Except on the machine I was recently using (fully updated ubuntu 12.04), which for reasons unbeknownst to me *would not* ALT+tab between firefox and libreoffice. Alt-tab gave me two options, Firefox, or show desktop. I could minimize my other apps and switch.
So yeah... not so useful in all cases.
On the other hand it works well enough for my grandmother who just uses office and "maybe" solitaire, but for me the lost functionality isn't worth it.
It's a funny argument. You have nutbars in "category A" who will happily troll on anonymously, posting crazy and hurtful shit just to get attention. Would a real-name requirement reduce these trolls? Perhaps.
However, then let's bring in category B. Somebody makes a perfectly sensical comment, but one that Nutbar B takes personal objection to (perhaps for religious/cultural reasons, or perhaps he's just easily offended). Now in the world of nicknames, Nutbar B's options are pretty much "flame back on the internet" and a little flamewar erupts. In the world of real names, Nutbar B collates other information with your real-name to figure out just who you really are, and decides that he's going to meet you outside your home one day with a lead pipe or a spiked baseball bat.
So which is a better situation? That I might be able to say something hurtful, that some anonymous jerk might respond to me with hurtful comments, or that somebody might decide to track me down and enact something a little personal vengeance. Or maybe it's not even physical violence.
Perhaps your boss just found out your sexual orientation because you commented on a bulletin board. Or perhaps your insurance provider founds something out that made them decide to cut your coverage. There are a *lot* of reasons to go by a somewhat anonymous pseudoname and not your real-name, and trolling is only a small part of it.
I was a Debian user for years. I eventually did switch to Ubuntu, mainly because I found "stable" too slow on updates and "unstable" lived up to its name. Then again, I was also a bit of a power-user as well compared to many Ubuntu users today, but even back then third-party repositories such as marillat etc used to do a good job of allowing one to doing more than the stock debian allowed.
There's open, and there's free. The two are not necessarily the same thing, but many people confuse the two. A lot of engines have been made "open", with sources that can be made available. In some case they're even free for various types of use, though not for commercial distribution. I think that the "licensing model works well in this case. Use our engine or even extend it. Play with it for free. Profit from it and share a cut.
As for Fedora, RHEL, and Debian. Yes, they don't "include" proprietary stuff. But it's still not hard to find a.DEB or.RPM file, and in the modern 'nix package managers those are pretty easy to deal with.
I believe the Win7 has the option to encrypt your home directory? If that's on, then nuking the user account (and associated/users/X homedir) should be enough for most cases, and it leaves the machine usable for anyone else.
Of course, if you're on AD with roaming profiles then nuking the local machine does little for the data that's on the network.
Hell, it wouldn't cost the manufacturers much. For *years* BIOS's had flags to booting in a 9X compatible way, then XP. SATA drive controllers still tend to have an option to emulate IDE, mostly for the benefit of older OS's.
So why not just have a checkbox in the BIOS "All generic boot key", disabled by default, and have a general key for Linux/BSD. Easy enough for most who will use Linux to still make the system bootable, and it allows the system to be locked down by default.
I've worked in many different workplaces. Some of them range from downright awful (comments that made *me* uncomfortable to just be hearing them), to respectful face-to-face but not so much in private.
It's not just the face-to-face contact, most people can at least manage that. It's the little side conversations that eventually get overheard by the wrong person at the wrong time. In many jobs I've overheard colleagues having conversations that - while between the two of them - were still very NSFW. Knowing your audience is important. Knowing your environment is equally important.
Lay it down flat. It's not cool to comment about Alice's bodily parts and/or personal-life to her face, nor to your friend/co-worker Bob, nor anywhere in the workplace. Violating this is a liability to the company, will go to HR, and may eventually lead to dismissal.
so that they can sell games that boot directly to the game on any system
Any system with compatible hardware. Don't get me wrong, I've mangled together a PXE that will load in the appropriate accelerated ATI/nVidia/Intel driver for most hardware I've been able to throw at it, but anything newer than my kernel still isn't going to work. That includes graphics cards, ethernet/wifi, soundcards, and a whole schwack of other things.
