Using a default Ubuntu installation I had to search the internet to find out why my dual monitor settings wouldn't persist through a restart. Turns out I had to run the control panel as root to make them permanent. This wasn't five years ago, either. You can still find people complaining about this in 2010.
No... fucking... thanks. If you can't get the little shit right, I can't be bothered.
"As long as the copyright holder can exclusively decide what DRM will be applied you have no possibility to vote with your wallet short of doing completely without it."
It's not freaking oxygen. Go without it. That's what voting with your wallet means - or should mean.
After reading the pdf "App Store Review Guidelines" I'm of two minds.
First, damn that's a long list of rejection reasons.
Second, the subset of that list that is neither reasonable nor obvious is very short. There are only a couple that I would say are stupid, and they revolve around censorship (i.e. adult themes).
In the end, would I try to write an app that violated any of those rules? Probably not. One could argue that I might want to... and that's true. But if I want to do that, there's an Android market just over thataway. It's a walled garden, but there's a door right there.
"When most people talk about free speech, they're talking about the principle of free speech, not the legal right."
Right... except you're not guaranteed the principle of free speech by anything. Also, even if the principle of free speach has any backing, Rackspace is not obliged to broadcast it for you. Their version of free speech is to not be required to echo your speech.
"...But within months of the official release, I switched to Linux..."
I know some kinky people, but not many who would go through the self flagellation that was the user experience of Linux in the mid-90's. If you tell me it was slackware I'll bow to the king.
1. I'm going to Vegas. "Easy Vegas" app is good.
2. I'm going to Vegas and I'm going to watch movies on the flight.
3. Amplitube iPad Edition came out - and it's great.
4. Instant on. No need to boot to check weatheror news, or to look up something I'm curious about.
5. The Reuters app is awesome.
6. Camera connection kit deals properly with Nikon raw format.
7. The tools for photo management are really coming along beautifully. Photogene is a good tool for travel.
Since then I've discovered some new things.
1. The 10 hour battery life is both real, and awesome.
2. I have gone to a site that required flash exactly twice, and I found the same content elswehere in a format I could view.
3. I really like reading magazines on it (Maxim with Kaley Cuoco!)
4. On the most difficult setting, the Scrabble app kicks my ass.
5. I haven't turned my netbook on since I got it.
6. The screen gets dirty when I eat cheezies and surf porn.
7. There's a LOT of compatible porn.
8. I've been expecting to have to buy a wireless keyboard, but so far I haven't "needed" to.
Anybody want to buy a used netbook? It has crappy battery life and a screen that semi-sucks, but it has a keyboard.
Do I give a crap that a bunch of nerds online think that it's underpowered compared to stuff that's 18 months away? Not even slightly.
I'm as technical a guy as they come. My workdays are spent writing industrial scheduling and simulation software on Unix. But I'm past the age where I want to screw around with stuff when I get home. Give me something that works well and doesn't give me any grief.
"Why can't he just come out and admit it - the iPad will be rendered totally obsolete by all the new pads coming out within the next year, just like many of the new smartphones are better than apple's latest iphone?"
You mean... no - I can't even say it... but I must! You mean that several years after the release of a successful electronics product competing devices will emerge that will trump it in terms of features and power?
The implications are staggering. Why produce a successful product in the first place?
I predict this groundbreaking dioscovery will mean the end of innovation as we know it.
We're one step closer to the day I can go find the freakiest, dirtiest, most disease-laden slut and hire her to do nasty, nasty things... and simply go for a single shot afterwards.
I'm turning 40, though, so they'd better get on with it. If my emails are to be believed, I have only another thirty or forty years until pills no longer facilitate my erections.
"In dog years... it'd be time to have it put down."
And in Cypress tree years it's barely a toddler. What's your point?
On a side note, I'd hate to be your dog. Do you stand by the door with a rifle and wait in gleeful anticipation of that glorious moment when your dogs turn 15?
