This This THIS! It's often impractical to break up a settlement among the members of the class and have the payment be anything but laughable. But if there's a nonprofit and not-evil competitor then sending the money (or a good part of it) to them is eminently better than sending it to a few pet universities where most of it will be consumed by administrative overhead.
Then you're an idiot. You opt-out only if you plan to sue them yourself. Otherwise, there's no point. Yes, the terms of the settlement apply to you, including some kind of prohibition on suing about it in the future, if you don't opt out, but if you don't intend to then who cares? All you did was waste some time filling out a form and some postage sending it in (because it always has to be mailed, and being a legal document you do want certified mail).
You can't "just ignore" the EU. The EU won't sue you. But the companies in the EU can and will - especially with copyright and other treaties plus the ability to sue in your home country if they choose to (most have US subsidiaries). So... should we revert to Usenet, with no pictures? Yes, they could still sue over text, but that's a bit less obvious and harder to prove unless it's a direct quote. Even then, fair use might apply in some countries.
DHS already does random checks at stations and on trains, though they have to be somewhat polite after a couple of episodes with Amtrak Police not being happy with their tactics.
They already exist, at least in California: Quik-Trak terminals. Purchase with cards, or print out pre-purchased tickets if you don't want to or can't put a PDF in your phone or print it out at home. They've been around for a decade or more. Not sure if those are Cal-Amtrak only or national, but it's a solved problem. I was even able to pick up a ticket for a trip on the NE Corridor before leaving from CA where the station was near the airport I was using at the east end - worked well, because the ticket window was a zoo but I already had mine in hand (and the train was just arriving).
True, LO is a bit of a pork roast to download the installer and local help, more so if you need both bitness, But in a place with multiple computers the online part need only be done once. I've sometimes gone to a local Starbucks to use their internet connection, which is much faster at midafternoon than my home line ever is. Suck in LO and do a little surfing while enjoying an overpriced cup of coffee. Then put it on a server or even a USB stick to pass around. Custom installation allows removing a lot of things that you probably aren't going to use (MediaWiki? Logo? Quickstarter?), slimming down the final product on the user's system. It works fine for me even on a tablet with only 2GB (1GB normally free after Windows loads up). And for those afraid of Java: it's only required for a couple of functions when using the database module - not a mainstream activity.
I usually leave the preloader out of my LO installation (always do custom so I can leave out some pieces I will never use). With SSD boot & applications drive (default data is on a separate hard disk), LO starts up in 10 sec or less. Core2 Extreme and 8G RAM, Win10 1709. Not much slower, actually in a Gen1 i5 laptop with only 4G. The 32-bit version of the suite runs acceptably in a cheap 2GB Win10 tablet, and has the advantage (over Office Mobile) of working when not online.
Has anybody tried LO Online? Is it still early beta? How does it compare to Office Mobile or Office 365? What server does it run on, if you're not serving it from your own data center or cloud instance?
Besides, even with Word, WYSINWYG wrt font details. It's close, but no cigar. I see many font and other spacing glitches on-screen in Office 360; it prints OK though. LO frankly isn't notably worse than Word on-screen, and good enough when printed. Better, actually, when saved as PDF.
Main issue is the default (open source) fonts; *those* do have minor glitches when compared with the standard (non-free) fonts MS uses. But if you're running LO in Windows then you have all those standard Windows fonts anyway, and LO happily uses them if you choose them.
Agree with this. When building something bigger than a letter, Word lets you use an outline view that is essentially the heading levels in the final document. Then drop in blocks of text which become the body text of the final document if you want to, or switch to the normal edit view and start typing body text. Has been there in Word since at least 6 (vaguely recall something like it in Word 2 for Windows and 4 for Mac). Yes, it can be simulated using heading levels in LO, but it's clunky because you have to remember not to type any text after each heading when setting it up.
I used to write BASIC programs with an outline processor in a Model 100... easy to get a decent structure for it.
