Why would I want to play in a web browser instead of natively?
You'd want to do this for the same reason that you'd want to run any application in a web browser instead of natively. It's far more convenient to deploy and update and far easier to support multiple platforms.
I'm a programmer, and I play first person shooters. Not everybody likes to solve the same problems on their downtime as they do at work.
Indeed, I'd be inclined to think the kinds of games described in TFA would would appeal to non-programmers in the same way games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band appeal to non-musicians. Perhaps they could even inspire people to become interested in programming.
Yay! I spent the last two weeks learning git, and Google kept pointing me to kernel.org for the documentation. Having the site actually up will be nice, although I've already learned everything possible about Git!
It means there are probably quite a few rooted Linux boxes out there and the users don't realize it because they bought into hype that their computer had impenetrable security.
So how does that explain the far greater number of compromised Windows boxes? It's unlikely their owners thought they had impenetrable security. Compromised machines exist because people take foolish risks and aren't vigilant for malware either out of ignorance or apathy regardless of OS. The average user is still much safer running any non-Windows OS, though they shouldn't be complacent.
I've never been a fan of government regulation because they also tend to over-reach and worse, they strip people of liberty. However, every single business regulation can be traced back to someone, or group of someones, who obnoxiously pushed enough people to the edge. We had robber-baron railroad operators. That brought the common-carrier regulations. We had dangerous work conditions and awful long (non-voluntary) work hours. Along came labor regulations and OSHA. A lake burned in the midwest and that gave us the God-forsaken EPA.
These guys are no different. The patent trolls will continue to make public asses of themselves to the point where eventually, some politician will say "ENOUGH!" and give them the spanking they deserve. Sadly, I don't see how the private sector can do anything about it on it's own. It's not like we can just take our business elsewhere.
So while I sigh when I read about the new troll of the week on/., I also look forward to the day when they reap the real fruit of their "labor". Unfortunately, there will likely be unintended consequences that harm innocent people and businesses in the process, as regulation always does.
This is not a situation which requires additional government regulation to rectify. Patents are unnatural monopolies granted by the Federal government. All they have to do fix the problem is stop granting bad patents. Originally, patents applications required working examples. It's only been in recent decades that "business methods" and algorithms have been patentable.
Which pound? There are pound force and pound mass. There are at least US and Imperial varieties. At least modern pound mass is generally defined in terms of the kilogram, so if it changes, so does the pound.
Call me paranoid, but if I read this right, this sounds like a frightening idea.
That's an entirely appropriate level of paranoia. What they're describing in their own help is exactly a MITM attack and extremely irresponsible. If the browser portrays that as "secure" it's fraud.
We heard you like the cloud, so we put the cloud in your cloud so you can swear while you disconnect!
The next version of silk won't need a client at all. The cloud will be able to take the place of the user's device as well. Sure, you might end up spending thousands of dollars on items from Amazon you wouldn't have ordered, but think of the time savings!
The only reason that science and religion doesn't seem to mix is that too many religious leaders stick to their dogmas and traditions even in face of human and scientific progress.
It's not just "religious leaders" who stick to a dogma for their own reasons. Observe how many politicians doubt climate change and the correlation with political party.
Let's just remember that the word "scientist" is a title only, like the word "firefighter" this does not mean anything in particular about the person in general.
Most people develop compartmentalization skills because most people in america were raised by religious parents or grandparents at some point in the past. It's easier to just paper over logical fallacies and inaccuracies for the sake of social convenience. Since most people belief (even if falsely) that 'social harmony' comes before rational acceptance of truth.
I don't suppose you have empirical evidence to back up your position?
The keyword is "always". When you use an absolute, it will change peoples' answers. If you were to ask the same question in the form of "are science and religion sometimes/usually at conflict?", you will see a much different result. That being said, there is really nothing to be seen here.
From TFA:
Another 15% say the two are never in conflict, and 70% believe religion and science are only sometimes in conflict.
So, if you were trying to say that most scientists think they are usually in conflict, there is something to be seen.
There is always a conflict between religion and science. It's just that it's mostly irrelevant for scientists in the USA. And even more irrelevant in Eastern Europe.
