You are a member of the plaintiff class
if you purchased in the United States from a
retail store in the United States (including
Creative's and others' on-line retail stores) a new
Creative brand hard disc drive MP3 player
between May 5, 2001 and April 30, 2008.
You are vastly underestimating the importance of "owning" an industry standard like MS wants to do with IE. A web browser isn't of any use in itself [to MS], but by controlling the entire market they can do "interesting" stuff like forcing people to use Windows because no other browser than IE can render the pages people need to/want to use. That's pretty much the recipe on how to unfairly take advantage of your position as a monopolist, but it is extremely profitable.
IANAL, but I think Opera might win this war. Netscape lost a similar battle, but they couldn't leverage the power of EU like Opera can. The EU is also likely to be biased towards Opera because it's a European company (although it is Norwegian, and Norway is not a member of the EU).
On the other hand: the precedence from the media player debacle points to a possible "solution" (forcing Microsoft to release a special version without IE) which in practice means a loss to Opera. The potential buyer of such a product does not exist: He needs to be both knowledgeable about Opera and not knowledgeable enough to know how to install Opera himself.
He seems to be confusing the amount of good games per year with the ratio of good games to bad ones per year.
While the odds of getting a good game through picking one at random is diminishing quickly, the number of good games is still constant (or rising). You just have to be more picky.
I can't understand why this is a problem. You already trust these networking sites with pretty detailed information on your own preferences, tastes, friends, location etc., so your e-mail password is not much of an asset to them. Any abuse would obviously lead to people changing their passwords.
The feature is really useful, and presented properly it is not abusive at all. What it does, is log in to your e-mail account and grab your address book. Then you are able to check off people you want to invite and send a premade invitation message. To the end user, the alternative is to manually type or copy-paste in all the e-mail addresses.
As far as I know, Flixster (and Facebook) have not abused the passwords they are given. When they do, make a case of it. If you don't want to give them your password, don't (or, if you need the feature, change the password after your address book has been downloaded). Don't force your paranoid, ineffective habits on the rest of us.
Actually, many compilers are written in C. When you think of it, you will find out that it's perfectly possible. Only the first compiler for a platform needs to be written in assembly.
Googlebot is mainly written in Python. Google is mainly written in C/C++.
Re:Nothing inconvenient about the results
on
An Inconvenient Truth
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
To stop people from polluting, make them pay the real price for consumption. In other words, fuel prices should skyrocket. If you want to destroy Shanghai, pay for moving the people out of there first.
I've used Moneydance, and it's far too simplistic. When you attempt to do anything more than balancing a check book (like doing a mortgage or keeping track of taxes) the GUI gets really obscure.
GnuCash does also perform better on large data.
A lot is currently being done on a Windows port through cygwin. Reports are that it compiles and runs now. Don't expect it to be nearly stable for a year, though.
OK, then, let's pollute! After all, we're only removing one tenth of our land, and maybe a fifth of all people must move. We also remove one tenth of our agricultural land. No problem! It's not like overpopulation is a problem anywhere. After all, rising temperatures is partly due to a "natural cycle", and us being able to avoid it does not enter the equation. And remember folks: If this causes a nuclear war, it's no problem! Nuclear wars could theoretically have been caused by something else!
In other news, a former dictator was released from captivity today. His genocides could, after all, have been caused by someone else.
A violin is worth the wood it is made from plus the craftmanship (including education of the craftsman). What is weird, is that a pair of Levi's jeans consists of roughly the same cotton and the same amount of invested work-hours as a pair of wal-mart jeans. The Levi's jeans aren't worth their cost because of anything intrinsical, they cost a lot because of human vanity.
I picked up a couple of them and as I was reading I kept thinking that "I could do that with Java applets" or "Java + WebStart can do that".
Funny, because when I read them I tend to think that I could do that with any language. It's not like Ajax technology is anything new ("ooh, the select lists are dynamically updated, just like Windows 1.0"). It's all about the method of delivery. Java applets require more stuff on your customer's side, and requires them to learn a different UI than the Web. Ajax utilises the poor environment of HTML to deliver content - meaning requirements and learning curve can be lower for quite a few applications.
