Lots more things take more than 5 years to create.
Without the protection of copyright there would just be more secrets - you can't copy information you don't have.
The protections/limitations (depending upon your point of view) of GPL would disappear too.
Most software development would switch to cloud-based services so that all code stays within the company and no software gets distributed.
Add signed 3rd party software repositories to Windows Update and remove the need for all these programs to add their own, often intrusive update processes.
Don't want java? Fine. Don't install and don't add the repos & key.
Want java? No problem add keys and repo and get it updated in a sane manner not an obtrusive installshield app that always seems to fire up when I;m right in the middle of doing something.
This is an area where pretty much every Linux disro wins.
Failing that, an alternative would be an open-source package manager for windows. Bit of a nightmare to make though - as I assume every windows software developer would want you to run their install executable so they can make you accept EULAs etc.
Thanks for the link. This particular line seems to me to be relevant:
On 27 January 2012, Justice Edwards stated that since the offence for which the US wanted to extradite was regarded as having been committed in Ireland the Court was prohibited from extraditing Garland. He was therefore obliged to refer the case to the Director of Public Prosecutions who would consider whether there was a case for prosecuting Garland in Ireland.
thanks! I've been programming js snippets here and there since 1999 and even though I've use a decent logging framework everywhere else (log4j, log4net, slf4j commons logging, the log object in ruby/rails) im still in the habit of debugging javascript with window.alert
With you there.
We keep hearing about all this testing going on behind these "design decisions" but I'm starting to wonder to myself, who are these people doing these tests?
And what do they test them doing?
No i haven't but will take a look when/if i get time.
Generally, I spend a bit of time playing with desktops when a new linix based project turns up and my current distro is starting to look old. I then spend time installing a new distro but it's not long before system tweaking time starts in eat into what should be productive dev time and my patience starts to tip downhill.
I've never yet seen a Linux system I can just start using straight away - but maybe I'm just too fussy.
This particular rant is about Unity but the concept of "design" decision overriding utlity applies.
I really tried using Unity for a week or so but NEEDED to move the launcher / dock thingy to a different screen edge. (reasons below)
First, I tried the obvious click-dragging move - nothing happened
Ok, I told myself. This is open source software! must be a config file somewhere so I googled. Found a post from Shuttleworth himself saying:
I’m afraid the location of the Unity launcher is fixed by design. We want the launcher always close to the Ubuntu button.
Fixed by design? but I want to move it! I'm running ubuntu inside Virtualbox. I NEED both 'dowze and 'nix and the windows host / linux guest config works best for me. I also give that Linux guest a monitor to itself - on the right. Because it's on the right, the left edge of the linux screen jumps the mouse pointer back to the left screen and into the windows host system. So when trying to use the dock with autohide on (i want to use all of my screen when coding) I'd keep touching the edge of the screen and the dock would disappear.
I've got no problem with these design decisions from valuable end-user testing being used to setup defaults but both Gnome and unity seem hell-bent on FORCING you to use their new design paradigms and guess what? It just doesn't suit all use cases.
This being open source, it didn't take long for a whole bunch of options, wokarounds and custom docks to appear but for fuck's sake stop telling me how to use MY computer.
Am currently reasonably happy with KDE - Don't think I'll be going anywhere near Unity or Gnome for a very long time.
I've only watched a couple of minutes as I need to get back to work but there's two things already that are the best thing I've seen/heared all week..
1) As princess leia takes her hand away from R2D2 at the end of recording her message to Obi-Wan you hear the windows "USB device removed" noise
2) The baby stormtrooper that pops into shot behind Darth Vader as he boards the Tantive IV
We actually looked into getting Mapinfo but the licensing costs were heading into tens of thousands and that's before getting any actual map tiles.
Happily using Quantum GIS. This has a plugin that can save shapes directly into a Postgis column.
Postgis took a little patience the first time I installed - I'm running postgres 9.0 on centos 5.4 which requires third-party repository so had to do a few steps by hand - a more recent distro may be easier.
We're using it to map a bunch of franchise areas and redirect new customers after a geolocation lookup.
there is also the issue of timing. everyhing in a movie is precisely timed so, for example, you get an orchestral stab when the monster face appears in the window. how are you going to achieve this sychronisation with the reader without severly restricrting the amount of words visible at a time?
so you are limited to picking a sound loop per page with none of the dramatic timing of a movie score.
There's no doubt that a soundtrack can significantly enhance the immersiveness and emotional impact of films and TV programs. But can some audio accompaniment do the same thing for books?
- No, it can't.
I can think of one useful application of this technology - Reading a music score while listening to the music. That would be cool.