Of course 9x/XP don't work on most modern hardware either, and it's hit-and-miss playing old xBox games on a 360... but PC hardware does tend to be rather diverse and can change rather suddenly. Perhaps if it was a bootable flash device instead it could at least be updated.
True, but if they (as rumoured) make a linux-based console - with better licensing terms than the MS/Sony/Nintendo consoles - then that might make a fairly large blog on the radar...
While the "chat client" etc features are nice, they aren't spectacular. However, being able to easily find my friends in-game, that's great. Remember the old days when *every* game had its own lobby. You had to find create a game, tell your friends the game name (and/or password), kick out the trolls repeated while "slow friend X" tries to join, etc. Annnd the network issues. 3 people could join but one could not connect. Or they had to know your IP address. Or you had to NAT a bunch of crap on your router.
One thing I'm *very* happy with steam for is not having to deal with that shit anymore.
until they officially announce jellybean for it with a ship date... I'm holding out
Might I ask why? I do agree that sometimes the new OS version has useful features etc. Is there something in particular in JellyBean that you think you need, or do you just want a clear upgrade path?
I guess my question is, what do you want from the upgrade?
As others have mentioned, there's a line where increasing the "aggressiveness" of advertising reduces its effectiveness. Ever watch a show and every commercial break it's the same damn annoying ad? How about the same ad in one commercial break?
Ads should be about predicting customer need. I've noticed that as soon as I check out something on Amazon, they start to spam me (at my associated email address) with ads on related topics. Close... but not quite. At least they're trying to show me stuff I might want, but they need to crank back on the volume a bit.
One thing about the apple connector (like it or love it), is that it's been consistent across iDevices. There are a *ton* of accessories that have an iDevice (generally iPod, possibly iPhone, less so iPad due to device size) connector: notably radios or stereo systems. Change the connector, and what happens to these devices? Perhaps an intermediary step would be to have microSD->iDevice adaptors, but it's still rather unlikely.
Apple's connectors annoy me, but I could see changing them being a real pain in the butt for everyone else already invested in devices using that connector.
That may apply to cars, but how about for toys and electronics, etc? I still have a bunch of stuff left over from when I was a kid that's in a box in the attic. Toy cars, action figures, lego, mechano. My sister has a bunch of dolls etc. What did break was usually fixable by a bit of superglue or epoxy (not recommended for younger children that still like to chew on stuff)
Aside from lego, what will survive from our kids toys? A bunch of the stuff I've found *arrives* broken, much less survives a year. How about computers? Yeah, the old stuff was a pain and required manual jumpers to assign IRQ/DMA's. It was heavy and clunky. It cost a lot. But damn, a lot of it is still around when the newest Dell/HP is a burned out wreck. In fact, some of the more expensive PC's are the most likely to die. I've seen tons of computers crammed with tons of RAM, fast CPU, etc etc and the cheapest PSU imaginable, virtually guaranteeing that they'll smoke out in a year or two.
When people ask me what (desktop) PC's to buy, I generally try to find some place that will do a build and make sure to put in a decent PSU. The local place here may charge a bit more than a prebuilt Dell, but they offer a 3yr warranty for stuff assembled in-shop and you can make sure not to get crap components inside.
" I've noticed that in general it's cheaper to buy a new bookcase than to buy the wood to build your own of the same quality, _if_ you're that good"
I noticed this as well. However, if you want something of *good* quality, it's still cheaper to do it yourself. If all you want is a couple slats of beaver-puke with some laminate to hold up books, which will look ugly over time with nicks and sags, then WalMart or maybe Home Depot is likely a cheaper solution, even over making it yourself.
If you want something that made of good, solid wood, then it's still often cheaper to do it yourself. Oak, or even pine makes a much nicer bookshelf, and if you're like me and have heavy book etc then unlike the WalMart equivilent it won't start to bow the shelves in the middle after a few months.
These days it seems that - depending on the product - cheap quality is cheaper to purchase than fix or build you own, but decent-grade or higher-quality stuff still demands a fairly high price. Look at the cost of solid-wood bookshelves or entertainment centres at a home furnishing store (or online)... that stuff ain't cheap but it'll (hopefully) look nicer and last longer.
