"The UI does not deform properly upon parametrization"
The GP is probably a Gnome 3 developer who has done a lot of usability testing and has the statistics and jargon to prove why Gnome 3 sucks less than Unity.
Users who say Gnome 3 is a better desktop than Unity probably belong to the Linux geek squad where multisyllabic terms like "parametrization" just roll off the keyboard. Sure Unity has its share of jargon, but they tend to belong to the overwrought desktop metaphor category. The concept of "lenses" isn't really that far off from the idea of applying a magnifiying lens on a particular search.
"Or doing something very right and making tons of money at it. Some people have expensive computers for a reason."
Most people doing something very right with a single $2K computer are probably using a Mac or running Windows. Expensive Linux computers tend to be servers or a supercomputing cluster better run without graphical cruft or at best a barebones X server plus widow manager set-up and not a full-blown desktop.
I'm sure "new" features will be added, but they won't be tied to any particular major number upgrade. This has been the way OpenBSD has been numbering its releases. OpenBSD 4.9 is simply the version that came before OBSD 5.0, which is the version that came before the current 5.1 release.
Maybe Linus wants to catch up to Theo? Linux kernel releases occur twice as fast as OpenBSD releases, so who knows. I kind of prefer the Ubuntu numeric versioning scheme that lets you know at a glance how old a release is. The animal names though are just plain silly.
For comparison look at the way Microsoft numbers its OS products, and you have to wonder what series they are using: 1, 2, 3, 95, 98, 2000, 7, followed by 8. Maybe they'll call release 9, Windows 2020?
Apple has been stuck at OSX for over at decade now. Two more decades and they'll be triple X.
"There are plenty of countries that aren't that friendly with the US that allow more freedom than the "Land of the Free", just involves careful choices."
Most such countries are small and therefore more easily "influenced" than "unfriendly" but clearly less democratic countries like Russia and China. Kim Dotcom probaby thought he was beyond the long arm of the DOJ by holing up in Hobbitland. Apparently the US was able to exert enough influence to initiate local police action him. NZ still appears to be a good choice as local judges, the final arbiters of the law, aren't as quick to grant the US request for extradition.
In those two words alone we know the case if far from ruined. I've never been a lawyer, but if I understand the jury system correctly, it's rightfully even more biased in favor of the accused than the justice system of an advanced Western counrty.
Since it's a jury trial, a Guilty verdict can more easily be overturned than a Not Guilty verdict. No other judge or court within the same jurisdiction can convict you of a crime if a jury already found you innocent of the said crime. That is why OJ Simpson is a free man. A mistrial is another matter, since techincally no verdict was returned.
Maybe that's why Samsung chose to go along with a jury trial. They had a chance of being acquited and so rid forever of Apple's intellectual harassment. Having failed, Samsung now has to go through the whole judicial distance of filing appeal after appeal until a judge rules in their favor or with finality.
If you want to carry a simple presentation or a movie you want to show without carrying an additional device, you can hook up the tablet to a projector or a 60'' TV. Modern tablets are powerful enough to replace standalone media players.
"But limited lifespan because of boredom? I mean, have you *seen* this world we live in?'
I've seen the world we live in, and it makes me want even more not to leave my room. Boredom is going to be the BIGGEST problem after we conquer war and other human and natural ills. One of the most peaceful countries in the world, Japan, has one of the the highest suicide rates. These are people who don't have to fear getting bombed while eating dinner or gunned down in some random act of violence.
Maybe that's why the longest living living things like giant tortoises and trees are either slow or virtually immobile, so they won't run out of things to do given their longer life spans.
into something called the Evolutionary Commons, where everything's guaranteed to be changeable and freed from any special Creator privileges.
Seriously I think CC is fine enough as it is for everybody that wants a taste of culture. Not everyone is a creator. As far as I can tell, there are no CC licenses that would prohibit somebody putting up stuff on Pirate Bay, which I think is the bare minimum for something to be called free. However, If there are licenses that can be used to sue jobless teenagers leeching and seeding in their basements, these licenses should be purged.
Surely, at a time where TV broadcasting was in its infancy at best, appearing on the cover of Time is as good a claim a fame as appearing on Fox News or American Idol.
Blame his failure to equal the status of Edison, not to mention Einstein, on his decision to withdraw from society in his later years.
