What he did with Manning was what every journalist of the world does
This is true. Though there still should be a layer of culpability. Don't do anything, no matter how noble, if you're not willing to face the consequences. There also is a very large difference between Manning approaching Assange, and Assange approaching Manning. The former is more "journalistic", the latter is a bit more (legally) dubious.
I'm not cheerleading for the US here, or trying to belittle Wikileaks (which I have nothing but respect for). Notice I said "Wikileaks" not Assange, one I have respect for, the other I have very mixed opinions on.
About being a coward to not go into tribunal and face those charges, well, the US does not provide tribunals anymore for this.
This isn't the US we're talking about. We're talking about Swedish law. It doesn't matter one way or another if it is or isn't against US law, or the law of any other country that isn't Sweden. I find it a bit odd that some of the crimes he's wanted for questioning in aren't against the law in the US. Having sex with a sleeping woman, and not wearing protection against the woman's wishes are a bit creepy to me. Again, if these charges are true, and we'll never know until he actually steps up and faces them.
Look at what is happening to Manning.
Which is horrible. Though it annoys me that we only care with Manning, when this same treatment happens hundreds of less glamorous criminals in the US system every year.
Understand as well that as a non-US citizen, Assange can end up in of the many "anti-terrorist" loopholes that US administrations have created over the years.
The US, sadly, doesn't need legal extradition for this, anymore. Further, they could have nabbed him at anytime in the UK, which has no qualms whatsoever with bowing down to the US's dubious requests. Sweden at least has a culture, and some history of resistance, despite a few publicized cases to the contrary. I'm sure the US would rather deal with the UK than Sweden. This again precludes any proof that this is indeed the reason behind the legal hullabaloo.
Personally I think Assange is an egotistic twerp, whose relevance has passed. If anything he is now hurting the leaking scene with his theatrics and histrionics. Wikileaks is great, and we owe him a debt in his roll in its creation. But as a person he isn't worth talking about.
I'm not arguing that the US is fantastic. Far from it, these days (Thanks Bush, thanks Obama... thanks Every president since Reagan).
My point was that we also shouldn't forget that he is also avoiding potentially legitimate charges in Sweden, involving misconduct towards women. Even if those laws are a bit odd by most standards (well, not really, having sex with a woman whose sleeping without her concent is just universally wrong), those were the laws of the land, and we can never know if he's innocent unless he's cleared of those charges. Charges he is avoiding facing, at the moment. Like a coward.
Hell, and I'm going to be modded to hell for this, if he solicited Manning to leak, he should face charges in the US. I'm okay with this, at least on a philosophical level. All of the great protesters, and agents of change (which we nerds want to bill him as) were willing to stand up to the consequences of their actions. Mandela didn't run from jail, even if he was in the right, nor did any of the participants of the great racial protests in mid-century America. Being a coward, and not willing to face consequences makes him suspect. It also assumes that what he did was at all threatening to the powers that be... which he wasn't/isn't. Things (sadly) are the same, Manning and Assange, or no. In the long term, both of them proved to be insignificant to the preservation of the status quo. If he had a cause, he'd realize that being openly attacked by the US would make it stronger.
Further, I have seen no proof whatsoever that the US is out to get him. Yes, our government is creepy at times. But this doesn't mean that Assange is really worth the hassle. Also, why stay in the UK, which is even more willing to bow down to the US government, than go to Sweden, which is less likely.
Has anyone ever asked themselves what if he did act badly towards those women? Does his involvement in Wikileaks excuse his treatment of women?
So, now that the US Government has done something based on nothing, everyone can? Fascinating logic you have there.
I say that the US caused the downfall of Rome, invented smallpox, ate the last of my cheese, and invented the wheel? Dare to disprove me? Well, the US said there were WMDs in Iraq, so there!
and is now trying to fight for his right to remain free even after that. That is indeed a commendable effort.
So if I break the law, and hide, I'm doing something "commendable" too? I am, after all, remaining free (both physically, and from the potential consequences of my own actions).
It keep him "alive", from what? Last I checked Sweden doesn't kill people, not even for suspected sexual assault.
Oh, sorry, left my tinfoil hat in my other pants...
Step one, get rid of Amy Pond. Step two, get rid of Matt Smith. Step three, get rid of Moffat?
I might actually start watching again, if that comes true. The last two seasons were crap, but no one has gotten around to telling Moffat that he really can't write, and that, no, he isn't Neil Gaiman so stop trying.
Though if, and they won't, they get someone like John Hurt to be The Doctor, I'd still put up with Moffat's fountain of crap.
Does that mean that every user needs to fall into the 'new' design that Google came up with?
No. As of now there are still options within Gmail. Three of them (Classic, Priority, and whatever the new one is called). This ignores the services existing outside of Google, obviously, of which there are tons of options.
I'd prefer to believe that choice is a perfectly valid option in our society.
I agree. But sadly we're dealing with being somewhat dependant on giant monolithic companies. Sadly, if you want to be in the Googleverse, you must accept whatever they want. You entered into that relationship knowing this, or at least should have. This is true of MS, Yahoo, and pretty much every "in the cloud" option. The only real solution is rolling your own, so the trade off is time and hassle or losing some freedom.