As for the manual dexterity... I'd wonder how that factors with kids who play a lot of video-games etc, as I'd imagine one of the few benefits is finger-dexterity.
A lot of what I had read seemed to indicate that it wouldn't, so it's good to know that it does work. While I loath what flash does to my battery-life, there are some things that it's unfortunately necessary for.
Anything special you had to do to get it installed+functional?
Why wouldn't they? There's plenty of stuff out there that I wouldn't drop a dime on regularly - mainly because I don't know if it'll be a waste or not - but if I happen to start using it regularly then I'm more than happy to donate.
A buddy recently described a certain movie in theatres: "it's a renter" Basically, he felt that the price he paid did not meet the expectations of the movie.
I've had similar experiences with apps, *especially* the ones that have down download a whackload of extra content (which usually means I've exceeded my "return" period by the time I get there).
I ordered mine around June 29th. I'm not sure exactly when launch was, but this is pretty damn close to when it was first available for order from Canada. It initially promised a 2-3 week delivery (with 2-day shipping), but now is stating another 1-2 weeks beyond the 19th.
"There is very little left in this world that is untouched, or that we can leave untouched"
I'm not sure how true this is. In terms of natural resources (mines, forestry, oil) things will get tougher. However, there are lots of places with places for people. However, most people tend to a) Prefer to live in the big, already-crowded cities b) Not want to start new towns
Technology allows us to cultivate land that was previously quite un-usable. The big problem is that we're dirty pests that tend to f*** up said land. If we could clean up our act ecologically, perhaps we could integrate better into the large amount of landmass that's still available.
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"and a very useful Alt-` and Alt-Tab switcher"
Except on the machine I was recently using (fully updated ubuntu 12.04), which for reasons unbeknownst to me *would not* ALT+tab between firefox and libreoffice. Alt-tab gave me two options, Firefox, or show desktop. I could minimize my other apps and switch.
So yeah... not so useful in all cases.
On the other hand it works well enough for my grandmother who just uses office and "maybe" solitaire, but for me the lost functionality isn't worth it.
It's a funny argument. You have nutbars in "category A" who will happily troll on anonymously, posting crazy and hurtful shit just to get attention. Would a real-name requirement reduce these trolls? Perhaps.
However, then let's bring in category B. Somebody makes a perfectly sensical comment, but one that Nutbar B takes personal objection to (perhaps for religious/cultural reasons, or perhaps he's just easily offended). Now in the world of nicknames, Nutbar B's options are pretty much "flame back on the internet" and a little flamewar erupts.
In the world of real names, Nutbar B collates other information with your real-name to figure out just who you really are, and decides that he's going to meet you outside your home one day with a lead pipe or a spiked baseball bat.
So which is a better situation? That I might be able to say something hurtful, that some anonymous jerk might respond to me with hurtful comments, or that somebody might decide to track me down and enact something a little personal vengeance. Or maybe it's not even physical violence.
Perhaps your boss just found out your sexual orientation because you commented on a bulletin board. Or perhaps your insurance provider founds something out that made them decide to cut your coverage. There are a *lot* of reasons to go by a somewhat anonymous pseudoname and not your real-name, and trolling is only a small part of it.
I was a Debian user for years. I eventually did switch to Ubuntu, mainly because I found "stable" too slow on updates and "unstable" lived up to its name.
Then again, I was also a bit of a power-user as well compared to many Ubuntu users today, but even back then third-party repositories such as marillat etc used to do a good job of allowing one to doing more than the stock debian allowed.
There's open, and there's free. The two are not necessarily the same thing, but many people confuse the two.
A lot of engines have been made "open", with sources that can be made available. In some case they're even free for various types of use, though not for commercial distribution.
I think that the "licensing model works well in this case. Use our engine or even extend it. Play with it for free. Profit from it and share a cut.
As for Fedora, RHEL, and Debian. Yes, they don't "include" proprietary stuff. But it's still not hard to find a .DEB or .RPM file, and in the modern 'nix package managers those are pretty easy to deal with.
