Yeah, the only problem I have is when I sit down at a laptop with a smaller keyboard and find myself weirdly unable to type. I never learned "real" touch-typing, but I can do it... as long as I'm not thinking about it too hard... it's a muscle memory thing. I have an old IBM M clone keyboard at home, which I love, but I haven't used it much in years, and with modern laptop keyboards, I really don't miss it. Whatever they've done with these chiclet-ish keys, they're really nice to use. The only problem I have with modern laptops is the touch pad; my hands are big and I have to keep the touchpad off because I hit it too often with the heel of my hand.
Yeah, my work laptop is a Dell Precision that they cherried out with 2 SSDs and 20GB of RAM for me, and it's built like a tank. I've had it for over two years and it survived a similar drop in the parking lot with only the most minor of cosmetic damage. The shell is metal, and pretty thick metal at that, and it's got the nicest display of any laptop I've used (1920x1080). Plus, we still use Windows 7. When they eventually do a laptop refresh for us, I'm hoping I can buy it.
My personal laptop is a larger Samsung, with a noticeably faster processor, which is a fine machine, but I prefer the Dell. Both laptops are fairly heavy, but I'm not interested in thinner machines. Just keep making 'em faster, longer-lasting, with more RAM, storage, etc.. I'd prefer that to making them lighter.
Microsoft has been threatening Linux with patents for many years. That they are playing hardball with patents against Google is definitely relevant because they could decide to cripple the Linux world by tying it up with patent lawsuits. Even if every one of them were ruled not in Microsoft's favor, they could throw enough money and lawyers at the problem to cripple or destroy any company they wanted to, except other juggernauts like Google, Apple, Samsung, Sony, etc.
So while the Android patents don't directly affect Open Source, they do show that Micosoft could do tremendous amounts of damage to Open Source should it choose.
It's a good sign that MS appears to be trying to play nice with the Open Source world, and to contribute to it as well, but no one can, nor should, forget about the previous 30 years of Microsoft's behavior. They should be earning some good will for these efforts, but there's a long, long way to go before they should earn the trust of the Open Source world, or to even prove that their intention is more than just to put up a screen of "nice" behavior to cover up their more nefarious, ant-competitive practices.
Perhaps, but the whole point of the Mozilla project was to get back to basics, eliminate the bloat, and make a tool that does one thing well. Well, it was 10+ years ago anyway.
I think it's a very reasonable thing to do in order to discourage behavior that is universally looked upon as bad. Yes, being abusive to software does no harm to the software, but if you can have your chatbot, or whatever you want to classify Cortana as in this scenario, act in a way that does not fuel this behavior (which let's face it would only be done by idiots), without compromising the functionality of the tool, then I support Microsoft's efforts.
Our communication with each other is coarsening at a fast enough rate as it is.
whipslash, you seem earnest about improving/. and interested in listening to what people have to say. I appreciate that, and will overlook your mid-7-digit UID.;-)
Seriously though, I sincerely hope that your tone reflects the desires of the new owners, because/. has been a great resource over the years and something I still check out most days. I understand the need to make money with the site, but it seems you (and by extension the new owners) are interested in preserving/restoring what makes/. great.
Yeah, because Google certainly isn't in the news on a monthly basis for randomly dropping or changing something they've provided and which people like and relied upon for years, for no apparent reason. Google is extremely unreliable in that regard, and even if it is their right to be that way, which it is, the recommendation to not rely on their services for something like RouteBuilder is a good one.
Were you around 20 years ago? Both franchises attract their share of People Who Take It Too Far.
It's both a blessing and a curse that we live in a society where people have the freedom to be so obsessed over a movie, TV show, or video game, etc.
It's obviously a blessing because we have the freedom to do so. Our societies and countries (in much of the world) aren't so oppressive that we are prevented from engaging and sharing in this kind of creative output, and a lot of us are freed from having to spend the majority of our time not starving to death or not being killed by someone else. This is most indeed a blessing I wouldn't want to trade for anything.
The curse, of course, is that some people will trade these cultural ephemera for real life, and equate them with something deep and meaningful, which they generally aren't, not in the grand scheme of Life, the Universe and Everything. If your stated religion is "Jedi", and it's not meant ironically or as a joke, then there is probably something wrong with you.
However, the blessings outweigh the curses in my opinion.
All I can say it, you shouldn't go back and read fairy tales from before the last century. You might gasp yourself to death.
Believe it or not, there was a time when children's fare didn't automatically mean something so sterile and artificial that no self-aware person could take it seriously.