Personally I'd love my email to arranged by group into the quadrants of a square, with each corner being a different class of useful mail, with a separate area "behind the fold" for bulk and less important notifications. These would be sorted by both handrolled filters, and smart filters. Can I have this? Not unless I'm willing to make it myself.
I'm not trying to be a Google apologist here... Its just a sad fact of the current internet, and there really isn't anything we can do about it until someone things of something better.
Conspiracy bits aside, if the FBI found something, why would they demand he open the gates to more?
For a stronger cases?
Or, more likely, for links to other people connected to the crime. Identifying features to locate and rescue the children involved, other people sharing the data, where he got the data, etc... They probably want to expand their case to other people, or develop leads towards further prosecutions.
I really don't see how this is newsworthy. Judge denies, more evidence is found, just allows. This happens every day. This is just the new Slashdot trying for a "controversial" debate, so they can get bigger numbers, They want it to be political, and looking at the comment count, they sadly succeeded.
I'm still quite happy with "everything turns up in my inbox with metadata I can filter by"
Good for you. Some people might not be happy with this, though. I don't like having a huge, unsorted list of messages. Email now serves many purposes, and messages come from many sources with many levels of significance within different domains of my life. It isn't that there is just quantitatively more, it is that they are more diverse and cover disparate domains of life.
Right now I have a messy list of mail... in it there are social media updates, important but "bulk" updates, work related mail of various importances, bills, invoices, shipping data, less important correspondences, utility bills, bank balances, and finally actual personal correspondences. Everything "pending" stays in the inbox, until it is addressed (shipped items received, billed items paid, etc...), and my correspondence is generally in long, unending threads, but never removed from the box just to keep track. Generally correspondence related to my current projects also sit around, in tens of individual threads, just so they are fresh. Right now I can have only four loose areas, which doesn't quite fit how I'd actually want them sorted (right now: starred for pending bills/invoices/shipping/appointments/and useful offers, which isn't very useful). If there was a way to simplify this, and cut it down to areas, I'd be happy. This new interface seems promising. If it supported more tabs, I'd be even happier.
So the 'internet' is one thing now, with no room for minority views or preferences?
Depending on the size of the minority, then yes. There comes a point where it isn't worth spending the money for niche needs. This isn't to say it is a fun experience (please don't kill Reader, or iGoogle), but it comes with free and proprietary services. If only 5% of people use X, but it costs more than 5% of of your operating expenses to maintain, why not kill it?
I'm sick of internet entitlement. Sure, Google is killing a service I love (not offering an alternate, optional, GUI, but KILLING), but I can't get upset. It is a free service. It is "in the cloud". I knew it was temporary, and subject to the arbitrary whims of Google (or MS, or Apple, no difference)... This is just how things work. It annoys me from time to time, but generally it has worked out well (look at where we are now, compared to where we were ten years ago).
Unlike killing... again... this is an OPTIONAL GUI change. Go set things to "Classic" if you don't like it. Go find another provider. Go use an offline client. Go forward Gmail to a better service. Go use an actual mod of Gmail (they are out there).
Personally, I like the new interface. Why should the minority keep it from me, especially when they have the option not to use it?
Just like they forced us to use the priority inbox... But they didn't.
I'm pissed at Google right now for killing iGoogle and Reader (Feedly kind of sucks), both of which are pretty much completely integrated into my life now... But so far Gmail hasn't done anything to make me mad. All changes are so-far reversible. So I somewhat doubt that this one won't be, especially since they outright said it would be. Sure, somewhere down the road they might force it, but that is what you get for using a proprietary service, you lose control.
Use Gmail (or whatever), use imap (or whatever), and use a standalone client.
You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot, the land of ironic techno-luddites. If it isn't a monotone command line, it is broken and needlessly complex.
I don't get it either, I'm looking forward to this, since right now Gmail somewhat frustrates me, since it is hard to divide messages into useful groups, beyond "starred", "important", and "everything else". I would like to keep all my work related mail in one area, all my invoices and shipping info in another, my social updates in another, useful "bulk" mail in another, and actual, important, personal correspondences in a primary area. I would love them to be separated, so I can focus on one at a time.
I'm a minimalist, so I can't stand having a huge messy list of messages, it overwhelms me (I also generally only have 5-6 icons on my desktop, and my office is almost completely plane, with no clutter on any surface not related to an immediate project). I also generally keep around 25-30 "working" messages, where either their status is still pending (appointments, shipping, reservations), or I haven't bothered with them yet. This list can get a bit overwhelming. This option works for me. And if it doesn't work for people, turn it off. Right now Gmail still offers the classic inbox, so I doubt that it, or the priority version will be going soon.
People will complain. Any change is the end of the world. We're addicted to the status quo, which is odd in computers, since things change so damn fast. Looking at what I grew up on in the '80's, to what we have now is rather overwhelming, but somehow I've managed to adapt and survive. Things are better now than when I was dialing into ugly ASCII BBSs on my 300 baud modem, waiting 2-3 minutes for just the login screen to load, back in the C64 days.
I don't even care if they hurt Apple. I just want things to be good for consumers again. Force the publishers to have to negotiate again on an individual basis. Thats all I, the customer, care about. Apple can do whatever the hell it wants, as long as it is legal.
