Because the whole case was a sham put forth by the US AGO. Even JSTOR, the "offended" party, didn't want to pursue the matter. It was the US government that butchered this man with their brutal legal system and relentless pursuit of him. Make no mistake about that.
The pursuit was even more vicious and determined than that of the MPAA and RIAA with their letters and lawsuits over copyright violations.
If they're in court over the device, they sure don't want any of their subsidiaries reviewing or commenting on the devices. That would provide the opposition with ammunition in court, and could even lead to a dismissal of the case because they didn't keep their opinions and comments in the court system instead of in public.
I suspect that thick bar across the bottom where the wires plug in is also where they've hidden the non-bendable chips for the device. I noticed that the bottom of the sheet didn't bend when they were flipping through the PDF example.
So this technology is definitely not ready for delivery.
It also strikes me as incredibly gimmicky. Picking up and shuffling paper is far from intuitive, and I don't want to cover my desk with a bunch of sheets. In the area consumed by my monitor and keyboard, I could fit maybe 4 of those sheets if they were all side by side.
Worst of all is the dependence on a soft screen keyboard. This would have been far more impressive technology if it would have allowed the user to scribble cursive writing anywhere on the surface and have it automatically converted to text.
Good Lord. Given the difficulty people have with the basic algebraic concept that "X is a variable", do you really think the "average" person could ever write a useful program?
I have great faith in the unwashed masses hanging themselves if they tried.
I read Al Jazeera's English website regularly. They provide good news, good video clips, and seem right up there with the BBC or CBC for the quality of their reporting.
But unlike the BBC and CBC, a lot of their news is about Asia and Africa, areas which aren't even *mentioned* on "mainstream" channels unless there is a major disaster or a few dozen people killed.
Oddly enough, they manage to cover the world with only one front page to their website, the same screen real-estate that the other channels have.
In comparison, the BBC and CBC are "local" news channels. And the US news feeds are just a freakin' joke -- they don't cover anything that can't be directly related to US white house policy. Navel-gazing waste of time -- no wonder most Americans are so ignorant about world politics and economic issues.
Most people have a "sibling" with the same name somewhere in the world. For example, there's a "Mark Sobkow" in the US who works in the tech industry, the same as I do. People using Google would get pages for both of us.
I'd suggest you can't do any more about the situation in the article than you can about someone who shares the same name and posts stuff that *you* don't like or respect.
While I realize that there are theoretically 32 bit versions of Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 available, I have never seen one installed on a system. For the Mozilla team to say there will "never" be a 64-bit build for Windows is an asinine and bass-ackwards approach to maintaining compatibility with the OS.
If it's the plugin-providers causing the problem, then they deserve as much "Boo Hiss" as Mozilla does.
Let's try to keep up with the times. 64-bit Windows has been stable and standard for years!
Quality code will always be "cluttered" with data validation code, result verification, and a host of other details.
The simple fact is that computers are stupid. They have to be explicitly told what to do in every conceivable situation the code could encounter at runtime, or else the code will crash and the user will complain about it being "unusable".
I notice that despite the article author's bitching about the situation, they had not one suggestion as to what to do instead. It's easy to bitch about life, but a lot harder to suck it up and deal.
If exception handling and return-value checking code are "too hard" for someone to understand, they need to get the hell out of the programming industry and leave it to professionals who actually find it fun and challenging to deal with all the details. Not everyone has the mindset of a true programmer.
I've purchased over 5,000 CDs and over 3,000 DVDs, as well as about 500 VHS tapes in my life. Prices back then weren't cheap, either, especialy for the VHS tapes. They were a "new thing." Same with DVDs when they came out.
I've spent over $150,000 on media over the years.
If I live to be 100, that would be 1200 months of payments. Near as I can figure, I've already paid $125/month from the cradle to the grave for media.
Nvidia doesn't seem to have much trouble releasing Linux blobs.
Technically, the blob is just another package distribution mechanism that happens to incorporate DRM. All of the APIs that Steam requires are pretty much stable. Nvidia and co. were likely brought on by Valve so they could tweak their drivers and correct any bugs that were discovered, not because there was some magic code inserted into anyone else's software just for Valve.
True, but when you defend yourself in court, it's your lawyer that's making the money. Someone on your side.
This is a cash cow that is just ripe for abuse by the ISPs, not a service fee.
To put it in perspective, I don't have to pay a fee to have my email unblocked should it be incorrectly flagged as a source of spam. This is the same situation -- defending yourself against an unproven allegation. And much like spam flagging, if it happens once, it's likely to happen again (because once a spammer starts spoofing your email address they'll keep spoofing it.)
When installing a Windows box of any release, I've made a habit since NT 3.5 of installing the OS, disabling swap, rebooting, and defragging the disk until it's solidly packed.