Now try to teach evolution in Muslim countries like Pakistan. Go on, try it. We'll pay for your funeral.
I don't suppose you'd care to provide any support that gives your personal opinion more weight than the vast majority of the scientists in the survey? Perhaps you know of a survey in Pakistan? Surely you wouldn't be stating your personal belief as fact without any ermpirical evidence, would you?
I develop web applications every day with PostgreSQL and Python, both very popular projects which originated in universities. I also depend on the ubiquitous Apache HTTP server which was originally a derivative of a university project. Both my development and production environments are GNU/Linux. GNU and Linux were not projects at universities, but they were non-commercial and inspired by experiences in universities.
Though Unix originated at AT&T, the additions from BSD have profound and lasting effects on all modern operating systems, especially Unix-like ones. The Internet was developed at universities and TCP/IP was originally implemented on BSD Unix.
How could Apple try to trademark 'Multi-touch' with a straight face?
This is like Ford trying to trademark 'Four-wheel drive' or Sony trying to trade mark 'Entertainment Center'.
Blatantly trying to abuse the system like this should warrant a paddling.
It's only slightly more brazen than trying to claim "App Store" as a trademark. Apple either really believes they invent everything they sell or at least believe they can convince their customers of that.
It's good to see a common sense result come out of the USPTO, I'm really hopeful that with additional funds gained from the recent patent bill the USPTO will be able to reach similarly sane conclusions when bad software patents are files too.
This is an example of a question that could be answered by truly common sense rather than requiring specific technical knowledge. Unfortunately, the questions about patentability can rarely be answered by ordinary people's common sense alone. There are some "business method" patents which are obviously bad to anyone with common sense, such as Amazon's infamous one click patent, but most bad patents do require more technical knowledge to understand.
Nice to see someone try to push the "Windows" angle...
In all truth, this doesn't affect anyone at all - MySQL is GPLed so, according to RMS, it should already be protected from Big Bad Oracle... Is Oracle really required to move MySQL forward? If not, then why the complaints - and if so, then does the fact that it is GPLed really mean anything at all?
In reality, Oracle has been bound by its merger with Sun to actually offer more assurances than Sun was ever required to offer - 4 years of support. What did Sun offer? Nothing.
Technically, MySQL should be in a better position after the Oracle merger...
TFA mentions several features which are apparently not released under the GPL (it uses the term "commercial" which can be assumed to mean "proprietary").
When I got the tablet last week, I chose VLC Direct from the Android Market. Works just fine.
Guess this refers to a fully-free version, since this already-working project is a paid application...
Did you get an offer for source with your VLC binary? If not, it's probably infringing on the copyrights of the VLC developers.
Reading the description of VLC Direct, I suspect that it's not derived from VLC, but an Android front end for the VLC web interface which must be running on another machine to make it work. Though that approach probably has advantages, such as reduced power usage, it's certainly not the most flexible. VLC running natively on the Android device wouldn't require any transcoding server.
If "VLC Direct" is not derived from VLC, it's not copyright infringement, but it could be trademark infringement, since it's clearly causing confusion.
I'll be interested to see if it has full software rendering engine bypassing the hardware decoder. I don't see why it shouldn't, I believe that's what the desktop VLC does.
You've got that backwards, as VLC originated on general-purpose PCs without any particular hardware decoder to "bypass." VLC, relying on libraries like libavcodec implements everything it needs in C for maximum functionality on a wide range of hardware. It optionally uses tuned assembly-language routines, hardware acceleration or decoding features when they exist for specific hardware. The C implementations will be the first to work, but hardware features of specific devices that save power or enable higher quality decoding can always be exploited if someone writes the code for it. I think Android devices all implement EGL, which could be used for scaling at least.
In summary, I agree with you that corn and corn byproducts are not good for anything but fattening up cows and pigs before slaughter, so I try to eat as little corn and corn byproducts as possible. But your arguments are incredibly counter productive.
You've obviously never eaten fresh, good tortillas as opposed to the crap in a bag which is the subject of TFA. It's fine if you don't personally like things made from corn, but to dismiss a grain which has been a staple for many cultures throughout history as only good for "fattening up cows and pigs before slaughter" seems ignorant and short-sighted at best. Which grains are fit for human consumption, oh great fount of wisdom?
