The problem came from an area that they often do: Programmer laziness. Programmers of early computers called the 1024 byte blocks computers used "kilo" since it was "pretty close" to 1000. Since space and power were limited, it was considered unnecessary overhead to actually convert it to base 10 for display.
Then as things went on it stuck, and the error kept getting bigger with increasing size.
Frankly I think OSes need to get with it and just start using base 10 prefixes for drive space. I mean we already do for network speed, CPU speed, pixels on the screen, etc, etc. Just start displaying drives using base 10 units. Memory I suppose we can keep base 2, since it is aligned on those boundaries, but then let's use the base-2 prefix. We easily have the power to do the conversion these days, let's do it.
The SI prefixes are clear and simple and used consistently everywhere, even in most computer things, except here. Let's fix this issue and call it good.
Basically my argument is don't upgrade or downgrade. So if you have an existing system with 7, stick with it. My home desktop is 7 and isn't changing any time soon. However if you get a new system with 8, stick with that. There's no reason to downgrade. The only real issue is the start menu and that is easy enough to get back. For that matter the start screen is perfectly usable, just more clunky and obtrusive than a start menu, hence my recommendation to get one.
It is silly to panic over 8 and act like you need to downgrade. You don't, it works just fine. Also, in the event you do happen to have a tablet, then it is better. That start screen is much easier to use than the start menu with fingers, and 8's multi-touch support is superior.
And do use it. I run Windows 8 on my work desktop full time. I'm our Windows support lead. So I have a pretty good feeling for it. I think it was a step backwards in terms of looks and usability. It's flat look is silly, particularly since the DWM is present and more powerful than ever. The start screen is also a very bad choice. While it is not hard to use, it is clumsy to use, it is worse than the start menu which is replaced.
However that really isn't such a big deal. Technically it is a very good OS. It is fast and stable, it has some nice new features, and it runs all the software I've tested, and I've tested a lot.
The major UI issue, the start menu, is easy to fix. You can get Classic Shell for free which does an ok job. For $5 you can get Start 8 which I love, it is a great replacement and very customizable. For $3 you can get Start is Back which actually restores the internal start menu to operation (most of the code is still there).
Hence I tell people don't bother to upgrade, if you've 7 stick with it. However if you get a system with 8, don't downgrade, just get a start menu and call it good.
Now if you have problems with 8, then that's fine, we can talk about them if you like. However just spurting vague shit is FUD, and that is mostly what we see. I see plenty of things about 8 that are flat out wrong.
MS made bad choices, but it really isn't all that big a deal. You find that out pretty quick if you use it much.
A lot of people on Slashdot decided Windows 8 was supposed to be bad. So now it is to them, regardless of any facts. They haven't actually used it to any significant degree, if at all, they just hate on it because they think they are supposed to hate it.
You'll see the FUD crew out in full force about it. My favourite is that it is a "walled garden" and you can only run apps from the MS store. That is, of course, completely false. It runs anything Windows 7 ran. However the point isn't to spread information, but FUD to try and scare people away from using it.
I'm certainly not a fan, since I think the look is a step backwards and Metro is retarded for the start menu, but I don't hate it. Get a start menu replacer and it works quite well.
Some things sell out because they just can't make enough. The company has made as many as it can and put them all out to retail, and they all sell. However other things sell out because the company deliberately limits production/distribution to make them scarce.
I can work too. People seem to have an irrational need to own things if they are told they can't have it. So paradoxically it can work to increase sales in the long run. People are told "you can't have this" and that makes them want it, even though they didn't before.
Look at the massive run on firearms/magazines what with the proposal for new gun legislation. These people were perfectly happy with what they had prior to this, but suddenly they get told "you can't have this" and they want to rush out and buy it.
Seriously, the Hurd guys either need to get with it, or just quit. It is stupid to have something this completely out of date and keep pretending like it'll be relevant. No, if you want your kernel to have any chance at relevance it needs to support modern features. Yes, that means SATA, x64, and so on. None of these are new things, by any stretch of the imagination.
If they lack the resources or drive to get this kind of thing done in a timely fashion, then just let it go. There is no point to releasing a kernel 10+ years out of date (as the parent points out, SATA hit in 2003) particularly when there are plenty of options that ARE up to date.