Sci-Fi/Historical viewpoint: the US now is sort of where Europe was before WW2. What industry remains is stuck with legacy equipment and infrastructure. Industry that was highly cost-sensitive long ago move offshore for both lower labor cost AND for the ability to move into new facilities with modern equipment. The US could reclaim some of that industry if it could afford to throw out the old stuff and start over - but it can't afford to do that. So we have a lot of industry that is stuck with old stuff, period, and will be until it goes out of business and is either recycled or is purchased by somebody with the money to rebuild using modern systems. That somebody might not be based in the US.
Health Care is a prime example of that - those gadgets that cost bazillion$ 5-10 years ago are still being paid off/depreciated, so the bean counters won't let them be replaced even if new stuff (unfortunately, gazillion$ instead of bazillion$) works far better. Industrial gear is not one of those places where the price drops every year.
1) Very small-memory devices. I have a tablet that runs Win10 in 2GB of RAM on an Atom chip. While the Atom theoretically is 64-bit capable, it only supports 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. So in order to run within those limitations, the 32-bit version of Windows is required - theoretically, you could boot 64-bit Windows in 2 GB, but it wouldn't be able to actually run anything because it would spend all of its time paging (yes, they gave me a 64-bit Win7 HP at work, and it was unusable until the RAM was upgraded). As a practical matter, with a fairly minimal set of startup items, the minimum memory use (idling) in the tablet is about 0.9 GB; it can run Libreoffice and Firefox at the same time, but FF better have only a few tabs open and the LO document better not be huge to avoid massive slowdown due to paging.
This is not a widely-used hardware configuration, but certainly not unknown. Anybody with 4GB or more of RAM should be running 64-bit Windows. And if I can run 32-bit Win10 on that tablet, you could probably even run it on a P4 or even 486 with 2GB - if anybody wants a modern user interface and all its overhead (I get the impression that the internals are not as modern) on very old hardware.
2) Need to run 16-bit software. This has been mentioned. It's a minimal use case, and in 64-bit Windows is easily handled, for 16-bit applications, by using DOSBox to virtualize the app while still allowing access to the main file system. The only legitimate need for 32-bit Windows to do this is where hardware must be addressed with drivers - an exceedingly small population of users, but probably a vocal one. Note: even 32-bit Windows needs to virtualize 16-bit software; that's what the NTDVM is for.
If you want to see a nice little crash, port the NTDVM from a 32-bit system to a 64-bit system, then attempt to run 16-bit software. Doesn't work. Not a bad crash; it just doesn't work. Works perfectly, though, in 32-bit Windows.
I use DOSBox to run the original DOS version of Railroad Tycoon in 64-bit Windows. Works perfectly. I also have Win 3.1 installed under DOSBox in 64-bit Windows; also works perfectly, and allows use of 16-bit Windows games.
And for those making the comment that you need 32-bit Windows for 32-bit software: NOT. 32-bit software works fine in 64-bit Windows; it and the CPU are designed to do that. Even some parts of the OS distribution are still 32-bit. Check out the details list in Task Manager sometime.
I can't. Windows phone*: no more updates; carrier stopped providing them at 8.1 Cyan. Android: without a Google Account, the manufacturer & carrier won't pass them through after the first year or so; WITH a Google Account, it still often won't work without a fair amount of hacking, and if it does work it only extends updates for maybe another year; Google abandons stuff (all kinds of stuff, not just phones) quickly. Apple? No experience, though reportedly they do support devices for up to a couple of years at least.
*Windows note: I *was* able to get more updates by joining "Windows Insider" which bypasses the carrier - but only to a point. The phone is running Win10 now, but stopped updating at 1511; no further update activity (even minor stuff) since that loaded about 9 months ago. No, I'm not going to get "preview builds" on a working phone. And btw as a phone/mobile OS 8.1 was better... same functions and apps, but in a smaller footprint.