I hear next year they will finally be able to have text output on the screen.
Stallman knew that you have to be willing to write the software yourself long before Linus came along. Emacs, GCC, GlibC and various other GNU components didn't magically appear from the community. They were begun and advanced by RMS and other GNU people for years, laying the ground work for Linux's success.
HURD turned out to be over-ambitious in comparison to those other core components and once Linux came out, the need for it went away. I wonder if GNU/kFreeBSD would have emerged sooner if it hadn't been for Linux. While most of the GNU components were designed in a similar way to the Unix components they replaced, HURD is based on ideas radically different from traditional Unix kernels which still haven't proven themselves practical in general. Linux, on the other hand, was designed very much like traditional Unix kernels, ironically in direct contrast with the Minix one it most directly replaced.
Does anybody have a backup plan for when their SSDs die?
Don't you mean "Does anybody have a backup plan for when their storage devices die?" Even if SSDs fail more quickly than hard drives (which isn't necessarily true any more), no storage device will last forever. Everyone should backup whatever he doesn't want to lose regardless of what type of device he uses. I do.
If they modified the standard so that the system would give a confirmation popup saying
"You are about to load an unsigned operating system, do you want to do so? To continue may compromise the security of your system.
This way people could load Linux if they wanted but the "joe average" would know something is wrong if he was compromised by a boot virus. This would actually be more sensible than preventing other systems, otherwise they will have literally thousands of hackers trying to discover the boot signing keys and publish them online like they did for blue-ray.
Unfortunately, the average Joe would just confirm without reading or understanding the warning. Why do you think malware is so widespread today? As long as there's an option to disable secure UEFI in the firmware setup, that's good enough to support other OSes while keeping the average Joe from rendering any benefit from it useless.
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Why would I want to play in a web browser instead of natively?
You'd want to do this for the same reason that you'd want to run any application in a web browser instead of natively. It's far more convenient to deploy and update and far easier to support multiple platforms.
I'm a programmer, and I play first person shooters. Not everybody likes to solve the same problems on their downtime as they do at work.
Indeed, I'd be inclined to think the kinds of games described in TFA would would appeal to non-programmers in the same way games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band appeal to non-musicians. Perhaps they could even inspire people to become interested in programming.
Yay! I spent the last two weeks learning git, and Google kept pointing me to kernel.org for the documentation. Having the site actually up will be nice, although I've already learned everything possible about Git!
Perhaps you should have used the git project's actual site.
It means there are probably quite a few rooted Linux boxes out there and the users don't realize it because they bought into hype that their computer had impenetrable security.
So how does that explain the far greater number of compromised Windows boxes? It's unlikely their owners thought they had impenetrable security. Compromised machines exist because people take foolish risks and aren't vigilant for malware either out of ignorance or apathy regardless of OS. The average user is still much safer running any non-Windows OS, though they shouldn't be complacent.
....Just by being themselves.
I've never been a fan of government regulation because they also tend to over-reach and worse, they strip people of liberty. However, every single business regulation can be traced back to someone, or group of someones, who obnoxiously pushed enough people to the edge. We had robber-baron railroad operators. That brought the common-carrier regulations. We had dangerous work conditions and awful long (non-voluntary) work hours. Along came labor regulations and OSHA. A lake burned in the midwest and that gave us the God-forsaken EPA.
These guys are no different. The patent trolls will continue to make public asses of themselves to the point where eventually, some politician will say "ENOUGH!" and give them the spanking they deserve. Sadly, I don't see how the private sector can do anything about it on it's own. It's not like we can just take our business elsewhere.
So while I sigh when I read about the new troll of the week on /., I also look forward to the day when they reap the real fruit of their "labor". Unfortunately, there will likely be unintended consequences that harm innocent people and businesses in the process, as regulation always does.
This is not a situation which requires additional government regulation to rectify. Patents are unnatural monopolies granted by the Federal government. All they have to do fix the problem is stop granting bad patents. Originally, patents applications required working examples. It's only been in recent decades that "business methods" and algorithms have been patentable.
When was the last time someone redefined a pound?