That is not at all the case. BIOS/firmware/driver updates/upgrades can potentially do four things for a working system:
1) Add new features. Many products get new features as their life goes on. My desktop board, an Intel, has gotten a number of new BIOS features during its life. When you update the code that runs something, no surprise that code can add features.
2) Improve performance. Sometimes, a faster/more efficient way of doing something is discovered. It takes an update to make that happen. I remember a big one back in the day with 3com switches. A firmware update provided a major improvement in through put and CPU usage.
3) Fix a bug that you haven't hit yet, but could. This is why you'll see updates tagged as urgent. Just because you never hit a bug that got discovered, doesn't mean the bug isn't there. So you want to get it fixed, BEFORE you hit it. There have been firmware updates that fixed some nasty ones, like data corruption with SSDs. Some people never got hit, but that doesn't mean the update wasn't a good idea.
4) Security issues. Same deal as with the bugs, just a different kind of bug. If a security issue is discovered, it'll take a patch to fix it and the system will be working before the patch.
The "Don't fix it if it ain't broke," really is not a valid ideology for systems administration.
Right now, there's no law against full capacity magazines. You can buy them in any capacity you wish. Well, I should say you can legally, they are sold out everywhere because idiots are panicking, but there's no law restricting capacity. So making your own, also no problem.
There might be an argument to taking it down if US law changed (I'm not saying I'd agree with it then either, just saying) but as it stands, there's nothing wrong with large mags legally.
Well most of the god-tards have moved on from disputing that things evolve. Rather their new shit is intelligent design, which says that god works behind the scenes, controlling how things evolve and change. So they aren't disputing the fact that change happens, they are disputing the theory as to why.
However their counter is not a theory, since there is no way to test it, and hence has no place in science class. Even if it is right, it is not science as it is not something one can test. Any time you mention god, by definition outside of the universe and untestable, you aren't talking science.
Gravity is a very active area of theoretical study. We don't understand what it is very well, and there are strong indications that General Relativity is not complete, that we need a better theory to fully explain interactions, particularly on the quantum level.
You may be confusing the theory with the fact. The fact of gravity is that objects attract, or on a more human scale, that things fall down. That is something you can just observe, sometimes without meaning to. The theory of gravity is to explain how and why the interaction works. That one we don't have nailed.
Not trying to support Texas here in their unscientific bullshit, but gravity is not an open and shut case. What its method of action is, how it works on very small and large levels, and how it unifies with the other forces are still not well understood.
It is incorrect that ideas only reach the status of "theory" when there's overwhelming evidence. A theory is a theory because it makes a testable, falsifiable, hypothesis. We have theories that aren't well tested. We don't go teaching them in science class, but that doesn't mean they aren't theories. This idea that "theory" means "proven beyond any reasonable doubt" is silly. It doesn't.
For that matter, some things get called theories that aren't. Like String Theory. Not only is there no proof, there's no testable predictions. As such right now it is a hypothesis. It is a neat bit of math, internally consistent, but so far there are no testable predictions, no way to falsify, so it isn't really a theory. We don't want to go teaching it in high school science class yet, but we do want to keep looking at it.
The reason why all the god backed proposals aren't theories is they aren't testable, aren't falsifiable. They rely on an entity that by definition is outside of the observable universe. As such they can't be tested and thus are not scientific theories. They could be right, but they still aren't science. Science is concerned with the testable. A testable, falsifiable, hypothesis is a theory. Heck even after it is falsified it is still a theory, it is just wrong:).
I'm not saying you never see it, the audio world likes it to an extent, Denon does it, but it is not very common. Most manufacturers decide what they want to make per unit and price accordingly. What the retailer does is of no concern to them.
Agency pricing is legal, but not to collude on it.
See normal pricing is wholesale, meaning that I decide what I need to charge for a product, and I sell it to stores for that much (usually with quantity discounts). Then the retailer is free to price it as they wish. They can mark it up a ton and try to make big unit profits, they can sell it at a loss as a loss leader. I am happy either way because I am getting what I want per copy.
Agency pricing is different. Here the manufacturer tells the retailer what price they must sell the final unit for. They not only set the price the retailer must pay them, but the price the retailer must charge customers.
Agency pricing is pretty scummy period in my opinion, and is fairly rare. Here not only was it being done, but as a collusion.