Sure, even though they're now officially a rounding error in the market share stats as noted in the 5/23 article. The phones actually aren't bad; my old Nokia (from before they shed the name) Lumina 635 works fine, and the buttons are much easier to use with my arthritic fingers than most of the Androids and Apples. Also, MS seems to have had better luck over the years than others with getting the carriers to allow updates; perhaps not having so many of them helps? I do think that I like having a phone that can't accept Win10 though (not enough memory); Win 8.1 just works, while I hear that Win10 for phones is still a work in progress, even more so than the computer flavor of it. Also: Gorilla Glass on a cheap phone - who'd a thunk it?/curmudgeon
In reverse: most of the application and utility software I regularly use in Windows is free, usually open-source (some is closed-source freeware). It works well. I stick with Windows because of specific games (that in some cases cannot run in a virtual machine), and for a couple of closed-source applications that just do things better or more conveniently than the open-source alternatives. I have tested Linux (Mint) and could easily switch now if the Wine/Mono ecosystem advanced just a bit so those couple of gotta-use-them closed applications would work. They're very close, actually, and do appear to install (but then they don't work). Also, games (the ones I have are not in Steam).
[flame on]
Frankly, if Linux as a group wants to be a player in the desktop game, the religious attitude about open source has to change. While maybe not embracing closed source, why not be ecumenical about it? Can't we "just get along?" All the "rest of us" really want is a system that works; Windows 10 seems to be trying its best to lose that label so where's the Really Useful Alternative? [/flame]
PS: I could see Windows eventually going open-source on a.NET model. That is: a "core" consisting of the kernel and perhaps a few necessary services, enough to boot the thing, but to do anything useful you would need a bunch of libraries and services that are not (at first, anyway) open source. The.NET open source "core" seems to be like that, because so much other stuff is needed to complete the project. Oracle does it, too, with VirtualBox: the basic machine is open, but the extensions that you need to make it useful are not (though they are free).
Slashdot Mirror
This This THIS! It's often impractical to break up a settlement among the members of the class and have the payment be anything but laughable. But if there's a nonprofit and not-evil competitor then sending the money (or a good part of it) to them is eminently better than sending it to a few pet universities where most of it will be consumed by administrative overhead.
Then you're an idiot. You opt-out only if you plan to sue them yourself. Otherwise, there's no point. Yes, the terms of the settlement apply to you, including some kind of prohibition on suing about it in the future, if you don't opt out, but if you don't intend to then who cares? All you did was waste some time filling out a form and some postage sending it in (because it always has to be mailed, and being a legal document you do want certified mail).
You can't "just ignore" the EU. The EU won't sue you. But the companies in the EU can and will - especially with copyright and other treaties plus the ability to sue in your home country if they choose to (most have US subsidiaries). So ... should we revert to Usenet, with no pictures? Yes, they could still sue over text, but that's a bit less obvious and harder to prove unless it's a direct quote. Even then, fair use might apply in some countries.
DHS already does random checks at stations and on trains, though they have to be somewhat polite after a couple of episodes with Amtrak Police not being happy with their tactics.
They already exist, at least in California: Quik-Trak terminals. Purchase with cards, or print out pre-purchased tickets if you don't want to or can't put a PDF in your phone or print it out at home. They've been around for a decade or more. Not sure if those are Cal-Amtrak only or national, but it's a solved problem. I was even able to pick up a ticket for a trip on the NE Corridor before leaving from CA where the station was near the airport I was using at the east end - worked well, because the ticket window was a zoo but I already had mine in hand (and the train was just arriving).
True, LO is a bit of a pork roast to download the installer and local help, more so if you need both bitness, But in a place with multiple computers the online part need only be done once. I've sometimes gone to a local Starbucks to use their internet connection, which is much faster at midafternoon than my home line ever is. Suck in LO and do a little surfing while enjoying an overpriced cup of coffee. Then put it on a server or even a USB stick to pass around. Custom installation allows removing a lot of things that you probably aren't going to use (MediaWiki? Logo? Quickstarter?), slimming down the final product on the user's system. It works fine for me even on a tablet with only 2GB (1GB normally free after Windows loads up). And for those afraid of Java: it's only required for a couple of functions when using the database module - not a mainstream activity.
