To me, it's not about number of screens, but the total amount of available screen space (both pixels and inches).
I regularly use one large screen (26" widescreen) for most of my work. I find this screen large enough to do side-by-side work when necessary. If I needed to have 3 items open at once (code/documentation/google search?), I would probably find it easier if I had more space than I do.
That said, when I'm really in the groove, I don't want anything but what I'm working on visible on my main screen. If I need a reference document open to glance at once in a while, I do find it better to have it on a separate screen, where it doesn't interfere with my concentration, but still lets me see both at once if I need to.
The head of the FCC has just said, "We know this merger could be bad for consumers in several ways. Here are the ways: 'A, B, C'. However, I'd like to let the merger go through, if Comcast just promises not to do those bad things."
Genius. Trust a business to put the interests of the people ahead of their profit. Sounds like a brilliant plan.
Even if the promise is backed by punishment if they break it, it's still a terrible idea, and there's no way they can cover every bad thing Comcast could do in the promise.
In other news, an experiment by SourceForge, using it's meatspace zombienet "Slashdot" proved that even Google-owned YouTube can be brought to it's knees by enough people trying to watch the same video at the same time.
Actually like the parent I am a bit confused, too. I roughly associate entropy with disorder. So I'd expect that black holes destroy entropy. They suck stuff in and destroy it totally or at least homogenize it totally -> less disorder. Like you have a very messy room. When you take out everything and throw it in a garbage bin, the room is empty and clean -> less entropy.
Question is, where is the flaw in this view?
IANAP(hysicist), but here's my thought:
The problem with this view is twofold, one is that of using "is a similar concept to" as if it were a mathematical "=". Entropy is similar to disorder and one type of disorder might be a messy room. This does not mean that a messy room has a higher entropy than a clean room.
The second is thinking that homogeny is the opposite of entropy, when, in fact, it is the ultimate form of entropy. If every single atom in the universe were the same (and stable, such as a Noble gas), then it would be very difficult to make anything happen. No useful energy is available. OTOH, if you have lots of different kinds of atoms, you can mix some of them together to make new things or generate different forms of energy (such as heat, light, or kinetic energy).
To get back to the messy room analogy--if everything in your room were thrown into a giant blender, and made into a sea of sand, it would have reached maximum entropy. However, in the messy room, there might be just as much potential energy as the clean room, possibly even more. Therefore is difficult to distinguish which has greater entropy.
And, finally, to get back to black holes: Assuming that Hawking Radiation really exists and functions as speculated, black holes take useful energy (light & matter) and turn it into less useful energy (hawking radiation), thus increasing entropy.
As I said, IANAP, so if someone wants to correct me, feel free, but please explain why, so that I can learn something.
Even if Oracle knew they would be fined $10,000 it was probably still well worth the cost of the fine + the cost of the ad. Not to mention that receiving the fine has gotten them the front page of Slashdot and probably lots of other tech sites as well.
TFA is talking about using an existing network of 1100 GPS receivers currently tracking plate tectonics to also track snowfall, without any additional equipment and without interfering with their current operation.
This not about using your Garmin to find out how much snow is in your front yard.
Just in case anyone else read the MIT article about how one of these things works, and noticed that they said "these things are nowhere near ready yet"... it's from 2006!
I think this tech is very cool, especially for people who don't have other options. I think that putting it to use in people who would have died otherwise will give us the data we need to know whether this is a better solution for everyone who needs a heart. It has the potential, eventually, to alleviate the need for transplants.
Neither is this a matter of illegal search and seizure, as the movements of a car can be tracked directly by having a car follow it everywhere. The tracking device does nothing more than make this an automated task.
You're wrong. If the cops are following someone's car--on suspician, no one is in imminent danger and they are not aware of a specific crime having been committed--and then the car goes onto private property (say, a large estate with miles of road on it), the police can't keep following the vehicle without either a warrant or probable cause. If they put a GPS tag on the vehicle, they can track it wherever it goes, public or private. This constitutes an illegal invasion of private property.
Suppose that Lockheed becomes successful in selling their flying camera drones (these things are relatively small) to police departments. Do you want the police flying a camera around your property without your permission? How about inside your home?
Allowing GPS tracking without warrant or probably cause is the first step to allowing the police to monitor everything every person does at all times.
It's possible to stay secure if the encryption keys are re-distributed regularly. While it would be possible to hack, it would require regular scanning to isolate updated keys; Then, of course, the encryption routines themselves can be regularly updated. Hacked or not, it would make it extremely difficult. Remember, there's no such thing as perfect security, only perfect deterrents.
