It's not so much puritanism, on my part, anyway. It's that I think sex is intrinsically uninteresting, and I'd rather we got foreplay and sex done quickly so we can talk about or do things that are actually interesting. There are simple, efficient tools that feel good; spending more time on foreplay to trick it up into something more elaborate seems to me to be a waste of time.
Actually, there are fairly "standard" definitions for "minor handicap" (basically "reduced quality of life but able to function normally without assistance") and loss of sense of smell is squarely in that camp. Eating a poisonous item you can't identify by other means, or smelling smoke and gas are emergency situations that are pretty rare in modern life, ie. a minority of people would ever encounter anyway. Not that it wouldn't suck royally in the quality of life area not to taste most of your food...
Yeah, totally! I found these mushrooms in the woods last night - they looked a bit weird, bright yellow and orange and waxy. But oh, did they taste good in that stir fry! Of course, I seem to be almost completely blind today and I think I have lost all sensation in my legs, but damn did they taste good...
Taste as a matter of enjoyment is subjective, as to a lesser extent is "healthy".
For an example of the former - you would have to drag me kicking and screaming into a McDonalds, but last week I had a medium rare kobe beef burger with blue cheese and bacon that was just goddamn perfection. Sadly, I am pretty sure it was less "healthy" on many metrics than a Big Mac.
For an example of the latter - I have high blood pressure, so I consider foods with a lot of sodium fairly unhealthy. My girlfriend has low blood pressure, so she doesn't really care about salt. And unfortunately for me but not her, sometimes salty food just tastes GOOD. On the other hand, I have very low cholesterol, and she doesn't. So I don't particularly consider bacon and a couple of eggs for breakfast unhealthy, but she has to moderate those meals a bit...
Ain't genetics a bitch?
Then again, I think the above rant puts me squarely in the "enjoy food" camp, so I am a lot closer to your position than the GP. I just roll my eyes any time someone tries to claim food should be for sustenance and not enjoyment. Yeah, sure, the human race will live on as long as you manage to eat, shit, screw, and die, in that general order. But the goal of almost every single thing we do beyond that is to improve upon that baseline.
Sure, Linux/Unix is far better at supporting multiple independent users, but at the same time IF you want to allow root access to let them learn actual installation and setup of a Linux system, it's a lot easier to "do really bad things".
Anyway, read my last paragraph - my real point was that the article's original question of "which OS should I use" becomes a lot less relevant if he sets up a "locked down" Linux workstation with decent VM software like VMWare or Xen, gives his students user accounts (bonus for network-based accounts and NFS/AFS/etc roots) and then lets his students install whatever OS he wants to teach with at the time, ie. he could even use different guest OSes for different classes...
My only problem with a "naive" use of Linux in a high school/college lab environment is that of course you have to lock down access and give them a fairly limited account to make sure someone doesn't start doing "bad things" to the machines...
Even though, yes, I did take an OS class, I learned the most about operating systems in college by being completely lazy. I was taking a VLSI design class and didn't want to have to trek over to the EE computer lab, so I installed Linux (0.95? maybe 0.99, it's been a while) on my desktop in my dorm room in order to run Magic (VLSI design SW - does anyone still use that??) on a local X server. Turned out I think I learned a lot more relevant things to future jobs from setting up (and later tinkering on) that Linux installation than I ever did laying out transistors...
Anyway. IMO one of the most interesting recent developments in operating systems is the virtual machine. Assuming you are limited by more students than hardware, give your students their own VM, and let them install, configure, and run their own OS inatance. For potential engineers and scientists Linux is a great choice since you really can use it to explain (or change!) an entire computer operating system from boot to window manager...
If they like to tinker, are interested in programming, or may want some postgraduate hard science or engineering degree: have them use Linux.
If they have a strong artistic streak, are obsessed with "Web 2.0" sites, or have more than 1000 Facebook friends: have them use OSX.
If they enjoy attending club meetings after class, like keeping track of the chess team results in a spreadsheet, or think the title "MBA" sounds cool: have them use Windows.
My guess is that it was to gather Latitude/Longitude on any APs broadcasting info in order to make assisted GPS on mobile phones more accurate. AKA "GPS by Starbucks".
I don't think they had any interest in recording any private data, and it probably didn't beyond the basic stuff these APs were broadcasting. It's just a moronic loophole in a law "preventing snooping on open wifi" or something like that...
