but does the binary have to run or just work if you configure; make; make install again? right the OSS world assumes that software can be recompiled, and most only needs that.
But as long as this attitude prevails, almost no one will release commercial (non-FOSS) software for Linux. The result is that, from an end-user perspective, moving to Linux means abandoning not only Windows or OSX, but nearly all of the software they're used to using. Simultaneously. Which is one of the reasons why almost no ordinary users ever switch to Linux.
You may not like proprietary software, but I don't think it's seriously open to question that Linux would be much more popular if it did support at least some of the top proprietary packages (Photoshop in particular comes to mind here).
This is good news, because a company like Valve might actually have the clout to get AMD and/or nVidia to release good open-source drivers. After all, if it wasn't for the games released by companies like Valve, a heck of a lot fewer PC owners would need/want discrete video cards. And neither AMD nor nVidia wants a popular game to run worse on their card than on their competitors.
Having an ego runs completely counter to being a great developer or engineer, because if you have an ego you're not capable of introspection, you're not capable of noticing your flaws, your weak areas, and improving them. If your devs have an ego then they're never going to be as good as the ones who quietly and happily just self improve.
But if you don't have an ego, you will be paid significantly less than those who do. Studies show that aggressive negotiation is a prerequisite to getting paid well, and this requires a strong ego. In this case as in so many others, technical logic is in direct opposition to the logic of the business world.
The fundamental problem is that if Microsoft "[moves] away from its licensed operating system business model", it is throwing away its primary competitive edge – the whole multi-billion-dollar Windows ecosystem – in favor of other markets where competition is fiercer, profit margins are lower, and (most importantly) Microsoft doesn't have a massive legacy advantage. Businesses pay billions of dollars collectively for licenses to Windows and Office because: (1) they need them to run legacy programs and read legacy documents; (2) all their employees already know how to use them; and (3) everyone *else* is using them, so they need to do the same thing for interoperability. Steve Ballmer doesn't seem to understand these basic facts, so he is undercutting the core business of Microsoft to chase after newer, sexier markets.
Same old jokes and criticisms. Reading these posts, you'd think Java was relegated to driving outhouse fans in Siberia and not the #3 language by popularity in the world.
A lot of these problems could be resolved if the Java installer didn't include the browser plugin. That should be a separate download, or at least it should require the user to affirmatively check a box. At this point, Java in the browser is, for most users, little more than a giant security hole. Virtually no legitimate public websites require it.
Just like with the flash thing, it doesn't matter if YOU ditch it, we need websites to ditch it as well.
What public websites still require Java? I haven't had this crap installed on my home PC in 3 years and I think I may have seen one random personal website that wanted it (and even then it was for menu buttons or some nonsense, nothing essential).
How does this intersect with the principal of jury nullification? Does the Rule 50 motion mean the judge can trump that? It's been my understanding that jury nullification is the last check and balance we the people have against unwanted legislation. Not true if the judge can throw out the jury's verdict anyways.
The judge can overrule a verdict for either side in a civil case, as articulated above. The judge can overrule a guilty verdict in a criminal case for the same reasons. But the judge cannot overrule a not guilty verdict in a criminal case. That would violate the Constitution. So the jury still has the ability to nullify in criminal cases, even though judges generally try to make sure they don't do this.
Apple has a trade dress patent. There are around 10 individual characteristics that make up the image of an iPhone. This includes rounded corners, grid of icons that can be swiped, lower set of icons that are static, edge to edge glass, black or white with chrome borders, etc.
Trade dress is NOT supposed to apply to functional aspects of the product. See this article and this one for more details. Rounding the rectangular corners of a phone or tablet is functional as much as it is aesthetic; consumers generally don't like to be poked with sharp corners, which can easily happen when a square-edged device is placed inside a pocket. Likewise, the "grid of icons that can be swiped" is almost entirely functional, since it was designed as the easiest way to allow a selection from a large number of graphical elements on a small touchscreen. Same with having a lower set of static indicators. Adding all these together basically says that Apple has a trade dress patent on making a smartphone or tablet that is easy and convenient to use. But you aren't supposed to be able to get a trade dress patent on any such thing, only on purely aesthetic elements.
I guess their saving grace is they can weld a real GPU to it, then beat the GPU benchmarks for Intel's welded on GPU.
You may not have noticed, but Intel is fast closing the gap in integrated GPU performance. They are catching up to AMD on the integrated GPU front much faster than AMD is catching up to Intel on the CPU side.
This mileage goal sounds more drastic than it really is. According to Edmonds:
As a result, the new CAFE measurement â" the 54.5-mpg figure that's been in the headlines â" is based on the original, congressional-endorsed test that was mandated in 1975. Meanwhile, the revised, EPA-endorsed fuel economy test is the one reflected in the ratings posted on the window sticker in all new cars and trucks. The EPA rating is also the one used in automotive advertising, most car-buying guides and online car shopping and information sites, including Edmunds.com.