I then set the paging file to be a fixed size, usually double the size of the physical memory in the system.
Reboot again, and continue with installation as normal.
Once created in this way, the paging file is unmovable during normal defrags, and remains a contiguous chunk of space.
There was also a program I used once that could do a boot-time defrag of the paging file itself, but I forget what the name of it was. (I don't run Windows any more.)
Just because recent administrations have gone tromping all over the Constitution of the US in their zealous pursuit of supposed terrorists since 9/11 does not mean such legislation is legal under the auspices of the Constitution.
The US is not the country it once was. It abandoned it's Constitution following 9/11. An absolute master stroke of manipulating the feat of the population into an abdication of their rights.
You have the right to expect that access be available to you as much as it is to anyone else in your neighbourhood, provided you can afford to pay for it. So you have a "right" to the option of paying for broadband service, but not the "right" to expect to receive it for free.
The car was revolutionary; people were not granted the "right" to own a car, nor even the "right" to drive one without passing tests.
The telegraph and telephone revolutionized communications, yet once again, no one has ever expected you to receive those services for free.
Even the radio and television, which broadcast "free" for anyone with a receiver, still require that you buy a receiver.
But of course the CEO of a company which SELLS such technology would like to have it declared a "right." That way they can soak the goobermint for even more money than they shaft the current consumers, with far less oversight and regulation than is currently in place. Hell, government being the way it is, they'd probably want to select a few providers of a "guaranteed internet access" program, and the CEO of any major telecom company would be a fool not to hope for a chance at being one of those few (and well paid) providers.
But hey, this is a world where iPad and iPhone wielding "protestors" on Wall Street were crying the blues about losing their homes while paying around $100 a month for mobile data access. I never have quite grasped how someone who faces a heavy mortgage can afford luxuries like hi-def TV, mobile broadband/data plans, etc.
Personally I think their priorities are just screwed up. As are the priorities of CNN's audience.
But it's not surprising. If someone thinks they might get something for free just by putting up their hand in a quick audience poll, of course they're going to put up their hand. The "expense" is far too cheap compared to the potential pay-back not to at least give it a shot.
It'll be hard for Win7 to compete with Win8 if Microsoft stops selling Win7. That means you'll have to buy a top-of-the-line Win8 instance in order to be able to downgrade to Win7. And good luck finding the Win7 media if you don't already have a copy when Win8 takes over.
Still, the nut of the problem remains the same: Win8 is going to have a tough time gaining traction in the market, and is going to produce a lot of cranky users who don't like the Metro UI and want things "the way they were."
If Microsoft starts selling hardware in competition with Dell, Lenovo, et. al., there is a very strong chance it will backfire on them. There is absolutely nothing stopping those competitors from abandoning Windows 8 entirely in favour of some flavour of Linux, likely Ubuntu.
There is nothing I need to do with my system that I can't do with Ubuntu 12.04. I haven't run across any unsupported video formats, I haven't run across any documents I couldn't open and view/edit, and the only piece of software that I haven't been able to get running under it is the Oracle RDBMS.
The average user is going to have a learning curve moving to Windows 8. I wouldn't be at all surprised if several corporations decide that such retraining is a bad investment, and instead have their users retrain on Linux based desktops. Alternatively, many companies have shifted to web-based tools for their internal systems, so as long as their users have Firefox and Open/Libre Office, they've got everything they need to do their jobs.
Microsoft is in trouble. They're changing things for the sake of change, focusing on tablet UIs for desktop PCs, and are likely to find the same kind of user backlash that the Gnome 3 developers did when they shafted the "traditional" desktop users.
Replacing one transport with another isn't innovative enough to warrant the attention. You could use torrents under YUM or APT, you could use GIT, SVN, or any of a number of change management tools as a means to tell the client which updates to subscribe to and install.
But I doubt any such approach will ever see critical mass, just because the two big players (Debian/Ubuntu and RedHat/RHEL) already have perfectly usable tools. You'd need some serious whizz-bang new features to justify changing those tools, and the article doesn't suggest anything that can't be done already with existing technology.
Change for the sake of change is pointless; there has to be a benefit big enough to justify the change, and I don't see that in the write-up.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the whole case was a sham put forth by the US AGO. Even JSTOR, the "offended" party, didn't want to pursue the matter. It was the US government that butchered this man with their brutal legal system and relentless pursuit of him. Make no mistake about that.
The pursuit was even more vicious and determined than that of the MPAA and RIAA with their letters and lawsuits over copyright violations.
If they're in court over the device, they sure don't want any of their subsidiaries reviewing or commenting on the devices. That would provide the opposition with ammunition in court, and could even lead to a dismissal of the case because they didn't keep their opinions and comments in the court system instead of in public.
