Google needs to improve their customer-service before they even consider expanding into another market. It's getting better but it's still pretty bad (ask those in Canada who purchased an N7)
I know that you can sync without tether to an iPhone with iTunes. But how do you get music/videos/etc on one without using iTunes (Amarok/etc work for some iDevices in Linux, but not always that well).
And I don't mean just the iTunes PC application, but the iTunes store. Can you buy music from any store and get it on your phone without goes through Apple?
Oddly, in many places GS2 has less signal bars than my wife's 4s (as a percentage of overall bars). That said, maybe it's just how my phone displays signal. I can have zilch for bars and still have clear calls, and the data doesn't seem overly slow when the bars are less than 50% either.
I have had some signal cutouts recently, but I'm more attributing those to my "unofficial" 4.0.4 upgrade than an android/hardware issue (I'll know better when they actually release the bloody firmware for unlock phones in my region).
Unless my google search for "Lena Test image" (also the image on wikipedia) is showing something other than what's used for printers, it's a pretty tame image. Pretty girl, hat, showing a bit of shoulder. Nothing crude about it. It shows less skin than some of Leonardo's art, or the famous "David" pictures.
It doesn't appear to be a playboy pinup image used for the test (or if it is, it's rather tasteful and likely vintage).
The problem is not just that such people exist - we know they do - but rather how they are dealt with and the overall message it sends. Geeks tend to rage against the "bad guys" in other professional fields. How many times on slashdot have you heard arguments about the "bad cops" out there? Usually it's brought up that "if you know about bad things and allow them to happen, you're also doing a bad thing"
My understanding is that the organizers of the event essentially ignored/downplayed this issue until it became public. It's not any different than a "good cop" looking the other way when a "bad cop" does something wrong.
So, while many of those at the event are perfectly normal, good people, shame on those who stood by and/or those in charge who didn't deal with it appropriately.
Overall some of the ways he described the working and transfer of the vampiric virus were quite cool.
I would also submit David Gerrold's Ch'torr series, except that it seems to have stalled for nearly the last decade, and I worry that he's going to pull a (Robert) Jordan before it gets completed.
And following that logic (whether for biblical reasons or otherwise). I don't have a problem judging people on certain criteria. However, I would expect them to judge me (and generally judge myself) by the same criteria. Basically it follows along the whole "practice what you preach" line of thinking.
It's the hypocrites that are the problem. Those that believe themselves better than others and thus act worse. Religion does sometimes attract those types, as some people seem to believe that going to church automatically makes them a "better person" despite their poor behaviour: gossip, shunning of others, discrimination, abuse, etc. However, as I've also often seem religious types go out of the way to help their fellows, it's not a set rule by any measure. Many of these people do follow the "do as you'd have done unto you" rule.
As with anything, the vocal combative types do tend to be more visible though.
Also, when you're able to run them anywhere. Steam needs to separate accounts from app instances. For example, I should be able to run Photoshop or Maya from computer "A" while my game is running on computer "B", despite them being on the same account. What should be blocked is running a copy of the same application simultaneously on computer "A" and "B".
At the moment, instance permission is account-level, rather than application-level. If they want to bring in non-games, that would be a deal-breaker for me as I often may have multiple things going on at once (say playing a game while something is rendering, etc)
I wonder how many accounts on slashdot etc could be identified. Most here I see tend to be shills for certain other tech corps, but I wouldn't be surprised to find some for Oracle/Google as well.
Well, in the case of Steam etc, there's value there that does contradict this. In fact, most people I know haven't bought a PC "disc" in a long time (consoles exempt).
No disc to lose or get scratched. No CD-key on the jewel-case/manual to misplace or wreck. Reinstall on any of your PC's anytime. The downside being you can only play one game (online) for a given account at a time.
Actually, that brings up a very good point, and one I hadn't thought of in favour of a possible "steam" distro: Mac Users Allowing a Mac user to play games in the same distro as others might make a much more "consistent" experience for everyone.