Sadly the better cheap tablets are manufactured by lesser known Chinese manufacturers. Compare the Nexus 7 to nearly similarly spec'd tablets by the virtually no-name Ainol.
http://www.ainol-novo.com/buy-products.html
The cheaper models, which should be less expensive than even the direct online price of the Nexus 7, don't have Bluetooth, but all models have the one thing missing from the Nexus 7, HDMI output. Comparable to the Nexus 7, except for the GPU, is the unimaginatively named Ainol Flame.
http://www.ainol-novo.com/ainol-novo-7-flame-dual-core-1-5ghz-7-inch-1280-800-ips-screen-android-tablet.html
The only thing to recommend the Nexus 7, compared to the cheaper Chinese tablets is the better English, not Engrish, of the manual and possibly the warranty. But I'm not sure, Google doesn't have Amazon's reputation as an online seller.
Import duties are another matter, something that probably doesn't matter if you're living outside the US anyway.
I wouldn't go that far. Or do we call news reporters "spies" as well?
More to the point, whenever we connect to another computer or information storage device, information is collected. Our own smart phones do that when it connects to a WIFI hotspot and retains that information for at least the duration of the connection. Web servers continuously collect information from clients. That's one of the ways you prevent a DDOS attack by dropping clients known to make too many requests within a short period.
As far back as when the first punch cards were manufactured, computers have been designed to collect and possibly retain information. Hell, even a flesh-and-blood human standing in a corner collects information. That's how we form memories of that hot chick or hunk standing across the street. Now, it would be a different matter if I started following the object of my casual observation. In real life, that would be stalking, and would definitely fall in the category "spying".
That sort of proves my point, does it? You, and perhaps every other non-blind, non-dyslexic person, will read much, much faster from a page than listen from an audiobook. As for speed reading, I choose not to. I know all the tricks, but I find it works havoc on my writing. So I read at subvocal speed, which is still faster than llistening to an audio book at 2x normal speed.
Release Comrade X or we'll firebomb Antartica. You don't want all that carbon up in the air, do you? On the other hand, maybe it'll be cheaper just to burn more fossil fuels or start a fair-sized forest fire.
Yes if it's plural "androids". We need truly autonomous robotic space vehicles and probes with the intelligence and mobility of an Apollo-era astronaut. ATM our space probes, already remarkable pieces of hardware, don't have the capability to fix themselves, much less build newer copies. The Martians rovers move at a pace that would shame a snail and they take such unimaginative pictures that, had they been taken on Earth, wouldn't merit a second glance on Facebook. As for the satellites above our heads, many can't even reorient themselves if for some reason they wobble or lose their orbit.
So Microsoft appears to bei in good company. Of course most people don't have to deal directly with CPUs, so strictly from a marketing point of view, Intel can afford a faster release cycle.
"Tick-Tock is a model adopted by chip manufacturer Intel Corporation since 2007 to follow every microarchitectural change with a die shrink of the process technology. Every 'tick' is a shrinking of process technology of the previous microarchitecture and every 'tock' is a new microarchitecture. Every year, there is expected to be one tick or tock."
"Take a look at where computers are used and realize that not everyone cares because they use computers to get work done. As long as it's getting work done, they're happy. If it's broken, they're more than happy to call in someone to fix it, just like they'd call a plumber to fix their plumbing, an electrician to fix the electricals, a mechanic to fix their engines and vehicles, etc."
But the know-how to fix a broken pipe is much lower than the know-how need to fix a sealed-box Mac. You can't just ring up your friendly neighborhood plumber, electrician or mechanic if you're the type who doesn't have the time to D-I-Y. "Smart" homes and cars would probably would probably make your comparison more appropriate.
While a hardcore hardware hacker can still fix most Apple products available in the market today, the know-how and technology to fix future iDevices will probably be limited to members of the Apple tech priesthood, to the exclusion of mere apprentices or tech school graduates.
And here's the greater danger, the technology to manufacture our information devices has become increasingly concentrated in a narrow area of the world. It's a good thing Apple hasn't outsourced its design and product development. But when even this part of the product cycle is relocated to China or nearby east Asian countries, then the only hope of fixing a defective iPhone 10 is to ship it halfway across the globe.