I think the GP's idea was that once you hack any given program, you can post it as a torrent or whatever, and that program is "in the wild" at that point. I don't think they're trying to stop people from "stealing" the broadcast, but from redistributing it afterward.
What TFS leaves out is that the reason "medical devices" cost so much is FDA regulations and the higher standards to which they are held. There is no possible way an iPhone could be certified as a "medical device". If Apple were to apply for certification, they would need to make a lot of changes, such as...wait for it...eliminating the ability to run 3rd party code.
This can't possibly be true. There are already "medical devices" that are just small x86 computers running WinCE (or even full Windows) and a proprietary app.
No special lockdown, just no obvious way to run another app (if you don't know where to look or what to do).
Since these devices qualify, we can infer that the most that's required is hiding the ability to run other apps, not disabling it.
At first I thought this was BS... the way they're describing this patent (in the articles about it) makes it sound like i4i's patent basically applies to any markup language (XML, SGML, HTML, etc). It does not. What they have a patent on is using a map to locate the tags, so that tags don't interfere with document content. If MS is doing this, it isn't part of standard XML, AFAIK.
Let me say it again: This patent isn't about XML, SGML, CSS, etc. It's pretty specific, and, if Microsoft is actually violating it, it's because of what they're doing differently, not because they're using XML.
All that said, IANAL, so there may well be something important I missed.
And putting all Apple apps back onto the desktop and at the top level of the Windows start menu every time you upgrade, irrespective of where you'd tidied the previous version up to.
I can agree with GP and GGP complaint v. Apple, but this one here, that applies to like 90% of applications. They check the default locations for the icons, if not found, it puts them there. Does that behavior suck?--Yes it does, but it's nowhere near an "Apple" problem. It's universal.
I think the OP's point is like XP was Windows nt5.1 to Windows 2k's nt5.0 (hint, just an update) and that Windows7 is just an update to Windows Vista, that ME was just an update to Windows 98 osr2.5.
You've got your Windows 9x's confused. Win 95 had an "OSR 2.5" (4.00.950C), Win 98 had "SE" (4.10.2222A).
What are you watching on Hulu? Everything I have watched has 3 breaks per "half hour(=22min)" show and more than that per "hour(=45min)" show.
P.S. What you are asking for is exactly what the networks don't want, because they think everyone will cancel cable if they can do that. Reality is that most people will be cancelling cable anyway, unless the prices come way down.
The networks are scared to death that everyone is going to ditch cable and satellite and just watch Hulu/Youtube/etc if you can buy a simple box (like a DVD player) and just hook it up to your TV.
It's a darn shame, because if they would wake up and figure out how to make a quality service that still earns a profit, and transition to that model, we could all win.
The reality is that more and more people are going to ditch cable/satellite over the next decade or so, and stopping people from selling a "Hulu Box" won't change that. It may delay it a little, but it won't actually stop it.
I don't mind watching ads in my TV shows, as long as they don't get too crazy with the ratio of ads:content. I'm sure there are LOTS of other people out there who feel that way as well. Oh, and I ditched cable quite a while ago.
The networks that embrace the future instead of having to be dragged into it kicking and screaming will be the ones with the largest mindshare 10 years from now.
Do you think Bill Gates cares about Windows people?
-1 Out of Touch (to both of you) for saying Bill Gates instead of Steve Ballmer.
Not only is Gates no longer the top exec at Microsoft, he is also one of the greatest philanthropists in the world, so I am inclined to think that he does, in fact, care about both Windows and Mac users. And even us Linux/BSD/Solaris geeks as well.
Feel free to continue to bash Ballmer and/or Microsoft as much you please, but Billy is no longer really a part of that picture.
In any case, the Hulu web experience is pretty good, and runs fine full-screen...
You must watch a different Hulu than I do.
I'm searching for alternatives, becaues Hulu will randomly stop streaming after 1 or more hours of working fine. And no, it's not my FiOS internet connection. Both Joost and Netflix (when I had a subscription) streamed absolutely fine, but the GD Hulu player hangs the connection. I then have to load a different page of the Hulu site, go back to the video, and skip forward to where I was.
I wouldn't consider this a problem at all, except that watching 3 ads in a 20 minute program already takes up enough of my time.
I'm not interested in piracy. Does anyone have any other legal, licensed for viewing in the US TV streaming sites?
