It's amusing that they seem to be so concerned about making sure the meeting schedules work for people in different time zones.
Because, in my experience, meetings are absolutely useless. I've never been to a meeting that accomplished anything that couldn't be accomplished with a brief e-mail, or at WORST a brief phone call.
Meetings are nothing more than a way for middle-management-types to justify their existence.
With Alexa, and with most "AI"-type stuff, the best you can usually do is "automate one step for me". So, you can set an alarm with your voice. You can order something online with your voice.
But you can't say "Contact the University of Illinois, and schedule an appointment with the financial aid office." That's only TWO steps, and neither of those steps actually requires the computer to DO much. But it's absolutely not something that a computer could do with any reliability.
And that's why Alexa, while neat, isn't that useful. It can handle "one step" things, and that's it.
In the United States, it's damn hard to find a phone that can be unlocked, *and* can be used with Verizon. Verizon has their own custom phone/frequencies, unfortunately.
If you are on T-Mobile or AT&T, things are better, but it's still hard to find good custom ROMs for most phones that anybody wants.
But...custom ROMs aren't as useful as they used to be. Android has gotten a lot better, privacy-wise, and there are a variety of VPN-based ad-blocker/firewall apps. You can do just about everything you would've previously needed "root" for with something like AdGuard, and the default privacy controls in newer versions of Android.
It's more that if you are doing complicated, unique, serious stuff at a HUGE scale, Unix/Linux is just better. It's built for that kind of thing. The networking and storage functionality/flexibility alone is enough to make Linux the obvious choice for stuff like Azure services. And, of course, you can script literally anything in Linux. You can't in Windows.
Yeah, Microsoft *could* add all that stuff into Windows, but why? Who would use it besides them? And it would cost them a ton of money to develop. Linux is free.
It came out fairly late in the life of the Playstation, so not all that many people are familiar with it, but it's just a great racing game. Arguably the best game in the Ridge Racer series. It's...sublime. And the soundtrack is fantastic (and I usually don't care about soundtracks).
If nothing else, get this to play that game if you haven't already. There's just something about it that feels great, even now. And the graphics actually hold-up - it almost looks like an early PS2 game.
If you don't work in the ISP/telco industry, you have no idea how cheap bandwidth is these days. You can get a full gigabit for less than $100. You can get 10 gigabit circuits for less than $2000. With the typical oversubscription rate of about 30-to-1, that means I can provide 300 people with 1 gigabit connections for $2000/month. And considering every one of those 300 people is paying roughly $70 month, that means the ISP is making about $20k/month just *on the bandwidth*.
The ISPs just don't want to do it. It's that simple. They don't want to spend more money on bandwidth, mostly because they don't want people watching Netflix. They want them watching cable TV, where their margins are much better, and they can sell their own advertising.
I know where he is coming from. Wouldn't it be cool to have a cheap, 2D-focused console that had all kinds of old-school games for it?
Yes, it would. But who is going to buy it? EVERY console can play those games. Every phone can play those games.
Even if it sells for $30, there is no "killer app" for such a thing, and there never will be, because any game that would run on this thing will run on EVERYTHING else, and "everything else" is a much bigger market. So why bother making it for this system at all?
But like I said, it's a neat idea, and I wish we lived in a world where something like this could work. But it wont'.
Apple didn't design OR manufacture the PowerPC processor. It was a variation on the Power architecture that IBM created. Motorola helped with design, to some degree, and manufactured them for a while, too. But at the end, the PowerPC line was an exclusively IBM-designed-and-manufactured CPU.
Being Slashdot, I expect that the usual gang of idiots that normally *despise* MS are going to come to their defense, because they despise the mythical "social justice warriors" even more.
Nothing more ridiculous than fat, well-paid white men complaining about other people asking to be treated fairly.
"Several Senators have indicated that they are considering becoming the 51st vote we need to win, but they're under huge pressure from telecom lobbyists."
Jesus.
"We want to do what we know is the right thing, but we can't just say no to a pile of money for doing what we know is the wrong thing!"
Imagine if you couldn't call Pizza Hut without paying an additional $15 to Verizon, because Pizza Hut refused to pay Verizon for "access" to their customers. But if you call Papa John's, you get a 20% discount on your order because Papa John's *did* pay Verizon for access to the customers.
Now extend that to every phone call you make. Imagine if the only calls you could make for "free" (as part of your plan) were to individuals and businesses that are paying for the privilege of having Verizon customers call them without additional charges.
THAT is why not having net neutrality is bad. The entire internet will rapidly become pay-per-view, and only the BIGGEST companies will be able to afford to pay-off the bandwidth providers/ISPs to make their content "free".