I think I'd prefer to say that the market has a purpose, and that purpose has absolutely nothing to do with maintaining wealth for the casual investor. Once you abandon the idea that the market gives a damn about the solidity of retirement accounts or the portfolios of the masses, then it's easier to accept that the purpose of the market is to move money around and around in a big circle, while slowly siphoning it off into the pockets of particular groups.
Stocks are a massive game of hot potato. Whoever is holding the stock with the game is over gets burned.
I say it's not necessarily a scam because it should be clear to anybody looking in that this is how it works. Like the rake at a poker game, if you wait long enough the house has all the money. This fact isn't hidden - you just have to wake up to the implications.
"Over 500 members of the Australian software industry"? Unless the Australian Software Industry is some specific body, what we really have here is 500 random programmer nerds who "signed" an internet petition.
The names of 500 (in all likelihood) nobodies on a petition with the sweeping goal of abolishing software patents?
Dead before it starts.
Man, even the petition page looks amateurish. Sorry to be so negative, but there's no chance of success here.
Hans Rosling
on
Beautiful Data
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
When it comes to data, this guy is the presentation master:
Thanks for setting me straight. I've decided I want nothing to do with people who bitch and whine about "walled gardens", open superiority, and how all those people who like iPhones and iPads are uneducated retards. You're a hateful, detestable group that I really want to distance myself from.
First step, buy an iPad.
It's really quite a slick device. A guy at work bought one launch day. I watched "Zombieland' on it.
"Truth is that his past, which is hardly whiter than white given all the suspected hacking he has done, makes him out to be much less of a virtuous crusader and more an occasionally maverick human being like quite a few people who once embarked on black hat attempts are. I agree with Wikileaks and enjoy the prospect that authority will be questioned a lot more as a result...but Assange isn't angel or particularly 'moral'."
So... if I get this straight... his past is definitevely not whiter than white because he's suspected of maybe possibly ocasionally being like others who once did some hacking which makes him definitely not particularly moral?
To cut it down, suspicion of what he once did means he's definitely not moral?
And then, top it off, you started with "Truth is" to make sure that your running stream of condemnation and conjecture is not to be questioned.
That's some quality nonsense right there. Well done.
"True wealth is not in having money, it in having the ability to produce things.
Oh, I certainly agree with that. And the U.S. is learning that quickly now.
The U.S. is NOT a rich country. If I got myself a thousand credit cards I could be rich in the sense that the U.S. is rich. Everything about it has been financed not on production, but on ever-increasing debt. They produce little, and they're seeing the result. Every part of the states is heavily debt-laden, from the individual to the federal government.
This is the end of the U.S. as a financial superpower. I'm surprised it's taking this long to unwind, frankly. For a long time the only thing the U.S. has had to offer is ideas and finances, and now they're underperforming in both.
I predict that in five years the U.S. dollar will be relegated to the U.S. alone (if it exists at all). I'm concerned, however, that a broke-ass nation in need of resources will still have awesome military might.
The only thing that protects the neighbours of the U.S. is that Americans view themselves as right and good and just. Canada is the greatest example of the benevolance of the states. Vast energy resources, scant population (less than 4 people per square kilometre), no practical way to defend itself, and rather than simply seizing what they want, the U.S. actually buys the resources from that country.
That is the current state. When the U.S. is officially destitute (it's unofficially destitute now, but first you have to admit you have a problem) they might have to show up with guns instead of dollars, at which point Canada raises the U.S. flag and business goes on as usual.
I think there's a pretty good chance that when everything falls apart, the U.S. will turn expansonist for real.
"I'd bitch slap you with the guide (which would knock you senseless as it is a big 1980's style guide), tie you to a chair, and then proceed to give you a point by point rundown on why your game sucks so fucking hard because you're the talentless fuck who could have improved the game it if only you had taken some time to think about what you were doing and taken some time get it right....One person could handle a good deal of that stuff in a day and since solving and patching your major problems is likely to take many days having that one person fixing little stuff could make a huge change in the perception of your game.