If you go by the official literature, window stickers, real-world experience, and so forth, it's easy to think "they'll never be able to hit an average of 54.5 MPG, that's asking too much." But those aren't the numbers that CAFE relies upon. In 2016, the CAFE standard will nominally require a 35.5 MPG average, but that corresponds to an EPA window-sticker rating of just 27 MPG.
Smaller cars carry less payload and mandating them may backfire if you have to take more trips to compensate.
Not necessarily. The Honda Fit is a small car, but it has tons of cargo capacity if you're willing to temporarily sacrifice the back seat. Some large sedans don't hold as much.
The problems with trial by jury in civil cases go far beyond the specifics of patent law. Patent cases aren't the only ones that rely upon complicated technical and/or legal issues. With criminal trials, we accept that even if juries might not always be as competent as judges, we want them as a safeguard so that the government can't throw people in jail without a representative part of the community saying so. But in civil trials, it's not about the state versus the individual; the issue is whether private party A has to pay money to private party B. Why not have these cases handled by judges, preferably trained in the specific fields at issue? Let's also consider the plight of the jurors: not everyone can easily miss work for long periods of time, and many companies don't pay for jury duty. Again, civic duty might be a plausible justification for doing this for criminal trials, but is it really right to pull private citizens out of their normal lives for months on end to hear a random business dispute between 2 companies?
It's worth pointing out that the jury's role has already been significantly weakened in civil cases. It is not uncommon for judges to order the jury to return a verdict for one particular side in a civil case. (In criminal trials, the judge can order a directed verdict for the defense, but not for the prosecution.) It's also not uncommon for a jury's decision to simply be overridden on the spot by the judge. And even if it survives that, almost all big judgments are modified on appeal. The jury isn't sovereign in deciding civil cases, so what purpose does it serve other than as another stumbling block where things can go wrong?
The US is about the only First World country that has trial by jury in civil cases. There's a reason for this. No one would come up with a system like this today; why should we stick with it just because the Founding Fathers thought it was a good idea 220 years ago?
Having one programmer think while the other types seems like a very inefficient use of resources. You're basically paying a programmer to act as a data-entry clerk. In that case, wouldn't it make more sense to pair a programmer with a secretary?
Most consumers want little portable devices and media consumption displays, not general purpose computers.
No, most consumers already have general purpose computers, use them for those occasional situations where their portable media consumption devices don't cut it, and don't see the need to upgrade hardware that is already working fine for them. You couldn't reasonably use a 2000-vintage computer in 2006, but you can easily use a 2006-vintage Core2 Duo or Athlon 64 X2 system today if your needs aren't too demanding. You can even run the same OS (Windows XP) until 2014 with no problems, and many people still are.
Desktop and laptop PCs are a commodity. Deal with it. If you don't want to be in that market, get out; there are others who will remain as long as the demand is there. You can't expect Apple-sized profit margins when you're selling a commodity product. You can eke out a bit on each unit and hope to make it up in volume, or focus on selling good service contracts to businesses. But you're not going to "reinvent" the market.
Huge amount of banking and intranet sites in the office not only require it but require a specific version like 9 year old 1.4.2. No not 1.4.1, nor 1.4.3 but just 1.4.2 with 10 exploits. Kronos, bank of america, and others. The same financial institutions that dont require java for us do require ancient IE and old java for corporate functions. These desktops get infected constantly over and over.
In that case, the appropriate solution is to run these tasks from virtual machines, which are then wiped back to their original state at the end of each session. And to complain to the idiots who run these pages and clearly don't know the first thing about IT security.
If Ellison doesn't see a way to monetize Java environment, why not sell it? Have an auction, put it on Ebay.
It's about the patents. That's why Ellison bought Sun. Java for end-user computing doesn't even factor in at all. He wants to be able to patent troll Android (in large part because of his personal friendship with Steve Jobs).
There is no good reason to have Java installed in your primary browser. The only reason why it's everywhere is that it often comes preinstalled for no good reason, and (even worse) the installer shoves its way into all your browsers, for even less reason. If there are specific business sites using Java that you must access, then use IE with Java exclusively for those, and Firefox or Chrome for normal browsing. Using Java on the open web is just asking to get 0wned.
You don't see Apple suing Amazon over the Kindle Fire, or Nokia over the Lumia.
Not *yet*. The worrisome possibility is that they decided to go against Samsung because they saw it as the case they could most easily make, then plan to use those precedents to attack all other Android devices. Steve Jobs is on record as saying that he wanted Android destroyed totally.
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but does the binary have to run or just work if you configure; make; make install again? right the OSS world assumes that software can be recompiled, and most only needs that.