Not sure where you got the impression that a.0 version is a final "please use this for your mission critical work". That has never been true and nobody every claimed it to be the case. Remember Windows 3.0 ? I don't. I do remember 3.1
Unless you use a special versioning system (like the Linux kernel), any release that isn't marked "Beta" or "Release candidate" should be ready for prime-time... unless the first number is a 0 (i.e. version 0.6.5 is understood to be "Beta" or "unstable"). OTOH, 2.0.0 should be ready for regular use, unless it's 2.0.0 BETA or 2.0.0 RC1.
I agree with the GP, labeling a release 2.0.0 (without saying "Beta" or "RC") and then saying it's not ready for daily use by end users is kind of stupid.
You give Win 3.0 as an example... OK, Win 3.0 wasn't around much, but what DOS versions do you remember? I mostly remember 5.0 and 6.0. How about Firefox, IE, Opera, and Safari? Sure, they had "minor" versions, but Firefox 2.0.0 and 3.0.0 were both considered "ready for use", likewise with IE 6.0, 7.0, 8.0. Opera 9.0, etc. A.0 release DOES NOT signify a "BETA", it signifies a milestone. If it isn't ready for public consumption, it should be market beta, release candidate, testing, or unstable.
Replying to myself as I went searching after noticing that article claims that the KDE team has a windows installer that includes KOffice. It would be nice if the KOffice site mentioned this.
Even on the KDE site, it looks like they are pretty far from making this into something that's truly cross-platform. All Windows versions are considered "unstable" and very little work is being done on a Mac version.
Good luck to them in their efforts.
If they really want to take off, they NEED to focus on a good working Windows version, because on the desktop, getting 1% of the Windows market is better than getting 50% of the linux market.
Don't bother saying anything about KOffice or any other Office product becoming popular until it can be installed on Windows with a setup.exe or an MSI.
Most of us here love Linux and/or BSD, but no office suite is going anywhere without a fully functional, easy to use Windows version.
With UTC timestamps, two files written simultaneously in Germany and Canada would have the same timestamp. In Windows, without UTC timestamps, they would have two completely different timestamps, because they would (most likely) use local time.
If you want a more informed source, try Wikipedia:
Slashdot Mirror
To me, it's not about number of screens, but the total amount of available screen space (both pixels and inches).
I regularly use one large screen (26" widescreen) for most of my work. I find this screen large enough to do side-by-side work when necessary. If I needed to have 3 items open at once (code/documentation/google search?), I would probably find it easier if I had more space than I do.
That said, when I'm really in the groove, I don't want anything but what I'm working on visible on my main screen. If I need a reference document open to glance at once in a while, I do find it better to have it on a separate screen, where it doesn't interfere with my concentration, but still lets me see both at once if I need to.
So let me get this straight.
The head of the FCC has just said, "We know this merger could be bad for consumers in several ways. Here are the ways: 'A, B, C'. However, I'd like to let the merger go through, if Comcast just promises not to do those bad things."
Genius. Trust a business to put the interests of the people ahead of their profit. Sounds like a brilliant plan.
Even if the promise is backed by punishment if they break it, it's still a terrible idea, and there's no way they can cover every bad thing Comcast could do in the promise.
Dont get me started on the Japanese chess game Go.
I don't know if your post was supposed to be either sarcastic or funny, but Go is neither Japanese nor chess.
It's Chinese, and it's older than chess.
The game commonly referred to as "Japanese chess" is Shogi.
In other news, an experiment by SourceForge, using it's meatspace zombienet "Slashdot" proved that even Google-owned YouTube can be brought to it's knees by enough people trying to watch the same video at the same time.
Is it just me, or do the video and article both CLEARLY state that it's rat brain cells, not human brain cells?
Actually like the parent I am a bit confused, too. I roughly associate entropy with disorder. So I'd expect that black holes destroy entropy. They suck stuff in and destroy it totally or at least homogenize it totally -> less disorder. Like you have a very messy room. When you take out everything and throw it in a garbage bin, the room is empty and clean -> less entropy.
Question is, where is the flaw in this view?
IANAP(hysicist), but here's my thought:
The problem with this view is twofold, one is that of using "is a similar concept to" as if it were a mathematical "=". Entropy is similar to disorder and one type of disorder might be a messy room. This does not mean that a messy room has a higher entropy than a clean room.
The second is thinking that homogeny is the opposite of entropy, when, in fact, it is the ultimate form of entropy. If every single atom in the universe were the same (and stable, such as a Noble gas), then it would be very difficult to make anything happen. No useful energy is available. OTOH, if you have lots of different kinds of atoms, you can mix some of them together to make new things or generate different forms of energy (such as heat, light, or kinetic energy).