None of what you had to say had anything at all to do with my post. I didn't advocate releasing buggy software with glaring errors. Why is your rant a reply to mine?
I was born in 1970, and in the 80's bought a lot of video games. Unless I subscribed to gaming magazines - which I did not - my experience of a game involved taking it home, and playing it with some friends. If we didn't like it, which wasn't often, we shelved it and moved on. No big deal.
Now the internet lets hordes of jackasses participate in a mass-evaluation of a product, including the vast number of ways it could be better. The experience of the game is somehow tainted because some unrelated moron with a web site gave your new game a rating of 7. Listening to people bitch about how a slightly twitchy steering system for a racing game is "completely broken" and how the company should just give up lowers perception of the game.
That's bad enough but these days it's not even necessary for the game to be out before people are already expressing their dissatisfaction. Huge web sites spring up years in advance of release just so that sad, sorry gamers can bitch about how the textures in pre-pre-pre-alpha screen shots seem glitchy.
Finally, we have the shitheads who freeze a shot in a game just so that they can find and reveal every last visual discontinuity. It's not important that you'd never notice it while playing, it's just something people do when they want to make perfectly sure they cannot enjoy their purchase.
Frankly, I don't know how the companies do it. If I were developing games, and some outlier twit gave me a 7 in the midst of an ocean of 9's, I'd want to drive over to their home/office, throw a big 1980's style C++ programming guide in their face, and say, "YOU do it, you talentless fuck."
Slashdot Mirror
Using a default Ubuntu installation I had to search the internet to find out why my dual monitor settings wouldn't persist through a restart. Turns out I had to run the control panel as root to make them permanent. This wasn't five years ago, either. You can still find people complaining about this in 2010.
No... fucking... thanks. If you can't get the little shit right, I can't be bothered.
"As long as the copyright holder can exclusively decide what DRM will be applied you have no possibility to vote with your wallet short of doing completely without it."
It's not freaking oxygen. Go without it. That's what voting with your wallet means - or should mean.
After reading the pdf "App Store Review Guidelines" I'm of two minds.
First, damn that's a long list of rejection reasons.
Second, the subset of that list that is neither reasonable nor obvious is very short. There are only a couple that I would say are stupid, and they revolve around censorship (i.e. adult themes).
In the end, would I try to write an app that violated any of those rules? Probably not. One could argue that I might want to... and that's true. But if I want to do that, there's an Android market just over thataway. It's a walled garden, but there's a door right there.
"When most people talk about free speech, they're talking about the principle of free speech, not the legal right."
Right... except you're not guaranteed the principle of free speech by anything. Also, even if the principle of free speach has any backing, Rackspace is not obliged to broadcast it for you. Their version of free speech is to not be required to echo your speech.
"...But within months of the official release, I switched to Linux..."
I know some kinky people, but not many who would go through the self flagellation that was the user experience of Linux in the mid-90's. If you tell me it was slackware I'll bow to the king.
"Linux also holds it's own in terms of Indie games."
That's like saying Linux is only as retarded as the average retard.
(Apologies to Jennifer Aniston for stealing her thunder)
Things that tipped the decision into "spend":
1. I'm going to Vegas. "Easy Vegas" app is good.
2. I'm going to Vegas and I'm going to watch movies on the flight.
3. Amplitube iPad Edition came out - and it's great.
4. Instant on. No need to boot to check weatheror news, or to look up something I'm curious about.
5. The Reuters app is awesome.
6. Camera connection kit deals properly with Nikon raw format.
7. The tools for photo management are really coming along beautifully. Photogene is a good tool for travel.
Since then I've discovered some new things.
1. The 10 hour battery life is both real, and awesome.
2. I have gone to a site that required flash exactly twice, and I found the same content elswehere in a format I could view.