Perhaps this is why the news is full of college students, legal adults by the way, who are whining and pitching a fit because they've been made to feel uncomfortable by mere words and are demanding someone (else) make it stop.
Perhaps this is why we've created a generation of kids who are so used to having everything spoon fed to them and to being led around and handed everything that adolescence routinely extends in the late 20s and beyond, and for many, never truly ends.
Perhaps this is why a majority of the country is trying create and expand a Nanny State to allow them, or anyone else, to be reduced in responsibility and duty, to the level of infants regardless of what they are truly capable of.
Perhaps this is why we are heading for a society in which it's been made impossible to fail, and therefore impossible to also truly succeed.
I'm with you. You have to retain your sense of wonder, which the movies captured perfectly. You can't dismiss them because they were written and designed for kids, and a lot of us first saw them as kids, and with the perspective of kids. You can't approach them with a jaded view based on how Hollywood has evolved in the nearly 40 years since. You can't criticize them for not being good "science fiction" because they aren't, and aren't trying to be. They also aren't "Shakespeare"... but are less removed from the kinds of works the Bard wrote than many snobby elites would acknowledge. They are myths, stories as old and universal as humankind itself. The setting, the technology and spaceships and blasters and light sabers and robots, is not central to what they are, just a medium in which the stories are told in a very visually appealing way.
If approached with the right mindset, and taking them for what they are, Saturday morning serials writ large, they accomplish their goals with great artistry and technical skill. And for similar reasons, this is why the prequels largely failed.
I disagree, and would offer the grandparent poster a drink at my party.
Science fiction is more than a setting. It must contain elements that are extrapolated from the reality we know using scientific principles or ideas based on scientific principles (i.e., "speculative fiction"). "Star Wars" wouldn't fundamentally change if it were set in feudal Japan and called "The Hidden Fortress" and the characters were riding horses and using swords, because the most important elements of the story aren't its specific setting nor anything based on science.
In "Star Wars", the "what" and "how" and "why" of the technology, settings or phenomena aren't important, and generally don't matter at all. This is why "midichlorians" was such a stupid addition: the Force doesn't need to be explained; it's fine the way originally presented. It's magic, and works best in the story if it remains magic.
"Star Wars" is a fantasy in a science fiction setting. Similarly, most modern "SF" films are really just horror films or action films in a science fiction setting. There's nothing wrong with that if they're good movies, and many of them are, but it helps to classify them correctly.
But it wasn't the CGI excess that killed the prequels (although it helped), it was the wooden acting, the horrible dialog, endless scenes of people sitting around talking (but not about stuff that was all that interesting), a political plot that not fleshed out enough to be interesting or really understandable, and the horribly uneven pacing. Short action sequences, long drawn out talky parts, 87 minutes of pod racing without 1 molecule of drama, "Spinning is good; I'll try that.", a love story that made "The Silence of the Lambs" look sweet and well-adjusted, a 115 minute light-saber duel over lava that was worse than watching someone else play a video game because again it wasn't in the same timezone as drama because there was nothing as stake, the end was pre-ordained.
It's not that I object to the idea of the movie having some depth and political intrigue... I can point to Star Trek episodes that are nothing but political intrigue and people sitting around talking that I think are brilliant, but they also have a world that's fleshed out enough that these ideas can be explored in depth. You can't do that in a 4 paragraph crawl at the beginning, and expect people to care.
It's Star Wars: it's space monks vs. evil cyborgs. With spaceships.
Trying to make it about more than that in the format of a movie is a waste of time. The original trilogy didn't and was all the better for it.
Slashdot Mirror
I often end up mapping A: and B: to network drives because... why not, these days?
The Hydraulic Press YouTube channel might take issue with that.
And since the better model only cost $200,000 more, it's cheaper than most MacBook models.
+1 for being one of about 13 people in the world who know the word is "drivel" and not "dribble".
Yeah, the only problem I have is when I sit down at a laptop with a smaller keyboard and find myself weirdly unable to type. I never learned "real" touch-typing, but I can do it... as long as I'm not thinking about it too hard... it's a muscle memory thing. I have an old IBM M clone keyboard at home, which I love, but I haven't used it much in years, and with modern laptop keyboards, I really don't miss it. Whatever they've done with these chiclet-ish keys, they're really nice to use. The only problem I have with modern laptops is the touch pad; my hands are big and I have to keep the touchpad off because I hit it too often with the heel of my hand.