People talked about "Windows Chicago" and "OSX Leopard" for months or even years before release. Marketing does matter. So does politics.
This project is failing at both, that's why Theora is an also-ran... adoption is more about politics than technology. And now that VP8 is open source and backed by Google, no one is going to bother with a VP3 derivative no matter how stupid they make the codename.
Well, "PCMCIA" may not be the sexiest name in the world, but if you can't pronounce or spell it trivially you should probably take a refresher course on the alphabet. Even more so for USB, SATA, MP3, or AVC.
And people most definitely care about tech product and standard names, even if they have no idea why they care. Why? Because companies tell them they should care through very clever and persistent marketing. I don't know how many times I have been asked questions by non-technical friends or relatives throwing around terms like "USB", "Cat-5", "GigE", "Wifi N", "SATA", "JPEG", "HDMI", etc, when they couldn't possible explain what they stand for, let alone what they are really mean. They just know that they want their products to have them because they were included in an ad or printed on the outside of the box. Plus, everyone likes to feel like they have learned something technical, even if it's just a word definition.
Add "now with Ptalarbvorm support" and see if anyone figures out how to spell it, let alone look it up.
Wow, that's a LOT of features. But I love this part...
Currently the code is in an early implementation phase, and not all of these have yet been implemented.
They even forgot to mention these other interesting Btrfs features that make it WAY better than all of the other file systems: Solar powered journaling Quantum string mirroring Automated backup cameras Continuous vacuum suction with no loss of data and it's high in Omega-3 fatty acids.
Ringer's solution is just Na, Cl, K, Ca in water. Oh, and lactate. So, the only commonality is 4 ions. And not even the same sugar. No, it's nowhere NEAR a tweaked Ringer's solution...
A task force specifically created to investigate crimes against large corporations?
How is that NOT a "pet police force?"
Who said it had anything to do with "large corporations"? In fact, their most common investigations seem to involve identity theft and online computer fraud, two areas that affect individuals at least as much as "large corporations".
And those are also two areas that the "regular" police forces are not trained to investigate properly, which is the WHOLE POINT of a computer/tech crimes task force! I know several people who have had to deal with woefully undertrained police when their identity was stolen or they were scammed/wronged by an online store. I'm sure they would have really appreciated being able to talk to detectives with proper training and experience in those areas.
This is a computer/tech crimes task force, investigating the possible theft, sale, and damage of a prototype of an electronic device that generates billions of dollars a year in revenue for the company involved.
The detective on the case doesn't deal in violent crimes, he deals in computer and high tech crimes. Not all police work is based on Law & Order.
I do think Apple's ridiculous obsession with secrecy is largely to blame for the amount of media scrutiny they get (and possibly this incident as well). In fact, they probably are getting what they deserve. But that's still not an excuse to commit crimes, and based on the affidavit there was plenty of evidence to pursue it further...
Yeah, I had my car rifled through (forgot to lock it, so they didn't even damage anything) and a couple CDs stolen, probably valued at $20 total. Since it was in an apt garage and their had been previous reports of the same thing, I called the police, thinking they would want more data points. They offered to come out, take a report, and investigate. I told them that wasn't really necessary, I just wanted to report it, but they said they don't record incidents unless they investigate.
Anyway, I was somewhat impressed they were willing to waste their time for something minor, but wish they could just take my info over the phone to keep track of these things without it. Oh, and this was Mountain View, which is right next to Sunnyvale...
You have insurance right?" I said "No, not for theft." "Well then, why are you calling us?" they replied. "I thought you might want to come out and investigate. They broke the lock, left their tool, probably left fingerprints everywhere..." "No, we don't do that"
He probably called the auto repair shop by accident instead of the cops;)
Have you heard of YouTube? I think providing HTML5 and Flash content side by side, depending on the device entered the mainstream when they implemented that option.
Of course he has, and to his point, YouTube does not support any reasonable trickplay (FF/RW/chapters/etc), seamless bitrate switching or DRM with HTML5. Trickplay and bitrate switching are required features once people start paying for content (they expect it to *just work*). DRM is a required feature to get content owners to offer their content in the first place.
Replace every reference to "revenue" in this thread with "profit", since in fact that was the OP's original question that I misstated from the start.