But a modern version is pointless. AmigaOS - even the latest version - is hopelessly outdated. And what Amiga software is out there that anyone would actually want to use? Besides games? Which can be emulated *perfectly* on a $50 Raspberry Pi?
Think of this as the next-generation Xbox, because that is what it is.
We're entering a new era for the consoles, in which they are *truly* nothing more than x64 PCs. Every generation will just have a faster x64 CPU, and a faster 3D chip from AMD/Nvidia.
The advantage of this is that backwards-compatibility is assured for a LONG time. Plus, Microsoft and Sony are both pushing developers to make their games work on both NEW and OLD hardware, meaning that a game designed for the Xbox One X will work on the plain-old Xbox One, with reduced graphical quality.
Like I said, they're going to be just like PCs, but cheaper and more locked-down.
Basically, MS and Sony realized that developing all-new hardware has been a waste of time and money for them, and by opening up the market with backwards-and-forwards compatibility, they can keep selling ALL games indefinitely, which means they get their license fees for all those old games, too.
Honestly, I think this is all an attempt by Sony and MS to cash-in on the console market before it completely disappears in the next decade or so. PCs and phones are getting cheaper and better all the time, and it's getting harder-and-harder to justify owning a console for anyone that isn't REALLY into video games.
It's true. After "Look to Windward", the quality went down. And "Matter" flat-out sucked. But "Surface Detail" is pretty good, and "Hydrogen Sonata" is alright, too.
Still, overall, I'd say it's the best sci-fi series ever. Though sometimes I feel like "The Vorkosigan Saga" might deserve the title, also. But that's not "hard" sci-fi.
He was the author of "The Culture" series of sci-fi novels. Which is *easily* the greatest science-fiction series ever written. It's everything you ever wanted from sci-fi. If you haven't read them, do so immediately.
Start with "The Player of Games", or even better, "Use of Weapons" if you are an "andvanced" reader.
Seriously, nobody that isn't a teenager or an emotionally stunted adult uses ANY of those things.
The idea that you *need* to use all of these "messenger" apps is ridiculous. You don't need to be in constant, *pointless* communication with your friends. Or your coworkers.
Just turn that shit off, and get on with your lives. Eliminating the endless, ego-boosting "small-talk" that these apps provide is good for your soul.
If they're using an LCD screen, the lightgun games work the same way as a WiiMote, basically. Just more accurate. There were a few "lightgun" games on the Wii, and that setup worked well enough.
If the game uses a gun that is permanently mounted to the machine, then obviuosly the gun is really just a big joystick, and the screen used doesn't matter.
ALL sysadmins have thoughts of what they would do as "revenge" for getting fired. Hoarding passwords is something that has occurred to all of us, at one time or another. It's such an easy thing to do.
But you can't do that stuff. It's unethical, and immature, and unprofessional. Not to mention, you'll end up getting sued, and YOU WILL LOSE.
This guy sounds like a whiny little bitch, and he never should've been hired in the first place. When you hire sysadmins, you need to hire people that seem trustworthy, first and foremost.
Hell, man. I would say 90% of mobile apps are crap.
Most of the games aren't fun, and most of the ones that ARE fun throw so many advertisements and notifications at you that it's ridiculous, so they get uninstalled immediately.
As for productivity apps...they're even worse. There are precious few truly USEFUL apps on a phone. The vast majority of them fall into the "treadmill in your basement" category - meaning, they SOUND useful, but you'll never actually bother with them.
This kind of "back-end" software is EXACTLY the kind of thing that contractors DREAM of. Nobody knows how it works, and the general public never has to see it, so they can't complain about it being a piece-of-shit that they paid for.
It's just like the air traffic control system "upgrade" they've been working on for nearly 30 years. The contractors have ZERO incentive to ever provide a working product. Much better to keep in in development forever.
I'm not one of those "government can't do anything right" people, but this is one of those things that is just a tailor-made pork-barrel disaster. I see why they don't want to even bother trying.
Slashdot Mirror
It's amusing that they seem to be so concerned about making sure the meeting schedules work for people in different time zones.
Because, in my experience, meetings are absolutely useless. I've never been to a meeting that accomplished anything that couldn't be accomplished with a brief e-mail, or at WORST a brief phone call.
Meetings are nothing more than a way for middle-management-types to justify their existence.
And that's the problem.
With Alexa, and with most "AI"-type stuff, the best you can usually do is "automate one step for me". So, you can set an alarm with your voice. You can order something online with your voice.