To get back to the messy room analogy--if everything in your room were thrown into a giant blender, and made into a sea of sand, it would have reached maximum entropy. However, in the messy room, there might be just as much potential energy as the clean room, possibly even more. Therefore is difficult to distinguish which has greater entropy.
And, finally, to get back to black holes: Assuming that Hawking Radiation really exists and functions as speculated, black holes take useful energy (light & matter) and turn it into less useful energy (hawking radiation), thus increasing entropy.
As I said, IANAP, so if someone wants to correct me, feel free, but please explain why, so that I can learn something.
Even if Oracle knew they would be fined $10,000 it was probably still well worth the cost of the fine + the cost of the ad. Not to mention that receiving the fine has gotten them the front page of Slashdot and probably lots of other tech sites as well.
Value for money, 10 Grand was a steal.
TFA is talking about using an existing network of 1100 GPS receivers currently tracking plate tectonics to also track snowfall, without any additional equipment and without interfering with their current operation.
This not about using your Garmin to find out how much snow is in your front yard.
Just in case anyone else read the MIT article about how one of these things works, and noticed that they said "these things are nowhere near ready yet"... it's from 2006!
I think this tech is very cool, especially for people who don't have other options. I think that putting it to use in people who would have died otherwise will give us the data we need to know whether this is a better solution for everyone who needs a heart. It has the potential, eventually, to alleviate the need for transplants.
Neither is this a matter of illegal search and seizure, as the movements of a car can be tracked directly by having a car follow it everywhere. The tracking device does nothing more than make this an automated task.
You're wrong. If the cops are following someone's car--on suspician, no one is in imminent danger and they are not aware of a specific crime having been committed--and then the car goes onto private property (say, a large estate with miles of road on it), the police can't keep following the vehicle without either a warrant or probable cause. If they put a GPS tag on the vehicle, they can track it wherever it goes, public or private. This constitutes an illegal invasion of private property.
Suppose that Lockheed becomes successful in selling their flying camera drones (these things are relatively small) to police departments. Do you want the police flying a camera around your property without your permission? How about inside your home?
Allowing GPS tracking without warrant or probably cause is the first step to allowing the police to monitor everything every person does at all times.
It's possible to stay secure if the encryption keys are re-distributed regularly. While it would be possible to hack, it would require regular scanning to isolate updated keys; Then, of course, the encryption routines themselves can be regularly updated. Hacked or not, it would make it extremely difficult. Remember, there's no such thing as perfect security, only perfect deterrents.
I think the GP's idea was that once you hack any given program, you can post it as a torrent or whatever, and that program is "in the wild" at that point. I don't think they're trying to stop people from "stealing" the broadcast, but from redistributing it afterward.
What TFS leaves out is that the reason "medical devices" cost so much is FDA regulations and the higher standards to which they are held. There is no possible way an iPhone could be certified as a "medical device". If Apple were to apply for certification, they would need to make a lot of changes, such as...wait for it...eliminating the ability to run 3rd party code.
This can't possibly be true. There are already "medical devices" that are just small x86 computers running WinCE (or even full Windows) and a proprietary app.
No special lockdown, just no obvious way to run another app (if you don't know where to look or what to do).
Since these devices qualify, we can infer that the most that's required is hiding the ability to run other apps, not disabling it.
At first I thought this was BS... the way they're describing this patent (in the articles about it) makes it sound like i4i's patent basically applies to any markup language (XML, SGML, HTML, etc). It does not. What they have a patent on is using a map to locate the tags, so that tags don't interfere with document content. If MS is doing this, it isn't part of standard XML, AFAIK.
Let me say it again: This patent isn't about XML, SGML, CSS, etc. It's pretty specific, and, if Microsoft is actually violating it, it's because of what they're doing differently, not because they're using XML.
All that said, IANAL, so there may well be something important I missed.
And putting all Apple apps back onto the desktop and at the top level of the Windows start menu every time you upgrade, irrespective of where you'd tidied the previous version up to.
I can agree with GP and GGP complaint v. Apple, but this one here, that applies to like 90% of applications. They check the default locations for the icons, if not found, it puts them there. Does that behavior suck?--Yes it does, but it's nowhere near an "Apple" problem. It's universal.
Just get her a small cheap phone and teach her how to use it. If she gets lost due to the school or her own demise, she can call and say where she is.
Wow, which carriers have coverage in Purgatory?
I think the OP's point is like XP was Windows nt5.1 to Windows 2k's nt5.0 (hint, just an update) and that Windows7 is just an update to Windows Vista, that ME was just an update to Windows 98 osr2.5.
You've got your Windows 9x's confused. Win 95 had an "OSR 2.5" (4.00.950C), Win 98 had "SE" (4.10.2222A).