I usually leave the preloader out of my LO installation (always do custom so I can leave out some pieces I will never use). With SSD boot & applications drive (default data is on a separate hard disk), LO starts up in 10 sec or less. Core2 Extreme and 8G RAM, Win10 1709. Not much slower, actually in a Gen1 i5 laptop with only 4G. The 32-bit version of the suite runs acceptably in a cheap 2GB Win10 tablet, and has the advantage (over Office Mobile) of working when not online.
Has anybody tried LO Online? Is it still early beta? How does it compare to Office Mobile or Office 365? What server does it run on, if you're not serving it from your own data center or cloud instance?
Besides, even with Word, WYSINWYG wrt font details. It's close, but no cigar. I see many font and other spacing glitches on-screen in Office 360; it prints OK though. LO frankly isn't notably worse than Word on-screen, and good enough when printed. Better, actually, when saved as PDF.
Main issue is the default (open source) fonts; *those* do have minor glitches when compared with the standard (non-free) fonts MS uses. But if you're running LO in Windows then you have all those standard Windows fonts anyway, and LO happily uses them if you choose them.
Agree with this. When building something bigger than a letter, Word lets you use an outline view that is essentially the heading levels in the final document. Then drop in blocks of text which become the body text of the final document if you want to, or switch to the normal edit view and start typing body text. Has been there in Word since at least 6 (vaguely recall something like it in Word 2 for Windows and 4 for Mac). Yes, it can be simulated using heading levels in LO, but it's clunky because you have to remember not to type any text after each heading when setting it up.
I used to write BASIC programs with an outline processor in a Model 100 ... easy to get a decent structure for it.
Grate? Is it for shredding your documents before they even get to paper?
Slashdot get's an "A" from SSLLabs (only minor complaints), but and "E" out of "G" for headers (several missing that they want).
Sci-Fi/Historical viewpoint: the US now is sort of where Europe was before WW2. What industry remains is stuck with legacy equipment and infrastructure. Industry that was highly cost-sensitive long ago move offshore for both lower labor cost AND for the ability to move into new facilities with modern equipment. The US could reclaim some of that industry if it could afford to throw out the old stuff and start over - but it can't afford to do that. So we have a lot of industry that is stuck with old stuff, period, and will be until it goes out of business and is either recycled or is purchased by somebody with the money to rebuild using modern systems. That somebody might not be based in the US.
Health Care is a prime example of that - those gadgets that cost bazillion$ 5-10 years ago are still being paid off/depreciated, so the bean counters won't let them be replaced even if new stuff (unfortunately, gazillion$ instead of bazillion$) works far better. Industrial gear is not one of those places where the price drops every year.
1) Very small-memory devices. I have a tablet that runs Win10 in 2GB of RAM on an Atom chip. While the Atom theoretically is 64-bit capable, it only supports 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. So in order to run within those limitations, the 32-bit version of Windows is required - theoretically, you could boot 64-bit Windows in 2 GB, but it wouldn't be able to actually run anything because it would spend all of its time paging (yes, they gave me a 64-bit Win7 HP at work, and it was unusable until the RAM was upgraded). As a practical matter, with a fairly minimal set of startup items, the minimum memory use (idling) in the tablet is about 0.9 GB; it can run Libreoffice and Firefox at the same time, but FF better have only a few tabs open and the LO document better not be huge to avoid massive slowdown due to paging.
This is not a widely-used hardware configuration, but certainly not unknown. Anybody with 4GB or more of RAM should be running 64-bit Windows. And if I can run 32-bit Win10 on that tablet, you could probably even run it on a P4 or even 486 with 2GB - if anybody wants a modern user interface and all its overhead (I get the impression that the internals are not as modern) on very old hardware.