I believe the Win7 has the option to encrypt your home directory? /users/X homedir) should be enough for most cases, and it leaves the machine usable for anyone else.
If that's on, then nuking the user account (and associated
Of course, if you're on AD with roaming profiles then nuking the local machine does little for the data that's on the network.
Hell, it wouldn't cost the manufacturers much. For *years* BIOS's had flags to booting in a 9X compatible way, then XP. SATA drive controllers still tend to have an option to emulate IDE, mostly for the benefit of older OS's.
So why not just have a checkbox in the BIOS "All generic boot key", disabled by default, and have a general key for Linux/BSD. Easy enough for most who will use Linux to still make the system bootable, and it allows the system to be locked down by default.
Nice call.
Harassment is not cool no matter what it's for. Gender, ethnicity, orientation, etc.
Framing that way should hopefully put it in a light that makes it blatantly obvious to "the boys"
Not in my experience...
I've worked in many different workplaces. Some of them range from downright awful (comments that made *me* uncomfortable to just be hearing them), to respectful face-to-face but not so much in private.
It's not just the face-to-face contact, most people can at least manage that. It's the little side conversations that eventually get overheard by the wrong person at the wrong time. In many jobs I've overheard colleagues having conversations that - while between the two of them - were still very NSFW. Knowing your audience is important. Knowing your environment is equally important.
Lay it down flat. It's not cool to comment about Alice's bodily parts and/or personal-life to her face, nor to your friend/co-worker Bob, nor anywhere in the workplace. Violating this is a liability to the company, will go to HR, and may eventually lead to dismissal.
so that they can sell games that boot directly to the game on any system
Any system with compatible hardware.
Don't get me wrong, I've mangled together a PXE that will load in the appropriate accelerated ATI/nVidia/Intel driver for most hardware I've been able to throw at it, but anything newer than my kernel still isn't going to work. That includes graphics cards, ethernet/wifi, soundcards, and a whole schwack of other things.
Of course 9x/XP don't work on most modern hardware either, and it's hit-and-miss playing old xBox games on a 360... but PC hardware does tend to be rather diverse and can change rather suddenly.
Perhaps if it was a bootable flash device instead it could at least be updated.
True, but if they (as rumoured) make a linux-based console - with better licensing terms than the MS/Sony/Nintendo consoles - then that might make a fairly large blog on the radar...
While the "chat client" etc features are nice, they aren't spectacular.
However, being able to easily find my friends in-game, that's great. Remember the old days when *every* game had its own lobby. You had to find create a game, tell your friends the game name (and/or password), kick out the trolls repeated while "slow friend X" tries to join, etc.
Annnd the network issues. 3 people could join but one could not connect.
Or they had to know your IP address.
Or you had to NAT a bunch of crap on your router.
One thing I'm *very* happy with steam for is not having to deal with that shit anymore.
Which board/GPU?
so... at the same time or sooner than it's available via Netflix in non-US countries...
until they officially announce jellybean for it with a ship date... I'm holding out
Might I ask why? I do agree that sometimes the new OS version has useful features etc. Is there something in particular in JellyBean that you think you need, or do you just want a clear upgrade path?
I guess my question is, what do you want from the upgrade?
As others have mentioned, there's a line where increasing the "aggressiveness" of advertising reduces its effectiveness. Ever watch a show and every commercial break it's the same damn annoying ad? How about the same ad in one commercial break?
Ads should be about predicting customer need. I've noticed that as soon as I check out something on Amazon, they start to spam me (at my associated email address) with ads on related topics. Close... but not quite. At least they're trying to show me stuff I might want, but they need to crank back on the volume a bit.
Lots of existing phones manage to use the microUSB ports to do HDMI video with the appropriate adaptor.
One thing about the apple connector (like it or love it), is that it's been consistent across iDevices. There are a *ton* of accessories that have an iDevice (generally iPod, possibly iPhone, less so iPad due to device size) connector: notably radios or stereo systems.
Change the connector, and what happens to these devices?