But as long as this attitude prevails, almost no one will release commercial (non-FOSS) software for Linux. The result is that, from an end-user perspective, moving to Linux means abandoning not only Windows or OSX, but nearly all of the software they're used to using. Simultaneously. Which is one of the reasons why almost no ordinary users ever switch to Linux.
You may not like proprietary software, but I don't think it's seriously open to question that Linux would be much more popular if it did support at least some of the top proprietary packages (Photoshop in particular comes to mind here).
Except according to actual WP7 owners, the 7.8 solution is fine
All three of them?
This is good news, because a company like Valve might actually have the clout to get AMD and/or nVidia to release good open-source drivers. After all, if it wasn't for the games released by companies like Valve, a heck of a lot fewer PC owners would need/want discrete video cards. And neither AMD nor nVidia wants a popular game to run worse on their card than on their competitors.
Having an ego runs completely counter to being a great developer or engineer, because if you have an ego you're not capable of introspection, you're not capable of noticing your flaws, your weak areas, and improving them. If your devs have an ego then they're never going to be as good as the ones who quietly and happily just self improve.
But if you don't have an ego, you will be paid significantly less than those who do. Studies show that aggressive negotiation is a prerequisite to getting paid well, and this requires a strong ego. In this case as in so many others, technical logic is in direct opposition to the logic of the business world.
The fundamental problem is that if Microsoft "[moves] away from its licensed operating system business model", it is throwing away its primary competitive edge – the whole multi-billion-dollar Windows ecosystem – in favor of other markets where competition is fiercer, profit margins are lower, and (most importantly) Microsoft doesn't have a massive legacy advantage. Businesses pay billions of dollars collectively for licenses to Windows and Office because: (1) they need them to run legacy programs and read legacy documents; (2) all their employees already know how to use them; and (3) everyone *else* is using them, so they need to do the same thing for interoperability. Steve Ballmer doesn't seem to understand these basic facts, so he is undercutting the core business of Microsoft to chase after newer, sexier markets.
Same old jokes and criticisms. Reading these posts, you'd think Java was relegated to driving outhouse fans in Siberia and not the #3 language by popularity in the world.
A lot of these problems could be resolved if the Java installer didn't include the browser plugin. That should be a separate download, or at least it should require the user to affirmatively check a box. At this point, Java in the browser is, for most users, little more than a giant security hole. Virtually no legitimate public websites require it.
Just like with the flash thing, it doesn't matter if YOU ditch it, we need websites to ditch it as well.
What public websites still require Java? I haven't had this crap installed on my home PC in 3 years and I think I may have seen one random personal website that wanted it (and even then it was for menu buttons or some nonsense, nothing essential).
How does this intersect with the principal of jury nullification? Does the Rule 50 motion mean the judge can trump that? It's been my understanding that jury nullification is the last check and balance we the people have against unwanted legislation. Not true if the judge can throw out the jury's verdict anyways.
The judge can overrule a verdict for either side in a civil case, as articulated above. The judge can overrule a guilty verdict in a criminal case for the same reasons. But the judge cannot overrule a not guilty verdict in a criminal case. That would violate the Constitution. So the jury still has the ability to nullify in criminal cases, even though judges generally try to make sure they don't do this.
Microsoft managed to create a smartphone that does not look and feel and operate like an iPhone.
And no one wants to use it because it's crap.
Apple has a trade dress patent. There are around 10 individual characteristics that make up the image of an iPhone. This includes rounded corners, grid of icons that can be swiped, lower set of icons that are static, edge to edge glass, black or white with chrome borders, etc.
Trade dress is NOT supposed to apply to functional aspects of the product. See this article and this one for more details. Rounding the rectangular corners of a phone or tablet is functional as much as it is aesthetic; consumers generally don't like to be poked with sharp corners, which can easily happen when a square-edged device is placed inside a pocket. Likewise, the "grid of icons that can be swiped" is almost entirely functional, since it was designed as the easiest way to allow a selection from a large number of graphical elements on a small touchscreen. Same with having a lower set of static indicators. Adding all these together basically says that Apple has a trade dress patent on making a smartphone or tablet that is easy and convenient to use. But you aren't supposed to be able to get a trade dress patent on any such thing, only on purely aesthetic elements.
I guess their saving grace is they can weld a real GPU to it, then beat the GPU benchmarks for Intel's welded on GPU.
You may not have noticed, but Intel is fast closing the gap in integrated GPU performance. They are catching up to AMD on the integrated GPU front much faster than AMD is catching up to Intel on the CPU side.
This mileage goal sounds more drastic than it really is. According to Edmonds:
If you go by the official literature, window stickers, real-world experience, and so forth, it's easy to think "they'll never be able to hit an average of 54.5 MPG, that's asking too much." But those aren't the numbers that CAFE relies upon. In 2016, the CAFE standard will nominally require a 35.5 MPG average, but that corresponds to an EPA window-sticker rating of just 27 MPG.