Maybe traditional books could get in on the multi-sense stimulation fad with a scratch-and-sniff panel on the back of every page. They wont though because it's a fucking stupid idea.
Who chooses the appropriate sound anyway? Do they really think someone is going to more fully appreciate the murder scene of Camus' "The Stranger" because some prick in a sound studio came by with: "This scene is on a beach so I'm going to add some wave noises"?
Be aware of the its/it's trap. Use an apostrophe with the word "it" only when you want to indicate a contraction for "it is" or "it has." It is a pronoun, and pronouns have their own possessive form that does not use an apostrophe. For example, "That noise? It's just the dog eating its bone."
I humbly suggest that all science writers and editors that have difficulty discerning the distinction between "a habitable planet" and "a planet with the so-called habital zone around a star" - particularly when writing or approving a headline or summary - be sent on a one-way trip to learn the difference.
The thing that blew my mind when I first started playing with my n900 is that you can not only ssh from your phone, you can also ssh into your phone. As root.
Then you can start sys-admining your phone itself from your pc.
For example, just install apps via apt-get.
Type a command from a shell prompt your pc and you'll see the app appear on your phone screen.
I very quickly got over using Nokia's OVI apps to sync my phone so now I just copy files to/from with scp. If that starts getting cumbersome I'll probably setup a few folders to auto-sync via rsync.
I agree with you on this point - using Mono you're pretty safe from being sued by Microsoft but there's one big issue with this whole patent issue that concerns me.
Currently there seems to be a bit of a patent arms race between a few large compaines. Most notably Microsoft and Oracle. Both these companies have a set of patents relating to VMs etc that seem to be fundamental to how these platfoms work.
The sheer number and breadth of these patents makes is look unlikely that there is nothing in Microsoft's offerings that voilates an Oracle patent and vice versa so we've got a cold-war style Mutually-Assured-Destruction stand-off in place.
The possible problem facing smaller implementations of either Java or.Net is that even if Mono gets an agreement from Microsoft mot to sue they are still vulnerable to being sued from elsewhere and they don't have their own stockpile of patents to act as a deterrant.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite some time ago, Douglas Adams "declared war" on "little dongly things"
His article is worth reading
I personally find that leaving sugar in the bowl helps me keep off the weight too.
Lots more things take more than 5 years to create.
Without the protection of copyright there would just be more secrets - you can't copy information you don't have.
The protections/limitations (depending upon your point of view) of GPL would disappear too.
Most software development would switch to cloud-based services so that all code stays within the company and no software gets distributed.
Add signed 3rd party software repositories to Windows Update and remove the need for all these programs to add their own, often intrusive update processes.
Don't want java? Fine. Don't install and don't add the repos & key.
Want java? No problem add keys and repo and get it updated in a sane manner not an obtrusive installshield app that always seems to fire up when I;m right in the middle of doing something.
This is an area where pretty much every Linux disro wins.
Failing that, an alternative would be an open-source package manager for windows. Bit of a nightmare to make though - as I assume every windows software developer would want you to run their install executable so they can make you accept EULAs etc.
I've already got an embedded device that vibrates.
thanks! I've been programming js snippets here and there since 1999 and even though I've use a decent logging framework everywhere else (log4j, log4net, slf4j commons logging, the log object in ruby/rails) im still in the habit of debugging javascript with window.alert
Brilliant. I'm going to watch all the Microsoft ads on youtube and make sure I click every ad link I can find on the pages.
With you there.
We keep hearing about all this testing going on behind these "design decisions" but I'm starting to wonder to myself, who are these people doing these tests? And what do they test them doing?
No i haven't but will take a look when/if i get time.
Generally, I spend a bit of time playing with desktops when a new linix based project turns up and my current distro is starting to look old. I then spend time installing a new distro but it's not long before system tweaking time starts in eat into what should be productive dev time and my patience starts to tip downhill.
I've never yet seen a Linux system I can just start using straight away - but maybe I'm just too fussy.
I really tried using Unity for a week or so but NEEDED to move the launcher / dock thingy to a different screen edge. (reasons below)
First, I tried the obvious click-dragging move - nothing happened
Ok, I told myself. This is open source software! must be a config file somewhere so I googled. Found a post from Shuttleworth himself saying:
Fixed by design? but I want to move it! I'm running ubuntu inside Virtualbox. I NEED both 'dowze and 'nix and the windows host / linux guest config works best for me. I also give that Linux guest a monitor to itself - on the right. Because it's on the right, the left edge of the linux screen jumps the mouse pointer back to the left screen and into the windows host system. So when trying to use the dock with autohide on (i want to use all of my screen when coding) I'd keep touching the edge of the screen and the dock would disappear.
