I might have a somewhat luddite view on this subject, but for me the whole concept of canned visual entertainment has failed. Since it has failed, I have given up on it. I can't remember the last movie I saw, I only know it was a long... time ago - many years. I do remember some movies from before that time which somehow managed to get stuck so I can not state unequivocally that movies are not worth the celluloid they used to be printed on but the industry has made the whole experience around it so distasteful that I feel better iff without. On the risk of sounding like a Luddite I can honestly say that I'd rather read the book. Which I do, a lot. Time and time again my own imagination produces better special effects than the UK, Canada and New Zealand manage.
How about denying medical insurance coverage to those that fail to get vaccinated, unless they can demonstrate that they are a member of a recognized religious congregation that specifically is against vaccination as a part of church dogma?
Why make an exception for 'church dogma'? If you willingly subject yourself to unnecessary risks because of 'church dogma' you should be willing and able to bear the consequences of your actions. Surely the ${deity} which instilled this 'church dogma' into its believers will come to the aid of the needy? And if ${deity} happens to fail to show up, that must all be part of the plan, right?
The only exception I see as necessary is that for underage children. They don't have a say in the matter and are just subject to whatever figment of imagination their parents or guardians impose on them.
It is not so much that commercial unixes sucked, more that they were encumbered with so many restrictions and limitations that it got plain annoying and hard to use them. From missing tools and compilers to forced kernel rebuilds for the most trivial configuration change, anything to extract just one more license fee from the user. This, combined with the unix wars where players tried to outdo their competitors by doing things their own way made life much harder than needed.
This is probably one of the biggest contributions Linux made to the unix world. While Linux might not officially be unix, it does away with all these artificial restrictions and offers the same options to everyone everywhere. The differences between Linux distributions are nothing compared to the difference between, say, HPUX and Solaris (or AIX or Irix or Non-Stop OS or AT&T system V, let alone SCO in its many incarnations...)
Also, isn't it possible to have a Google Play account without a credit card?
Yes, that is perfectly possible. Entering payment details is completely optional and does in no way limit the functionality, other than not being able to pay for apps and in-app purchases. Compare this to iOS which absolutely refuses to do anything unless you enter either payment details or a pre-paid card number. Android - iOS: 1 - 0.
There is a really simple solution to all these problems on Android: don't enter any payment details. No, you won't be able to buy anything on your phone. What have you lost? Nothing of value. What do you gain? Peace of mind. Freedom. No more bill shock, at least not from that side of the equation.
Take it one step further for even more freedom: remove - or disable - the play store and install F-Droid. It only holds a tiny fraction of the number of apps you'll find on the play store, but everything there is free software. This is both reassuring for those who care about what they run on their devices as well as handy for those who want to get into Android software development - just look at how other did it to get a head start.
The hardware on many of these tablets can be made to do much more than the often mediocre firmware provided by the OEM enables it to. I ported Android Cyanogenmod 10 (Android 4.1.2) to a RK3066-powered tablet which turned the thing from a sometimes sluggish, rather middle of the road performer to something which outperforms my parents' Galaxy Tab 3 (the 10.1", Intel Atom-powered version). I did the same with one of the earlier Chinese tablets (Ainol Novo 8) with similar results. For the price of a 'branded' Android tablet you can usually get two or three of these, if not more. Given the right attitude they can be made to perform like one of the branded tablets, with the added advantage of the usually larger range of interfaces and expansion options on the 'cheap' tablets.
The conclusion is simple: if you want a guaranteed 'out of the box' experience these cheaper tablets are hit and miss. If you are willing to do some work you can do really well with some of them.
Hmmmm.... I wonder what you do to your phones which makes them do that. I have only ever had phones with removable batteries without these problems. Either you always buy lemons, you exaggerate the problem or you slam them down on the desk in a futile attempt to form a phone-shaped crater in the surface.
While the concept of a lego phone might not appeal to everyone, there certainly is some merit in being able to swap more than just the battery.
Also remember that GSM phones already contain user-swappable devices (SIM cards) which do not seem to suffer from your desk-dunking disease. There are ways of achieving this modularity without sacrificing reliability.