I suspect that thick bar across the bottom where the wires plug in is also where they've hidden the non-bendable chips for the device. I noticed that the bottom of the sheet didn't bend when they were flipping through the PDF example.
So this technology is definitely not ready for delivery.
It also strikes me as incredibly gimmicky. Picking up and shuffling paper is far from intuitive, and I don't want to cover my desk with a bunch of sheets. In the area consumed by my monitor and keyboard, I could fit maybe 4 of those sheets if they were all side by side.
Worst of all is the dependence on a soft screen keyboard. This would have been far more impressive technology if it would have allowed the user to scribble cursive writing anywhere on the surface and have it automatically converted to text.
Good Lord. Given the difficulty people have with the basic algebraic concept that "X is a variable", do you really think the "average" person could ever write a useful program?
I have great faith in the unwashed masses hanging themselves if they tried.
'nuff said.
I read Al Jazeera's English website regularly. They provide good news, good video clips, and seem right up there with the BBC or CBC for the quality of their reporting.
But unlike the BBC and CBC, a lot of their news is about Asia and Africa, areas which aren't even *mentioned* on "mainstream" channels unless there is a major disaster or a few dozen people killed.
Oddly enough, they manage to cover the world with only one front page to their website, the same screen real-estate that the other channels have.
In comparison, the BBC and CBC are "local" news channels. And the US news feeds are just a freakin' joke -- they don't cover anything that can't be directly related to US white house policy. Navel-gazing waste of time -- no wonder most Americans are so ignorant about world politics and economic issues.
Most people have a "sibling" with the same name somewhere in the world. For example, there's a "Mark Sobkow" in the US who works in the tech industry, the same as I do. People using Google would get pages for both of us.
I'd suggest you can't do any more about the situation in the article than you can about someone who shares the same name and posts stuff that *you* don't like or respect.
i.e. Ignore it and get on with your life.
I could have had a Windows 8 laptop, but I opted to get a "last year's model" with Windows 7 after test driving that abortion of release 8.
I can't imagine a more unfriendly desktop for a software developer, except maybe Gnome 3.
But my buddy's a lightweight and fell out by 18h30. So I went home. *sigh*
But only because Sergio Aragone hasn't published a "Groo" web comic. :D
While I realize that there are theoretically 32 bit versions of Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 available, I have never seen one installed on a system. For the Mozilla team to say there will "never" be a 64-bit build for Windows is an asinine and bass-ackwards approach to maintaining compatibility with the OS.
If it's the plugin-providers causing the problem, then they deserve as much "Boo Hiss" as Mozilla does.
Let's try to keep up with the times. 64-bit Windows has been stable and standard for years!
When I first started programming, I tried to write elegant functions.
Later, I tried to package that into elegant libraries or modules, and my code became clearer and more structured.
Along came object oriented languages, which made modularity natural and clarified the code further.
Nowadays a complex system looks like a template-driven fractal to me, a thing of rigorously standardized crystalline beauty.
The article reads as "I was a staunch advocate for privacy until I realized I could make money by selling my soul."
Quality code will always be "cluttered" with data validation code, result verification, and a host of other details.
The simple fact is that computers are stupid. They have to be explicitly told what to do in every conceivable situation the code could encounter at runtime, or else the code will crash and the user will complain about it being "unusable".
I notice that despite the article author's bitching about the situation, they had not one suggestion as to what to do instead. It's easy to bitch about life, but a lot harder to suck it up and deal.
If exception handling and return-value checking code are "too hard" for someone to understand, they need to get the hell out of the programming industry and leave it to professionals who actually find it fun and challenging to deal with all the details. Not everyone has the mindset of a true programmer.
I've purchased over 5,000 CDs and over 3,000 DVDs, as well as about 500 VHS tapes in my life. Prices back then weren't cheap, either, especialy for the VHS tapes. They were a "new thing." Same with DVDs when they came out.
I've spent over $150,000 on media over the years.
If I live to be 100, that would be 1200 months of payments. Near as I can figure, I've already paid $125/month from the cradle to the grave for media.
Just when is enough enough?
Funny.
Nvidia doesn't seem to have much trouble releasing Linux blobs.
Technically, the blob is just another package distribution mechanism that happens to incorporate DRM. All of the APIs that Steam requires are pretty much stable. Nvidia and co. were likely brought on by Valve so they could tweak their drivers and correct any bugs that were discovered, not because there was some magic code inserted into anyone else's software just for Valve.
True, but when you defend yourself in court, it's your lawyer that's making the money. Someone on your side.
This is a cash cow that is just ripe for abuse by the ISPs, not a service fee.