Other the other hand, a packaged Steam app for Linux kernels might cross platforms to Android devices easier, allowing a more fluid transition to the tablet/portable market.
The solution to fracturing is certainly *NOT* to make an existing standard. That just furthers the fracturing. It would be a terrible thing to inflict upon the Linux community.
Pushing out packages for the common distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Redhat) should work well for most Linux users.
On the other hand, one argument for a new distro would be non-Linux users. Just as Android is essentially a Linux fork, a Steam distro could essentially be a "Linux for non-Linux users." More specially, it would be a "Linux for Gamers." In many ways it would make the PC functionally similar to a console. Boot disk, play game(s). Of course, some other problems arise:
* How would it be installed? Would it automatically try to make space alongside the likely-existing windows partition? * Would it run directly from a bootCD? If so, where would it save settings or games, to the HDD or a USB stick? * If each game is a bootCD, how would they fare with newer hardware? * What's the upgrade path for installed distros?
Using existing distros would add compatibility work for Valve. However, making their own might - and moreover maintaining it - could very well be a lot more work.
Look at things like the "Humble Bundles" From the stats, it seems that Linux users consistently pay a higher price (by choice). For myself, I'd be willing to pay an extra 10% or so (more or less depending on the actual software) to support having Linux versions of the software I like/use/want.
Sadly, banks are often the worst for this. 8 character limit, alphanumeric only. No special characters. No spaces.
Maybe this is to tie into some archaic infrastructure, but whatever the reason it seems those that should prefer the strongest passwords instead often require the weakest.
Given a home of about 1500sqft, how much would it take in terms of solar panels to run an air-conditioning unit that keeps said house relatively cool. How about the same for your average shopping mall, grocery store, etc?
If it's affordable, then that's a nice start right there. We run into nasty grid issues during heatwaves, and overall power consumption tends to go up with the summer temperatures, so why not start by stabilizing the grid against that and more from there
Also, for differing resolutions. If it does 200fps at 720P resolution, then I'd assume it would do less at 1080P. Depending on how much less, then an overall framerate increase should also scale to higher resolutions.
Was it a laptop? I found that often where the windows driver hadn't been updated in awhile, the Linux driver was actually more fully featured at the time. My old HP laptop ran some games (I believe it was Battlefield 2) that wouldn't work at all in windows due to driver issues.
This depends on the operation before, but one of the big areas I noticed improvements seemed to be in loading times due to disk access. As it the same game on the same machine/disk (though different partitions), I'd put that down to filesystem efficiency.
Seriously, when I'm worn out, I'm dumb as a fencepost. I generally don't drink caffeine, which means that sometimes when I'm tired, a full cup will have me buzzing like a squirrel on crack. Caffeine+sugar means a marked improvement in thinking ability (followed by a sharp drop later on).
Don't have a problem with ubuntu in general, but migration to 12.04 is kinda sucky. I prefer to keep my homedir in a seperate partition for upgrades like this. That way I can add the new OS on another partition, install, and see how scary the update is...
A bit suspicious yes. However, on the other hand if the phones precede Apple's dominance in the arena (or really, even their presence), why would anyone be "copying" them?
Do they make their own hardware? I thought it was just rebranded stuff from other manufacturers? Most of what I've had in terms of Microsoft-branded hardware has been good. Typing on an "MS Natural" keyboard right now, which I've always appreciated. I did find that some of their early wireless mice sucked though (IIRC, the "Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse Blue"), but I believe they've improved with age.
Slashdot Mirror
Google needs to improve their customer-service before they even consider expanding into another market. It's getting better but it's still pretty bad (ask those in Canada who purchased an N7)
I know that you can sync without tether to an iPhone with iTunes. But how do you get music/videos/etc on one without using iTunes (Amarok/etc work for some iDevices in Linux, but not always that well).
And I don't mean just the iTunes PC application, but the iTunes store. Can you buy music from any store and get it on your phone without goes through Apple?