"There are dozens of other cases like that where the Supreme Court has so grossly misinterpreted such a basic law or right. Just look at what the police are able to legally do today in regards to searches and seizures!"
That's because the constitution is whatever the Supreme Court of a country says it is. Of course the Supreme Court can be effectively overruled through a constitutional amendment or possibly removal from office and replacement by more pliant judges. So if the Supreme Court declares that the right to bear arms includes the right to carry shoulder-fired missiles, then there's nothing the national government can do that won't lead to a constitutional crisis.
"Indexing rocks on a different planet from 50-400 million km away. NASA has the greatest rock collection ever."
Well if NASA has the greatest rock collection on another planet, I have the greatest art collection right here on Earth. But because of my extremely generous nature, I'm letting all you plebeians have a peek at it in Paris, London and New York.
"Chance is fun! Save it for poker, not the avoidable horror show of a sick and dying kid."
A "genetically engineered" baby sounds like what you'd get when an Android gives birth. So that's where you'll be getting all the negative posts. So between the two extremes of a malformed natural baby and a CGI-perfect looking designer baby, maybe there's a halfway point?
Maybe we can allow genetic "intervention" for and only for obvious physical and mental defects? Gene combinations that result in a malfunctioning heart or mental retardation for example. But we should prevent parents from giving their babies an added boost, following the rule that if your face isn't broken don't facelift it.
The problem with genetically engineering away undesirable traits that aren't obvious physical or health defects is that we don't know enough to tell whether a given trait is actually undesirable and what the side effects of removing it are. A predeliction for violence is obviously undesirable to anybody who has been a victim ofa violent crime. But what if the agressive tendencies that trigger violence are the same things that enable our survival in times of disaster? Or that allow ruthless innovators like Bill Gates, Von Braun, or Edison to flourish?
Skim don't read then. Because this is what listening to audiobooks while driving, cooking, running on a threadmill or making love means. You're not paying as much attention as when you're reading with two eyes focused on the page or eInk screen. Granted nobody can concentrate with 100% focus, reading a book the normal way is still a more mentally intense activity than presumably "listening" WHILE doing something else. This is besides the fact that reading even without skimming is still faster than listening to an audibook at 2x speed.
I have nothing against audiobooks. But using audiobooks in the manner you describe is no different from playing music while you exercise or do some boring office work. It helps to distract you from the pain or drudgery of your other activity.
If you find it hard to read a book, I can only suggest reading in spurts THEN doing something else, reading a few pages at a time if a chapter is too long. Or you can reverse the focus, and take reading breaks the way some people take smoking or Facebook breaks.
The problem with bans is that they look good in theory or they work in the short term or under specific instances but introduce a host of other problems when implemented on a grander scale. Severely restrict the sale of guns and reports of gun-related deaths will go down and then rise again as people figure out illegal ways to acquire weapons. The Prohibition reduced the total amount of alcohol consumed but allowed organized crime to flourish.
I'd be happy to see Facebook banned. I'm sure that would increase people's productivity before it nosedives again as they find other ways to waste their time or attempt to "connect" and rumormonger using old-fashioned SMS. Ban carrier-based SMS, and who knows somebody will invent a mesh-based peer-to-peer substitute.
I'd say bit more scientific than Star Trek because the premise sounds a bit preposterous. A mission is sent to reignite a sun that's started to grow cold. The tool of choice is a "star bomb" to start a solar chain reaction. As the GP pointed out, we're smaller than ants compared to sun, and we can't accidentally "break" the sun, what more fix it, when it breaks.
Let's leave to the space trolls the question of whether India should be launching anything besides weather and GPS satellites. But it's orders of magnitude easier to put inanimate objects into space. So if India has ambitions beyond Earth orbit, Mars is as good a target practice as any. From a purely economic point of view, Mars is as useless a piece of rock as the Moon.
Slashdot Mirror
"The UI does not deform properly upon parametrization"
The GP is probably a Gnome 3 developer who has done a lot of usability testing and has the statistics and jargon to prove why Gnome 3 sucks less than Unity.
Users who say Gnome 3 is a better desktop than Unity probably belong to the Linux geek squad where multisyllabic terms like "parametrization" just roll off the keyboard. Sure Unity has its share of jargon, but they tend to belong to the overwrought desktop metaphor category. The concept of "lenses" isn't really that far off from the idea of applying a magnifiying lens on a particular search.
