I did not like the fact that I had to create an icon for the launcher.
Huh? There's no need to create an icon on the launcher. You can run the Terminal by clicking on "Applications" on the launcher, and then choosing "Accessories" from the drop-down, and clicking on "Terminal" in the "Installed" section; not all that unlike the old Gnome, although with a popup full of icons, rather than a menu.
Reading the comments here is weird, I have to say. I've found Unity pretty easy to figure out, but lots of - presumably pretty computer-literate - people on Slashdot completely failing to understand it makes me think it may not be as intuitive as I had thought.
The mouse-only option still fails. Being able to browse programs in an ordered menu-like structure fails. Being able to go through lists and find that randomly named program I just installed fails.
All of these work on Unity. The Applications popup from the launcher shows all your applications, which you can browse through, optionally organizing them by category.
Being able to go to a list of all Preference or Administration options fails.
Click on the Power symbol in the top right, select "System settings."
You don't have to type the application name with Unity, though. It shows icons for all the installed apps, which you can filter using the same categories as the GNOME 2 menu had. It does require more clicks to find an app than the old menu system did, although frequently used apps will show up immediately on the application screen, so for those it will require fewer clicks.
Why should I care if a business is monetizing me? What harm does it do me if Google, or whoever, collects information about me and uses that to make money?
if you are not able to bring a rigorous, scientific approach to your work, you shouldn't be called "PhD".
Why on earth not? The degree of Doctor of Philosophy predates the invention of the scientific method, and reflects the fact that "philosophy," in the broad sense of sustained, rigorous, academic inquiry, is broader than what we now call "science." What justifies restricting the title of "PhD" to only one particular form of rigorous academic work, one which is unsuitable for many forms of human knowledge?
Their penalties for going over 250 are pretty severe.
Really? AFAIK, the penalty is "we might contact you and ask you to download less." They do threaten to terminate the service of very heavy users after they've been made aware they've been going over the cap (which, frankly, sucks - but they were doing that before they had an official figure for what they are going to consider "excessive use"), but there's no automatic penalty for going over 250GB - the point of the cap is that, if you don't go over 250GB, you can be sure they won't consider you an excessive user.
Right - there's a fairly sophisticated argument that can be put forward as to why it's a good idea to grant people a monopoly on the right to copy a work. The fact that you have to make that sophisticated argument, which only applies in certain times and places, supports the previous poster's claim that copying stuff isn't "intuitively and naturally" immoral. It might still be bad, even immoral, but what makes it bad isn't necessarily immediately obvious.
It is technically illegal for you to rip CDs for which you do not own the rights to do so.
It is legal in the US. Well, it's not absolutely settled, but precedent seems to support the idea that ripping CDs is fair use. From the EFF:
"ripping" an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)
People keep saying this, and it keeps not being true. You do not need a license to make copies of works subject to copyright in the course of non-infringing use. Copying an MP3 from a hard drive to RAM is not something the copyright holder can forbid, thus not something you need a license for.
It's a whole different ballgame when a for-profit company takes music it doesn't own, stores it, and streams it out, even if you are the one who is asking them to do so.
I don't think it is. Generally, if it's legal for you to do something, it's legal for you to employ someone to do it on your behalf. I would be surprised if it would be illegal for me to, say, pay someone to come round to my house and rip my CDs for me. Amazon's system seems to be broadly analogous.
It's only their uploader app that is restricted to Windows/OS X. You can use the web-based uploader from Linux, and the web-based player works fine from Linux too (I assume it uses Flash for the actual MP3 playing, at least on Firefox).
So use the web based interface to the Cloud Drive service, which they link to right under the message about the MP3 uploader only working on Windows/OS X. No need to install their software.
And this claim continues to be fictional. You don't in general, need or get any kind of license from the copyright owners when you buy a CD. You own a physical object, which you can do anything you like with, except where limited by copyright law. You do not need a license from the copyright owner simply to listen to the music, or to make copies which are "fair use." Format shifting (e.g., ripping a CD to your computer) is fair use; whether copying a song to someone else's servers is fair use is less clear.