Some families are larger than others and need a vehicle that can hold several people.
If that was the primary motivation, then you'd see more minivans and fewer SUVs and pickup trucks.
Because the easiest way to improve gas mileage is to reduce the weight of the vehicle, meaning less steel protecting you in an accident.
Apparently you haven't heard of crumple zones. Or airbags.
Smaller cars carry less payload and mandating them may backfire if you have to take more trips to compensate.
Not necessarily. The Honda Fit is a small car, but it has tons of cargo capacity if you're willing to temporarily sacrifice the back seat. Some large sedans don't hold as much.
And you probably overbought on your computer purchase. What's your point?
Overbuying on a computer purchase doesn't have anywhere near the negative externalities that unnecessarily buying a giant pickup or SUV does.
The problems with trial by jury in civil cases go far beyond the specifics of patent law. Patent cases aren't the only ones that rely upon complicated technical and/or legal issues. With criminal trials, we accept that even if juries might not always be as competent as judges, we want them as a safeguard so that the government can't throw people in jail without a representative part of the community saying so. But in civil trials, it's not about the state versus the individual; the issue is whether private party A has to pay money to private party B. Why not have these cases handled by judges, preferably trained in the specific fields at issue? Let's also consider the plight of the jurors: not everyone can easily miss work for long periods of time, and many companies don't pay for jury duty. Again, civic duty might be a plausible justification for doing this for criminal trials, but is it really right to pull private citizens out of their normal lives for months on end to hear a random business dispute between 2 companies?
It's worth pointing out that the jury's role has already been significantly weakened in civil cases. It is not uncommon for judges to order the jury to return a verdict for one particular side in a civil case. (In criminal trials, the judge can order a directed verdict for the defense, but not for the prosecution.) It's also not uncommon for a jury's decision to simply be overridden on the spot by the judge. And even if it survives that, almost all big judgments are modified on appeal. The jury isn't sovereign in deciding civil cases, so what purpose does it serve other than as another stumbling block where things can go wrong?
The US is about the only First World country that has trial by jury in civil cases. There's a reason for this. No one would come up with a system like this today; why should we stick with it just because the Founding Fathers thought it was a good idea 220 years ago?
Yes, we all know what the Constitution says, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is good policy. We've amended it before.
Having one programmer think while the other types seems like a very inefficient use of resources. You're basically paying a programmer to act as a data-entry clerk. In that case, wouldn't it make more sense to pair a programmer with a secretary?
Most consumers want little portable devices and media consumption displays, not general purpose computers.
No, most consumers already have general purpose computers, use them for those occasional situations where their portable media consumption devices don't cut it, and don't see the need to upgrade hardware that is already working fine for them. You couldn't reasonably use a 2000-vintage computer in 2006, but you can easily use a 2006-vintage Core2 Duo or Athlon 64 X2 system today if your needs aren't too demanding. You can even run the same OS (Windows XP) until 2014 with no problems, and many people still are.
Desktop and laptop PCs are a commodity. Deal with it. If you don't want to be in that market, get out; there are others who will remain as long as the demand is there. You can't expect Apple-sized profit margins when you're selling a commodity product. You can eke out a bit on each unit and hope to make it up in volume, or focus on selling good service contracts to businesses. But you're not going to "reinvent" the market.
Huge amount of banking and intranet sites in the office not only require it but require a specific version like 9 year old 1.4.2. No not 1.4.1, nor 1.4.3 but just 1.4.2 with 10 exploits. Kronos, bank of america, and others. The same financial institutions that dont require java for us do require ancient IE and old java for corporate functions. These desktops get infected constantly over and over.
In that case, the appropriate solution is to run these tasks from virtual machines, which are then wiped back to their original state at the end of each session. And to complain to the idiots who run these pages and clearly don't know the first thing about IT security.
If Ellison doesn't see a way to monetize Java environment, why not sell it? Have an auction, put it on Ebay.
It's about the patents. That's why Ellison bought Sun. Java for end-user computing doesn't even factor in at all. He wants to be able to patent troll Android (in large part because of his personal friendship with Steve Jobs).
There is no good reason to have Java installed in your primary browser. The only reason why it's everywhere is that it often comes preinstalled for no good reason, and (even worse) the installer shoves its way into all your browsers, for even less reason. If there are specific business sites using Java that you must access, then use IE with Java exclusively for those, and Firefox or Chrome for normal browsing. Using Java on the open web is just asking to get 0wned.
You don't see Apple suing Amazon over the Kindle Fire, or Nokia over the Lumia.
Not *yet*. The worrisome possibility is that they decided to go against Samsung because they saw it as the case they could most easily make, then plan to use those precedents to attack all other Android devices. Steve Jobs is on record as saying that he wanted Android destroyed totally.