My point (that has now been beaten into oblivion by inaccurate statements refuted by my inaccurate responses) still stands - Android makes no *significant* money (revenue OR profit) for Google, the iPhone is Apple's largest profit center. Sales and market share are largely irrelevant if they don't end up generating revenue and profit. Wake me up when Android makes $1.5B+ a quarter in net profit with a supposed losing market share.
So.. Apple doesn't care about the single biggest indicator of sales and revenue, because their sales and revenue are currently growing?
That's a lot of sarcasm for such little point. Market share is a HORRIBLE indicator of sales and revenue in this market.
Linux workstation OS market share is about, what, 1.5%? And yet revenue is almost zero.
MacOS has maybe 5% market share, and yet Apple's profits were higher than Microsoft's, and their market cap is getting close.
Sure, a lot of that profit was from the iPhone. But then again, this article is about how Android's sales is now better than Apple's, and yet they have made almost zero significant revenue (and clearly no real profit).
Apple isn't stupid. They realized the key to ridiculous profits is high margin with a solid customer base, not trying to capture the entire market for FREE.
Ok, in theory, yes, the Google Android App Store *generates some Android-specific revenue*. But "make money"?
In practice, I think a statistic I saw was that almost 60% of the apps on Google's Android app store are free, and it's estimated that they make about $60M a year (gross - that's $20M for Google). Contrast that to Apple's app store revenue that easily tops $2B a year.
Not only that, but Android allows 3rd party apps stores - and there are now a bunch of them.
Google probably has $20M stashed in a broom closet - they are just not not trying to leverage Android to make money on that market right now. It's probably below the cost to develop and run it.
Which is again my point. I don't know why everyone wants to keep nitpicking the details... but the fact is phones are Apple's #1 business right now, and they are a (very interesting, but not very profitable) experiment for Google.
Again, I'd love to see Android/Google take a chunk out of Apple's business. But these "market share" statistics from the article just don't mean that much right now...
Slashdot Mirror
And there are a few hundred million cell phones out there that support H.264 but not VP8, so good luck taking over that market any time soon.
VP8 will need to prove itself on the desktop where software decoders are possible before it's going to get any traction in embedded devices...
It's not so much puritanism, on my part, anyway. It's that I think sex is intrinsically uninteresting, and I'd rather we got foreplay and sex done quickly so we can talk about or do things that are actually interesting. There are simple, efficient tools that feel good; spending more time on foreplay to trick it up into something more elaborate seems to me to be a waste of time.
Actually, there are fairly "standard" definitions for "minor handicap" (basically "reduced quality of life but able to function normally without assistance") and loss of sense of smell is squarely in that camp. Eating a poisonous item you can't identify by other means, or smelling smoke and gas are emergency situations that are pretty rare in modern life, ie. a minority of people would ever encounter anyway. Not that it wouldn't suck royally in the quality of life area not to taste most of your food...
Yeah, totally! I found these mushrooms in the woods last night - they looked a bit weird, bright yellow and orange and waxy. But oh, did they taste good in that stir fry! Of course, I seem to be almost completely blind today and I think I have lost all sensation in my legs, but damn did they taste good...
Unhealthy food only really tastes comfortable
Taste as a matter of enjoyment is subjective, as to a lesser extent is "healthy".
For an example of the former - you would have to drag me kicking and screaming into a McDonalds, but last week I had a medium rare kobe beef burger with blue cheese and bacon that was just goddamn perfection. Sadly, I am pretty sure it was less "healthy" on many metrics than a Big Mac.
For an example of the latter - I have high blood pressure, so I consider foods with a lot of sodium fairly unhealthy. My girlfriend has low blood pressure, so she doesn't really care about salt. And unfortunately for me but not her, sometimes salty food just tastes GOOD. On the other hand, I have very low cholesterol, and she doesn't. So I don't particularly consider bacon and a couple of eggs for breakfast unhealthy, but she has to moderate those meals a bit...
Ain't genetics a bitch?
Then again, I think the above rant puts me squarely in the "enjoy food" camp, so I am a lot closer to your position than the GP. I just roll my eyes any time someone tries to claim food should be for sustenance and not enjoyment. Yeah, sure, the human race will live on as long as you manage to eat, shit, screw, and die, in that general order. But the goal of almost every single thing we do beyond that is to improve upon that baseline.
Sure, Linux/Unix is far better at supporting multiple independent users, but at the same time IF you want to allow root access to let them learn actual installation and setup of a Linux system, it's a lot easier to "do really bad things".