What are you watching on Hulu? Everything I have watched has 3 breaks per "half hour(=22min)" show and more than that per "hour(=45min)" show.
P.S. What you are asking for is exactly what the networks don't want, because they think everyone will cancel cable if they can do that. Reality is that most people will be cancelling cable anyway, unless the prices come way down.
The networks are scared to death that everyone is going to ditch cable and satellite and just watch Hulu/Youtube/etc if you can buy a simple box (like a DVD player) and just hook it up to your TV.
It's a darn shame, because if they would wake up and figure out how to make a quality service that still earns a profit, and transition to that model, we could all win.
The reality is that more and more people are going to ditch cable/satellite over the next decade or so, and stopping people from selling a "Hulu Box" won't change that. It may delay it a little, but it won't actually stop it.
I don't mind watching ads in my TV shows, as long as they don't get too crazy with the ratio of ads:content. I'm sure there are LOTS of other people out there who feel that way as well. Oh, and I ditched cable quite a while ago.
The networks that embrace the future instead of having to be dragged into it kicking and screaming will be the ones with the largest mindshare 10 years from now.
Do you think Bill Gates cares about Windows people?
-1 Out of Touch (to both of you) for saying Bill Gates instead of Steve Ballmer.
Not only is Gates no longer the top exec at Microsoft, he is also one of the greatest philanthropists in the world, so I am inclined to think that he does, in fact, care about both Windows and Mac users. And even us Linux/BSD/Solaris geeks as well.
Feel free to continue to bash Ballmer and/or Microsoft as much you please, but Billy is no longer really a part of that picture.
In any case, the Hulu web experience is pretty good, and runs fine full-screen...
You must watch a different Hulu than I do.
I'm searching for alternatives, becaues Hulu will randomly stop streaming after 1 or more hours of working fine. And no, it's not my FiOS internet connection. Both Joost and Netflix (when I had a subscription) streamed absolutely fine, but the GD Hulu player hangs the connection. I then have to load a different page of the Hulu site, go back to the video, and skip forward to where I was.
I wouldn't consider this a problem at all, except that watching 3 ads in a 20 minute program already takes up enough of my time.
I'm not interested in piracy. Does anyone have any other legal, licensed for viewing in the US TV streaming sites?
IE was never "ready for use"
Ok, you win that one.
Not sure where you got the impression that a .0 version is a final "please use this for your mission critical work". That has never been true and nobody every claimed it to be the case. Remember Windows 3.0 ? I don't. I do remember 3.1
Unless you use a special versioning system (like the Linux kernel), any release that isn't marked "Beta" or "Release candidate" should be ready for prime-time... unless the first number is a 0 (i.e. version 0.6.5 is understood to be "Beta" or "unstable"). OTOH, 2.0.0 should be ready for regular use, unless it's 2.0.0 BETA or 2.0.0 RC1.
I agree with the GP, labeling a release 2.0.0 (without saying "Beta" or "RC") and then saying it's not ready for daily use by end users is kind of stupid.
You give Win 3.0 as an example... OK, Win 3.0 wasn't around much, but what DOS versions do you remember? I mostly remember 5.0 and 6.0. How about Firefox, IE, Opera, and Safari? Sure, they had "minor" versions, but Firefox 2.0.0 and 3.0.0 were both considered "ready for use", likewise with IE 6.0, 7.0, 8.0. Opera 9.0, etc. A .0 release DOES NOT signify a "BETA", it signifies a milestone. If it isn't ready for public consumption, it should be market beta, release candidate, testing, or unstable.
Replying to myself as I went searching after noticing that article claims that the KDE team has a windows installer that includes KOffice. It would be nice if the KOffice site mentioned this.
Even on the KDE site, it looks like they are pretty far from making this into something that's truly cross-platform. All Windows versions are considered "unstable" and very little work is being done on a Mac version.
Good luck to them in their efforts.
If they really want to take off, they NEED to focus on a good working Windows version, because on the desktop, getting 1% of the Windows market is better than getting 50% of the linux market.
Don't bother saying anything about KOffice or any other Office product becoming popular until it can be installed on Windows with a setup.exe or an MSI.
Most of us here love Linux and/or BSD, but no office suite is going anywhere without a fully functional, easy to use Windows version.
UTC is a time format, and specifies GMT.
With UTC timestamps, two files written simultaneously in Germany and Canada would have the same timestamp. In Windows, without UTC timestamps, they would have two completely different timestamps, because they would (most likely) use local time.
If you want a more informed source, try Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time