Yeah, my work laptop is a Dell Precision that they cherried out with 2 SSDs and 20GB of RAM for me, and it's built like a tank. I've had it for over two years and it survived a similar drop in the parking lot with only the most minor of cosmetic damage. The shell is metal, and pretty thick metal at that, and it's got the nicest display of any laptop I've used (1920x1080). Plus, we still use Windows 7. When they eventually do a laptop refresh for us, I'm hoping I can buy it.
My personal laptop is a larger Samsung, with a noticeably faster processor, which is a fine machine, but I prefer the Dell. Both laptops are fairly heavy, but I'm not interested in thinner machines. Just keep making 'em faster, longer-lasting, with more RAM, storage, etc.. I'd prefer that to making them lighter.
Microsoft has been threatening Linux with patents for many years. That they are playing hardball with patents against Google is definitely relevant because they could decide to cripple the Linux world by tying it up with patent lawsuits. Even if every one of them were ruled not in Microsoft's favor, they could throw enough money and lawyers at the problem to cripple or destroy any company they wanted to, except other juggernauts like Google, Apple, Samsung, Sony, etc.
So while the Android patents don't directly affect Open Source, they do show that Micosoft could do tremendous amounts of damage to Open Source should it choose.
It's a good sign that MS appears to be trying to play nice with the Open Source world, and to contribute to it as well, but no one can, nor should, forget about the previous 30 years of Microsoft's behavior. They should be earning some good will for these efforts, but there's a long, long way to go before they should earn the trust of the Open Source world, or to even prove that their intention is more than just to put up a screen of "nice" behavior to cover up their more nefarious, ant-competitive practices.
Maybe they should just use GUID's for verison numbers.
That joke is less funny when you realize that's exactly what Git does.
Chrome was the first browser to do rapid releases and version number escalation.
I would recommend PaleMoon. It's Firefox without the churn and without the feature bingo.
Perhaps, but the whole point of the Mozilla project was to get back to basics, eliminate the bloat, and make a tool that does one thing well. Well, it was 10+ years ago anyway.
You need to ask "better for whom".... better for the end user, or better for advertisers?
Better for your customers, of course. They're the ones who pay the bills.
So you're saying advertisers, then... because they _are_ the customers for most software these days.
I think it's a very reasonable thing to do in order to discourage behavior that is universally looked upon as bad. Yes, being abusive to software does no harm to the software, but if you can have your chatbot, or whatever you want to classify Cortana as in this scenario, act in a way that does not fuel this behavior (which let's face it would only be done by idiots), without compromising the functionality of the tool, then I support Microsoft's efforts.
Our communication with each other is coarsening at a fast enough rate as it is.
Hondas have a reputation of being more dependable (and more expensive) than their domestic counterparts.
Yeah, 20 years ago. Now, not so much.
Neither of the two most recent Hondas I've owned lasted nearly as long as they should have. I no longer buy them.
So you're saying it's OK to scam people or lie to them because you can't get a better job, 'cause that's what it sounds like you're saying.
That's pretty close to saying that going on a crime spree is justifiable for the same reason.
whipslash, you seem earnest about improving /. and interested in listening to what people have to say. I appreciate that, and will overlook your mid-7-digit UID. ;-)
Seriously though, I sincerely hope that your tone reflects the desires of the new owners, because /. has been a great resource over the years and something I still check out most days. I understand the need to make money with the site, but it seems you (and by extension the new owners) are interested in preserving/restoring what makes /. great.
Good luck.
2) Firefox labeled them as "sponsored" instead of being honest and labeling them what they are: advertisements.
What do you think sponsored means?
Yeah, that puzzled me too. OP apparently doesn't understand English.
Yeah, I recall when AOL released some anonymized data about 10 years ago, and it was de-anonymized pretty quickly.
Just set all the bits to 1. Ones are heavier than zeroes. It should be enough to counteract the helium.
Yeah, because Google certainly isn't in the news on a monthly basis for randomly dropping or changing something they've provided and which people like and relied upon for years, for no apparent reason. Google is extremely unreliable in that regard, and even if it is their right to be that way, which it is, the recommendation to not rely on their services for something like RouteBuilder is a good one.
I clicked on this to make a comment questioning if KDE 5 has managed to catch up with KDE 3.5, but I was beaten to the punch.
Were you around 20 years ago? Both franchises attract their share of People Who Take It Too Far.
It's both a blessing and a curse that we live in a society where people have the freedom to be so obsessed over a movie, TV show, or video game, etc.