"Or doing something very right and making tons of money at it. Some people have expensive computers for a reason."
Most people doing something very right with a single $2K computer are probably using a Mac or running Windows. Expensive Linux computers tend to be servers or a supercomputing cluster better run without graphical cruft or at best a barebones X server plus widow manager set-up and not a full-blown desktop.
I'm sure "new" features will be added, but they won't be tied to any particular major number upgrade. This has been the way OpenBSD has been numbering its releases. OpenBSD 4.9 is simply the version that came before OBSD 5.0, which is the version that came before the current 5.1 release.
Maybe Linus wants to catch up to Theo? Linux kernel releases occur twice as fast as OpenBSD releases, so who knows. I kind of prefer the Ubuntu numeric versioning scheme that lets you know at a glance how old a release is. The animal names though are just plain silly.
For comparison look at the way Microsoft numbers its OS products, and you have to wonder what series they are using: 1, 2, 3, 95, 98, 2000, 7, followed by 8. Maybe they'll call release 9, Windows 2020?
Apple has been stuck at OSX for over at decade now. Two more decades and they'll be triple X.
"There are plenty of countries that aren't that friendly with the US that allow more freedom than the "Land of the Free", just involves careful choices."
Most such countries are small and therefore more easily "influenced" than "unfriendly" but clearly less democratic countries like Russia and China. Kim Dotcom probaby thought he was beyond the long arm of the DOJ by holing up in Hobbitland. Apparently the US was able to exert enough influence to initiate local police action him. NZ still appears to be a good choice as local judges, the final arbiters of the law, aren't as quick to grant the US request for extradition.
"The jury" blah blah.
In those two words alone we know the case if far from ruined. I've never been a lawyer, but if I understand the jury system correctly, it's rightfully even more biased in favor of the accused than the justice system of an advanced Western counrty.
Since it's a jury trial, a Guilty verdict can more easily be overturned than a Not Guilty verdict. No other judge or court within the same jurisdiction can convict you of a crime if a jury already found you innocent of the said crime. That is why OJ Simpson is a free man. A mistrial is another matter, since techincally no verdict was returned.
Maybe that's why Samsung chose to go along with a jury trial. They had a chance of being acquited and so rid forever of Apple's intellectual harassment. Having failed, Samsung now has to go through the whole judicial distance of filing appeal after appeal until a judge rules in their favor or with finality.
If you want to carry a simple presentation or a movie you want to show without carrying an additional device, you can hook up the tablet to a projector or a 60'' TV. Modern tablets are powerful enough to replace standalone media players.
"But limited lifespan because of boredom? I mean, have you *seen* this world we live in?'
I've seen the world we live in, and it makes me want even more not to leave my room. Boredom is going to be the BIGGEST problem after we conquer war and other human and natural ills. One of the most peaceful countries in the world, Japan, has one of the the highest suicide rates. These are people who don't have to fear getting bombed while eating dinner or gunned down in some random act of violence.
Maybe that's why the longest living living things like giant tortoises and trees are either slow or virtually immobile, so they won't run out of things to do given their longer life spans.
into something called the Evolutionary Commons, where everything's guaranteed to be changeable and freed from any special Creator privileges.
Seriously I think CC is fine enough as it is for everybody that wants a taste of culture. Not everyone is a creator. As far as I can tell, there are no CC licenses that would prohibit somebody putting up stuff on Pirate Bay, which I think is the bare minimum for something to be called free. However, If there are licenses that can be used to sue jobless teenagers leeching and seeding in their basements, these licenses should be purged.
"If only he had gotten as much attention as the media now tend to spend on famous trash, the world would be a much better place."
Tesla was actually quite famous in his day. His fame might have fallen by the time he died, but Time magazine did feature him in its cover. See:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Nikola_Tesla_on_Time_Magazine_1931.jpg
Surely, at a time where TV broadcasting was in its infancy at best, appearing on the cover of Time is as good a claim a fame as appearing on Fox News or American Idol.
Blame his failure to equal the status of Edison, not to mention Einstein, on his decision to withdraw from society in his later years.