But you can't say "Contact the University of Illinois, and schedule an appointment with the financial aid office." That's only TWO steps, and neither of those steps actually requires the computer to DO much. But it's absolutely not something that a computer could do with any reliability.
And that's why Alexa, while neat, isn't that useful. It can handle "one step" things, and that's it.
In the United States, it's damn hard to find a phone that can be unlocked, *and* can be used with Verizon. Verizon has their own custom phone/frequencies, unfortunately.
If you are on T-Mobile or AT&T, things are better, but it's still hard to find good custom ROMs for most phones that anybody wants.
But...custom ROMs aren't as useful as they used to be. Android has gotten a lot better, privacy-wise, and there are a variety of VPN-based ad-blocker/firewall apps. You can do just about everything you would've previously needed "root" for with something like AdGuard, and the default privacy controls in newer versions of Android.
It's more that if you are doing complicated, unique, serious stuff at a HUGE scale, Unix/Linux is just better. It's built for that kind of thing. The networking and storage functionality/flexibility alone is enough to make Linux the obvious choice for stuff like Azure services. And, of course, you can script literally anything in Linux. You can't in Windows.
Yeah, Microsoft *could* add all that stuff into Windows, but why? Who would use it besides them? And it would cost them a ton of money to develop. Linux is free.
It came out fairly late in the life of the Playstation, so not all that many people are familiar with it, but it's just a great racing game. Arguably the best game in the Ridge Racer series. It's...sublime. And the soundtrack is fantastic (and I usually don't care about soundtracks).
If nothing else, get this to play that game if you haven't already. There's just something about it that feels great, even now. And the graphics actually hold-up - it almost looks like an early PS2 game.
If you don't work in the ISP/telco industry, you have no idea how cheap bandwidth is these days. You can get a full gigabit for less than $100. You can get 10 gigabit circuits for less than $2000. With the typical oversubscription rate of about 30-to-1, that means I can provide 300 people with 1 gigabit connections for $2000/month. And considering every one of those 300 people is paying roughly $70 month, that means the ISP is making about $20k/month just *on the bandwidth*.
The ISPs just don't want to do it. It's that simple. They don't want to spend more money on bandwidth, mostly because they don't want people watching Netflix. They want them watching cable TV, where their margins are much better, and they can sell their own advertising.
I know where he is coming from. Wouldn't it be cool to have a cheap, 2D-focused console that had all kinds of old-school games for it?
Yes, it would. But who is going to buy it? EVERY console can play those games. Every phone can play those games.
Even if it sells for $30, there is no "killer app" for such a thing, and there never will be, because any game that would run on this thing will run on EVERYTHING else, and "everything else" is a much bigger market. So why bother making it for this system at all?
But like I said, it's a neat idea, and I wish we lived in a world where something like this could work. But it wont'.
Apple didn't design OR manufacture the PowerPC processor. It was a variation on the Power architecture that IBM created. Motorola helped with design, to some degree, and manufactured them for a while, too. But at the end, the PowerPC line was an exclusively IBM-designed-and-manufactured CPU.
Being Slashdot, I expect that the usual gang of idiots that normally *despise* MS are going to come to their defense, because they despise the mythical "social justice warriors" even more.
Nothing more ridiculous than fat, well-paid white men complaining about other people asking to be treated fairly.
"Several Senators have indicated that they are considering becoming the 51st vote we need to win, but they're under huge pressure from telecom lobbyists."
Jesus.
"We want to do what we know is the right thing, but we can't just say no to a pile of money for doing what we know is the wrong thing!"
This country is so fucked up.
I think the point is, the code is out there. Apple can't get it back.
The hackers that care will get a hold of it, one way or another, and Apple can't do much about it. Especially outside of the United States.
Hell, the hackers that care almost certainly *already* have the code.
Imagine if you couldn't call Pizza Hut without paying an additional $15 to Verizon, because Pizza Hut refused to pay Verizon for "access" to their customers. But if you call Papa John's, you get a 20% discount on your order because Papa John's *did* pay Verizon for access to the customers.
Now extend that to every phone call you make. Imagine if the only calls you could make for "free" (as part of your plan) were to individuals and businesses that are paying for the privilege of having Verizon customers call them without additional charges.
THAT is why not having net neutrality is bad. The entire internet will rapidly become pay-per-view, and only the BIGGEST companies will be able to afford to pay-off the bandwidth providers/ISPs to make their content "free".
Everything that is labeled "AI"...isn't.
We don't have computers that can think yet. We just don't. We aren't even CLOSE, and it may not be possible at all.
Hawking doesn't know what he's talking about. Neither does the media.