I'm 100% positive that that's absolutely not what happened. Funny sense of re-writing reality you have there. I've heard a term for that before, I'm sure you bandied it about before...
RTFA. That is exactly what happened, well at least the spirit of things. They told the publishers that they could set their own prices, but no one is allowed to sell for lower. This helped Apple, since they didn't have to fight over price (with their ridiculous mark-up) with Amazon (with their huge market share, and existing infrastructure, and contracts). It didn't do much to Amazon. But it screwed consumers.
90% to 60%, and no longer able to bully the publishers around to the same extent as before. I don't know how you can think that doesn't count as being "hurt". Perhaps if that three-letter term I referenced above would come to me, what is it?...
So basic economics is only useful as long as it doesn't hurt your favorite company? Amazon had a larger customer base, more infrastructure, more experience, more contacts, and thus more buying power. Normally this would mean they could leverage lower prices. But... being that this wasn't good for Apple, this is wrong now?
None of this really matters though, all that matters is if Apple actually engaged in price fixing. Which is illegal. And has been for a long time. Nintendo got busted for it in the 80's. The RIAA got busted in the 90's. So if Apple did the same thing, they should get busted now. Being a bully is legal. Price fixing isn't. Look up the definition of "price fixing", look up the actual facts of the case... This is all that matters, not what you feel about Amazon, or Apple.
You mean how I now have more plentiful options for eBooks? Wow, I'm soooooo hurt!
Before this there were multiple sources of ebooks. But... and this is all that matters to me, they were at different prices. Amazon might be cheaper, or Kobo, or Barnes and Noble, or... even Apple. Now we might have more sources, but who cares, they all cost the same (too much). Not that it matters to me anymore, I refuse to buy ebooks until they actually cost as much as I see their worth (less than actual books, since they aren't material, I don't own them, they aren't permanent, and I can't share them, and if Apple or whoever don't like me they can make them go away). Back before Apple screwed us, I loved them. Now... I'm waiting for the law, or publishers, to realize that the writing is on the wall.
They've offered products which I've willingly paid for.
At an artificially inflated price. And you have no choice than to pay that price, unlike almost any other product in the world. The real book, I can get cheaper, I can get discounted, I can get as a loss-leader, I can get clearance, I can get second hand, or at near wholesale... The ebook, I can't.
Kaku doesn't really strike me as credible. I'm sure he's a good scientist, but he does too many "time travel wormhole star trek is cool!" pop-sci things to really let me trust him. Tyson reminds me of Sagan, smart and doesn't feel the need to dress things up to sell to the lay audience. Kaku is like Bill Nye, science for people who hate science. Tyson is Mr. Wizard, science for people who just didn't go to school for it but find it cool just because science is cool in-itself.
I suppose thats main difference in how people teach science; one group thinks to be interesting science must DO something. The other school think that the intrinsic "aha" of science is enough to make it interesting. I find the former group to be annoying, and more destructive than useful.
Tyson is willing to let the science talk for itself, without dressing it up. Which makes him Sagan-y enough to reboot something as venerable as Cosmos. He's more likely to let the sheer beauty of the universe talk for itself, without forcing wormholes and time-travel down our throats.
What stops the government from becoming the "top" instead?
Enforcing strict accountability, transparency and keeping money away from politicians to as great an extent as possible? By forcing them to judge things on "for the good of all of us" as opposed to "for the good of a small percentage of us".
I can do the same thing on Win 7 with pinning buttons to the task bar or shortcuts on the desktop, or a widget that starts stuff.
Which obviously works, but I still prefer how Win8 does it. I've got about 40 programs pinned, along with some notifications, in 4 groups. This would be a pain without the start screen, especially since I'm one of those people who hate cluttered desktops (right now I have 3 folders and a link, thats it, and it feels cluttered).
Get your eyes checked, if you are having trouble finding stuff you probably need vision corrected or to get checked for glaucoma.
Looking at my girlfriends start menu... she has around 35 folders, and 10 programs sitting on the first level of her start menu... dig inside them, and you'll find 10-15 files, mostly readmes or uninstallers, along with links to webpages. Every time something installs the bloat grows. Every times something get uninstalled, it leaves zombie items and folders behind. And if you want to keep it all organized you have to muck around with it after EVERY single install, and need to manage to two separate locations that feed into the start menu (all users, and user). I tried to keep a nice hierarchy (start>design>sound/graphics/text/utilities), but I generally put it off, since it was one more pointless task that made me feel like I was fighting against my OS, and more-so, developers who feel the need to put as much cruft and clutter on my computer.
There is a reason that every other major OS or windowing scheme has moved beyond pure menus for program management. The start menu should die, and I will not mourn it.
And so far as I can tell, a whole lot of that disparity in outcomes is less a question of differences in brains than of the environments people are in over a long period of time.
Actual scientific answers to things like this would go a long way. My girlfriend used to work with people with sever autism (nonfunctioning), and we have a couple friends with highly functional aspergers (not counting the self-diagnosis, which I always mistrust), and the difference is mind-blowing. I don't think environmental causes alone can account for such a discrepancy, really they might as well be different disorders (not that I'd consider highly functioning aspergers to be a "disorder", per-se, more a cognitive difference). I wouldn't be surprised if Autism was fractured into several separate disorders, and the lowest end of the spectrum was shaved off someday when we realized that not everyone works the same, or responds to stimulus the same way.