I've got no problem with these design decisions from valuable end-user testing being used to setup defaults but both Gnome and unity seem hell-bent on FORCING you to use their new design paradigms and guess what? It just doesn't suit all use cases.
This being open source, it didn't take long for a whole bunch of options, wokarounds and custom docks to appear but for fuck's sake stop telling me how to use MY computer.
Am currently reasonably happy with KDE - Don't think I'll be going anywhere near Unity or Gnome for a very long time.
chuck norris communicates digitally by punching you in the face with his left fist for zero and right fist for one.
Damn.
Took years of therapy to deliberately repress memories of that Smurf gang bang.
"who's your papa?"
I've only watched a couple of minutes as I need to get back to work but there's two things already that are the best thing I've seen/heared all week..
1) As princess leia takes her hand away from R2D2 at the end of recording her message to Obi-Wan you hear the windows "USB device removed" noise
2) The baby stormtrooper that pops into shot behind Darth Vader as he boards the Tantive IV
I'll second this combination.
We actually looked into getting Mapinfo but the licensing costs were heading into tens of thousands and that's before getting any actual map tiles.
Happily using Quantum GIS. This has a plugin that can save shapes directly into a Postgis column.
Postgis took a little patience the first time I installed - I'm running postgres 9.0 on centos 5.4 which requires third-party repository so had to do a few steps by hand - a more recent distro may be easier.
We're using it to map a bunch of franchise areas and redirect new customers after a geolocation lookup.
it's fairly simple... NOT!
Whoah! It's just occurred to me that although I've been lurking around here for quite a few years, I've never actually seen any of you...
there is also the issue of timing. everyhing in a movie is precisely timed so, for example, you get an orchestral stab when the monster face appears in the window. how are you going to achieve this sychronisation with the reader without severly restricrting the amount of words visible at a time? so you are limited to picking a sound loop per page with none of the dramatic timing of a movie score.
There's no doubt that a soundtrack can significantly enhance the immersiveness and emotional impact of films and TV programs. But can some audio accompaniment do the same thing for books?
- No, it can't.
I can think of one useful application of this technology - Reading a music score while listening to the music. That would be cool.
Maybe traditional books could get in on the multi-sense stimulation fad with a scratch-and-sniff panel on the back of every page. They wont though because it's a fucking stupid idea.
Who chooses the appropriate sound anyway? Do they really think someone is going to more fully appreciate the murder scene of Camus' "The Stranger" because some prick in a sound studio came by with: "This scene is on a beach so I'm going to add some wave noises"?
BZZZZT - ok so you've thought about it but you're still wrong.
http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Apostrophe
Be aware of the its/it's trap. Use an apostrophe with the word "it" only when you want to indicate a contraction for "it is" or "it has." It is a pronoun, and pronouns have their own possessive form that does not use an apostrophe. For example, "That noise? It's just the dog eating its bone."
Or maybe he's discussing hand-crank-powered devices.
I humbly suggest that all science writers and editors that have difficulty discerning the distinction between "a habitable planet" and "a planet with the so-called habital zone around a star" - particularly when writing or approving a headline or summary - be sent on a one-way trip to learn the difference.
The thing that blew my mind when I first started playing with my n900 is that you can not only ssh from your phone, you can also ssh into your phone. As root.
Then you can start sys-admining your phone itself from your pc.
For example, just install apps via apt-get.
Type a command from a shell prompt your pc and you'll see the app appear on your phone screen.
I very quickly got over using Nokia's OVI apps to sync my phone so now I just copy files to/from with scp. If that starts getting cumbersome I'll probably setup a few folders to auto-sync via rsync.
Frankly, All new tech should be made this way.
surrounded by psychopants?!?! ;-)
disturbing and terrifying maybe but not lonely.
Or maybe that just the sicophant in me...
I agree with you on this point - using Mono you're pretty safe from being sued by Microsoft but there's one big issue with this whole patent issue that concerns me.
.Net is that even if Mono gets an agreement from Microsoft mot to sue they are still vulnerable to being sued from elsewhere and they don't have their own stockpile of patents to act as a deterrant.
Currently there seems to be a bit of a patent arms race between a few large compaines. Most notably Microsoft and Oracle. Both these companies have a set of patents relating to VMs etc that seem to be fundamental to how these platfoms work.
The sheer number and breadth of these patents makes is look unlikely that there is nothing in Microsoft's offerings that voilates an Oracle patent and vice versa so we've got a cold-war style Mutually-Assured-Destruction stand-off in place.
The possible problem facing smaller implementations of either Java or