Then, to make matters worse, it was done due to the request of a retailer. Apple wanted agency pricing so they didn't have to compete with Amazon on price. They were having their high margins enforced on all retailers, at the expense of the consumers.
What with doing Windows support for a living I use the new and old Windows versions all the time. I run 8 at work, 7 at home. 8 is fine, once you get a start menu back. Start 8 is my favourite, costs $5. Start is Back costs $3 and actually restores the Windows start menu, the code is still in Win 8, at least most of it. Classic Shell is of course free and works fine, I just don't care for it as much.
One that is there, it works real well. It is fast and stable, and it has some improvements I like, the new task manager is quite nice.
It isn't worth rushing out to upgrade, it isn't OMGbettar than 7, if you have 7 stick with it. However it isn't problematic. It runs every program I've tried on it that also ran on 7 (and I've tried a lot) and it isn't problematic to use.
For that matter even the new start menu is perfectly usable, it is just more clunky than what it replaced. It isn't hard to use, just slower and inelegant. Perfectly usable though, we leave it on the 2012 servers we have.
And have Slashdot mod that down by 6. Seriously, that's all you can do with spelling/grammar nazis. They are the kind of people who can't actually argue a point, can't admit they are wrong, and can't just stay quiet. So instead they nit pick and go after minor issues with presentation as though that invalidates the actual point made.
Just put them on ignore, and move on. Ends up making Slashdot much more enjoyable.
While it may take more scientists, and more and grander hardware (like the LHC) there's still plenty of cool shit left to be discovered. Also some of it will likely have some amazing practical applications.
For example: Some day we may truly decode DNA. I don't mean just sequence it, I mean understand how it works, what it says, completely. Be able to read, and perhaps write, the code of life in a complete and precise fashion. Well that has a hell of a lot of implications as to what one could do with it, it isn't just cool science.
I encounter this kind of attitude all the time: People who want to fight tooth and nail to hold on to whatever vital information they think they have, so they can't be replaced. They want to make sure nobody else learns how to do it, because otherwise they think they'd be laid off.
Thing is? They are often right, because they aren't very useful outside of that.
Personally I think it is silly. My boss always says we IT types should be trying to work ourselves out of a job. He doesn't mean he wants to get rid of us (he's a tech guy, not a PHB) just that we, including him, should always be working for better automation, working to solve problem, working to streamline and make service better.
The thing is that won't end up with us being out of a job because there's always more to do. There are things people would like us to do, but we don't have time for, and if we free up more time we can move on to that.
Not everyone operates that way though. They want to hold on to whatever little niche of knowledge they have, believing that is all that makes them valuable.
I can't see how this is supposed to be useful. I guess if you really want to play smartphone-type games on your TV this is a way to go since it is much easier to hook up to a TV and controllers than most smartphones. However I can't see why else you'd want it. I already have an Android phone, why do I want an android console that is by all accounts less powerful than my phone?
Geeks love the concept because it is "cheap and open" but that really isn't going to do much in the long run. I think the appeal will wear off, and people will set aside for their existing game consoles and phones.
Soldiers should be perfect automata, wanting nothing but to serve their country, needing no entertainment, no respite, willing to work with complete focus as much as is required.
Oh please cut the fucking shit.
Soldiers are human, and they need recreation just like everyone else. Now maybe watching football isn't your choice for that, it's not mine either, but you are in no position to judge others for what they like.
What's more, it helps give them a sense of connection to their country. Serving on a ship, and a sub in particular, is lonely. You are gone for months at a time, in the case of a sub often totally cut off. This is a way to get a "taste of home" as it were, to get to participate in something that a large part of the nation is also doing.
I know it is popular to hate on America, but if you are going to do it, you might want to check up on it first. You wanna see bad phone service? Check out Canada. The carriers there dick you around badly. Expensive, not a lot of choice, long contracts (3 year) and poor service (for example the phones are prone to roam to US networks if you live near the border, which most Canadians do, and the Canadian companies charge you tons when it happens).
Also, how's that Internet going for you in New Zealand? Enjoying 50GB a month for $85 (the current offer on telecom.nz)? Sometimes I'll do more than 50GB in a day, on a single system, if I'm reinstalling a bunch off of Steam. Nary a peep from my ISP, not any extra charges.