If you stop and think about it, i++ actually has to return the old value. ++i can destroy that old value and never needs to worry about returning the old value (you can avoid an extra copy). If you're in a high performance loop, either with not much body or with a lot of increments, such things matter.
Note that this only matters with overloaded ++ operators in C++. For the basic types, the compiler will optimize out an unused copy.
Seriously, TeX is a great example of how being a great computer scientist doesn't make you a good programmer. From the concept ("instead of a typesetting program, I'll create a programming language which typesets as a side effect") to the implementation of that concept, TeX is evidence that they had some good weed in the South Bay in the 70s (BibTex, on the other hand, is a tragic illustration of the effects of the crack epidemic in the 1980s).
If your program does not link in any C runtime calls, the executable will contain no "runtime" at all
If the executable doesn't contain the C runtime, it won't work at all, because the runtime contains the function which is the actual entry point, which is traditionally called _start on Unix (I can't remember if it's something different on Windows). This is why if you don't include a "main" function you'll get an error from the linker about an undefined reference - the C runtime refers to the main function in order to call it after it has performed initialization.
Yeah, it's just as well that Christopher Nolan put something at the bottom of the screen saying Christian Bale is an actor, and Batman doesn't actually exist, or he'd be doing hard time for fraud right now.
This isn't astroturfing. Samsung made promotional videos which they showed as promotional videos. It's completely clear that this is Samsung expressing their opinion about their own product, which is advertizing, not astroturf.
Well, for-profit companies "give up" the copyright on work they contribute to open source projects, presumably because they think access to the open-source project is worth more to them than their exclusive control over their code would be. Why wouldn't the same trade-off sometimes be true for patents?
Slashdot Mirror
I did not like the fact that I had to create an icon for the launcher.
Huh? There's no need to create an icon on the launcher. You can run the Terminal by clicking on "Applications" on the launcher, and then choosing "Accessories" from the drop-down, and clicking on "Terminal" in the "Installed" section; not all that unlike the old Gnome, although with a popup full of icons, rather than a menu.
Reading the comments here is weird, I have to say. I've found Unity pretty easy to figure out, but lots of - presumably pretty computer-literate - people on Slashdot completely failing to understand it makes me think it may not be as intuitive as I had thought.
The mouse-only option still fails.
Being able to browse programs in an ordered menu-like structure fails.
Being able to go through lists and find that randomly named program I just installed fails.
All of these work on Unity. The Applications popup from the launcher shows all your applications, which you can browse through, optionally organizing them by category.
Being able to go to a list of all Preference or Administration options fails.
Click on the Power symbol in the top right, select "System settings."
Where is the minimized window icon?
Erm, it's on the "thing that takes a chunk of [your] screen," the dock on the left-hand side of the screen.
Gnome 3 includes the Gnome 2-style panel, and they have no plans to remove it.
Having to type the application name...
You don't have to type the application name with Unity, though. It shows icons for all the installed apps, which you can filter using the same categories as the GNOME 2 menu had. It does require more clicks to find an app than the old menu system did, although frequently used apps will show up immediately on the application screen, so for those it will require fewer clicks.
Why should I care if a business is monetizing me? What harm does it do me if Google, or whoever, collects information about me and uses that to make money?
Canonical may be forcing people to use PCs like they use cellphones
How exactly are Canonical doing this?
if you are not able to bring a rigorous, scientific approach to your work, you shouldn't be called "PhD".
Why on earth not? The degree of Doctor of Philosophy predates the invention of the scientific method, and reflects the fact that "philosophy," in the broad sense of sustained, rigorous, academic inquiry, is broader than what we now call "science." What justifies restricting the title of "PhD" to only one particular form of rigorous academic work, one which is unsuitable for many forms of human knowledge?
Their penalties for going over 250 are pretty severe.