Which pound? There are pound force and pound mass. There are at least US and Imperial varieties. At least modern pound mass is generally defined in terms of the kilogram, so if it changes, so does the pound.
Call me paranoid, but if I read this right, this sounds like a frightening idea.
That's an entirely appropriate level of paranoia. What they're describing in their own help is exactly a MITM attack and extremely irresponsible. If the browser portrays that as "secure" it's fraud.
We heard you like the cloud, so we put the cloud in your cloud so you can swear while you disconnect!
The next version of silk won't need a client at all. The cloud will be able to take the place of the user's device as well. Sure, you might end up spending thousands of dollars on items from Amazon you wouldn't have ordered, but think of the time savings!
It's not always lose-win or lose-lose.
Perhaps you missed the last word "more."
The only reason that science and religion doesn't seem to mix is that too many religious leaders stick to their dogmas and traditions even in face of human and scientific progress.
It's not just "religious leaders" who stick to a dogma for their own reasons. Observe how many politicians doubt climate change and the correlation with political party.
Let's just remember that the word "scientist" is a title only, like the word "firefighter" this does not mean anything in particular about the person in general.
Most people develop compartmentalization skills because most people in america were raised by religious parents or grandparents at some point in the past. It's easier to just paper over logical fallacies and inaccuracies for the sake of social convenience. Since most people belief (even if falsely) that 'social harmony' comes before rational acceptance of truth.
I don't suppose you have empirical evidence to back up your position?
The keyword is "always". When you use an absolute, it will change peoples' answers. If you were to ask the same question in the form of "are science and religion sometimes/usually at conflict?", you will see a much different result. That being said, there is really nothing to be seen here.
From TFA:
Another 15% say the two are never in conflict, and 70% believe religion and science are only sometimes in conflict.
So, if you were trying to say that most scientists think they are usually in conflict, there is something to be seen.
There is always a conflict between religion and science. It's just that it's mostly irrelevant for scientists in the USA. And even more irrelevant in Eastern Europe.
Now try to teach evolution in Muslim countries like Pakistan. Go on, try it. We'll pay for your funeral.
I don't suppose you'd care to provide any support that gives your personal opinion more weight than the vast majority of the scientists in the survey? Perhaps you know of a survey in Pakistan? Surely you wouldn't be stating your personal belief as fact without any ermpirical evidence, would you?
I develop web applications every day with PostgreSQL and Python, both very popular projects which originated in universities. I also depend on the ubiquitous Apache HTTP server which was originally a derivative of a university project. Both my development and production environments are GNU/Linux. GNU and Linux were not projects at universities, but they were non-commercial and inspired by experiences in universities.
Though Unix originated at AT&T, the additions from BSD have profound and lasting effects on all modern operating systems, especially Unix-like ones. The Internet was developed at universities and TCP/IP was originally implemented on BSD Unix.
How could Apple try to trademark 'Multi-touch' with a straight face?
This is like Ford trying to trademark 'Four-wheel drive' or Sony trying to trade mark 'Entertainment Center'.
Blatantly trying to abuse the system like this should warrant a paddling.
It's only slightly more brazen than trying to claim "App Store" as a trademark. Apple either really believes they invent everything they sell or at least believe they can convince their customers of that.
It's good to see a common sense result come out of the USPTO, I'm really hopeful that with additional funds gained from the recent patent bill the USPTO will be able to reach similarly sane conclusions when bad software patents are files too.
This is an example of a question that could be answered by truly common sense rather than requiring specific technical knowledge. Unfortunately, the questions about patentability can rarely be answered by ordinary people's common sense alone. There are some "business method" patents which are obviously bad to anyone with common sense, such as Amazon's infamous one click patent, but most bad patents do require more technical knowledge to understand.
Nice to see someone try to push the "Windows" angle...
In all truth, this doesn't affect anyone at all - MySQL is GPLed so, according to RMS, it should already be protected from Big Bad Oracle... Is Oracle really required to move MySQL forward? If not, then why the complaints - and if so, then does the fact that it is GPLed really mean anything at all?
In reality, Oracle has been bound by its merger with Sun to actually offer more assurances than Sun was ever required to offer - 4 years of support. What did Sun offer? Nothing.
Technically, MySQL should be in a better position after the Oracle merger...