3. I really like reading magazines on it (Maxim with Kaley Cuoco!)
4. On the most difficult setting, the Scrabble app kicks my ass.
5. I haven't turned my netbook on since I got it.
6. The screen gets dirty when I eat cheezies and surf porn.
7. There's a LOT of compatible porn.
8. I've been expecting to have to buy a wireless keyboard, but so far I haven't "needed" to.
Anybody want to buy a used netbook? It has crappy battery life and a screen that semi-sucks, but it has a keyboard.
Do I give a crap that a bunch of nerds online think that it's underpowered compared to stuff that's 18 months away? Not even slightly.
I'm as technical a guy as they come. My workdays are spent writing industrial scheduling and simulation software on Unix. But I'm past the age where I want to screw around with stuff when I get home. Give me something that works well and doesn't give me any grief.
"Why can't he just come out and admit it - the iPad will be rendered totally obsolete by all the new pads coming out within the next year, just like many of the new smartphones are better than apple's latest iphone?"
You mean... no - I can't even say it... but I must! You mean that several years after the release of a successful electronics product competing devices will emerge that will trump it in terms of features and power?
The implications are staggering. Why produce a successful product in the first place?
I predict this groundbreaking dioscovery will mean the end of innovation as we know it.
I weep for my techy future.
"The result is a picture that is as bright as a CRT and does not suffer a time lag sometimes seen on LCD panels with rapidly moving images."
Why are you trying to upsell me to something that you don't have stock?
We're one step closer to the day I can go find the freakiest, dirtiest, most disease-laden slut and hire her to do nasty, nasty things... and simply go for a single shot afterwards.
I'm turning 40, though, so they'd better get on with it. If my emails are to be believed, I have only another thirty or forty years until pills no longer facilitate my erections.
"I launched my first BBS at 1200 bps and at the time it was a pretty good speed"
Hah. My first BBS was on 300 baud. I could read faster than the text could scroll.
(Queue the acoustic coupler fellows)
"In dog years... it'd be time to have it put down."
And in Cypress tree years it's barely a toddler. What's your point?
On a side note, I'd hate to be your dog. Do you stand by the door with a rifle and wait in gleeful anticipation of that glorious moment when your dogs turn 15?
"The "market" is a fucking scam."
I think I'd prefer to say that the market has a purpose, and that purpose has absolutely nothing to do with maintaining wealth for the casual investor. Once you abandon the idea that the market gives a damn about the solidity of retirement accounts or the portfolios of the masses, then it's easier to accept that the purpose of the market is to move money around and around in a big circle, while slowly siphoning it off into the pockets of particular groups.
Stocks are a massive game of hot potato. Whoever is holding the stock with the game is over gets burned.
I say it's not necessarily a scam because it should be clear to anybody looking in that this is how it works. Like the rake at a poker game, if you wait long enough the house has all the money. This fact isn't hidden - you just have to wake up to the implications.
"Over 500 members of the Australian software industry"? Unless the Australian Software Industry is some specific body, what we really have here is 500 random programmer nerds who "signed" an internet petition.
The names of 500 (in all likelihood) nobodies on a petition with the sweeping goal of abolishing software patents?
Dead before it starts.
Man, even the petition page looks amateurish. Sorry to be so negative, but there's no chance of success here.
When it comes to data, this guy is the presentation master:
The best stats you've ever seen
Asia's Rise
...just jizzed all over his monitor.
...can the ship be righted?
A couple of substandard students with sue-happy parents will take care of that in a hurry.
Thanks for setting me straight. I've decided I want nothing to do with people who bitch and whine about "walled gardens", open superiority, and how all those people who like iPhones and iPads are uneducated retards. You're a hateful, detestable group that I really want to distance myself from.
First step, buy an iPad.
It's really quite a slick device. A guy at work bought one launch day. I watched "Zombieland' on it.
"Truth is that his past, which is hardly whiter than white given all the suspected hacking he has done, makes him out to be much less of a virtuous crusader and more an occasionally maverick human being like quite a few people who once embarked on black hat attempts are. I agree with Wikileaks and enjoy the prospect that authority will be questioned a lot more as a result...but Assange isn't angel or particularly 'moral' ."