I had an Amiga back in the day. It was great.
But a modern version is pointless. AmigaOS - even the latest version - is hopelessly outdated. And what Amiga software is out there that anyone would actually want to use? Besides games? Which can be emulated *perfectly* on a $50 Raspberry Pi?
Think of this as the next-generation Xbox, because that is what it is.
We're entering a new era for the consoles, in which they are *truly* nothing more than x64 PCs. Every generation will just have a faster x64 CPU, and a faster 3D chip from AMD/Nvidia.
The advantage of this is that backwards-compatibility is assured for a LONG time. Plus, Microsoft and Sony are both pushing developers to make their games work on both NEW and OLD hardware, meaning that a game designed for the Xbox One X will work on the plain-old Xbox One, with reduced graphical quality.
Like I said, they're going to be just like PCs, but cheaper and more locked-down.
Basically, MS and Sony realized that developing all-new hardware has been a waste of time and money for them, and by opening up the market with backwards-and-forwards compatibility, they can keep selling ALL games indefinitely, which means they get their license fees for all those old games, too.
Honestly, I think this is all an attempt by Sony and MS to cash-in on the console market before it completely disappears in the next decade or so. PCs and phones are getting cheaper and better all the time, and it's getting harder-and-harder to justify owning a console for anyone that isn't REALLY into video games.
It's true. After "Look to Windward", the quality went down. And "Matter" flat-out sucked. But "Surface Detail" is pretty good, and "Hydrogen Sonata" is alright, too.
Still, overall, I'd say it's the best sci-fi series ever. Though sometimes I feel like "The Vorkosigan Saga" might deserve the title, also. But that's not "hard" sci-fi.
He was the author of "The Culture" series of sci-fi novels. Which is *easily* the greatest science-fiction series ever written. It's everything you ever wanted from sci-fi. If you haven't read them, do so immediately.
Start with "The Player of Games", or even better, "Use of Weapons" if you are an "andvanced" reader.
Seriously, nobody that isn't a teenager or an emotionally stunted adult uses ANY of those things.
The idea that you *need* to use all of these "messenger" apps is ridiculous. You don't need to be in constant, *pointless* communication with your friends. Or your coworkers.
Just turn that shit off, and get on with your lives. Eliminating the endless, ego-boosting "small-talk" that these apps provide is good for your soul.
If they're using an LCD screen, the lightgun games work the same way as a WiiMote, basically. Just more accurate. There were a few "lightgun" games on the Wii, and that setup worked well enough.
If the game uses a gun that is permanently mounted to the machine, then obviuosly the gun is really just a big joystick, and the screen used doesn't matter.
ALL sysadmins have thoughts of what they would do as "revenge" for getting fired. Hoarding passwords is something that has occurred to all of us, at one time or another. It's such an easy thing to do.
But you can't do that stuff. It's unethical, and immature, and unprofessional. Not to mention, you'll end up getting sued, and YOU WILL LOSE.
This guy sounds like a whiny little bitch, and he never should've been hired in the first place. When you hire sysadmins, you need to hire people that seem trustworthy, first and foremost.
Don't feel bad. Windows is just a *better OS for the desktop* than Linux. And it's starting to look like that well NEVER change.
Linux is just so...unfinished. All kinds of things that are easy in Windows are difficult in Linux.
uBlock Origin, uMatrix, Tab Mix Plus...
I can't live without them. I worry that they'll all go away when Firefox abandons their extensions system in the future, like they are talking about.
Hell, man. I would say 90% of mobile apps are crap.
Most of the games aren't fun, and most of the ones that ARE fun throw so many advertisements and notifications at you that it's ridiculous, so they get uninstalled immediately.
As for productivity apps...they're even worse. There are precious few truly USEFUL apps on a phone. The vast majority of them fall into the "treadmill in your basement" category - meaning, they SOUND useful, but you'll never actually bother with them.
Actually, Google kept all of Motorola's patents and IP. They just sold the phone "manufacturing" business and label to Lenovo.
Lenovo got nothing useful out of the deal besides the Motorola name. It was a stupid deal, and they deserve to suffer for it.
This kind of "back-end" software is EXACTLY the kind of thing that contractors DREAM of. Nobody knows how it works, and the general public never has to see it, so they can't complain about it being a piece-of-shit that they paid for.
It's just like the air traffic control system "upgrade" they've been working on for nearly 30 years. The contractors have ZERO incentive to ever provide a working product. Much better to keep in in development forever.
I'm not one of those "government can't do anything right" people, but this is one of those things that is just a tailor-made pork-barrel disaster. I see why they don't want to even bother trying.