2) Need to run 16-bit software. This has been mentioned. It's a minimal use case, and in 64-bit Windows is easily handled, for 16-bit applications, by using DOSBox to virtualize the app while still allowing access to the main file system. The only legitimate need for 32-bit Windows to do this is where hardware must be addressed with drivers - an exceedingly small population of users, but probably a vocal one. Note: even 32-bit Windows needs to virtualize 16-bit software; that's what the NTDVM is for.
If you want to see a nice little crash, port the NTDVM from a 32-bit system to a 64-bit system, then attempt to run 16-bit software. Doesn't work. Not a bad crash; it just doesn't work. Works perfectly, though, in 32-bit Windows.
I use DOSBox to run the original DOS version of Railroad Tycoon in 64-bit Windows. Works perfectly. I also have Win 3.1 installed under DOSBox in 64-bit Windows; also works perfectly, and allows use of 16-bit Windows games.
And for those making the comment that you need 32-bit Windows for 32-bit software: NOT. 32-bit software works fine in 64-bit Windows; it and the CPU are designed to do that. Even some parts of the OS distribution are still 32-bit. Check out the details list in Task Manager sometime.
I can't. Windows phone*: no more updates; carrier stopped providing them at 8.1 Cyan. Android: without a Google Account, the manufacturer & carrier won't pass them through after the first year or so; WITH a Google Account, it still often won't work without a fair amount of hacking, and if it does work it only extends updates for maybe another year; Google abandons stuff (all kinds of stuff, not just phones) quickly. Apple? No experience, though reportedly they do support devices for up to a couple of years at least.
*Windows note: I *was* able to get more updates by joining "Windows Insider" which bypasses the carrier - but only to a point. The phone is running Win10 now, but stopped updating at 1511; no further update activity (even minor stuff) since that loaded about 9 months ago. No, I'm not going to get "preview builds" on a working phone. And btw as a phone/mobile OS 8.1 was better ... same functions and apps, but in a smaller footprint.
Sure, even though they're now officially a rounding error in the market share stats as noted in the 5/23 article. The phones actually aren't bad; my old Nokia (from before they shed the name) Lumina 635 works fine, and the buttons are much easier to use with my arthritic fingers than most of the Androids and Apples. Also, MS seems to have had better luck over the years than others with getting the carriers to allow updates; perhaps not having so many of them helps? I do think that I like having a phone that can't accept Win10 though (not enough memory); Win 8.1 just works, while I hear that Win10 for phones is still a work in progress, even more so than the computer flavor of it. Also: Gorilla Glass on a cheap phone - who'd a thunk it? /curmudgeon
The author makes a good point.
In reverse: most of the application and utility software I regularly use in Windows is free, usually open-source (some is closed-source freeware). It works well. I stick with Windows because of specific games (that in some cases cannot run in a virtual machine), and for a couple of closed-source applications that just do things better or more conveniently than the open-source alternatives. I have tested Linux (Mint) and could easily switch now if the Wine/Mono ecosystem advanced just a bit so those couple of gotta-use-them closed applications would work. They're very close, actually, and do appear to install (but then they don't work). Also, games (the ones I have are not in Steam).
[flame on]
Frankly, if Linux as a group wants to be a player in the desktop game, the religious attitude about open source has to change. While maybe not embracing closed source, why not be ecumenical about it? Can't we "just get along?" All the "rest of us" really want is a system that works; Windows 10 seems to be trying its best to lose that label so where's the Really Useful Alternative?
[/flame]
PS: I could see Windows eventually going open-source on a .NET model. That is: a "core" consisting of the kernel and perhaps a few necessary services, enough to boot the thing, but to do anything useful you would need a bunch of libraries and services that are not (at first, anyway) open source. The .NET open source "core" seems to be like that, because so much other stuff is needed to complete the project. Oracle does it, too, with VirtualBox: the basic machine is open, but the extensions that you need to make it useful are not (though they are free).