So... if I get this straight... his past is definitevely not whiter than white because he's suspected of maybe possibly ocasionally being like others who once did some hacking which makes him definitely not particularly moral?
To cut it down, suspicion of what he once did means he's definitely not moral?
And then, top it off, you started with "Truth is" to make sure that your running stream of condemnation and conjecture is not to be questioned.
That's some quality nonsense right there. Well done.
I think this might be the original - why not start there? There are some other articles that are funny as well.
http://www.27bslash6.com/missy.html
The complexity of pubic hair on their porn stars could definitely be reduced.
"True wealth is not in having money, it in having the ability to produce things.
Oh, I certainly agree with that. And the U.S. is learning that quickly now.
The U.S. is NOT a rich country. If I got myself a thousand credit cards I could be rich in the sense that the U.S. is rich. Everything about it has been financed not on production, but on ever-increasing debt. They produce little, and they're seeing the result. Every part of the states is heavily debt-laden, from the individual to the federal government.
This is the end of the U.S. as a financial superpower. I'm surprised it's taking this long to unwind, frankly. For a long time the only thing the U.S. has had to offer is ideas and finances, and now they're underperforming in both.
I predict that in five years the U.S. dollar will be relegated to the U.S. alone (if it exists at all). I'm concerned, however, that a broke-ass nation in need of resources will still have awesome military might.
The only thing that protects the neighbours of the U.S. is that Americans view themselves as right and good and just. Canada is the greatest example of the benevolance of the states. Vast energy resources, scant population (less than 4 people per square kilometre), no practical way to defend itself, and rather than simply seizing what they want, the U.S. actually buys the resources from that country.
That is the current state. When the U.S. is officially destitute (it's unofficially destitute now, but first you have to admit you have a problem) they might have to show up with guns instead of dollars, at which point Canada raises the U.S. flag and business goes on as usual.
I think there's a pretty good chance that when everything falls apart, the U.S. will turn expansonist for real.
"I'd bitch slap you with the guide (which would knock you senseless as it is a big 1980's style guide), tie you to a chair, and then proceed to give you a point by point rundown on why your game sucks so fucking hard because you're the talentless fuck who could have improved the game it if only you had taken some time to think about what you were doing and taken some time get it right....One person could handle a good deal of that stuff in a day and since solving and patching your major problems is likely to take many days having that one person fixing little stuff could make a huge change in the perception of your game.
None of what you had to say had anything at all to do with my post. I didn't advocate releasing buggy software with glaring errors. Why is your rant a reply to mine?
I was born in 1970, and in the 80's bought a lot of video games. Unless I subscribed to gaming magazines - which I did not - my experience of a game involved taking it home, and playing it with some friends. If we didn't like it, which wasn't often, we shelved it and moved on. No big deal.
Now the internet lets hordes of jackasses participate in a mass-evaluation of a product, including the vast number of ways it could be better. The experience of the game is somehow tainted because some unrelated moron with a web site gave your new game a rating of 7. Listening to people bitch about how a slightly twitchy steering system for a racing game is "completely broken" and how the company should just give up lowers perception of the game.
That's bad enough but these days it's not even necessary for the game to be out before people are already expressing their dissatisfaction. Huge web sites spring up years in advance of release just so that sad, sorry gamers can bitch about how the textures in pre-pre-pre-alpha screen shots seem glitchy.
Finally, we have the shitheads who freeze a shot in a game just so that they can find and reveal every last visual discontinuity. It's not important that you'd never notice it while playing, it's just something people do when they want to make perfectly sure they cannot enjoy their purchase.
Frankly, I don't know how the companies do it. If I were developing games, and some outlier twit gave me a 7 in the midst of an ocean of 9's, I'd want to drive over to their home/office, throw a big 1980's style C++ programming guide in their face, and say, "YOU do it, you talentless fuck."