Anyway, read my last paragraph - my real point was that the article's original question of "which OS should I use" becomes a lot less relevant if he sets up a "locked down" Linux workstation with decent VM software like VMWare or Xen, gives his students user accounts (bonus for network-based accounts and NFS/AFS/etc roots) and then lets his students install whatever OS he wants to teach with at the time, ie. he could even use different guest OSes for different classes...
My only problem with a "naive" use of Linux in a high school/college lab environment is that of course you have to lock down access and give them a fairly limited account to make sure someone doesn't start doing "bad things" to the machines...
Even though, yes, I did take an OS class, I learned the most about operating systems in college by being completely lazy. I was taking a VLSI design class and didn't want to have to trek over to the EE computer lab, so I installed Linux (0.95? maybe 0.99, it's been a while) on my desktop in my dorm room in order to run Magic (VLSI design SW - does anyone still use that??) on a local X server. Turned out I think I learned a lot more relevant things to future jobs from setting up (and later tinkering on) that Linux installation than I ever did laying out transistors...
Anyway. IMO one of the most interesting recent developments in operating systems is the virtual machine. Assuming you are limited by more students than hardware, give your students their own VM, and let them install, configure, and run their own OS inatance. For potential engineers and scientists Linux is a great choice since you really can use it to explain (or change!) an entire computer operating system from boot to window manager...
If they like to tinker, are interested in programming, or may want some postgraduate hard science or engineering degree: have them use Linux.
If they have a strong artistic streak, are obsessed with "Web 2.0" sites, or have more than 1000 Facebook friends: have them use OSX.
If they enjoy attending club meetings after class, like keeping track of the chess team results in a spreadsheet, or think the title "MBA" sounds cool: have them use Windows.
My guess is that it was to gather Latitude/Longitude on any APs broadcasting info in order to make assisted GPS on mobile phones more accurate. AKA "GPS by Starbucks".
I don't think they had any interest in recording any private data, and it probably didn't beyond the basic stuff these APs were broadcasting. It's just a moronic loophole in a law "preventing snooping on open wifi" or something like that...
And Slashdot, if you read it as /. is just the root directory.
People talked about "Windows Chicago" and "OSX Leopard" for months or even years before release. Marketing does matter. So does politics.
This project is failing at both, that's why Theora is an also-ran... adoption is more about politics than technology. And now that VP8 is open source and backed by Google, no one is going to bother with a VP3 derivative no matter how stupid they make the codename.
Well, "PCMCIA" may not be the sexiest name in the world, but if you can't pronounce or spell it trivially you should probably take a refresher course on the alphabet. Even more so for USB, SATA, MP3, or AVC.
And people most definitely care about tech product and standard names, even if they have no idea why they care. Why? Because companies tell them they should care through very clever and persistent marketing. I don't know how many times I have been asked questions by non-technical friends or relatives throwing around terms like "USB", "Cat-5", "GigE", "Wifi N", "SATA", "JPEG", "HDMI", etc, when they couldn't possible explain what they stand for, let alone what they are really mean. They just know that they want their products to have them because they were included in an ad or printed on the outside of the box. Plus, everyone likes to feel like they have learned something technical, even if it's just a word definition.
Add "now with Ptalarbvorm support" and see if anyone figures out how to spell it, let alone look it up.
I was thinking the same thing. No wonder no one outside of open source AV geeks have ever heard of any of these standards.
"It's a Ptalarbvorm/Vorbis Matroska stream" it just plain awful. I guess there just aren't enough open source marketing volunteers...
Wow, that's a LOT of features. But I love this part...
Currently the code is in an early implementation phase, and not all of these have yet been implemented.
They even forgot to mention these other interesting Btrfs features that make it WAY better than all of the other file systems:
Solar powered journaling
Quantum string mirroring
Automated backup cameras
Continuous vacuum suction with no loss of data
and it's high in Omega-3 fatty acids.
Ringer's solution is just Na, Cl, K, Ca in water. Oh, and lactate. So, the only commonality is 4 ions. And not even the same sugar. No, it's nowhere NEAR a tweaked Ringer's solution...
No, a strip club. Wait, why??
A task force specifically created to investigate crimes against large corporations?
How is that NOT a "pet police force?"
Who said it had anything to do with "large corporations"? In fact, their most common investigations seem to involve identity theft and online computer fraud, two areas that affect individuals at least as much as "large corporations".