Sadly the better cheap tablets are manufactured by lesser known Chinese manufacturers. Compare the Nexus 7 to nearly similarly spec'd tablets by the virtually no-name Ainol. http://www.ainol-novo.com/buy-products.html The cheaper models, which should be less expensive than even the direct online price of the Nexus 7, don't have Bluetooth, but all models have the one thing missing from the Nexus 7, HDMI output. Comparable to the Nexus 7, except for the GPU, is the unimaginatively named Ainol Flame. http://www.ainol-novo.com/ainol-novo-7-flame-dual-core-1-5ghz-7-inch-1280-800-ips-screen-android-tablet.html The only thing to recommend the Nexus 7, compared to the cheaper Chinese tablets is the better English, not Engrish, of the manual and possibly the warranty. But I'm not sure, Google doesn't have Amazon's reputation as an online seller. Import duties are another matter, something that probably doesn't matter if you're living outside the US anyway.
I wouldn't go that far. Or do we call news reporters "spies" as well?
More to the point, whenever we connect to another computer or information storage device, information is collected. Our own smart phones do that when it connects to a WIFI hotspot and retains that information for at least the duration of the connection. Web servers continuously collect information from clients. That's one of the ways you prevent a DDOS attack by dropping clients known to make too many requests within a short period.
As far back as when the first punch cards were manufactured, computers have been designed to collect and possibly retain information. Hell, even a flesh-and-blood human standing in a corner collects information. That's how we form memories of that hot chick or hunk standing across the street. Now, it would be a different matter if I started following the object of my casual observation. In real life, that would be stalking, and would definitely fall in the category "spying".
That sort of proves my point, does it? You, and perhaps every other non-blind, non-dyslexic person, will read much, much faster from a page than listen from an audiobook. As for speed reading, I choose not to. I know all the tricks, but I find it works havoc on my writing. So I read at subvocal speed, which is still faster than llistening to an audio book at 2x normal speed.
Release Comrade X or we'll firebomb Antartica. You don't want all that carbon up in the air, do you? On the other hand, maybe it'll be cheaper just to burn more fossil fuels or start a fair-sized forest fire.
Yes if it's plural "androids". We need truly autonomous robotic space vehicles and probes with the intelligence and mobility of an Apollo-era astronaut. ATM our space probes, already remarkable pieces of hardware, don't have the capability to fix themselves, much less build newer copies. The Martians rovers move at a pace that would shame a snail and they take such unimaginative pictures that, had they been taken on Earth, wouldn't merit a second glance on Facebook. As for the satellites above our heads, many can't even reorient themselves if for some reason they wobble or lose their orbit.
"Every other version is pushing boundaries, taking chances, kind of like ..."
Intel? Intel is famous for its CPU release cycle, where a new CPU design is followed by a die shrink:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Tick-Tock
So Microsoft appears to bei in good company. Of course most people don't have to deal directly with CPUs, so strictly from a marketing point of view, Intel can afford a faster release cycle.
"Tick-Tock is a model adopted by chip manufacturer Intel Corporation since 2007 to follow every microarchitectural change with a die shrink of the process technology. Every 'tick' is a shrinking of process technology of the previous microarchitecture and every 'tock' is a new microarchitecture. Every year, there is expected to be one tick or tock."
It won't. At the speed it's moving, the rover is still in the driveway. Maybe they should call it a crawler.
"Take a look at where computers are used and realize that not everyone cares because they use computers to get work done. As long as it's getting work done, they're happy. If it's broken, they're more than happy to call in someone to fix it, just like they'd call a plumber to fix their plumbing, an electrician to fix the electricals, a mechanic to fix their engines and vehicles, etc."
But the know-how to fix a broken pipe is much lower than the know-how need to fix a sealed-box Mac. You can't just ring up your friendly neighborhood plumber, electrician or mechanic if you're the type who doesn't have the time to D-I-Y. "Smart" homes and cars would probably would probably make your comparison more appropriate.
While a hardcore hardware hacker can still fix most Apple products available in the market today, the know-how and technology to fix future iDevices will probably be limited to members of the Apple tech priesthood, to the exclusion of mere apprentices or tech school graduates.