And let's face it, most sites can just remain static. Mr. Sixpack doesn't need DOM, JavaScript and XMLHttpRequest to display his fishing trip pictures online...
You are strange, sir. First you advocate replacing thin solutions like Ajax with fat solutions like Java applets. Then you say "but many people need nothing", and go for the thinnest possible solution. Why is it suddenly a problem that Mr. Sixpack has a fatter solution than needed, when it's no problem that Ajax (thinner) gets replaced by applets (fatter) in all other situations? Web applications do demonstrably work with Ajax, you know, you don't need applets.
And why shouldn't Mr. Sixpack get easier navigation, sazzier transitions, pre-loading of slideshow images and so on for his fishing trip pictures? Whose "need" are you referring to when you say he doesn't need Ajax? Does Mr. Sixpack need to have his images online at all? Do most people need e-mail? Shouldn't they be happy with food?
I hate to say it, but performing "s/old release/new release/g" on/etc/apt/sources.list, apt-get update, and apt-get dist-upgrade is not always as clear as one might expect.
I agree. If you use Ubuntu, it is also quite unnecessary. The Ubuntu Update Manager GUIfies this - it pops up to ask you if you would like to upgrade. If you don't want to, it doesn't nag, but presents the option if you would like to update at a later time.
You have no GUI? Well, CLI users are SOL: They need to replace keywords in sources.list.
Re:But does it have a useable file-save dialogue?
on
GNOME 2.16 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
If you are referring to the standard GTK File-open-dialog, try to press CTRL+H, as that will show hidden files. You could also right-click and choose "Show hidden files" from the pop-up menu.
Bah, they can't help you when the key you get from the OEM (Dell or whatever) doesn't work. I've run into that problem dozens of times when installing many desktops at the same time in an office.
Of course, I can use a key from one of the other PCs, but this WGA thing makes me wary to do so.
My problem with a.bin install is that it doesn't work with my package-management system, and that I don't know (without taking it apart) what the install is doing. Who knows where it's installing or what other files it's modifying during the install process?
Bah, you're running it as a normal user, who can only write to $HOME. And Google Earth makes a directory, copies files to it, and makes a symlink in.local/share/applications. That's it. If you really needed to make sure, you could make a new user, run the install as this user, and diff the complete file list before and after.
I agree that it's easier to remove a program that has been installed with the package manager. OTOH, removing Google Earth is a matter of running the shell script "uninstall" in your Google Earth installation directory.
Re:Dapper is good, but it's not there yet.
on
Ubuntu 6.06 Reviewed
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Bah! Is MS paying these people to write one post like this on every mention of linux progress anywhere?
Dear Sir,
Your post is addressing the needs of a computer user (Grandma). You argue that she could not use Ubuntu Dapper for her computing needs. According to you, she would have problems with the following:
Getting mp3 and video support
Getting a binary NVIDIA proprietary video driver
Getting a driver for her exotic wi-fi card
Because this is why she can't switch, I am guessing that you presume she does not know anyone who can help her with that. Fine. And because you argue that this is what makes Ubuntu inapt as an XP replacement, you must be arguing that she em can do all of that on her own with Windows XP.
"Grandma" does not exist, so stop pulling her out. Let's analyse what kind of person Grandma would have to be to fit the description: She is concerned about the performance loss between the nv and nvidia drivers, but unable to follow the three steps documented under "documentation" on Ubuntus webpage to get the nvidia driver. Also, she is completely able to download and install an updated executable from the correct website when she is in Windows. That kind of person does not exist.
I am really sick and tired over these kind of comments. "It is really good, I use it, but I doubt anyone could manage to use it". What you are trying to say, is that not everyone can setup and manage a computer, and maintain a healthy, powerful and updated operating system on it. This is old news. It applies just as much to your favoured operating system (which pshyciatric examination would reveal to be Windows) as Ubuntu Dapper.
As a counter-point, and an exercise to the GP, please do compare the routine of installing office applications on Windows compared to Ubuntu Dapper. Oh, it came pre-installed on Dapper? OK, that's unfair. Then compare installing any other application on Dapper vs. Windows. The ease-of-use for new users is vastly better with Dapper's extremely user-friendly shell over apt-get and dpkg. Windows is more difficult on this much more common task for a newbie than installing custom, 4%-extra-performance-gaining graphic drivers.