Really? AFAIK, the penalty is "we might contact you and ask you to download less." They do threaten to terminate the service of very heavy users after they've been made aware they've been going over the cap (which, frankly, sucks - but they were doing that before they had an official figure for what they are going to consider "excessive use"), but there's no automatic penalty for going over 250GB - the point of the cap is that, if you don't go over 250GB, you can be sure they won't consider you an excessive user.
The only proper version number is the 40-digit git commit id.
Right - there's a fairly sophisticated argument that can be put forward as to why it's a good idea to grant people a monopoly on the right to copy a work. The fact that you have to make that sophisticated argument, which only applies in certain times and places, supports the previous poster's claim that copying stuff isn't "intuitively and naturally" immoral. It might still be bad, even immoral, but what makes it bad isn't necessarily immediately obvious.
Even el-cheapo feature phones have email, web surfing, and multimedia, though.
It is technically illegal for you to rip CDs for which you do not own the rights to do so.
It is legal in the US. Well, it's not absolutely settled, but precedent seems to support the idea that ripping CDs is fair use. From the EFF:
"ripping" an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)
People keep saying this, and it keeps not being true. You do not need a license to make copies of works subject to copyright in the course of non-infringing use. Copying an MP3 from a hard drive to RAM is not something the copyright holder can forbid, thus not something you need a license for.
It's a whole different ballgame when a for-profit company takes music it doesn't own, stores it, and streams it out, even if you are the one who is asking them to do so.
I don't think it is. Generally, if it's legal for you to do something, it's legal for you to employ someone to do it on your behalf. I would be surprised if it would be illegal for me to, say, pay someone to come round to my house and rip my CDs for me. Amazon's system seems to be broadly analogous.
It's only their uploader app that is restricted to Windows/OS X. You can use the web-based uploader from Linux, and the web-based player works fine from Linux too (I assume it uses Flash for the actual MP3 playing, at least on Firefox).
So use the web based interface to the Cloud Drive service, which they link to right under the message about the MP3 uploader only working on Windows/OS X. No need to install their software.
And this claim continues to be fictional. You don't in general, need or get any kind of license from the copyright owners when you buy a CD. You own a physical object, which you can do anything you like with, except where limited by copyright law. You do not need a license from the copyright owner simply to listen to the music, or to make copies which are "fair use." Format shifting (e.g., ripping a CD to your computer) is fair use; whether copying a song to someone else's servers is fair use is less clear.
If you stop and think about it, i++ actually has to return the old value. ++i can destroy that old value and never needs to worry about returning the old value (you can avoid an extra copy). If you're in a high performance loop, either with not much body or with a lot of increments, such things matter.
Note that this only matters with overloaded ++ operators in C++. For the basic types, the compiler will optimize out an unused copy.
Seriously, TeX is a great example of how being a great computer scientist doesn't make you a good programmer. From the concept ("instead of a typesetting program, I'll create a programming language which typesets as a side effect") to the implementation of that concept, TeX is evidence that they had some good weed in the South Bay in the 70s (BibTex, on the other hand, is a tragic illustration of the effects of the crack epidemic in the 1980s).
If your program does not link in any C runtime calls, the executable will contain no "runtime" at all
If the executable doesn't contain the C runtime, it won't work at all, because the runtime contains the function which is the actual entry point, which is traditionally called _start on Unix (I can't remember if it's something different on Windows). This is why if you don't include a "main" function you'll get an error from the linker about an undefined reference - the C runtime refers to the main function in order to call it after it has performed initialization.
Yeah, it's just as well that Christopher Nolan put something at the bottom of the screen saying Christian Bale is an actor, and Batman doesn't actually exist, or he'd be doing hard time for fraud right now.
This isn't astroturfing. Samsung made promotional videos which they showed as promotional videos. It's completely clear that this is Samsung expressing their opinion about their own product, which is advertizing, not astroturf.
my first thought was how crap the sound quality of the call was.
Right, that's what the parent meant by "Apple quality."
Well, for-profit companies "give up" the copyright on work they contribute to open source projects, presumably because they think access to the open-source project is worth more to them than their exclusive control over their code would be. Why wouldn't the same trade-off sometimes be true for patents?