And those are also two areas that the "regular" police forces are not trained to investigate properly, which is the WHOLE POINT of a computer/tech crimes task force! I know several people who have had to deal with woefully undertrained police when their identity was stolen or they were scammed/wronged by an online store. I'm sure they would have really appreciated being able to talk to detectives with proper training and experience in those areas.
SWAT? Oh come on.
This is a computer/tech crimes task force, investigating the possible theft, sale, and damage of a prototype of an electronic device that generates billions of dollars a year in revenue for the company involved.
The detective on the case doesn't deal in violent crimes, he deals in computer and high tech crimes. Not all police work is based on Law & Order.
I do think Apple's ridiculous obsession with secrecy is largely to blame for the amount of media scrutiny they get (and possibly this incident as well). In fact, they probably are getting what they deserve. But that's still not an excuse to commit crimes, and based on the affidavit there was plenty of evidence to pursue it further...
Yeah, I had my car rifled through (forgot to lock it, so they didn't even damage anything) and a couple CDs stolen, probably valued at $20 total. Since it was in an apt garage and their had been previous reports of the same thing, I called the police, thinking they would want more data points. They offered to come out, take a report, and investigate. I told them that wasn't really necessary, I just wanted to report it, but they said they don't record incidents unless they investigate.
Anyway, I was somewhat impressed they were willing to waste their time for something minor, but wish they could just take my info over the phone to keep track of these things without it. Oh, and this was Mountain View, which is right next to Sunnyvale...
You have insurance right?" I said "No, not for theft." "Well then, why are you calling us?" they replied. "I thought you might want to come out and investigate. They broke the lock, left their tool, probably left fingerprints everywhere..." "No, we don't do that"
He probably called the auto repair shop by accident instead of the cops ;)
But neither does Gizmodo. CA law states that they have to return it to the owner or police if they know it's not theirs.
The ABC player is not HTML5, it's a native app.
Have you heard of YouTube? I think providing HTML5 and Flash content side by side, depending on the device entered the mainstream when they implemented that option.
Of course he has, and to his point, YouTube does not support any reasonable trickplay (FF/RW/chapters/etc), seamless bitrate switching or DRM with HTML5. Trickplay and bitrate switching are required features once people start paying for content (they expect it to *just work*). DRM is a required feature to get content owners to offer their content in the first place.
Sure - you are right, the terms were wrong.
Replace every reference to "revenue" in this thread with "profit", since in fact that was the OP's original question that I misstated from the start.
My point (that has now been beaten into oblivion by inaccurate statements refuted by my inaccurate responses) still stands - Android makes no *significant* money (revenue OR profit) for Google, the iPhone is Apple's largest profit center. Sales and market share are largely irrelevant if they don't end up generating revenue and profit. Wake me up when Android makes $1.5B+ a quarter in net profit with a supposed losing market share.
So.. Apple doesn't care about the single biggest indicator of sales and revenue, because their sales and revenue are currently growing?
That's a lot of sarcasm for such little point. Market share is a HORRIBLE indicator of sales and revenue in this market.
Linux workstation OS market share is about, what, 1.5%? And yet revenue is almost zero.
MacOS has maybe 5% market share, and yet Apple's profits were higher than Microsoft's, and their market cap is getting close.
Sure, a lot of that profit was from the iPhone. But then again, this article is about how Android's sales is now better than Apple's, and yet they have made almost zero significant revenue (and clearly no real profit).
Apple isn't stupid. They realized the key to ridiculous profits is high margin with a solid customer base, not trying to capture the entire market for FREE.
Ok, in theory, yes, the Google Android App Store *generates some Android-specific revenue*. But "make money"?
In practice, I think a statistic I saw was that almost 60% of the apps on Google's Android app store are free, and it's estimated that they make about $60M a year (gross - that's $20M for Google). Contrast that to Apple's app store revenue that easily tops $2B a year.
Not only that, but Android allows 3rd party apps stores - and there are now a bunch of them.
Google probably has $20M stashed in a broom closet - they are just not not trying to leverage Android to make money on that market right now. It's probably below the cost to develop and run it.
Which is again my point. I don't know why everyone wants to keep nitpicking the details... but the fact is phones are Apple's #1 business right now, and they are a (very interesting, but not very profitable) experiment for Google.
Again, I'd love to see Android/Google take a chunk out of Apple's business. But these "market share" statistics from the article just don't mean that much right now...