If you don't think they can make a majority, then voting for them based solely on this one issue as a protest is useless.
But in Sweden, they could end up at the tipping point between the blocks with a single mandate, and bargain their way on copyright law, giving support to whichever block that gives them more. After all, the issues is rather un-important to most parties.
In addition, if they get a lot of votes, populist parties are going to hijack their opinions to get their voters. And populist parties are, well, popular.
"Just as powerful" and "harder to learn" in the same sentence is an oxymoron.
No, it isn't. This can be illustrated by turing-complete languages: They are all able to express the same set of algorithms (that is: all algorithms). They are, as such, just as powerful as each other. But you would be rather ignorant that all programming languages are equally hard (or simple) to learn.
For an even more convincing example: Imagine a turing complete language L which has exactly the minimal number of instructions; let's say they are A, B and C. Then make a language M by adding any instruction, for instance D(x), which means do B if value after A is x. Now, M is harder to learn than L (but it is probably easier to implement some algorithm in M than L - but that is a different matter). But D can be implemented in terms of A, B, and C, and they are therefore just as powerful.
In the case of Windows and Unix security, it is obvious that they can be of different difficulty to learn while having the same power. For instance, For instance, Windows demands that you use a graphical tool and names the access rights differently. That tool and those names may be more difficult to learn than Unix'.
Maybe a more strict response than you would have expected, but I'm getting sick and tired of people claiming that you can't make advanced stuff easy-to-use or simple stuff difficult-to-use. Obviously you can.
I had to take an introductory course on Java a couple of years ago, even though I am fairly proficient already. But the course came in two flavors: one course in "object-oriented programming" (my course) and one in "java programming".
My course used the extremely simple IDE-ish BlueJ (http://www.bluej.org/). I think it was really great for all the non-programmers, because it allowed the teachers to start where you should: at the conceptual level. The other course started with syntax, compiler commands, files and Javas idiosyncracies (only one public class per file etc). They even spent an hour learning unix commands before they could start programming!
We started straight at objects: instances vs. classes, inheritage, methods, instance variables. BlueJ makes it simple: You open an example project (for instance a "shapes" program), and then you can instantiate objects and run their methods through a GUI. The objects even appear on-screen with quasi inheritage lines!
If you're teaching Java AND Python this object-oriented conceptual approach will be invaluable, in my opinion. And BlueJ is free as in beer.
Slashdot Mirror
You are vastly underestimating the importance of "owning" an industry standard like MS wants to do with IE. A web browser isn't of any use in itself [to MS], but by controlling the entire market they can do "interesting" stuff like forcing people to use Windows because no other browser than IE can render the pages people need to/want to use. That's pretty much the recipe on how to unfairly take advantage of your position as a monopolist, but it is extremely profitable.
IANAL, but I think Opera might win this war. Netscape lost a similar battle, but they couldn't leverage the power of EU like Opera can. The EU is also likely to be biased towards Opera because it's a European company (although it is Norwegian, and Norway is not a member of the EU).
On the other hand: the precedence from the media player debacle points to a possible "solution" (forcing Microsoft to release a special version without IE) which in practice means a loss to Opera. The potential buyer of such a product does not exist: He needs to be both knowledgeable about Opera and not knowledgeable enough to know how to install Opera himself.
He seems to be confusing the amount of good games per year with the ratio of good games to bad ones per year.
While the odds of getting a good game through picking one at random is diminishing quickly, the number of good games is still constant (or rising). You just have to be more picky.
I can't understand why this is a problem. You already trust these networking sites with pretty detailed information on your own preferences, tastes, friends, location etc., so your e-mail password is not much of an asset to them. Any abuse would obviously lead to people changing their passwords.
The feature is really useful, and presented properly it is not abusive at all. What it does, is log in to your e-mail account and grab your address book. Then you are able to check off people you want to invite and send a premade invitation message. To the end user, the alternative is to manually type or copy-paste in all the e-mail addresses.
As far as I know, Flixster (and Facebook) have not abused the passwords they are given. When they do, make a case of it. If you don't want to give them your password, don't (or, if you need the feature, change the password after your address book has been downloaded). Don't force your paranoid, ineffective habits on the rest of us.