Some forms of music, or any art, are condemned to poverty because nobody gives a shit. Same with really any other trade. Maybe you absolutely love writing some kind of obscure program that very few people have a use for, and none are willing to pay for. That's wonderful, just don't expect to make any money on it. You wanna make money programming? It needs to be writing things people want/need which may not be what's fun for you.
If you want to follow your dream, there's fine, just don't expect anyone else to want to give you money for it. If you want money, do something that others want or need done.
A lot of creative types seem to get sucked in by the Hollywood idea of "making it big". They seem to think that if people like their stuff, they should get a lot of money for it and be able to live the high life. Now that may happen in rare cases, but not in most, of course.
Just like all the rest of us. Some people, through a combination of luck, hard work, and timing, make it big and can retire young, live rich, and so on. However most of us have to continue working regularly for a good bit of our lives. We don't "make it big" we work, we make some money, we work some more.
Musicians need to realize that you need to look at having your own band/act much like any other small business: You have a small chance of making a lot of money and really doing well. You have a much larger chance of making some money, but having to work hard for it and keep working. You also have a non-trivial chance of making fuck-all and having your work amount to very little. Any time you do your own thing, that is how it goes.
Another problem is that most artists care about their art, they feel it is a good sort of art, otherwise they wouldn't do it. However they can have trouble understanding that not everyone else feels the same. They think their kind of music is the shit and don't get why everyone isn't after it.
This lady needs to STFU. If she can make a living as a one-woman cello act, well that is pretty lucky, actually, and it is going to be a lot of work. There's just not a lot of people who are in to that. I like classical music, but I'm not interested in that. Solo strings is all kinds of not my thing. If she's making a living at it (and she is, a pretty good one) asking more is rather silly.
There are very few, if any, human achievements that come totally by themselves, with no reliance on what came before them. Everything is iterative. Some things may be bigger leaps than others but it is all still built on earlier work, it is all derivative to an extent. I think Newton's statement to Hooke is apt "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
You hear shit like this from whiny people all the time with regards to video games ans so on. How there's nothing "new" anymore, that everything is based on something else. Of course all that really speaks of is looking at the past with rose coloured glasses, and of course ignoring the influence of other media on early video games.
We do not live or work in a vacuum, trying to come up with things with no knowledge or reference of what else has been done. We build on what we know, and try to add to it. In science, this is EVERYTHING to how it works. It is all about discovery leading to discovery, small pieces being unlocked to slowly solve large puzzles.
Also many of the really big things kind sneak up on you. They don't happen over night, little does, and you only notice the massive change in retrospect. The Internet is a good example. When I first got on it in 1995 it was a toy really. It was damn cool but there was little you could do with it of much utility. However that shifted and shifted until seemingly suddenly, without me really noticing, sometime in the mid to late 2000s it really matured.
Now the Internet isn't just useful, it is vital to many things. You can do most everything online, some things you have to do online. It has become to go to place for the world's knowledge. It is just an assumed part of computing to the point that when it is out, you forget and still try to open your browser to look something up real quick because you are so used to it.
It didn't happen overnight, but it did happen in a pretty short time really. It changed the way humans communicate, the way our data interacts. It kinda capped off the information age in a sense. It is a major change in human civilization, and most people have trouble really appreciating how different things were without it.
You are also extremely right about preexisting technologies. Convergence, some people call it. You have to have all the other stuff ready before you can do some things. Smart phones are a great example. People have long had the idea of something like it. Heck, look at Star Trek. The idea of a handheld information/communication device is nothing new. So why did it take so long?
Well you had to get all kinds of technology to the right state. Batteries had to be small enough and last long enough. Lithography had to advance to the point were a useful amount of CPU and memory could be jammed in there. Display technology needed to advance to where you could have a workable display in the small package. Oh and then there's the little matter of having a communications network to get data to it.
Once we had all that? Well guess what? We got ourselves smartphones. There again is a massive shift happening right under our noses. It is quickly going from something nobody had, to something only a few had, to something everyone is getting. Internet, and as such the store of human knowledge, is now something that follows many people around everywhere, and the number grows daily.
And more generally educated on money. In particular, I understand that it is a theoretical construct for facilitating trade. That physical objects have and continue to be used for it is of no consequence. The objects aren't what make money money.