To put it in perspective, I don't have to pay a fee to have my email unblocked should it be incorrectly flagged as a source of spam. This is the same situation -- defending yourself against an unproven allegation. And much like spam flagging, if it happens once, it's likely to happen again (because once a spammer starts spoofing your email address they'll keep spoofing it.)
When installing a Windows box of any release, I've made a habit since NT 3.5 of installing the OS, disabling swap, rebooting, and defragging the disk until it's solidly packed.
I then set the paging file to be a fixed size, usually double the size of the physical memory in the system.
Reboot again, and continue with installation as normal.
Once created in this way, the paging file is unmovable during normal defrags, and remains a contiguous chunk of space.
There was also a program I used once that could do a boot-time defrag of the paging file itself, but I forget what the name of it was. (I don't run Windows any more.)
Fear not Feat! *LOL*
It says "We the People", not "We the Citizens."
Just because recent administrations have gone tromping all over the Constitution of the US in their zealous pursuit of supposed terrorists since 9/11 does not mean such legislation is legal under the auspices of the Constitution.
The US is not the country it once was. It abandoned it's Constitution following 9/11. An absolute master stroke of manipulating the feat of the population into an abdication of their rights.
Fools.
Toews was an idiot to try and put this past the well-educated and often computer-literate Canadian population in the first place.
The reality is a hybrid of rights and luxury.
You have the right to expect that access be available to you as much as it is to anyone else in your neighbourhood, provided you can afford to pay for it. So you have a "right" to the option of paying for broadband service, but not the "right" to expect to receive it for free.
The car was revolutionary; people were not granted the "right" to own a car, nor even the "right" to drive one without passing tests.
The telegraph and telephone revolutionized communications, yet once again, no one has ever expected you to receive those services for free.
Even the radio and television, which broadcast "free" for anyone with a receiver, still require that you buy a receiver.
But of course the CEO of a company which SELLS such technology would like to have it declared a "right." That way they can soak the goobermint for even more money than they shaft the current consumers, with far less oversight and regulation than is currently in place. Hell, government being the way it is, they'd probably want to select a few providers of a "guaranteed internet access" program, and the CEO of any major telecom company would be a fool not to hope for a chance at being one of those few (and well paid) providers.
But hey, this is a world where iPad and iPhone wielding "protestors" on Wall Street were crying the blues about losing their homes while paying around $100 a month for mobile data access. I never have quite grasped how someone who faces a heavy mortgage can afford luxuries like hi-def TV, mobile broadband/data plans, etc.
Personally I think their priorities are just screwed up. As are the priorities of CNN's audience.
But it's not surprising. If someone thinks they might get something for free just by putting up their hand in a quick audience poll, of course they're going to put up their hand. The "expense" is far too cheap compared to the potential pay-back not to at least give it a shot.
It'll be hard for Win7 to compete with Win8 if Microsoft stops selling Win7. That means you'll have to buy a top-of-the-line Win8 instance in order to be able to downgrade to Win7. And good luck finding the Win7 media if you don't already have a copy when Win8 takes over.
Still, the nut of the problem remains the same: Win8 is going to have a tough time gaining traction in the market, and is going to produce a lot of cranky users who don't like the Metro UI and want things "the way they were."
If Microsoft starts selling hardware in competition with Dell, Lenovo, et. al., there is a very strong chance it will backfire on them. There is absolutely nothing stopping those competitors from abandoning Windows 8 entirely in favour of some flavour of Linux, likely Ubuntu.
There is nothing I need to do with my system that I can't do with Ubuntu 12.04. I haven't run across any unsupported video formats, I haven't run across any documents I couldn't open and view/edit, and the only piece of software that I haven't been able to get running under it is the Oracle RDBMS.
The average user is going to have a learning curve moving to Windows 8. I wouldn't be at all surprised if several corporations decide that such retraining is a bad investment, and instead have their users retrain on Linux based desktops. Alternatively, many companies have shifted to web-based tools for their internal systems, so as long as their users have Firefox and Open/Libre Office, they've got everything they need to do their jobs.
Microsoft is in trouble. They're changing things for the sake of change, focusing on tablet UIs for desktop PCs, and are likely to find the same kind of user backlash that the Gnome 3 developers did when they shafted the "traditional" desktop users.
Yet Another Update Manager.
Replacing one transport with another isn't innovative enough to warrant the attention. You could use torrents under YUM or APT, you could use GIT, SVN, or any of a number of change management tools as a means to tell the client which updates to subscribe to and install.
But I doubt any such approach will ever see critical mass, just because the two big players (Debian/Ubuntu and RedHat/RHEL) already have perfectly usable tools. You'd need some serious whizz-bang new features to justify changing those tools, and the article doesn't suggest anything that can't be done already with existing technology.
Change for the sake of change is pointless; there has to be a benefit big enough to justify the change, and I don't see that in the write-up.