This is probably one of the better options, even though the S/N ratio on reddit often makes me long for a Dolby C switch on this here laptop.
Sooooo... boycottperson, please add a hint to gather at the slashdot subreddit for boycott-related communications. Open a thread there and keep it alive.
I've seen many calls for a boycott, and such a thing might be in order to get the powers that be to understand that the future of/. is rather bleak without actively participating users.
One thing is missing from these boycott calls: a means of communication before, during and after the proposed boycott. Without such a means of communication nobody will know whether the boycott is successful or not. At the most they'll head for/. - thereby negating the effect of the proposed boycott - to see whether it is as empty as intended.
If anyone has a suggestion for a good place to discuss and connect during the boycott, please speak up. Understand that many/.-ers are wary of all the social boondoggery which infests the web so don't come with suggestions like 'facebook' or 'twitter'. A newsgroup would work, as would another discussion forum. That newsgroup should have a web interface, preferably one which does not require you to login using a Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/Facebook/Twitter/other-big-data-vacuum account.
TFA talks about these whales never having been seen because they live so deep in the sea. Either they have developed rebreathers or everlasting scuba gear OR they have to come to the surface every once in a while to breathe and thus be liable to be seen. The same goes for calves, they'd have to stay relatively close to the surface for the first few days. Good to know that there is still something left to be discovered. </content-disposition>
Now that this is out of the way I'd like to add my voice to those who state that the beta is, shall we say, sub-optimal? I don't tend to use expletives so I'll refrain from them in this context but I do want to let it be known that I'll probably be a goner if I have to access the site through the JS-riddled monstrosity called beta. I already spend more time elsewhere (HN et al) even though 'elsewhere' also has its faults.
To those in command, accept that the beta is generally disliked. Either keep the site as it is until it bleeds dry or, if you insist in changing for changes' sake offer the content through an API so users can decide on their own frontend - think HN. Yes, you'll want to have some way of foisting ads and infomercial content and such pablum on your very suspecting users. They'll find ways to block it as they always did. Just accept that and keep the brand alive, or fight it and perish.
For everything that doesn't move, it should be wired anyway.
Strange as it may sound to you there are actually reasons to have stationary things connect to the network through a wireless adapter. One good reason would be the simple fact that some of us live in areas where lightning plays havoc on infrastructure, especially telephone lines. If you connect to the 'net through ADSL you'll start seeing the wisdom of having as few wired connections between your modem and your network. While it is more or less impossible to protect the modem from a direct strike and usually inconvenient to protect the router, all other equipment should preferably be connected wirelessly or suffer the wrath of Thor.
This is no idle talk, I have personally lost three modems, two routers, three Thinkpad T23 network adapters, one Intel SS4200 server network interface and one HP Jetdirect card to lightning strikes. The damage always came from the telephone line and was carried through the wired network to the victims. Nothing ever happened to any wireless device, ever.
Re:The more things change the more they... change?
on
Apple Macintosh Turns 30
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Not having a CLI and forcing developers to either limit their applications to what could be pointed at and clicked, or implementing their own application-specific CLI is one of the reasons why the Macintosh ended up being a niche platform, derided by some as having its manual 'printed on drool-proof paper'. If there is one thing Apple did right when they introduced OSX it is their decision to 'allow' command line access.
Both the money issue - iPeople are very much wont to shell out for the next craze - as well as the rather high audio latency on even the latest incarnation of Android. With a bit of luck the latter problem will be solved when the new Android runtime (ART) goes mainstream. The former problem is unsolvable as it seems to be part of the target group's identity to want to show others that they *can* spend money on basically unnecessary things.
Hear, hear... I only subscribed to this site when it became hard to contribute anonymously. Were it not for that I'd be gladly hiding behind the AC banner still.
Even more generic lesson: don't go to that cinema, ever again. Or any other cinema for that matter, there are better things to do with your time. Better things to do with your money as well.
Knowing the company behind this boondoggle I guess the reason the code is not open source is to protect the innocent developers who might otherwise happen to get a glance of said code to their eternal detriment and damnation. Snow crash for real...
The mere fact that many sites host executable content does not mean you need to execute that content. Calling people 'luddites' and 'clueless' when they recognize this is... rather clueless.