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The problem came from an area that they often do: Programmer laziness. Programmers of early computers called the 1024 byte blocks computers used "kilo" since it was "pretty close" to 1000. Since space and power were limited, it was considered unnecessary overhead to actually convert it to base 10 for display.
Then as things went on it stuck, and the error kept getting bigger with increasing size.
Frankly I think OSes need to get with it and just start using base 10 prefixes for drive space. I mean we already do for network speed, CPU speed, pixels on the screen, etc, etc. Just start displaying drives using base 10 units. Memory I suppose we can keep base 2, since it is aligned on those boundaries, but then let's use the base-2 prefix. We easily have the power to do the conversion these days, let's do it.
The SI prefixes are clear and simple and used consistently everywhere, even in most computer things, except here. Let's fix this issue and call it good.
Basically my argument is don't upgrade or downgrade. So if you have an existing system with 7, stick with it. My home desktop is 7 and isn't changing any time soon. However if you get a new system with 8, stick with that. There's no reason to downgrade. The only real issue is the start menu and that is easy enough to get back. For that matter the start screen is perfectly usable, just more clunky and obtrusive than a start menu, hence my recommendation to get one.
It is silly to panic over 8 and act like you need to downgrade. You don't, it works just fine. Also, in the event you do happen to have a tablet, then it is better. That start screen is much easier to use than the start menu with fingers, and 8's multi-touch support is superior.
And do use it. I run Windows 8 on my work desktop full time. I'm our Windows support lead. So I have a pretty good feeling for it. I think it was a step backwards in terms of looks and usability. It's flat look is silly, particularly since the DWM is present and more powerful than ever. The start screen is also a very bad choice. While it is not hard to use, it is clumsy to use, it is worse than the start menu which is replaced.
However that really isn't such a big deal. Technically it is a very good OS. It is fast and stable, it has some nice new features, and it runs all the software I've tested, and I've tested a lot.
The major UI issue, the start menu, is easy to fix. You can get Classic Shell for free which does an ok job. For $5 you can get Start 8 which I love, it is a great replacement and very customizable. For $3 you can get Start is Back which actually restores the internal start menu to operation (most of the code is still there).
Hence I tell people don't bother to upgrade, if you've 7 stick with it. However if you get a system with 8, don't downgrade, just get a start menu and call it good.
Now if you have problems with 8, then that's fine, we can talk about them if you like. However just spurting vague shit is FUD, and that is mostly what we see. I see plenty of things about 8 that are flat out wrong.
MS made bad choices, but it really isn't all that big a deal. You find that out pretty quick if you use it much.
A lot of people on Slashdot decided Windows 8 was supposed to be bad. So now it is to them, regardless of any facts. They haven't actually used it to any significant degree, if at all, they just hate on it because they think they are supposed to hate it.
You'll see the FUD crew out in full force about it. My favourite is that it is a "walled garden" and you can only run apps from the MS store. That is, of course, completely false. It runs anything Windows 7 ran. However the point isn't to spread information, but FUD to try and scare people away from using it.
I'm certainly not a fan, since I think the look is a step backwards and Metro is retarded for the start menu, but I don't hate it. Get a start menu replacer and it works quite well.
Some things sell out because they just can't make enough. The company has made as many as it can and put them all out to retail, and they all sell. However other things sell out because the company deliberately limits production/distribution to make them scarce.
I can work too. People seem to have an irrational need to own things if they are told they can't have it. So paradoxically it can work to increase sales in the long run. People are told "you can't have this" and that makes them want it, even though they didn't before.
Look at the massive run on firearms/magazines what with the proposal for new gun legislation. These people were perfectly happy with what they had prior to this, but suddenly they get told "you can't have this" and they want to rush out and buy it.
Seriously, the Hurd guys either need to get with it, or just quit. It is stupid to have something this completely out of date and keep pretending like it'll be relevant. No, if you want your kernel to have any chance at relevance it needs to support modern features. Yes, that means SATA, x64, and so on. None of these are new things, by any stretch of the imagination.
If they lack the resources or drive to get this kind of thing done in a timely fashion, then just let it go. There is no point to releasing a kernel 10+ years out of date (as the parent points out, SATA hit in 2003) particularly when there are plenty of options that ARE up to date.
That is not at all the case. BIOS/firmware/driver updates/upgrades can potentially do four things for a working system:
1) Add new features. Many products get new features as their life goes on. My desktop board, an Intel, has gotten a number of new BIOS features during its life. When you update the code that runs something, no surprise that code can add features.
