I have to wonder if Intel basically ditching the last 5 years of CPU development in favor of their Israeli skunkworks ranks at or above the famous Microsoft IE U-turn?
I mean, Intel sold millions and spent billions on Netbu(r|)st, and hit the wall far before the 5+ghz figures bandied about back in the day. This is basically ctrl-alt-del on a large part of their roadmap, though I'm sure they'll still be selling 'traditional' P4s for awhile.
That's not to say that your whole OS would fail to load, but if you bought that 1080i copy of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo and expected to play it on your PC or Mac, that PC or Mac would need end-to-end HDCP for a licensed player to load.
Of course, all bets are off related to cracking the keys that are burnt onto each disc, but one would presume that teh industray would have learnt from DVDJon...
Fair 'nuff, though a good case could be made that a VoIP-equipped questing party would be a better substitute for PBM or PBEM, if your gaming circle spans multiple cities, timezones or countries.
Still, WoW should incorporate at least an alignment system so that chaotics can get XP for ninjaing and lawfuls can get XP for helping non-party members, and stuff like that;)
Like a virus, they spread through my gaming community. Like a cancer, they grew to crowd out other, healthier pursuits like AD&D, Shadowrun, Starfleet Battles, Gamma World, etc. I stood against the tide only to watch friend after friend fall into the CCG trap. Steve Jackson stabbed me in the back after discontinuing the old hotness Illuminati for the new and busted INWO. And now they threaten WoW? In the immortal words of one of my greatest heroes, "Oh, my valve!"
Then again, an Arcanite Reaper lottery _would_ be sorta cool...
Is there an international standard on altitudes for such beasts? Is anything over ~30km fair game?
I agree that a solar-powered helium dirigible @ 35km or so would be more cost-effective and have better ping times.. But you never know, maybe the Japanese just want to show the world they're a spacefaring nation as well;)
Seriously, it is. It's probably the best opensource OO WM out there, and it's the closest thing X has to the glorious wonder that is *Step short of GNUStep, which also has the heretical GPL?
Then again, UI usability doesn't really relate to the kernel it runs on, except for stuff like supporting chrome in X, D-Bus-style auto device handling and whatnot. I'd probably stick to linux only because it's what I'm most familiar with, and has wider compatibility with stuff I'd be likely to use, and it's the primary OSS platform for lots of stuff I'd be likely to use.
At the end of the day, for window managers, I believe that you need to recruit a UI fascist or cabal, and give them power to block releases for usability bugs and feature demands. You need to have someone that can take a flood of non-techie usability bugs and turn them into a coherent set of usability requirements. Someone that can document a set of usability and design philosophies (such as the Apple HIG) and force people to adhere to them.
and if you use the GPL'ed Linux libraries you are also FORCED to release your application code (it's not LGPL)).
In the linux world, that's a wonderful feature, not a bug. Share and share alike.
Perhaps, but Linux to me is more like a baseline standard that provides a foundation for more interesting things on top.
For example, what if you had to pay, say, France, every time you used the term 'meter' or 'liter', or used those terms in the design and description of any engineering, manufacturing, geographic, etc. product? What if, to avoid such fees, you had to reinvent a whole new Metric(tm) system to describe such things?
What if you had to pay an annual licensing fee to speak or write the English language?
Granted, new refinements are made to standard measurments periodically, new 'hacks' are entered into language dictionaries on occasion, but in the end those standards are open and unencumbered. This is where I think Linux should end up, and how the perception should be formed.
Same applies to everyone who whines about Linux not being "ready for the desktop", because the OS hackers can't be bothered to build pretty UIs. That's because UI twiddling isn't Fun. So if you want us to do it, pay us - just like you would pay anyone else to do anything else that they don't particularly want to do.
Agreed, but don't whinge when MS walks off with the desktop because Linux developers couldn't be bothered.
Nobody ever said World Domination(tm) would be easy.
For the following reason: cafes have limited seating / serving space, and therefore depend on turnaround for profits. So unless you have table service (which is an expense most small cafes don't have) pestering you to stop loitering, you are gonna have to be the bad cop and roust loiterers yourself.
Or, which IMHO is the right choice, implement a system that prints, say, short passphrases on receipts that offer, say, 15 minutes of access per purchase. When your lease expires and you're prompted to login for access to the network, just buy more stuff and get another receipt. I'll be damned if this couldn't be done with an opensource POS solution coupled with a suitably hacked linksys.