"More science" is my answer to everything though...
Seriously, I am curious to learn which areas you found to be an improvement over previous versions of Windows on desktop machines.
People have different tastes, no big surprise. I
I like Windows 8. I like the start screen. I actually like it more than the menu of old, it is more useful to me, personally. If they got rid of it, I'd try to find software to replace it. I don't mind the lack of start button, less shit on my desktop is good (another personal preference), I never really cared about the button sitting there, saying "Start", or whatnot, since I haven't even seen it since Win95 thanks to muscle memory and the win key.
This isn't to say everything in Win8 is good. I don't like that "All programs" screen, it is an un-organized/unorganizable mess, especially next to my very organized and aesthetic metro screen. The charms bar is dumb, I appreciate the thought but it seems a bit rushed and tacked on. The difference between the top-left corner, and alt-tab annoys me. Search is a bit of a mess as well. Apps are dumb, both in layout and being forced to use the Windows Store, and not being able to be windowed. And having ads.... And being generally piss-poor compared to real software. And not having intuitive controls on a desktop, not a tablet. And... I could go on. As a result I've only bought one app (Game Dev Tycoon), and only actually use another (Pulse), the rest only act as heads ups, and notifications.
Internally Windows 8 is pretty nice too, it is actually reliable when it comes to transfers over my network, and with SD cards, and manages to be about as BSOD prone as 7, i.e. not at all. I'm not as excited about Windows 8 as I was about Win7 (its like XP, but compatible, stable, and modern!), but I can overlook its flaws for its good bits.
I'm actually pretty excited for when/if the Leap Motion actually comes out, since it seems like it would work perfectly with Metro apps, if not for anything on the desktop. MS dropped the ball a bit by not releasing Kinect PC with Windows 8.
I must be the only person who actually prefers the metro menu thing. I don't think I could go back to the small and horribly ordered (unless you spend the tedium of organizing it constantly) menu again. I like having all my main programs organized and displayed prominently. The metro screen is the best thing they did in Win 8, really (outside of making SD and Network transfers less idiotic).
Metro apps are still mostly crap, and they still need to make the whole OS feel less "tacked on", and work on UI and app consistency, though.
If this update is $15-20 I'll grab it. If not... I don't mind Win 8.
Which is neither here nor there... Autism is just as scientific as a non-measured dopamine imbalance, when it comes down to it. Less so, even, since no one can really point to a brain or test and say "yep, there's your autism problem right there".
This obviously doesn't mean autism doesn't exist, or rather the cloud of behaviors that we currently label "autism" doesn't exist. Autism is very much a diagnostic "shrug" right now, nothing more than a loose collection of behaviors and severities. At one end you have people who aren't mentally "ill" (it doesn't impair their ability to function at a high level), and at the other you have non-verbals who bang their heads into walls who can't even communicate. You have a vast array of symptoms, which aren't even shared between all individuals. And you have very little to no science backing it up.
Again, I'm not saying that people don't have it, or what people feel isn't real... But there is no difference between autism and a non-measured dopamine disorder... outside of the fact that we CAN measure dopamine, and it can be low... but at the moment we can't measure autism.
"there's too much dopamine up there"... "was most likely undiagnosed autistic spectrum disorder and post traumatic stress from all the crap that happens when spectrum kids get bullied in school."...
So your problem with unscientific psychobabble is that it was the wrong type of unscientific psychobabble?
Did I say that? Did my cat sneak into my room with invisible bits while I was typing that? I've re-read my message three times now, even with my special glasses, and can't see where I wrote that.
hy is this? because Israel's position is that it will live peaceably with the Arabs if they are prepared to sign a permanent peace treaty on fair terms. The Arab political position is simple: genocide for the Jews as laid out in the Qur'an and hadiths.
This is a fallacious statement. There are "genocidal" Jews in Israel, and peace-loving Arabs in Palestine. Sadly on both sides the genocidal factions get the most press and power. The settler and hardline Zionists are just as bad, really, as the extremists among the Arabs.
There was a point where you could say "this side has higher ground", but I feel that that time passed long ago. There has too much violence and extremism at this point for anyone to say anyone has clean hands anymore.
The Jews should have settled there like they did. The Arabs shouldn't have reacted as they did. The Jews should have struck back as they did... The Arabs should have retaliated in that way... Etc...
Drawing "moral equivalence" between the two sides ends up equating the genocidal goals of Islam with the right of a UN member State to defend itself against attack. Clearly such an equivalence is a falsehood.
That would be picking sides... No, the aggressors on both sides should be stuck down, both Arab and Jew, allowing the normal folk who just want to raise their families live peaceably. The Arabs shouldn't get a pass, any more than the more hateful bits of the Zionist movement. Occupy Isreal/Palestine, then throw anyone who breaks the peace, Jew or Arab, on a desert island, naked, and let them sort it out like men, without letting innocents suffer.
Slashdot Mirror
What he did with Manning was what every journalist of the world does
This is true. Though there still should be a layer of culpability. Don't do anything, no matter how noble, if you're not willing to face the consequences. There also is a very large difference between Manning approaching Assange, and Assange approaching Manning. The former is more "journalistic", the latter is a bit more (legally) dubious.