Actually, many compilers are written in C. When you think of it, you will find out that it's perfectly possible. Only the first compiler for a platform needs to be written in assembly.
But you can't watch their content (legally) on YouTube, dummy. That was the point of the GP.
Googlebot is mainly written in Python. Google is mainly written in C/C++.
To stop people from polluting, make them pay the real price for consumption. In other words, fuel prices should skyrocket. If you want to destroy Shanghai, pay for moving the people out of there first.
I've used Moneydance, and it's far too simplistic. When you attempt to do anything more than balancing a check book (like doing a mortgage or keeping track of taxes) the GUI gets really obscure. GnuCash does also perform better on large data.
A lot is currently being done on a Windows port through cygwin. Reports are that it compiles and runs now. Don't expect it to be nearly stable for a year, though.
OK, then, let's pollute! After all, we're only removing one tenth of our land, and maybe a fifth of all people must move. We also remove one tenth of our agricultural land. No problem! It's not like overpopulation is a problem anywhere. After all, rising temperatures is partly due to a "natural cycle", and us being able to avoid it does not enter the equation. And remember folks: If this causes a nuclear war, it's no problem! Nuclear wars could theoretically have been caused by something else!
In other news, a former dictator was released from captivity today. His genocides could, after all, have been caused by someone else.
Middle eastern? You have to check your map, dude. It's a "funny" mistake to do when you're trying to point out how ignorant westerners are.
"What are the usual per minute rates to make call in the UK, EU, and asia?"
My plan in Norway makes me pay $1.50 per month. One minute of calling time (to another mobile phone) costs $0.08. Text message costs $0.08 as well.
Bah, Marx has been through this.
A violin is worth the wood it is made from plus the craftmanship (including education of the craftsman). What is weird, is that a pair of Levi's jeans consists of roughly the same cotton and the same amount of invested work-hours as a pair of wal-mart jeans. The Levi's jeans aren't worth their cost because of anything intrinsical, they cost a lot because of human vanity.
Funny, because when I read them I tend to think that I could do that with any language. It's not like Ajax technology is anything new ("ooh, the select lists are dynamically updated, just like Windows 1.0"). It's all about the method of delivery. Java applets require more stuff on your customer's side, and requires them to learn a different UI than the Web. Ajax utilises the poor environment of HTML to deliver content - meaning requirements and learning curve can be lower for quite a few applications.
You are strange, sir. First you advocate replacing thin solutions like Ajax with fat solutions like Java applets. Then you say "but many people need nothing", and go for the thinnest possible solution. Why is it suddenly a problem that Mr. Sixpack has a fatter solution than needed, when it's no problem that Ajax (thinner) gets replaced by applets (fatter) in all other situations? Web applications do demonstrably work with Ajax, you know, you don't need applets.
And why shouldn't Mr. Sixpack get easier navigation, sazzier transitions, pre-loading of slideshow images and so on for his fishing trip pictures? Whose "need" are you referring to when you say he doesn't need Ajax? Does Mr. Sixpack need to have his images online at all? Do most people need e-mail? Shouldn't they be happy with food?
I agree. If you use Ubuntu, it is also quite unnecessary. The Ubuntu Update Manager GUIfies this - it pops up to ask you if you would like to upgrade. If you don't want to, it doesn't nag, but presents the option if you would like to update at a later time.
You have no GUI? Well, CLI users are SOL: They need to replace keywords in sources.list.
If you are referring to the standard GTK File-open-dialog, try to press CTRL+H, as that will show hidden files. You could also right-click and choose "Show hidden files" from the pop-up menu.
Bah, they can't help you when the key you get from the OEM (Dell or whatever) doesn't work. I've run into that problem dozens of times when installing many desktops at the same time in an office. Of course, I can use a key from one of the other PCs, but this WGA thing makes me wary to do so.
Am I the only one who read "when more than half of your content is non-pornographic in nature"? That would make flickr interesting...
Bah, you're running it as a normal user, who can only write to $HOME. And Google Earth makes a directory, copies files to it, and makes a symlink in .local/share/applications. That's it. If you really needed to make sure, you could make a new user, run the install as this user, and diff the complete file list before and after.