2) Improve performance. Sometimes, a faster/more efficient way of doing something is discovered. It takes an update to make that happen. I remember a big one back in the day with 3com switches. A firmware update provided a major improvement in through put and CPU usage.
3) Fix a bug that you haven't hit yet, but could. This is why you'll see updates tagged as urgent. Just because you never hit a bug that got discovered, doesn't mean the bug isn't there. So you want to get it fixed, BEFORE you hit it. There have been firmware updates that fixed some nasty ones, like data corruption with SSDs. Some people never got hit, but that doesn't mean the update wasn't a good idea.
4) Security issues. Same deal as with the bugs, just a different kind of bug. If a security issue is discovered, it'll take a patch to fix it and the system will be working before the patch.
The "Don't fix it if it ain't broke," really is not a valid ideology for systems administration.
Right now, there's no law against full capacity magazines. You can buy them in any capacity you wish. Well, I should say you can legally, they are sold out everywhere because idiots are panicking, but there's no law restricting capacity. So making your own, also no problem.
There might be an argument to taking it down if US law changed (I'm not saying I'd agree with it then either, just saying) but as it stands, there's nothing wrong with large mags legally.
Well most of the god-tards have moved on from disputing that things evolve. Rather their new shit is intelligent design, which says that god works behind the scenes, controlling how things evolve and change. So they aren't disputing the fact that change happens, they are disputing the theory as to why.
However their counter is not a theory, since there is no way to test it, and hence has no place in science class. Even if it is right, it is not science as it is not something one can test. Any time you mention god, by definition outside of the universe and untestable, you aren't talking science.
Gravity is a very active area of theoretical study. We don't understand what it is very well, and there are strong indications that General Relativity is not complete, that we need a better theory to fully explain interactions, particularly on the quantum level.
You may be confusing the theory with the fact. The fact of gravity is that objects attract, or on a more human scale, that things fall down. That is something you can just observe, sometimes without meaning to. The theory of gravity is to explain how and why the interaction works. That one we don't have nailed.
Not trying to support Texas here in their unscientific bullshit, but gravity is not an open and shut case. What its method of action is, how it works on very small and large levels, and how it unifies with the other forces are still not well understood.
It is incorrect that ideas only reach the status of "theory" when there's overwhelming evidence. A theory is a theory because it makes a testable, falsifiable, hypothesis. We have theories that aren't well tested. We don't go teaching them in science class, but that doesn't mean they aren't theories. This idea that "theory" means "proven beyond any reasonable doubt" is silly. It doesn't.
For that matter, some things get called theories that aren't. Like String Theory. Not only is there no proof, there's no testable predictions. As such right now it is a hypothesis. It is a neat bit of math, internally consistent, but so far there are no testable predictions, no way to falsify, so it isn't really a theory. We don't want to go teaching it in high school science class yet, but we do want to keep looking at it.
The reason why all the god backed proposals aren't theories is they aren't testable, aren't falsifiable. They rely on an entity that by definition is outside of the observable universe. As such they can't be tested and thus are not scientific theories. They could be right, but they still aren't science. Science is concerned with the testable. A testable, falsifiable, hypothesis is a theory. Heck even after it is falsified it is still a theory, it is just wrong :).
I'm not saying you never see it, the audio world likes it to an extent, Denon does it, but it is not very common. Most manufacturers decide what they want to make per unit and price accordingly. What the retailer does is of no concern to them.
Agency pricing is legal, but not to collude on it.
They were agreeing on a set agency pricing.
See normal pricing is wholesale, meaning that I decide what I need to charge for a product, and I sell it to stores for that much (usually with quantity discounts). Then the retailer is free to price it as they wish. They can mark it up a ton and try to make big unit profits, they can sell it at a loss as a loss leader. I am happy either way because I am getting what I want per copy.
Agency pricing is different. Here the manufacturer tells the retailer what price they must sell the final unit for. They not only set the price the retailer must pay them, but the price the retailer must charge customers.
Agency pricing is pretty scummy period in my opinion, and is fairly rare. Here not only was it being done, but as a collusion.
Then, to make matters worse, it was done due to the request of a retailer. Apple wanted agency pricing so they didn't have to compete with Amazon on price. They were having their high margins enforced on all retailers, at the expense of the consumers.