Tedious, yes, but less so than going out of business from all the non-coffee-drinking limpets out there...
... I mean, there may be vehement fans of the Geek Utility Belt(tm) out there, but normals want one device that does it all, so there's only one thing to keep track of and only one thing to learn how to use.
I want an uvvy, or what's as close as possible given current technology.
Here's hoping Apple pulls it off, or SonyEricsson gets its thumb out its ass and releases the Hermione with 3G and voice recognition...
Hey, has anyone else noticed that occasionally Google results will have their links wrapped in some form of redirect script, so they can track your clicks? Did they announce this and I missed it? It seems to happen at random: two separate searches of identical search terms result in identical results, except one search has 'true' links and the other has clicktracking links.
In theory, I suppose, aggregate link tracking could help refine an expert system's ability to troubleshoot, assuming they track the right people;)
But otherwise, I find it a bit unsavory to be honest. Less than good, though not technically evil I suppose.
Time to send 'em to museums, and develop a modern, robust system based on all we've learned from 20+ years of 'experimentation' with reusable spacecraft.. Maybe see if the Skylon has merit...
Qiyrat Gat seems to be about 10 miles from the West Bank, and 15 miles from the Gaza border.
Dude, there's no spot in Israel that isn't at most 25 miles from some pissed off Arab. It's a pretty small country, about 80% the size of Maryland, give or take a settlement.
If you actually read 1984 or Animal Farm with any literary sensitivity, you'd see how in both cases Orwell imagines socialism becoming perverted by the actions of power-hungry Communists - the very same thing he saw happening in the Spanish Civil War (and described in Homage to Catalonia, where he sees the Communist Party as second only to Franco's Facists as agents of injustice).
By the end of his life, I believe he found communism to be inevitably corrupt and evil, given the evidence.
Socialism, a watered-down version of communism, may be less corrupt and evil by degree, but it's no less bankrupt in the long run, as many continental nations are in the process of discovering. The central idea of socialism is institutionalized theft by majority rule, making the state a 'robin hood' which steals from the rich to give to the poor. In the long run, this so impacts entrepreneurship and incentives that it leads to stagnation and true income equality, where everyone is equally poor. Of course, true believers pack bag lunches and sing songs of solidarity, but the best of the rest end up brain-draining to America.
Capitalism, on the other hand, in one form or another, has existed since the dawn of human history. Hell, scientific evidence proves that even monkeys can learn how to exchange goods for services.
I think he doesn't understand that all economic systems, capitalist and socialist, are corrosive to democracy because they require either competition (which naturally leads to economic disparities, which give more power to the wealthy, and which therefore undermine democracy) or control (which suppress individual initiative and submits the individual to mass control).
You try to place moral equivalence between capitalism and socialism where there is, in fact, none at all. Economic disparities stem from individual competence, and competition acts as both a valve and a pressor, pushing progress inevitably forward. You are actually describing China when you're talking about a worst-case for capitalism.
China, which has transformed into a fascist country though it calls itself a communist country, is where you'll find the vicious brew of capitalist economy and totalitarian, pro-corporate (thru its institutional ownership of at least half the economy) society. In the Chinese government, international corporations find a willing partner in wage exploitation, labor migration, etc. And people are not permitted to protest, and the press is state-owned or state-controlled.
Also, to be honest, _everything_ is corrosive to democracy, when institutionalized and permitted to metastasize. The key is finding the balance which provides the most individual liberty while preserving common rights and privileges in the most fair and sustainable way.
ObTopic: there's no way anything like V could happen in the USA, because of our free press and broad and deep gun ownership. Besides, unlike England, our armed services and law enforcment swear an oath to protect the principles enshrined in the founding document of our nation, and many even carry copies of this document with them. If you've ever known any military or law enforcement personnel, you'd know how seriously they take that oath. Just look at what happend to MacArthur. Unpopular president fires popular war hero for insubordination, and while the people protest venomously, the general steps down with grace and respect for the Constitutional principle of civilian authority over the military.
