machine am I supposed to buy that can do all of the following?
Windows 10 has come a long way with its Linux integration re: command line, but I've yet to find anything that comes close to approximating Font Book or LinoType Explorer X.
OSX is the only reason I still am on the platform
Same here. OSX is the only reason I asked for a Macbook for my last upgrade at work rather than a PC. The rest of the designers and developers are on Lenovo laptops, and we have one sad Mac Mini around for when we need to compile for Xcode. Back in 2009 when I graduated design school, Macs were the de-facto standard for designers. They still get a lot of developer love...Adobe's XD software still runs best on macOS, and the super-popular Sketch app is Mac-only. Most of the well-known front end developers that I follow are on Macbooks. Apple's brand and software is still running on the inertia it built up over the last 10 years, although I have to wonder how long that will last.
I used to say that between the superior keyboard shortcuts and availability of Quicksilver I was twice as quick at normal tasks on a Mac as on a PC. Nowadays, with the Windows Key and superior window management in Windows 10, I'm not so sure.
It's not a bad plot when described that way. The problem is that it takes a curated look across a half dozen films to come up with it, and in the meantime we're distracted with terrible dialog and acting. The prequels suggested the errors of the Jedi maybe twice in their entiretyâ"and one time it came from an evil sith lord!
The sequels have been more obvious with that plot line, but unfortunately they're just as poorly written.
Jesus Christ. Just...just...hold on. Let me set down my drink.
No, a gun is purposely built and designed to fire a projectile. A slingshot is designed to do the same thing, so is a BB gun, so is a potato gun.
A drill is purposely built to twist things, but I so happen to make bookcases with one. Guns so happen to kill people. Kind of what they're good at. Next.
I can attest that none of my weapons have come to life and spontaneously gone out and shot something or someone.
That's great, but not everyone is as responsible with their firearms as you are. Nor can you guarantee they will be just because you stand by your philosophy.
The AR-15 is not a military weapon, it is not fully automatic and is not used by the military
Then what is it, exactly? You go hunting with that thing?
One last thing, I don't know of anywhere in the US (at least no state I"ve lived in) that requires any form of training in order to drive a car or get a license.
I'm not sure where you've lived, but everywhere I've been, they don't let you behind a wheel without having gone through Driver's Ed.
Your gun to car analogy has issues. Cars are a necessity for most Americans, whereas guns are recreational or defense tools for those who live in high-crime areas with little confidence in the response time for police. Or people who just think that maybe, at some point in time, they might be.
Arm yourself — police have no obligation to defend you [nytimes.com]
So goes the current Libertardian tripe. "Look, a judge says they constitutionally don't have to help you! I guess none of them will now! We better all go buy our own guns! Don't tread on me!!"
The next time you're in a serious accident, or someone on the street is chasing you, remember to forget 911. They're not under any obligation to help you, right?
Much as I hate Adobe, they’re a necessary evil when it comes to doing real work on many Macs.
Not entirely true, depending on your design industry sector. Raster and vector-based graphics editing will always be a necessity, but web designers can get away with focusing on the latter. That means programs like Sketch and Affinity Designer can fill in the gap quite nicely. Online raster-based photo editors like Pixlr can do your photo sizing and cropping for you, which is 80% of the job on the web. Chances are your clients are uploading their own photos, so it behooves you to have some sort of setup that takes your typical digital camera photo and sizes it properly for your home page "hero" headers.
I'm a designer and I use Adobe's CC suite, but mostly because I'm already familiar with Illustrator, InDesign, and PhotoShop. Along with Adobe's other apps, it gives me the potential to produce anything, even if I'm only using 10% of their apps, and could probably find alternatives.
As long as no one suggest using The Gimp. Fuck Gimp.
Last time I checked, there wasn't anything stopping someone from creating their own website and running BuddyPress/BBpress/vBulletin to voice their opinions with other like-minded individuals.
There was an internet before Facebook/Reddit/YouTube, people. You wanna play in their yard, you gotta play by their rules. Otherwise go buy your own damn house.
True, but we had these things before Facebook. Facebook beat out the rest of the market. It's simpler, the design is attractive, and it's where you can find everyone.
As a nerd, I liked the distributed services you mention. But if I want to organize events with people in real life or find things to do in my area, guess where I'm going to look.
Mod parent up! The EquiFax leak was even worse—it wasn't even opt-in. The best you could do is learn to freeze your credit and pray for the best.
The American psyche has learned to accept free gifts in the form of online software because what could be better than "free?" Okay: so maybe my generic information is getting stored on some monolithic benevolent company's servers somewhere, but so what? What are they going to do with my photos of me in my dinosaur costume?