Most sites hosting executable content work partly without that content. Some things might not look like they would had that executable content been given free reign, but so what? Some sites overlay the static page with warnings about the lack of functionality when you block their executable content. Right-mouse-button-click on 'Remove this object' and voila... the site works fine. For those sites which really, really insist on having their scripts run there is always CTRL-w.
Apart from lowering the expletive count in your prose I'd suggest those 'hot shots' would have been much better off paying someone 'a few hundred dollars an hour' to cobble together a new boot image minus all the cruft which had accumulated in all those years. They could have run this boot image in parallel in a simulated environment for a few weeks to months to iron out any glitches, then run it live on a number of 'hot shot' seats, then roll it out to the floor. It would have cost money but it would have been money well spent. It is possible to interface to older systems without needing to run 'DOS TCP/IP 1.0', especially since those older systems are much more likely to talk some SNA-related dialect than that new-fangled 'internet protocol'.
...they should ask for donations to buy power-generating equipment. PV-panels, a wind generator, anything which fits the budget and is a feasible option in the area where they are active. The generated power can either be used directly to keep those servers running or it could be used to run the meters backwards. If you give someone a kilowatt hour she runs her server for a few hours. If you give him the capacity to generate his own power he will become free.
And this, dear reader, is why you don't give iDevices to children. If you insist on giving them a touch-screen thing, get something running Android, don't activate a Google account on it - or even better install an alternative Android distribution and keep the thing Google-free - and side-load a few free games which you downloaded on another device through the Play store. Android runs fine without Google, you do not need anything else than the device and some software to run on it. No credit card. No 'iTunes gift card' equivalent. No Google account. Just hardware and the software you want to run on it.
Any computing device which comes with a mandatory credit account is off-limits in my opinion. It is the equivalent of a slot machine or a pay-to-play arcade game, not a personal computing device.
Well then, keep that thermostat but install another in a supersecret location. Disconnect thermostat number one and let her twiddle it to her heart's content. Problem solved.
Slashdot Mirror
I might have a somewhat luddite view on this subject, but for me the whole concept of canned visual entertainment has failed. Since it has failed, I have given up on it. I can't remember the last movie I saw, I only know it was a long... time ago - many years. I do remember some movies from before that time which somehow managed to get stuck so I can not state unequivocally that movies are not worth the celluloid they used to be printed on but the industry has made the whole experience around it so distasteful that I feel better iff without. On the risk of sounding like a Luddite I can honestly say that I'd rather read the book. Which I do, a lot. Time and time again my own imagination produces better special effects than the UK, Canada and New Zealand manage.
Why make an exception for 'church dogma'? If you willingly subject yourself to unnecessary risks because of 'church dogma' you should be willing and able to bear the consequences of your actions. Surely the ${deity} which instilled this 'church dogma' into its believers will come to the aid of the needy? And if ${deity} happens to fail to show up, that must all be part of the plan, right?
The only exception I see as necessary is that for underage children. They don't have a say in the matter and are just subject to whatever figment of imagination their parents or guardians impose on them.
It is not so much that commercial unixes sucked, more that they were encumbered with so many restrictions and limitations that it got plain annoying and hard to use them. From missing tools and compilers to forced kernel rebuilds for the most trivial configuration change, anything to extract just one more license fee from the user. This, combined with the unix wars where players tried to outdo their competitors by doing things their own way made life much harder than needed.
This is probably one of the biggest contributions Linux made to the unix world. While Linux might not officially be unix, it does away with all these artificial restrictions and offers the same options to everyone everywhere. The differences between Linux distributions are nothing compared to the difference between, say, HPUX and Solaris (or AIX or Irix or Non-Stop OS or AT&T system V, let alone SCO in its many incarnations...)
Also, isn't it possible to have a Google Play account without a credit card?
Yes, that is perfectly possible. Entering payment details is completely optional and does in no way limit the functionality, other than not being able to pay for apps and in-app purchases. Compare this to iOS which absolutely refuses to do anything unless you enter either payment details or a pre-paid card number. Android - iOS: 1 - 0.
There is a really simple solution to all these problems on Android: don't enter any payment details. No, you won't be able to buy anything on your phone. What have you lost? Nothing of value. What do you gain? Peace of mind. Freedom. No more bill shock, at least not from that side of the equation.