I'm not cheerleading for the US here, or trying to belittle Wikileaks (which I have nothing but respect for). Notice I said "Wikileaks" not Assange, one I have respect for, the other I have very mixed opinions on.
About being a coward to not go into tribunal and face those charges, well, the US does not provide tribunals anymore for this.
This isn't the US we're talking about. We're talking about Swedish law. It doesn't matter one way or another if it is or isn't against US law, or the law of any other country that isn't Sweden. I find it a bit odd that some of the crimes he's wanted for questioning in aren't against the law in the US. Having sex with a sleeping woman, and not wearing protection against the woman's wishes are a bit creepy to me. Again, if these charges are true, and we'll never know until he actually steps up and faces them.
Look at what is happening to Manning.
Which is horrible. Though it annoys me that we only care with Manning, when this same treatment happens hundreds of less glamorous criminals in the US system every year.
Understand as well that as a non-US citizen, Assange can end up in of the many "anti-terrorist" loopholes that US administrations have created over the years.
The US, sadly, doesn't need legal extradition for this, anymore. Further, they could have nabbed him at anytime in the UK, which has no qualms whatsoever with bowing down to the US's dubious requests. Sweden at least has a culture, and some history of resistance, despite a few publicized cases to the contrary. I'm sure the US would rather deal with the UK than Sweden. This again precludes any proof that this is indeed the reason behind the legal hullabaloo.
Personally I think Assange is an egotistic twerp, whose relevance has passed. If anything he is now hurting the leaking scene with his theatrics and histrionics. Wikileaks is great, and we owe him a debt in his roll in its creation. But as a person he isn't worth talking about.
I'm not arguing that the US is fantastic. Far from it, these days (Thanks Bush, thanks Obama... thanks Every president since Reagan).
My point was that we also shouldn't forget that he is also avoiding potentially legitimate charges in Sweden, involving misconduct towards women. Even if those laws are a bit odd by most standards (well, not really, having sex with a woman whose sleeping without her concent is just universally wrong), those were the laws of the land, and we can never know if he's innocent unless he's cleared of those charges. Charges he is avoiding facing, at the moment. Like a coward.
Hell, and I'm going to be modded to hell for this, if he solicited Manning to leak, he should face charges in the US. I'm okay with this, at least on a philosophical level. All of the great protesters, and agents of change (which we nerds want to bill him as) were willing to stand up to the consequences of their actions. Mandela didn't run from jail, even if he was in the right, nor did any of the participants of the great racial protests in mid-century America. Being a coward, and not willing to face consequences makes him suspect. It also assumes that what he did was at all threatening to the powers that be... which he wasn't/isn't. Things (sadly) are the same, Manning and Assange, or no. In the long term, both of them proved to be insignificant to the preservation of the status quo. If he had a cause, he'd realize that being openly attacked by the US would make it stronger.
Further, I have seen no proof whatsoever that the US is out to get him. Yes, our government is creepy at times. But this doesn't mean that Assange is really worth the hassle. Also, why stay in the UK, which is even more willing to bow down to the US government, than go to Sweden, which is less likely.
Has anyone ever asked themselves what if he did act badly towards those women? Does his involvement in Wikileaks excuse his treatment of women?
So, now that the US Government has done something based on nothing, everyone can? Fascinating logic you have there.
I say that the US caused the downfall of Rome, invented smallpox, ate the last of my cheese, and invented the wheel? Dare to disprove me? Well, the US said there were WMDs in Iraq, so there!
and is now trying to fight for his right to remain free even after that. That is indeed a commendable effort.
So if I break the law, and hide, I'm doing something "commendable" too? I am, after all, remaining free (both physically, and from the potential consequences of my own actions).
It keep him "alive", from what? Last I checked Sweden doesn't kill people, not even for suspected sexual assault.
Oh, sorry, left my tinfoil hat in my other pants...
Assange has obviously been driven a little batty by the U.S. government's pursuit via Sweden, U.K., etc.,
Has anyone proven that the U.S. has anything to do with this, rather than him just being a coward and not risking the consequences for his actions?
Step one, get rid of Amy Pond. Step two, get rid of Matt Smith. Step three, get rid of Moffat?
I might actually start watching again, if that comes true. The last two seasons were crap, but no one has gotten around to telling Moffat that he really can't write, and that, no, he isn't Neil Gaiman so stop trying.
Though if, and they won't, they get someone like John Hurt to be The Doctor, I'd still put up with Moffat's fountain of crap.
Does that mean that every user needs to fall into the 'new' design that Google came up with?
No. As of now there are still options within Gmail. Three of them (Classic, Priority, and whatever the new one is called). This ignores the services existing outside of Google, obviously, of which there are tons of options.
I'd prefer to believe that choice is a perfectly valid option in our society.
I agree. But sadly we're dealing with being somewhat dependant on giant monolithic companies. Sadly, if you want to be in the Googleverse, you must accept whatever they want. You entered into that relationship knowing this, or at least should have. This is true of MS, Yahoo, and pretty much every "in the cloud" option. The only real solution is rolling your own, so the trade off is time and hassle or losing some freedom.