Oddly, in many places GS2 has less signal bars than my wife's 4s (as a percentage of overall bars). That said, maybe it's just how my phone displays signal. I can have zilch for bars and still have clear calls, and the data doesn't seem overly slow when the bars are less than 50% either.
I have had some signal cutouts recently, but I'm more attributing those to my "unofficial" 4.0.4 upgrade than an android/hardware issue (I'll know better when they actually release the bloody firmware for unlock phones in my region).
Unless my google search for "Lena Test image" (also the image on wikipedia) is showing something other than what's used for printers, it's a pretty tame image.
Pretty girl, hat, showing a bit of shoulder. Nothing crude about it. It shows less skin than some of Leonardo's art, or the famous "David" pictures.
It doesn't appear to be a playboy pinup image used for the test (or if it is, it's rather tasteful and likely vintage).
Who cares what the woman does/did for a living.
The problem is not just that such people exist - we know they do - but rather how they are dealt with and the overall message it sends.
Geeks tend to rage against the "bad guys" in other professional fields. How many times on slashdot have you heard arguments about the "bad cops" out there? Usually it's brought up that "if you know about bad things and allow them to happen, you're also doing a bad thing"
My understanding is that the organizers of the event essentially ignored/downplayed this issue until it became public. It's not any different than a "good cop" looking the other way when a "bad cop" does something wrong.
So, while many of those at the event are perfectly normal, good people, shame on those who stood by and/or those in charge who didn't deal with it appropriately.
His books are somewhat of a pseudosci-fi fantasy horror genre, but many of the Necroscope series were quite good.
Overall some of the ways he described the working and transfer of the vampiric virus were quite cool.
I would also submit David Gerrold's Ch'torr series, except that it seems to have stalled for nearly the last decade, and I worry that he's going to pull a (Robert) Jordan before it gets completed.
And following that logic (whether for biblical reasons or otherwise).
I don't have a problem judging people on certain criteria. However, I would expect them to judge me (and generally judge myself) by the same criteria.
Basically it follows along the whole "practice what you preach" line of thinking.
It's the hypocrites that are the problem. Those that believe themselves better than others and thus act worse. Religion does sometimes attract those types, as some people seem to believe that going to church automatically makes them a "better person" despite their poor behaviour: gossip, shunning of others, discrimination, abuse, etc.
However, as I've also often seem religious types go out of the way to help their fellows, it's not a set rule by any measure. Many of these people do follow the "do as you'd have done unto you" rule.
As with anything, the vocal combative types do tend to be more visible though.
Also, when you're able to run them anywhere.
Steam needs to separate accounts from app instances. For example, I should be able to run Photoshop or Maya from computer "A" while my game is running on computer "B", despite them being on the same account. What should be blocked is running a copy of the same application simultaneously on computer "A" and "B".
At the moment, instance permission is account-level, rather than application-level. If they want to bring in non-games, that would be a deal-breaker for me as I often may have multiple things going on at once (say playing a game while something is rendering, etc)
I'd imagine it's a bit more fine-grained than that.
As in, receives direct benefits/payment from Google or Oracle, rather than "is a user of services/products provided by Google or Oracle"
Otherwise that would include every Android phone owner and everyone with Java installed on their Desktop....
I wonder how many accounts on slashdot etc could be identified.
Most here I see tend to be shills for certain other tech corps, but I wouldn't be surprised to find some for Oracle/Google as well.
Well, in the case of Steam etc, there's value there that does contradict this. In fact, most people I know haven't bought a PC "disc" in a long time (consoles exempt).
No disc to lose or get scratched. No CD-key on the jewel-case/manual to misplace or wreck. Reinstall on any of your PC's anytime. The downside being you can only play one game (online) for a given account at a time.
Actually, that brings up a very good point, and one I hadn't thought of in favour of a possible "steam" distro: Mac Users
Allowing a Mac user to play games in the same distro as others might make a much more "consistent" experience for everyone.