And here's the greater danger, the technology to manufacture our information devices has become increasingly concentrated in a narrow area of the world. It's a good thing Apple hasn't outsourced its design and product development. But when even this part of the product cycle is relocated to China or nearby east Asian countries, then the only hope of fixing a defective iPhone 10 is to ship it halfway across the globe.
"There are dozens of other cases like that where the Supreme Court has so grossly misinterpreted such a basic law or right. Just look at what the police are able to legally do today in regards to searches and seizures!"
That's because the constitution is whatever the Supreme Court of a country says it is. Of course the Supreme Court can be effectively overruled through a constitutional amendment or possibly removal from office and replacement by more pliant judges. So if the Supreme Court declares that the right to bear arms includes the right to carry shoulder-fired missiles, then there's nothing the national government can do that won't lead to a constitutional crisis.
Don't forget the other F-word, F*book. Then we'll have hordes of literal couch potatoes.
A seriously evil application of this would be to design herds of cows that don't need to eat grass.
"Indexing rocks on a different planet from 50-400 million km away. NASA has the greatest rock collection ever."
Well if NASA has the greatest rock collection on another planet, I have the greatest art collection right here on Earth. But because of my extremely generous nature, I'm letting all you plebeians have a peek at it in Paris, London and New York.
"Chance is fun! Save it for poker, not the avoidable horror show of a sick and dying kid." A "genetically engineered" baby sounds like what you'd get when an Android gives birth. So that's where you'll be getting all the negative posts. So between the two extremes of a malformed natural baby and a CGI-perfect looking designer baby, maybe there's a halfway point? Maybe we can allow genetic "intervention" for and only for obvious physical and mental defects? Gene combinations that result in a malfunctioning heart or mental retardation for example. But we should prevent parents from giving their babies an added boost, following the rule that if your face isn't broken don't facelift it. The problem with genetically engineering away undesirable traits that aren't obvious physical or health defects is that we don't know enough to tell whether a given trait is actually undesirable and what the side effects of removing it are. A predeliction for violence is obviously undesirable to anybody who has been a victim ofa violent crime. But what if the agressive tendencies that trigger violence are the same things that enable our survival in times of disaster? Or that allow ruthless innovators like Bill Gates, Von Braun, or Edison to flourish?
Skim don't read then. Because this is what listening to audiobooks while driving, cooking, running on a threadmill or making love means. You're not paying as much attention as when you're reading with two eyes focused on the page or eInk screen. Granted nobody can concentrate with 100% focus, reading a book the normal way is still a more mentally intense activity than presumably "listening" WHILE doing something else. This is besides the fact that reading even without skimming is still faster than listening to an audibook at 2x speed.
I have nothing against audiobooks. But using audiobooks in the manner you describe is no different from playing music while you exercise or do some boring office work. It helps to distract you from the pain or drudgery of your other activity.
If you find it hard to read a book, I can only suggest reading in spurts THEN doing something else, reading a few pages at a time if a chapter is too long. Or you can reverse the focus, and take reading breaks the way some people take smoking or Facebook breaks.
The problem with bans is that they look good in theory or they work in the short term or under specific instances but introduce a host of other problems when implemented on a grander scale. Severely restrict the sale of guns and reports of gun-related deaths will go down and then rise again as people figure out illegal ways to acquire weapons. The Prohibition reduced the total amount of alcohol consumed but allowed organized crime to flourish.
I'd be happy to see Facebook banned. I'm sure that would increase people's productivity before it nosedives again as they find other ways to waste their time or attempt to "connect" and rumormonger using old-fashioned SMS. Ban carrier-based SMS, and who knows somebody will invent a mesh-based peer-to-peer substitute.
If you like something a bit more scientific. Try Sunshine the movie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_(2007_film)
I'd say bit more scientific than Star Trek because the premise sounds a bit preposterous. A mission is sent to reignite a sun that's started to grow cold. The tool of choice is a "star bomb" to start a solar chain reaction. As the GP pointed out, we're smaller than ants compared to sun, and we can't accidentally "break" the sun, what more fix it, when it breaks.
Let's leave to the space trolls the question of whether India should be launching anything besides weather and GPS satellites. But it's orders of magnitude easier to put inanimate objects into space. So if India has ambitions beyond Earth orbit, Mars is as good a target practice as any. From a purely economic point of view, Mars is as useless a piece of rock as the Moon.