That Dodge might have a Hemi, but you have to rewire the distributor, gap the plugs and change the cams every time you wanna start it. And the procedure for braking? Don't ask.;)
Gimme a Mercedes diesel any day. Efficient, pretty, easy to use, and lasts FOREVER... Not necessarily that fast though:p
Linux still has a long way to go in usability polishing, but it's getting there. As a recent Ubuntu convert myself I keep running into situations where I miss the polish pro of XP. Another year or so, and I think we'll be closer.
Yeah, but OS X will be that much farther ahead..
I'm less and less enthused over the Linux desktop for general-purpose use. Designing computer interfaces for normals to enjoy is not what most OSSers would consider their itch, so they're unlikely to do it (and test it, and subject themselves to often harsh and unforgiving criticism by technical illiterates) without being paid to do it. Of course, it may behoove IBM or other systems integrators to pay for that thankless gruntwork to support selling complete packages into their clientele, but that'll take a bit more time, and there's quite a bit of chicken-and-eggery involved. Still, with critical mass approaching (OOo 2.0 being the key IMHO) it may be sooner than I think.
I think, in the end, Linux desktop will end up being for the most part what it is today: something with great configurability, great power, and requiring prior GUI proficiency in UIs that Linux steals from (such as Windows and OS X). Great for corporations that want control and consistency on their frontends (with thin clients or recycled netbooting dickless PCs). Not so great for grandma doing bingo invitations in Print Shop or junior farming copper in WoW.
I don't see the Linux community ever offering anything that's radically usable _and_ simple _and_ user-friendly _and_ gorgeous, all at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to wonder if Intel basically ditching the last 5 years of CPU development in favor of their Israeli skunkworks ranks at or above the famous Microsoft IE U-turn?
I mean, Intel sold millions and spent billions on Netbu(r|)st, and hit the wall far before the 5+ghz figures bandied about back in the day. This is basically ctrl-alt-del on a large part of their roadmap, though I'm sure they'll still be selling 'traditional' P4s for awhile.
Not exactly.
The theory is, software or hardware that will be licensed to play DRM media will force the use of HDCP.
if ($HDCP && exists $legal->{$media_key}) {
play($hardware->'max_res');
} elsif (!$HDCP) {
play($hardware->'480i') && warn ("$0: tough noogies, buy new crap!\n");
} else {
inform(['M$', 'FBI', 'RIAA', 'MPAA']);
}
That's not to say that your whole OS would fail to load, but if you bought that 1080i copy of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo and expected to play it on your PC or Mac, that PC or Mac would need end-to-end HDCP for a licensed player to load.
Of course, all bets are off related to cracking the keys that are burnt onto each disc, but one would presume that teh industray would have learnt from DVDJon...
Fair 'nuff, though a good case could be made that a VoIP-equipped questing party would be a better substitute for PBM or PBEM, if your gaming circle spans multiple cities, timezones or countries.
;)
Still, WoW should incorporate at least an alignment system so that chaotics can get XP for ninjaing and lawfuls can get XP for helping non-party members, and stuff like that
Like a virus, they spread through my gaming community. Like a cancer, they grew to crowd out other, healthier pursuits like AD&D, Shadowrun, Starfleet Battles, Gamma World, etc. I stood against the tide only to watch friend after friend fall into the CCG trap. Steve Jackson stabbed me in the back after discontinuing the old hotness Illuminati for the new and busted INWO. And now they threaten WoW? In the immortal words of one of my greatest heroes, "Oh, my valve!"
Then again, an Arcanite Reaper lottery _would_ be sorta cool...
WHO RULES BARTERTOWN!?!?!
Talk about dick tack toe...
Is there an international standard on altitudes for such beasts? Is anything over ~30km fair game?
;)
I agree that a solar-powered helium dirigible @ 35km or so would be more cost-effective and have better ping times.. But you never know, maybe the Japanese just want to show the world they're a spacefaring nation as well
Because KDE is better?
Seriously, it is. It's probably the best opensource OO WM out there, and it's the closest thing X has to the glorious wonder that is *Step short of GNUStep, which also has the heretical GPL?
Then again, UI usability doesn't really relate to the kernel it runs on, except for stuff like supporting chrome in X, D-Bus-style auto device handling and whatnot. I'd probably stick to linux only because it's what I'm most familiar with, and has wider compatibility with stuff I'd be likely to use, and it's the primary OSS platform for lots of stuff I'd be likely to use.