Other the other hand, a packaged Steam app for Linux kernels might cross platforms to Android devices easier, allowing a more fluid transition to the tablet/portable market.
I think that xkcd covered this fairly well.
The solution to fracturing is certainly *NOT* to make an existing standard. That just furthers the fracturing. It would be a terrible thing to inflict upon the Linux community.
Pushing out packages for the common distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Redhat) should work well for most Linux users.
On the other hand, one argument for a new distro would be non-Linux users. Just as Android is essentially a Linux fork, a Steam distro could essentially be a "Linux for non-Linux users." More specially, it would be a "Linux for Gamers."
In many ways it would make the PC functionally similar to a console. Boot disk, play game(s).
Of course, some other problems arise:
* How would it be installed? Would it automatically try to make space alongside the likely-existing windows partition?
* Would it run directly from a bootCD? If so, where would it save settings or games, to the HDD or a USB stick?
* If each game is a bootCD, how would they fare with newer hardware?
* What's the upgrade path for installed distros?
Using existing distros would add compatibility work for Valve. However, making their own might - and moreover maintaining it - could very well be a lot more work.
Did you manage to get Mass Effect 3 working in Linux? Origin didn't seem to like my WINE environment.
Older stuff (including AVP2, BF1942, etc) all work without issue though.
Beyond that...
Look at things like the "Humble Bundles"
From the stats, it seems that Linux users consistently pay a higher price (by choice).
For myself, I'd be willing to pay an extra 10% or so (more or less depending on the actual software) to support having Linux versions of the software I like/use/want.
Sadly, banks are often the worst for this.
8 character limit, alphanumeric only. No special characters. No spaces.
Maybe this is to tie into some archaic infrastructure, but whatever the reason it seems those that should prefer the strongest passwords instead often require the weakest.
Given a home of about 1500sqft, how much would it take in terms of solar panels to run an air-conditioning unit that keeps said house relatively cool.
How about the same for your average shopping mall, grocery store, etc?
If it's affordable, then that's a nice start right there. We run into nasty grid issues during heatwaves, and overall power consumption tends to go up with the summer temperatures, so why not start by stabilizing the grid against that and more from there
Also, for differing resolutions.
If it does 200fps at 720P resolution, then I'd assume it would do less at 1080P. Depending on how much less, then an overall framerate increase should also scale to higher resolutions.
Was it a laptop?
I found that often where the windows driver hadn't been updated in awhile, the Linux driver was actually more fully featured at the time.
My old HP laptop ran some games (I believe it was Battlefield 2) that wouldn't work at all in windows due to driver issues.
This depends on the operation before, but one of the big areas I noticed improvements seemed to be in loading times due to disk access. As it the same game on the same machine/disk (though different partitions), I'd put that down to filesystem efficiency.
Seriously, when I'm worn out, I'm dumb as a fencepost.
I generally don't drink caffeine, which means that sometimes when I'm tired, a full cup will have me buzzing like a squirrel on crack. Caffeine+sugar means a marked improvement in thinking ability (followed by a sharp drop later on).
Don't have a problem with ubuntu in general, but migration to 12.04 is kinda sucky.
I prefer to keep my homedir in a seperate partition for upgrades like this. That way I can add the new OS on another partition, install, and see how scary the update is...
A bit suspicious yes. However, on the other hand if the phones precede Apple's dominance in the arena (or really, even their presence), why would anyone be "copying" them?
Perhaps this will serve as a wake-up-call to other distros (*cough* ubuntu *cough*).
New shinies are nice. Choice is better.
Do they make their own hardware? I thought it was just rebranded stuff from other manufacturers?
Most of what I've had in terms of Microsoft-branded hardware has been good. Typing on an "MS Natural" keyboard right now, which I've always appreciated.
I did find that some of their early wireless mice sucked though (IIRC, the "Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse Blue"), but I believe they've improved with age.