What with doing Windows support for a living I use the new and old Windows versions all the time. I run 8 at work, 7 at home. 8 is fine, once you get a start menu back. Start 8 is my favourite, costs $5. Start is Back costs $3 and actually restores the Windows start menu, the code is still in Win 8, at least most of it. Classic Shell is of course free and works fine, I just don't care for it as much.
One that is there, it works real well. It is fast and stable, and it has some improvements I like, the new task manager is quite nice.
It isn't worth rushing out to upgrade, it isn't OMGbettar than 7, if you have 7 stick with it. However it isn't problematic. It runs every program I've tried on it that also ran on 7 (and I've tried a lot) and it isn't problematic to use.
For that matter even the new start menu is perfectly usable, it is just more clunky than what it replaced. It isn't hard to use, just slower and inelegant. Perfectly usable though, we leave it on the 2012 servers we have.
Many companies like to use Exchange for e-mail and calendar functions. Given that, having it integrate on your smart phone is important.
You can argue all you like that companies shouldn't do that, they do, and that is what matters.
And have Slashdot mod that down by 6. Seriously, that's all you can do with spelling/grammar nazis. They are the kind of people who can't actually argue a point, can't admit they are wrong, and can't just stay quiet. So instead they nit pick and go after minor issues with presentation as though that invalidates the actual point made.
Just put them on ignore, and move on. Ends up making Slashdot much more enjoyable.
While it may take more scientists, and more and grander hardware (like the LHC) there's still plenty of cool shit left to be discovered. Also some of it will likely have some amazing practical applications.
For example: Some day we may truly decode DNA. I don't mean just sequence it, I mean understand how it works, what it says, completely. Be able to read, and perhaps write, the code of life in a complete and precise fashion. Well that has a hell of a lot of implications as to what one could do with it, it isn't just cool science.
I encounter this kind of attitude all the time: People who want to fight tooth and nail to hold on to whatever vital information they think they have, so they can't be replaced. They want to make sure nobody else learns how to do it, because otherwise they think they'd be laid off.
Thing is? They are often right, because they aren't very useful outside of that.
Personally I think it is silly. My boss always says we IT types should be trying to work ourselves out of a job. He doesn't mean he wants to get rid of us (he's a tech guy, not a PHB) just that we, including him, should always be working for better automation, working to solve problem, working to streamline and make service better.
The thing is that won't end up with us being out of a job because there's always more to do. There are things people would like us to do, but we don't have time for, and if we free up more time we can move on to that.
Not everyone operates that way though. They want to hold on to whatever little niche of knowledge they have, believing that is all that makes them valuable.
I can't see how this is supposed to be useful. I guess if you really want to play smartphone-type games on your TV this is a way to go since it is much easier to hook up to a TV and controllers than most smartphones. However I can't see why else you'd want it. I already have an Android phone, why do I want an android console that is by all accounts less powerful than my phone?
Geeks love the concept because it is "cheap and open" but that really isn't going to do much in the long run. I think the appeal will wear off, and people will set aside for their existing game consoles and phones.
Soldiers should be perfect automata, wanting nothing but to serve their country, needing no entertainment, no respite, willing to work with complete focus as much as is required.
Oh please cut the fucking shit.
Soldiers are human, and they need recreation just like everyone else. Now maybe watching football isn't your choice for that, it's not mine either, but you are in no position to judge others for what they like.
What's more, it helps give them a sense of connection to their country. Serving on a ship, and a sub in particular, is lonely. You are gone for months at a time, in the case of a sub often totally cut off. This is a way to get a "taste of home" as it were, to get to participate in something that a large part of the nation is also doing.
I know it is popular to hate on America, but if you are going to do it, you might want to check up on it first. You wanna see bad phone service? Check out Canada. The carriers there dick you around badly. Expensive, not a lot of choice, long contracts (3 year) and poor service (for example the phones are prone to roam to US networks if you live near the border, which most Canadians do, and the Canadian companies charge you tons when it happens).
Also, how's that Internet going for you in New Zealand? Enjoying 50GB a month for $85 (the current offer on telecom.nz)? Sometimes I'll do more than 50GB in a day, on a single system, if I'm reinstalling a bunch off of Steam. Nary a peep from my ISP, not any extra charges.