TFA mentions several features which are apparently not released under the GPL (it uses the term "commercial" which can be assumed to mean "proprietary").
Then what am I running?
When I got the tablet last week, I chose VLC Direct from the Android Market. Works just fine.
Guess this refers to a fully-free version, since this already-working project is a paid application...
Did you get an offer for source with your VLC binary? If not, it's probably infringing on the copyrights of the VLC developers.
Reading the description of VLC Direct, I suspect that it's not derived from VLC, but an Android front end for the VLC web interface which must be running on another machine to make it work. Though that approach probably has advantages, such as reduced power usage, it's certainly not the most flexible. VLC running natively on the Android device wouldn't require any transcoding server.
If "VLC Direct" is not derived from VLC, it's not copyright infringement, but it could be trademark infringement, since it's clearly causing confusion.
Then what am I running?
When I got the tablet last week, I chose VLC Direct from the Android Market. Works just fine.
Guess this refers to a fully-free version, since this already-working project is a paid application...
Did you get an offer for source with your VLC binary? If not, it's probably infringing on the copyrights of the VLC developers.
I'll be interested to see if it has full software rendering engine bypassing the hardware decoder. I don't see why it shouldn't, I believe that's what the desktop VLC does.
You've got that backwards, as VLC originated on general-purpose PCs without any particular hardware decoder to "bypass." VLC, relying on libraries like libavcodec implements everything it needs in C for maximum functionality on a wide range of hardware. It optionally uses tuned assembly-language routines, hardware acceleration or decoding features when they exist for specific hardware. The C implementations will be the first to work, but hardware features of specific devices that save power or enable higher quality decoding can always be exploited if someone writes the code for it. I think Android devices all implement EGL, which could be used for scaling at least.
PS: On top of that, every Doritos bag is 100% GMO corn too, so I realy hate myself afterwards eating that crap.
Yeah, engineering is bad. People never should have modified food crops. Look how far cows have come eating unmodified grass!
In summary, I agree with you that corn and corn byproducts are not good for anything but fattening up cows and pigs before slaughter, so I try to eat as little corn and corn byproducts as possible. But your arguments are incredibly counter productive.
You've obviously never eaten fresh, good tortillas as opposed to the crap in a bag which is the subject of TFA. It's fine if you don't personally like things made from corn, but to dismiss a grain which has been a staple for many cultures throughout history as only good for "fattening up cows and pigs before slaughter" seems ignorant and short-sighted at best. Which grains are fit for human consumption, oh great fount of wisdom?
Stallman did that already it is called HURD.
I hear next year they will finally be able to have text output on the screen.
Stallman knew that you have to be willing to write the software yourself long before Linus came along. Emacs, GCC, GlibC and various other GNU components didn't magically appear from the community. They were begun and advanced by RMS and other GNU people for years, laying the ground work for Linux's success.
HURD turned out to be over-ambitious in comparison to those other core components and once Linux came out, the need for it went away. I wonder if GNU/kFreeBSD would have emerged sooner if it hadn't been for Linux. While most of the GNU components were designed in a similar way to the Unix components they replaced, HURD is based on ideas radically different from traditional Unix kernels which still haven't proven themselves practical in general. Linux, on the other hand, was designed very much like traditional Unix kernels, ironically in direct contrast with the Minix one it most directly replaced.
Does anybody have a backup plan for when their SSDs die?
Don't you mean "Does anybody have a backup plan for when their storage devices die?" Even if SSDs fail more quickly than hard drives (which isn't necessarily true any more), no storage device will last forever. Everyone should backup whatever he doesn't want to lose regardless of what type of device he uses. I do.
If they modified the standard so that the system would give a confirmation popup saying
This way people could load Linux if they wanted but the "joe average" would know something is wrong if he was compromised by a boot virus. This would actually be more sensible than preventing other systems, otherwise they will have literally thousands of hackers trying to discover the boot signing keys and publish them online like they did for blue-ray.
Unfortunately, the average Joe would just confirm without reading or understanding the warning. Why do you think malware is so widespread today? As long as there's an option to disable secure UEFI in the firmware setup, that's good enough to support other OSes while keeping the average Joe from rendering any benefit from it useless.