I agree that it's easier to remove a program that has been installed with the package manager. OTOH, removing Google Earth is a matter of running the shell script "uninstall" in your Google Earth installation directory.
Bah! Is MS paying these people to write one post like this on every mention of linux progress anywhere?
Dear Sir,
Your post is addressing the needs of a computer user (Grandma). You argue that she could not use Ubuntu Dapper for her computing needs. According to you, she would have problems with the following:
Because this is why she can't switch, I am guessing that you presume she does not know anyone who can help her with that. Fine. And because you argue that this is what makes Ubuntu inapt as an XP replacement, you must be arguing that she em can do all of that on her own with Windows XP.
"Grandma" does not exist, so stop pulling her out. Let's analyse what kind of person Grandma would have to be to fit the description: She is concerned about the performance loss between the nv and nvidia drivers, but unable to follow the three steps documented under "documentation" on Ubuntus webpage to get the nvidia driver. Also, she is completely able to download and install an updated executable from the correct website when she is in Windows. That kind of person does not exist.
I am really sick and tired over these kind of comments. "It is really good, I use it, but I doubt anyone could manage to use it". What you are trying to say, is that not everyone can setup and manage a computer, and maintain a healthy, powerful and updated operating system on it. This is old news. It applies just as much to your favoured operating system (which pshyciatric examination would reveal to be Windows) as Ubuntu Dapper.
As a counter-point, and an exercise to the GP, please do compare the routine of installing office applications on Windows compared to Ubuntu Dapper. Oh, it came pre-installed on Dapper? OK, that's unfair. Then compare installing any other application on Dapper vs. Windows. The ease-of-use for new users is vastly better with Dapper's extremely user-friendly shell over apt-get and dpkg. Windows is more difficult on this much more common task for a newbie than installing custom, 4%-extra-performance-gaining graphic drivers.
If you don't think they can make a majority, then voting for them based solely on this one issue as a protest is useless.
But in Sweden, they could end up at the tipping point between the blocks with a single mandate, and bargain their way on copyright law, giving support to whichever block that gives them more. After all, the issues is rather un-important to most parties.
In addition, if they get a lot of votes, populist parties are going to hijack their opinions to get their voters. And populist parties are, well, popular.
"Just as powerful" and "harder to learn" in the same sentence is an oxymoron.
No, it isn't. This can be illustrated by turing-complete languages: They are all able to express the same set of algorithms (that is: all algorithms). They are, as such, just as powerful as each other. But you would be rather ignorant that all programming languages are equally hard (or simple) to learn.
For an even more convincing example: Imagine a turing complete language L which has exactly the minimal number of instructions; let's say they are A, B and C. Then make a language M by adding any instruction, for instance D(x), which means do B if value after A is x. Now, M is harder to learn than L (but it is probably easier to implement some algorithm in M than L - but that is a different matter). But D can be implemented in terms of A, B, and C, and they are therefore just as powerful.
In the case of Windows and Unix security, it is obvious that they can be of different difficulty to learn while having the same power. For instance, For instance, Windows demands that you use a graphical tool and names the access rights differently. That tool and those names may be more difficult to learn than Unix'.
Maybe a more strict response than you would have expected, but I'm getting sick and tired of people claiming that you can't make advanced stuff easy-to-use or simple stuff difficult-to-use. Obviously you can.
I had to take an introductory course on Java a couple of years ago, even though I am fairly proficient already. But the course came in two flavors: one course in "object-oriented programming" (my course) and one in "java programming".
My course used the extremely simple IDE-ish BlueJ (http://www.bluej.org/). I think it was really great for all the non-programmers, because it allowed the teachers to start where you should: at the conceptual level. The other course started with syntax, compiler commands, files and Javas idiosyncracies (only one public class per file etc). They even spent an hour learning unix commands before they could start programming!
We started straight at objects: instances vs. classes, inheritage, methods, instance variables. BlueJ makes it simple: You open an example project (for instance a "shapes" program), and then you can instantiate objects and run their methods through a GUI. The objects even appear on-screen with quasi inheritage lines!
If you're teaching Java AND Python this object-oriented conceptual approach will be invaluable, in my opinion. And BlueJ is free as in beer.