Take it one step further for even more freedom: remove - or disable - the play store and install F-Droid. It only holds a tiny fraction of the number of apps you'll find on the play store, but everything there is free software. This is both reassuring for those who care about what they run on their devices as well as handy for those who want to get into Android software development - just look at how other did it to get a head start.
The hardware on many of these tablets can be made to do much more than the often mediocre firmware provided by the OEM enables it to. I ported Android Cyanogenmod 10 (Android 4.1.2) to a RK3066-powered tablet which turned the thing from a sometimes sluggish, rather middle of the road performer to something which outperforms my parents' Galaxy Tab 3 (the 10.1", Intel Atom-powered version). I did the same with one of the earlier Chinese tablets (Ainol Novo 8) with similar results. For the price of a 'branded' Android tablet you can usually get two or three of these, if not more. Given the right attitude they can be made to perform like one of the branded tablets, with the added advantage of the usually larger range of interfaces and expansion options on the 'cheap' tablets.
The conclusion is simple: if you want a guaranteed 'out of the box' experience these cheaper tablets are hit and miss. If you are willing to do some work you can do really well with some of them.
Hmmmm.... I wonder what you do to your phones which makes them do that. I have only ever had phones with removable batteries without these problems. Either you always buy lemons, you exaggerate the problem or you slam them down on the desk in a futile attempt to form a phone-shaped crater in the surface.
While the concept of a lego phone might not appeal to everyone, there certainly is some merit in being able to swap more than just the battery.
Also remember that GSM phones already contain user-swappable devices (SIM cards) which do not seem to suffer from your desk-dunking disease. There are ways of achieving this modularity without sacrificing reliability.
This is probably one of the better options, even though the S/N ratio on reddit often makes me long for a Dolby C switch on this here laptop.
Sooooo... boycottperson, please add a hint to gather at the slashdot subreddit for boycott-related communications. Open a thread there and keep it alive.
IRC is good for ephemeral communications but it is inferior for more long-term discussions. A web forum is probably best given the target audience.
I've seen many calls for a boycott, and such a thing might be in order to get the powers that be to understand that the future of /. is rather bleak without actively participating users.
One thing is missing from these boycott calls: a means of communication before, during and after the proposed boycott. Without such a means of communication nobody will know whether the boycott is successful or not. At the most they'll head for /. - thereby negating the effect of the proposed boycott - to see whether it is as empty as intended.
If anyone has a suggestion for a good place to discuss and connect during the boycott, please speak up. Understand that many /.-ers are wary of all the social boondoggery which infests the web so don't come with suggestions like 'facebook' or 'twitter'. A newsgroup would work, as would another discussion forum. That newsgroup should have a web interface, preferably one which does not require you to login using a Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/Facebook/Twitter/other-big-data-vacuum account.
Any suggestions?
TFA talks about these whales never having been seen because they live so deep in the sea. Either they have developed rebreathers or everlasting scuba gear OR they have to come to the surface every once in a while to breathe and thus be liable to be seen. The same goes for calves, they'd have to stay relatively close to the surface for the first few days. Good to know that there is still something left to be discovered.
</content-disposition>
Now that this is out of the way I'd like to add my voice to those who state that the beta is, shall we say, sub-optimal? I don't tend to use expletives so I'll refrain from them in this context but I do want to let it be known that I'll probably be a goner if I have to access the site through the JS-riddled monstrosity called beta. I already spend more time elsewhere (HN et al) even though 'elsewhere' also has its faults.
To those in command, accept that the beta is generally disliked. Either keep the site as it is until it bleeds dry or, if you insist in changing for changes' sake offer the content through an API so users can decide on their own frontend - think HN. Yes, you'll want to have some way of foisting ads and infomercial content and such pablum on your very suspecting users. They'll find ways to block it as they always did. Just accept that and keep the brand alive, or fight it and perish.