It's obviously a blessing because we have the freedom to do so. Our societies and countries (in much of the world) aren't so oppressive that we are prevented from engaging and sharing in this kind of creative output, and a lot of us are freed from having to spend the majority of our time not starving to death or not being killed by someone else. This is most indeed a blessing I wouldn't want to trade for anything.
The curse, of course, is that some people will trade these cultural ephemera for real life, and equate them with something deep and meaningful, which they generally aren't, not in the grand scheme of Life, the Universe and Everything. If your stated religion is "Jedi", and it's not meant ironically or as a joke, then there is probably something wrong with you.
However, the blessings outweigh the curses in my opinion.
Did you know "Planet of the Apes" was rated "G"?
All I can say it, you shouldn't go back and read fairy tales from before the last century. You might gasp yourself to death.
Believe it or not, there was a time when children's fare didn't automatically mean something so sterile and artificial that no self-aware person could take it seriously.
Perhaps this is why the news is full of college students, legal adults by the way, who are whining and pitching a fit because they've been made to feel uncomfortable by mere words and are demanding someone (else) make it stop.
Perhaps this is why we've created a generation of kids who are so used to having everything spoon fed to them and to being led around and handed everything that adolescence routinely extends in the late 20s and beyond, and for many, never truly ends.
Perhaps this is why a majority of the country is trying create and expand a Nanny State to allow them, or anyone else, to be reduced in responsibility and duty, to the level of infants regardless of what they are truly capable of.
Perhaps this is why we are heading for a society in which it's been made impossible to fail, and therefore impossible to also truly succeed.
I'm with you. You have to retain your sense of wonder, which the movies captured perfectly. You can't dismiss them because they were written and designed for kids, and a lot of us first saw them as kids, and with the perspective of kids. You can't approach them with a jaded view based on how Hollywood has evolved in the nearly 40 years since. You can't criticize them for not being good "science fiction" because they aren't, and aren't trying to be. They also aren't "Shakespeare"... but are less removed from the kinds of works the Bard wrote than many snobby elites would acknowledge. They are myths, stories as old and universal as humankind itself. The setting, the technology and spaceships and blasters and light sabers and robots, is not central to what they are, just a medium in which the stories are told in a very visually appealing way.
If approached with the right mindset, and taking them for what they are, Saturday morning serials writ large, they accomplish their goals with great artistry and technical skill. And for similar reasons, this is why the prequels largely failed.
I disagree, and would offer the grandparent poster a drink at my party.
Science fiction is more than a setting. It must contain elements that are extrapolated from the reality we know using scientific principles or ideas based on scientific principles (i.e., "speculative fiction"). "Star Wars" wouldn't fundamentally change if it were set in feudal Japan and called "The Hidden Fortress" and the characters were riding horses and using swords, because the most important elements of the story aren't its specific setting nor anything based on science.
In "Star Wars", the "what" and "how" and "why" of the technology, settings or phenomena aren't important, and generally don't matter at all. This is why "midichlorians" was such a stupid addition: the Force doesn't need to be explained; it's fine the way originally presented. It's magic, and works best in the story if it remains magic.
"Star Wars" is a fantasy in a science fiction setting. Similarly, most modern "SF" films are really just horror films or action films in a science fiction setting. There's nothing wrong with that if they're good movies, and many of them are, but it helps to classify them correctly.
But it wasn't the CGI excess that killed the prequels (although it helped), it was the wooden acting, the horrible dialog, endless scenes of people sitting around talking (but not about stuff that was all that interesting), a political plot that not fleshed out enough to be interesting or really understandable, and the horribly uneven pacing. Short action sequences, long drawn out talky parts, 87 minutes of pod racing without 1 molecule of drama, "Spinning is good; I'll try that.", a love story that made "The Silence of the Lambs" look sweet and well-adjusted, a 115 minute light-saber duel over lava that was worse than watching someone else play a video game because again it wasn't in the same timezone as drama because there was nothing as stake, the end was pre-ordained.
It's not that I object to the idea of the movie having some depth and political intrigue... I can point to Star Trek episodes that are nothing but political intrigue and people sitting around talking that I think are brilliant, but they also have a world that's fleshed out enough that these ideas can be explored in depth. You can't do that in a 4 paragraph crawl at the beginning, and expect people to care.
It's Star Wars: it's space monks vs. evil cyborgs. With spaceships.
Trying to make it about more than that in the format of a movie is a waste of time. The original trilogy didn't and was all the better for it.