At the end of the day, for window managers, I believe that you need to recruit a UI fascist or cabal, and give them power to block releases for usability bugs and feature demands. You need to have someone that can take a flood of non-techie usability bugs and turn them into a coherent set of usability requirements. Someone that can document a set of usability and design philosophies (such as the Apple HIG) and force people to adhere to them.
and if you use the GPL'ed Linux libraries you are also FORCED to release your application code (it's not LGPL)).
In the linux world, that's a wonderful feature, not a bug. Share and share alike.
Perhaps, but Linux to me is more like a baseline standard that provides a foundation for more interesting things on top.
For example, what if you had to pay, say, France, every time you used the term 'meter' or 'liter', or used those terms in the design and description of any engineering, manufacturing, geographic, etc. product? What if, to avoid such fees, you had to reinvent a whole new Metric(tm) system to describe such things?
What if you had to pay an annual licensing fee to speak or write the English language?
Granted, new refinements are made to standard measurments periodically, new 'hacks' are entered into language dictionaries on occasion, but in the end those standards are open and unencumbered. This is where I think Linux should end up, and how the perception should be formed.
Same applies to everyone who whines about Linux not being "ready for the desktop", because the OS hackers can't be bothered to build pretty UIs. That's because UI twiddling isn't Fun. So if you want us to do it, pay us - just like you would pay anyone else to do anything else that they don't particularly want to do.
Agreed, but don't whinge when MS walks off with the desktop because Linux developers couldn't be bothered.
Nobody ever said World Domination(tm) would be easy.
... to post this link:
http://plif.andkon.com/archive/wc263.gif
Probably...
No simultaneous l+r button = no mouse cruising in World of Warcraft, therefore this mouse is useless.
Since, as we all know, a computer's value is directly proportional to its ability to play World of Warcraft.
That is all.
For the following reason: cafes have limited seating / serving space, and therefore depend on turnaround for profits. So unless you have table service (which is an expense most small cafes don't have) pestering you to stop loitering, you are gonna have to be the bad cop and roust loiterers yourself.
Or, which IMHO is the right choice, implement a system that prints, say, short passphrases on receipts that offer, say, 15 minutes of access per purchase. When your lease expires and you're prompted to login for access to the network, just buy more stuff and get another receipt. I'll be damned if this couldn't be done with an opensource POS solution coupled with a suitably hacked linksys.
Tedious, yes, but less so than going out of business from all the non-coffee-drinking limpets out there...
Just don't forget your TPS report coversheet.
You _did_ get the memo, right?
... If we did, we'd wouldn't be in the field.
;)
What we need is root, coffee and chocolate.
And guns. BIG FUCKING GUNS!!!!
(and money
... I mean, there may be vehement fans of the Geek Utility Belt(tm) out there, but normals want one device that does it all, so there's only one thing to keep track of and only one thing to learn how to use.
I want an uvvy, or what's as close as possible given current technology.
Here's hoping Apple pulls it off, or SonyEricsson gets its thumb out its ass and releases the Hermione with 3G and voice recognition...
... Just root, coffee and chocolate.
Hey, has anyone else noticed that occasionally Google results will have their links wrapped in some form of redirect script, so they can track your clicks? Did they announce this and I missed it? It seems to happen at random: two separate searches of identical search terms result in identical results, except one search has 'true' links and the other has clicktracking links.
;)
In theory, I suppose, aggregate link tracking could help refine an expert system's ability to troubleshoot, assuming they track the right people
But otherwise, I find it a bit unsavory to be honest. Less than good, though not technically evil I suppose.
... It's DONE.
Time to send 'em to museums, and develop a modern, robust system based on all we've learned from 20+ years of 'experimentation' with reusable spacecraft.. Maybe see if the Skylon has merit...
Qiyrat Gat seems to be about 10 miles from the West Bank, and 15 miles from the Gaza border.
Dude, there's no spot in Israel that isn't at most 25 miles from some pissed off Arab. It's a pretty small country, about 80% the size of Maryland, give or take a settlement.
I run an OCZ ModPower. I like the modular cabling, and not having extra connectors and cables cluttering my airflow.
I'd _LOVE_ a fanless PS that could pump out ~450W, IFF it had modular cabling so I could install only the cables I need.