Perhaps an intermediary step would be to have microSD->iDevice adaptors, but it's still rather unlikely.
Apple's connectors annoy me, but I could see changing them being a real pain in the butt for everyone else already invested in devices using that connector.
What did they run to if not the fuse box?
That may apply to cars, but how about for toys and electronics, etc?
I still have a bunch of stuff left over from when I was a kid that's in a box in the attic. Toy cars, action figures, lego, mechano. My sister has a bunch of dolls etc. What did break was usually fixable by a bit of superglue or epoxy (not recommended for younger children that still like to chew on stuff)
Aside from lego, what will survive from our kids toys? A bunch of the stuff I've found *arrives* broken, much less survives a year.
How about computers? Yeah, the old stuff was a pain and required manual jumpers to assign IRQ/DMA's. It was heavy and clunky. It cost a lot.
But damn, a lot of it is still around when the newest Dell/HP is a burned out wreck. In fact, some of the more expensive PC's are the most likely to die. I've seen tons of computers crammed with tons of RAM, fast CPU, etc etc and the cheapest PSU imaginable, virtually guaranteeing that they'll smoke out in a year or two.
When people ask me what (desktop) PC's to buy, I generally try to find some place that will do a build and make sure to put in a decent PSU. The local place here may charge a bit more than a prebuilt Dell, but they offer a 3yr warranty for stuff assembled in-shop and you can make sure not to get crap components inside.
" I've noticed that in general it's cheaper to buy a new bookcase than to buy the wood to build your own of the same quality, _if_ you're that good"
I noticed this as well. However, if you want something of *good* quality, it's still cheaper to do it yourself.
If all you want is a couple slats of beaver-puke with some laminate to hold up books, which will look ugly over time with nicks and sags, then WalMart or maybe Home Depot is likely a cheaper solution, even over making it yourself.
If you want something that made of good, solid wood, then it's still often cheaper to do it yourself. Oak, or even pine makes a much nicer bookshelf, and if you're like me and have heavy book etc then unlike the WalMart equivilent it won't start to bow the shelves in the middle after a few months.
These days it seems that - depending on the product - cheap quality is cheaper to purchase than fix or build you own, but decent-grade or higher-quality stuff still demands a fairly high price. Look at the cost of solid-wood bookshelves or entertainment centres at a home furnishing store (or online)... that stuff ain't cheap but it'll (hopefully) look nicer and last longer.
As for the manual dexterity... I'd wonder how that factors with kids who play a lot of video-games etc, as I'd imagine one of the few benefits is finger-dexterity.
A lot of what I had read seemed to indicate that it wouldn't, so it's good to know that it does work. While I loath what flash does to my battery-life, there are some things that it's unfortunately necessary for.
Anything special you had to do to get it installed+functional?
Why wouldn't they? There's plenty of stuff out there that I wouldn't drop a dime on regularly - mainly because I don't know if it'll be a waste or not - but if I happen to start using it regularly then I'm more than happy to donate.
A buddy recently described a certain movie in theatres: "it's a renter"
Basically, he felt that the price he paid did not meet the expectations of the movie.
I've had similar experiences with apps, *especially* the ones that have down download a whackload of extra content (which usually means I've exceeded my "return" period by the time I get there).
I ordered mine around June 29th. I'm not sure exactly when launch was, but this is pretty damn close to when it was first available for order from Canada. It initially promised a 2-3 week delivery (with 2-day shipping), but now is stating another 1-2 weeks beyond the 19th.
Not if it doesn't work properly with that version of the OS and prerequisite libraries (not sure yet myself... damn thing still hasn't shipped)
"There is very little left in this world that is untouched, or that we can leave untouched"
I'm not sure how true this is. In terms of natural resources (mines, forestry, oil) things will get tougher. However, there are lots of places with places for people.
However, most people tend to
a) Prefer to live in the big, already-crowded cities
b) Not want to start new towns
Technology allows us to cultivate land that was previously quite un-usable. The big problem is that we're dirty pests that tend to f*** up said land. If we could clean up our act ecologically, perhaps we could integrate better into the large amount of landmass that's still available.