Personally I'd love my email to arranged by group into the quadrants of a square, with each corner being a different class of useful mail, with a separate area "behind the fold" for bulk and less important notifications. These would be sorted by both handrolled filters, and smart filters. Can I have this? Not unless I'm willing to make it myself.
I'm not trying to be a Google apologist here... Its just a sad fact of the current internet, and there really isn't anything we can do about it until someone things of something better.
Conspiracy bits aside, if the FBI found something, why would they demand he open the gates to more?
For a stronger cases?
Or, more likely, for links to other people connected to the crime. Identifying features to locate and rescue the children involved, other people sharing the data, where he got the data, etc... They probably want to expand their case to other people, or develop leads towards further prosecutions.
I really don't see how this is newsworthy. Judge denies, more evidence is found, just allows. This happens every day. This is just the new Slashdot trying for a "controversial" debate, so they can get bigger numbers, They want it to be political, and looking at the comment count, they sadly succeeded.
I'm still quite happy with "everything turns up in my inbox with metadata I can filter by"
Good for you. Some people might not be happy with this, though. I don't like having a huge, unsorted list of messages. Email now serves many purposes, and messages come from many sources with many levels of significance within different domains of my life. It isn't that there is just quantitatively more, it is that they are more diverse and cover disparate domains of life.
Right now I have a messy list of mail... in it there are social media updates, important but "bulk" updates, work related mail of various importances, bills, invoices, shipping data, less important correspondences, utility bills, bank balances, and finally actual personal correspondences. Everything "pending" stays in the inbox, until it is addressed (shipped items received, billed items paid, etc...), and my correspondence is generally in long, unending threads, but never removed from the box just to keep track. Generally correspondence related to my current projects also sit around, in tens of individual threads, just so they are fresh. Right now I can have only four loose areas, which doesn't quite fit how I'd actually want them sorted (right now: starred for pending bills/invoices/shipping/appointments/and useful offers, which isn't very useful). If there was a way to simplify this, and cut it down to areas, I'd be happy. This new interface seems promising. If it supported more tabs, I'd be even happier.
So the 'internet' is one thing now, with no room for minority views or preferences?
Depending on the size of the minority, then yes. There comes a point where it isn't worth spending the money for niche needs. This isn't to say it is a fun experience (please don't kill Reader, or iGoogle), but it comes with free and proprietary services. If only 5% of people use X, but it costs more than 5% of of your operating expenses to maintain, why not kill it?
I'm sick of internet entitlement. Sure, Google is killing a service I love (not offering an alternate, optional, GUI, but KILLING), but I can't get upset. It is a free service. It is "in the cloud". I knew it was temporary, and subject to the arbitrary whims of Google (or MS, or Apple, no difference)... This is just how things work. It annoys me from time to time, but generally it has worked out well (look at where we are now, compared to where we were ten years ago).
Unlike killing... again... this is an OPTIONAL GUI change. Go set things to "Classic" if you don't like it. Go find another provider. Go use an offline client. Go forward Gmail to a better service. Go use an actual mod of Gmail (they are out there).
Personally, I like the new interface. Why should the minority keep it from me, especially when they have the option not to use it?
Just like they forced us to use the priority inbox... But they didn't.
I'm pissed at Google right now for killing iGoogle and Reader (Feedly kind of sucks), both of which are pretty much completely integrated into my life now... But so far Gmail hasn't done anything to make me mad. All changes are so-far reversible. So I somewhat doubt that this one won't be, especially since they outright said it would be. Sure, somewhere down the road they might force it, but that is what you get for using a proprietary service, you lose control.
Use Gmail (or whatever), use imap (or whatever), and use a standalone client.
You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot, the land of ironic techno-luddites. If it isn't a monotone command line, it is broken and needlessly complex.
I don't get it either, I'm looking forward to this, since right now Gmail somewhat frustrates me, since it is hard to divide messages into useful groups, beyond "starred", "important", and "everything else". I would like to keep all my work related mail in one area, all my invoices and shipping info in another, my social updates in another, useful "bulk" mail in another, and actual, important, personal correspondences in a primary area. I would love them to be separated, so I can focus on one at a time.
I'm a minimalist, so I can't stand having a huge messy list of messages, it overwhelms me (I also generally only have 5-6 icons on my desktop, and my office is almost completely plane, with no clutter on any surface not related to an immediate project). I also generally keep around 25-30 "working" messages, where either their status is still pending (appointments, shipping, reservations), or I haven't bothered with them yet. This list can get a bit overwhelming. This option works for me. And if it doesn't work for people, turn it off. Right now Gmail still offers the classic inbox, so I doubt that it, or the priority version will be going soon.
People will complain. Any change is the end of the world. We're addicted to the status quo, which is odd in computers, since things change so damn fast. Looking at what I grew up on in the '80's, to what we have now is rather overwhelming, but somehow I've managed to adapt and survive. Things are better now than when I was dialing into ugly ASCII BBSs on my 300 baud modem, waiting 2-3 minutes for just the login screen to load, back in the C64 days.
I don't even care if they hurt Apple. I just want things to be good for consumers again. Force the publishers to have to negotiate again on an individual basis. Thats all I, the customer, care about. Apple can do whatever the hell it wants, as long as it is legal.