If you actually read 1984 or Animal Farm with any literary sensitivity, you'd see how in both cases Orwell imagines socialism becoming perverted by the actions of power-hungry Communists - the very same thing he saw happening in the Spanish Civil War (and described in Homage to Catalonia, where he sees the Communist Party as second only to Franco's Facists as agents of injustice).
By the end of his life, I believe he found communism to be inevitably corrupt and evil, given the evidence.
Socialism, a watered-down version of communism, may be less corrupt and evil by degree, but it's no less bankrupt in the long run, as many continental nations are in the process of discovering. The central idea of socialism is institutionalized theft by majority rule, making the state a 'robin hood' which steals from the rich to give to the poor. In the long run, this so impacts entrepreneurship and incentives that it leads to stagnation and true income equality, where everyone is equally poor. Of course, true believers pack bag lunches and sing songs of solidarity, but the best of the rest end up brain-draining to America.
Capitalism, on the other hand, in one form or another, has existed since the dawn of human history. Hell, scientific evidence proves that even monkeys can learn how to exchange goods for services.
I think he doesn't understand that all economic systems, capitalist and socialist, are corrosive to democracy because they require either competition (which naturally leads to economic disparities, which give more power to the wealthy, and which therefore undermine democracy) or control (which suppress individual initiative and submits the individual to mass control).
You try to place moral equivalence between capitalism and socialism where there is, in fact, none at all. Economic disparities stem from individual competence, and competition acts as both a valve and a pressor, pushing progress inevitably forward. You are actually describing China when you're talking about a worst-case for capitalism.
China, which has transformed into a fascist country though it calls itself a communist country, is where you'll find the vicious brew of capitalist economy and totalitarian, pro-corporate (thru its institutional ownership of at least half the economy) society. In the Chinese government, international corporations find a willing partner in wage exploitation, labor migration, etc. And people are not permitted to protest, and the press is state-owned or state-controlled.
Also, to be honest, _everything_ is corrosive to democracy, when institutionalized and permitted to metastasize. The key is finding the balance which provides the most individual liberty while preserving common rights and privileges in the most fair and sustainable way.
ObTopic: there's no way anything like V could happen in the USA, because of our free press and broad and deep gun ownership. Besides, unlike England, our armed services and law enforcment swear an oath to protect the principles enshrined in the founding document of our nation, and many even carry copies of this document with them. If you've ever known any military or law enforcement personnel, you'd know how seriously they take that oath. Just look at what happend to MacArthur. Unpopular president fires popular war hero for insubordination, and while the people protest venomously, the general steps down with grace and respect for the Constitutional principle of civilian authority over the military.
... the Space Robots.
O OO OOOOOOOOMED!
Still, first the AARP, now this? We're doomed.
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
That Dodge might have a Hemi, but you have to rewire the distributor, gap the plugs and change the cams every time you wanna start it. And the procedure for braking? Don't ask. ;)
:p
Gimme a Mercedes diesel any day. Efficient, pretty, easy to use, and lasts FOREVER... Not necessarily that fast though
Linux still has a long way to go in usability polishing, but it's getting there. As a recent Ubuntu convert myself I keep running into situations where I miss the polish pro of XP. Another year or so, and I think we'll be closer.
Yeah, but OS X will be that much farther ahead..
I'm less and less enthused over the Linux desktop for general-purpose use. Designing computer interfaces for normals to enjoy is not what most OSSers would consider their itch, so they're unlikely to do it (and test it, and subject themselves to often harsh and unforgiving criticism by technical illiterates) without being paid to do it. Of course, it may behoove IBM or other systems integrators to pay for that thankless gruntwork to support selling complete packages into their clientele, but that'll take a bit more time, and there's quite a bit of chicken-and-eggery involved. Still, with critical mass approaching (OOo 2.0 being the key IMHO) it may be sooner than I think.
I think, in the end, Linux desktop will end up being for the most part what it is today: something with great configurability, great power, and requiring prior GUI proficiency in UIs that Linux steals from (such as Windows and OS X). Great for corporations that want control and consistency on their frontends (with thin clients or recycled netbooting dickless PCs). Not so great for grandma doing bingo invitations in Print Shop or junior farming copper in WoW.
I don't see the Linux community ever offering anything that's radically usable _and_ simple _and_ user-friendly _and_ gorgeous, all at the same time.