Strange as it may sound to you there are actually reasons to have stationary things connect to the network through a wireless adapter. One good reason would be the simple fact that some of us live in areas where lightning plays havoc on infrastructure, especially telephone lines. If you connect to the 'net through ADSL you'll start seeing the wisdom of having as few wired connections between your modem and your network. While it is more or less impossible to protect the modem from a direct strike and usually inconvenient to protect the router, all other equipment should preferably be connected wirelessly or suffer the wrath of Thor.
This is no idle talk, I have personally lost three modems, two routers, three Thinkpad T23 network adapters, one Intel SS4200 server network interface and one HP Jetdirect card to lightning strikes. The damage always came from the telephone line and was carried through the wired network to the victims. Nothing ever happened to any wireless device, ever.
Not having a CLI and forcing developers to either limit their applications to what could be pointed at and clicked, or implementing their own application-specific CLI is one of the reasons why the Macintosh ended up being a niche platform, derided by some as having its manual 'printed on drool-proof paper'. If there is one thing Apple did right when they introduced OSX it is their decision to 'allow' command line access.
Oh well, there is plenty of malware on the Apple app store as well. The Windows store is also full of malware.
These statements are just as unproven as the one you just made. If you back up yours with some evidence, I'm sure I can find some for mine...
Both the money issue - iPeople are very much wont to shell out for the next craze - as well as the rather high audio latency on even the latest incarnation of Android. With a bit of luck the latter problem will be solved when the new Android runtime (ART) goes mainstream. The former problem is unsolvable as it seems to be part of the target group's identity to want to show others that they *can* spend money on basically unnecessary things.
Here they are! Get them! Squash 'm! Eradicate 'm! Rid the world of this vermin!
Hear, hear... I only subscribed to this site when it became hard to contribute anonymously. Were it not for that I'd be gladly hiding behind the AC banner still.
Even more generic lesson: don't go to that cinema, ever again. Or any other cinema for that matter, there are better things to do with your time. Better things to do with your money as well.
In reality three words would suffice when it comes to translating any policitian's words on covert monitoring:
'bridge for sale'
Knowing the company behind this boondoggle I guess the reason the code is not open source is to protect the innocent developers who might otherwise happen to get a glance of said code to their eternal detriment and damnation. Snow crash for real...
The mere fact that many sites host executable content does not mean you need to execute that content. Calling people 'luddites' and 'clueless' when they recognize this is... rather clueless.
Most sites hosting executable content work partly without that content. Some things might not look like they would had that executable content been given free reign, but so what? Some sites overlay the static page with warnings about the lack of functionality when you block their executable content. Right-mouse-button-click on 'Remove this object' and voila... the site works fine. For those sites which really, really insist on having their scripts run there is always CTRL-w.
Apart from lowering the expletive count in your prose I'd suggest those 'hot shots' would have been much better off paying someone 'a few hundred dollars an hour' to cobble together a new boot image minus all the cruft which had accumulated in all those years. They could have run this boot image in parallel in a simulated environment for a few weeks to months to iron out any glitches, then run it live on a number of 'hot shot' seats, then roll it out to the floor. It would have cost money but it would have been money well spent. It is possible to interface to older systems without needing to run 'DOS TCP/IP 1.0', especially since those older systems are much more likely to talk some SNA-related dialect than that new-fangled 'internet protocol'.
...they should ask for donations to buy power-generating equipment. PV-panels, a wind generator, anything which fits the budget and is a feasible option in the area where they are active. The generated power can either be used directly to keep those servers running or it could be used to run the meters backwards. If you give someone a kilowatt hour she runs her server for a few hours. If you give him the capacity to generate his own power he will become free.
And this, dear reader, is why you don't give iDevices to children. If you insist on giving them a touch-screen thing, get something running Android, don't activate a Google account on it - or even better install an alternative Android distribution and keep the thing Google-free - and side-load a few free games which you downloaded on another device through the Play store. Android runs fine without Google, you do not need anything else than the device and some software to run on it. No credit card. No 'iTunes gift card' equivalent. No Google account. Just hardware and the software you want to run on it.
Any computing device which comes with a mandatory credit account is off-limits in my opinion. It is the equivalent of a slot machine or a pay-to-play arcade game, not a personal computing device.
Well then, keep that thermostat but install another in a supersecret location. Disconnect thermostat number one and let her twiddle it to her heart's content. Problem solved.