Some small part of me wonders if the genesis of this cultural zeitgeist wasn't started by Napster...the internet is where you go to get "free stuff." You used to have to pay for email from the likes of Juno! Now the general public would scoff at the idea!
What I find fascinating is that all these witch hunts for nazis aren't occurring on public channels--these are private citizen users on privately-owned* social networks putting pressure on their operators to censor speech, which may or may not have any legal equivalency in the public sphere. It's purely business sense in whether the operators (YouTube, Twitter, what have you) choose to remove material that a vocal part of their user-base are objecting to. And that business sense is based on whether advertisers feel safe to spend their money. I think Penny Arcade's Jan 22 strip does a great job of reminding us what lies at the foundation of these tussles.
I.E. if alt right videos are bad for business, alt right videos get removed.
It's fascinating to me as a leftist that complaints of "witch hunts" are being pointed at these blue California tech companies...which are only responding to market forces. Which is the altar to which most card-carrying Republicans and Libertarians pray.
We Americans are in a transition phase in our society, and it'll be interesting to see what comes out of it.
*Alphabet is publicly traded, but the distinction I'm trying to make is public policy/law versus corporate policy.
Despite the purchase well over a year ago, and the existence of Microsoft ToDo, Wunderlist has still been available for download. I reinstalled it on my phone since it's still the best available. Maybe the number of installs will make MS hold on to it.
It's the same reason people bitch when a logo gets redesignedâ"most people hate change. It takes them out of their comfort zone.
I've used Linux minimally. My brief exposure to the previous Gnome3 desktop did leave me wondering: why the fuck are these titlebars so goddamned big? It was like the UI designers went âoeHmm, Windows has title bars. Let's do that.â and promptly left the design to rot. Granted, Windows and macOS still use titlebars, but they do a better job of visually merging them with the window chrome. It's a much more pleasing visual experience.
Gnome doesn't need to redesign the function of title bars so much as it needs to redesign the impression that they give. Let them serve their purpose, but visually let them take a back seat.
As a web designer, I'm all for accessible, progressively-enhanced websites. Everything should be accessible without JavaScript.
But I'm not going to waste my time designing for 0.5% of my client's audience just because they demanded so on a tech blog. And I'm definitely not going to waste my time designing for your use case, since analytics utilities are run using JavaScript.
tl;dr: Go back to bed, grandpa.
Apple never should have left PowerPC!
Censorship is unacceptable in a democracy. Unfortunately, the price of freedom is watching your country devolve into a mess of propaganda and messaging designed to exaserbate the fears and anger of the lowest common denominator.
George Carlin had it right: it's one big, entertaining show. Might as well grab some popcorn.
If I had points to give out, I would give them here.
Progressive Web Apps are not a replacement for native applications. They are exactly what they claim to be: web apps. If you design your web app by the strictures of PWAs and don't mess with actually declaring it a PWA, well then...you're just left with a nice, fast, regular web app. If your web app requires an internet connection to work (think Twitter, Yelp, etc) then how is this any more draconian than just adding a shortcut to your home screen?
PWA's make a lot of sense when you think about the current state of app development. As a customer, why should I spend twice the amount of money to have an Android app and an iOS app developed when I could just have it written once in JS/CSS/HTML, use PhoneGap/Cordova to wrap it and package it into the App Stores? In fact, why should I mess with the app stores at all when I can just write a PWA? Do you know how much of a pain in the ass it is to prepare and get an app through the approval process?
People are using the mobile web for more an more things every day. Long live the PWA, I say. (Just not for everything!)
B-but, but her emails!
Mozilla has been stating loudly for YEARS that they would be moving on from the old add-ons. Here's an official post from them in August 2015 about beginning to move in the direction of web extensions: https://blog.mozilla.org/addon... For a browser to compete, it has to be fast, and it has to be safe. Web Extensions tick box #2.
2009 was a good year for Macbook Pro serviceability. They still had removable batteries, and even made note of how accessible the hard drive was right next to it so you could replace it later. I believe the RAM was accessible as well.
The reason developers flock to Macs is simply to not have to deal with Windows. Thankfully, 2015 models are still available, and Microsoft still sells Windows 8.1 >:-}
Bullcrap. I loved my old 2007 Macbook Pro (until it was stolen), but even with a brand new battery, that guy never got more than 3.5 hours of screen-on time. That's with doing regular web browsing, Photoshop, Illustrator, and web development. I severely doubt your Powerbook was doing any better, except in nostalgia land.
The best thing to happen to laptops in the past decade were the efficiency gains made within the last few generations of Intel processors, and God bless them for that. Typing this on a 2014 Macbook Air I bought on Craigslist, which I can actually take with me without toting a power brick. The power issues the new crop of Macbook Pros are having is perplexing at the very least, and more likely just completely irresponsible on the part of the engineering and testing teams.