If the ends and the means involve more freedom and consumer choice, then yes.
The freedom to pay more? More choices at the exact same inflated price?
I'm 100% positive that that's absolutely not what happened. Funny sense of re-writing reality you have there. I've heard a term for that before, I'm sure you bandied it about before...
RTFA. That is exactly what happened, well at least the spirit of things. They told the publishers that they could set their own prices, but no one is allowed to sell for lower. This helped Apple, since they didn't have to fight over price (with their ridiculous mark-up) with Amazon (with their huge market share, and existing infrastructure, and contracts). It didn't do much to Amazon. But it screwed consumers.
90% to 60%, and no longer able to bully the publishers around to the same extent as before. I don't know how you can think that doesn't count as being "hurt". Perhaps if that three-letter term I referenced above would come to me, what is it?...
So basic economics is only useful as long as it doesn't hurt your favorite company? Amazon had a larger customer base, more infrastructure, more experience, more contacts, and thus more buying power. Normally this would mean they could leverage lower prices. But... being that this wasn't good for Apple, this is wrong now?
None of this really matters though, all that matters is if Apple actually engaged in price fixing. Which is illegal. And has been for a long time. Nintendo got busted for it in the 80's. The RIAA got busted in the 90's. So if Apple did the same thing, they should get busted now. Being a bully is legal. Price fixing isn't. Look up the definition of "price fixing", look up the actual facts of the case... This is all that matters, not what you feel about Amazon, or Apple.
You mean how I now have more plentiful options for eBooks? Wow, I'm soooooo hurt!
Before this there were multiple sources of ebooks. But... and this is all that matters to me, they were at different prices. Amazon might be cheaper, or Kobo, or Barnes and Noble, or... even Apple. Now we might have more sources, but who cares, they all cost the same (too much). Not that it matters to me anymore, I refuse to buy ebooks until they actually cost as much as I see their worth (less than actual books, since they aren't material, I don't own them, they aren't permanent, and I can't share them, and if Apple or whoever don't like me they can make them go away). Back before Apple screwed us, I loved them. Now... I'm waiting for the law, or publishers, to realize that the writing is on the wall.
They've offered products which I've willingly paid for.
At an artificially inflated price. And you have no choice than to pay that price, unlike almost any other product in the world. The real book, I can get cheaper, I can get discounted, I can get as a loss-leader, I can get clearance, I can get second hand, or at near wholesale... The ebook, I can't.
Kaku doesn't really strike me as credible. I'm sure he's a good scientist, but he does too many "time travel wormhole star trek is cool!" pop-sci things to really let me trust him. Tyson reminds me of Sagan, smart and doesn't feel the need to dress things up to sell to the lay audience. Kaku is like Bill Nye, science for people who hate science. Tyson is Mr. Wizard, science for people who just didn't go to school for it but find it cool just because science is cool in-itself.
I suppose thats main difference in how people teach science; one group thinks to be interesting science must DO something. The other school think that the intrinsic "aha" of science is enough to make it interesting. I find the former group to be annoying, and more destructive than useful.
Tyson is willing to let the science talk for itself, without dressing it up. Which makes him Sagan-y enough to reboot something as venerable as Cosmos. He's more likely to let the sheer beauty of the universe talk for itself, without forcing wormholes and time-travel down our throats.
What stops the government from becoming the "top" instead?
Enforcing strict accountability, transparency and keeping money away from politicians to as great an extent as possible? By forcing them to judge things on "for the good of all of us" as opposed to "for the good of a small percentage of us".
I can do the same thing on Win 7 with pinning buttons to the task bar or shortcuts on the desktop, or a widget that starts stuff.
Which obviously works, but I still prefer how Win8 does it. I've got about 40 programs pinned, along with some notifications, in 4 groups. This would be a pain without the start screen, especially since I'm one of those people who hate cluttered desktops (right now I have 3 folders and a link, thats it, and it feels cluttered).
Get your eyes checked, if you are having trouble finding stuff you probably need vision corrected or to get checked for glaucoma.
Looking at my girlfriends start menu... she has around 35 folders, and 10 programs sitting on the first level of her start menu... dig inside them, and you'll find 10-15 files, mostly readmes or uninstallers, along with links to webpages. Every time something installs the bloat grows. Every times something get uninstalled, it leaves zombie items and folders behind. And if you want to keep it all organized you have to muck around with it after EVERY single install, and need to manage to two separate locations that feed into the start menu (all users, and user). I tried to keep a nice hierarchy (start>design>sound/graphics/text/utilities), but I generally put it off, since it was one more pointless task that made me feel like I was fighting against my OS, and more-so, developers who feel the need to put as much cruft and clutter on my computer.
There is a reason that every other major OS or windowing scheme has moved beyond pure menus for program management. The start menu should die, and I will not mourn it.
And so far as I can tell, a whole lot of that disparity in outcomes is less a question of differences in brains than of the environments people are in over a long period of time.