All nations have good and bad points.
Some forms of music, or any art, are condemned to poverty because nobody gives a shit. Same with really any other trade. Maybe you absolutely love writing some kind of obscure program that very few people have a use for, and none are willing to pay for. That's wonderful, just don't expect to make any money on it. You wanna make money programming? It needs to be writing things people want/need which may not be what's fun for you.
If you want to follow your dream, there's fine, just don't expect anyone else to want to give you money for it. If you want money, do something that others want or need done.
A lot of creative types seem to get sucked in by the Hollywood idea of "making it big". They seem to think that if people like their stuff, they should get a lot of money for it and be able to live the high life. Now that may happen in rare cases, but not in most, of course.
Just like all the rest of us. Some people, through a combination of luck, hard work, and timing, make it big and can retire young, live rich, and so on. However most of us have to continue working regularly for a good bit of our lives. We don't "make it big" we work, we make some money, we work some more.
Musicians need to realize that you need to look at having your own band/act much like any other small business: You have a small chance of making a lot of money and really doing well. You have a much larger chance of making some money, but having to work hard for it and keep working. You also have a non-trivial chance of making fuck-all and having your work amount to very little. Any time you do your own thing, that is how it goes.
Another problem is that most artists care about their art, they feel it is a good sort of art, otherwise they wouldn't do it. However they can have trouble understanding that not everyone else feels the same. They think their kind of music is the shit and don't get why everyone isn't after it.
This lady needs to STFU. If she can make a living as a one-woman cello act, well that is pretty lucky, actually, and it is going to be a lot of work. There's just not a lot of people who are in to that. I like classical music, but I'm not interested in that. Solo strings is all kinds of not my thing. If she's making a living at it (and she is, a pretty good one) asking more is rather silly.
There are very few, if any, human achievements that come totally by themselves, with no reliance on what came before them. Everything is iterative. Some things may be bigger leaps than others but it is all still built on earlier work, it is all derivative to an extent. I think Newton's statement to Hooke is apt "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
You hear shit like this from whiny people all the time with regards to video games ans so on. How there's nothing "new" anymore, that everything is based on something else. Of course all that really speaks of is looking at the past with rose coloured glasses, and of course ignoring the influence of other media on early video games.
We do not live or work in a vacuum, trying to come up with things with no knowledge or reference of what else has been done. We build on what we know, and try to add to it. In science, this is EVERYTHING to how it works. It is all about discovery leading to discovery, small pieces being unlocked to slowly solve large puzzles.
Also many of the really big things kind sneak up on you. They don't happen over night, little does, and you only notice the massive change in retrospect. The Internet is a good example. When I first got on it in 1995 it was a toy really. It was damn cool but there was little you could do with it of much utility. However that shifted and shifted until seemingly suddenly, without me really noticing, sometime in the mid to late 2000s it really matured.
Now the Internet isn't just useful, it is vital to many things. You can do most everything online, some things you have to do online. It has become to go to place for the world's knowledge. It is just an assumed part of computing to the point that when it is out, you forget and still try to open your browser to look something up real quick because you are so used to it.
It didn't happen overnight, but it did happen in a pretty short time really. It changed the way humans communicate, the way our data interacts. It kinda capped off the information age in a sense. It is a major change in human civilization, and most people have trouble really appreciating how different things were without it.
You are also extremely right about preexisting technologies. Convergence, some people call it. You have to have all the other stuff ready before you can do some things. Smart phones are a great example. People have long had the idea of something like it. Heck, look at Star Trek. The idea of a handheld information/communication device is nothing new. So why did it take so long?
Well you had to get all kinds of technology to the right state. Batteries had to be small enough and last long enough. Lithography had to advance to the point were a useful amount of CPU and memory could be jammed in there. Display technology needed to advance to where you could have a workable display in the small package. Oh and then there's the little matter of having a communications network to get data to it.
Once we had all that? Well guess what? We got ourselves smartphones. There again is a massive shift happening right under our noses. It is quickly going from something nobody had, to something only a few had, to something everyone is getting. Internet, and as such the store of human knowledge, is now something that follows many people around everywhere, and the number grows daily.
And more generally educated on money. In particular, I understand that it is a theoretical construct for facilitating trade. That physical objects have and continue to be used for it is of no consequence. The objects aren't what make money money.