Actual scientific answers to things like this would go a long way. My girlfriend used to work with people with sever autism (nonfunctioning), and we have a couple friends with highly functional aspergers (not counting the self-diagnosis, which I always mistrust), and the difference is mind-blowing. I don't think environmental causes alone can account for such a discrepancy, really they might as well be different disorders (not that I'd consider highly functioning aspergers to be a "disorder", per-se, more a cognitive difference). I wouldn't be surprised if Autism was fractured into several separate disorders, and the lowest end of the spectrum was shaved off someday when we realized that not everyone works the same, or responds to stimulus the same way.
"More science" is my answer to everything though...
Seriously, I am curious to learn which areas you found to be an improvement over previous versions of Windows on desktop machines.
People have different tastes, no big surprise. I
I like Windows 8. I like the start screen. I actually like it more than the menu of old, it is more useful to me, personally. If they got rid of it, I'd try to find software to replace it. I don't mind the lack of start button, less shit on my desktop is good (another personal preference), I never really cared about the button sitting there, saying "Start", or whatnot, since I haven't even seen it since Win95 thanks to muscle memory and the win key.
This isn't to say everything in Win8 is good. I don't like that "All programs" screen, it is an un-organized/unorganizable mess, especially next to my very organized and aesthetic metro screen. The charms bar is dumb, I appreciate the thought but it seems a bit rushed and tacked on. The difference between the top-left corner, and alt-tab annoys me. Search is a bit of a mess as well. Apps are dumb, both in layout and being forced to use the Windows Store, and not being able to be windowed. And having ads.... And being generally piss-poor compared to real software. And not having intuitive controls on a desktop, not a tablet. And... I could go on. As a result I've only bought one app (Game Dev Tycoon), and only actually use another (Pulse), the rest only act as heads ups, and notifications.
Internally Windows 8 is pretty nice too, it is actually reliable when it comes to transfers over my network, and with SD cards, and manages to be about as BSOD prone as 7, i.e. not at all. I'm not as excited about Windows 8 as I was about Win7 (its like XP, but compatible, stable, and modern!), but I can overlook its flaws for its good bits.
I'm actually pretty excited for when/if the Leap Motion actually comes out, since it seems like it would work perfectly with Metro apps, if not for anything on the desktop. MS dropped the ball a bit by not releasing Kinect PC with Windows 8.
I must be the only person who actually prefers the metro menu thing. I don't think I could go back to the small and horribly ordered (unless you spend the tedium of organizing it constantly) menu again. I like having all my main programs organized and displayed prominently. The metro screen is the best thing they did in Win 8, really (outside of making SD and Network transfers less idiotic).
Metro apps are still mostly crap, and they still need to make the whole OS feel less "tacked on", and work on UI and app consistency, though.
If this update is $15-20 I'll grab it. If not... I don't mind Win 8.
Which is neither here nor there... Autism is just as scientific as a non-measured dopamine imbalance, when it comes down to it. Less so, even, since no one can really point to a brain or test and say "yep, there's your autism problem right there".
This obviously doesn't mean autism doesn't exist, or rather the cloud of behaviors that we currently label "autism" doesn't exist. Autism is very much a diagnostic "shrug" right now, nothing more than a loose collection of behaviors and severities. At one end you have people who aren't mentally "ill" (it doesn't impair their ability to function at a high level), and at the other you have non-verbals who bang their heads into walls who can't even communicate. You have a vast array of symptoms, which aren't even shared between all individuals. And you have very little to no science backing it up.
Again, I'm not saying that people don't have it, or what people feel isn't real... But there is no difference between autism and a non-measured dopamine disorder... outside of the fact that we CAN measure dopamine, and it can be low... but at the moment we can't measure autism.
"there's too much dopamine up there"... "was most likely undiagnosed autistic spectrum disorder and post traumatic stress from all the crap that happens when spectrum kids get bullied in school."...
So your problem with unscientific psychobabble is that it was the wrong type of unscientific psychobabble?
So Winston Churchill was no better than hitler?
Did I say that? Did my cat sneak into my room with invisible bits while I was typing that? I've re-read my message three times now, even with my special glasses, and can't see where I wrote that.
hy is this? because Israel's position is that it will live peaceably with the Arabs if they are prepared to sign a permanent peace treaty on fair terms. The Arab political position is simple: genocide for the Jews as laid out in the Qur'an and hadiths.
This is a fallacious statement. There are "genocidal" Jews in Israel, and peace-loving Arabs in Palestine. Sadly on both sides the genocidal factions get the most press and power. The settler and hardline Zionists are just as bad, really, as the extremists among the Arabs.
There was a point where you could say "this side has higher ground", but I feel that that time passed long ago. There has too much violence and extremism at this point for anyone to say anyone has clean hands anymore.
The Jews should have settled there like they did. The Arabs shouldn't have reacted as they did. The Jews should have struck back as they did... The Arabs should have retaliated in that way... Etc...
Drawing "moral equivalence" between the two sides ends up equating the genocidal goals of Islam with the right of a UN member State to defend itself against attack. Clearly such an equivalence is a falsehood.
That would be picking sides... No, the aggressors on both sides should be stuck down, both Arab and Jew, allowing the normal folk who just want to raise their families live peaceably. The Arabs shouldn't get a pass, any more than the more hateful bits of the Zionist movement. Occupy Isreal/Palestine, then throw anyone who breaks the peace, Jew or Arab, on a desert island, naked, and let them sort it out like men, without letting innocents suffer.