Do you travel by public transport? Read up on PING. Rim's are very distinctive with their qwerty keypad that isn't a slideout. But it might depend on income, PING is cheap and I the kids I see are not the type who can afford an iPhone. This is in Holland by the way.
ANYONE could have produced the iPod but NOBODY did. MS failed, Sony failed, Philips failed, Samsung failed, Sharp failed. EVERYONE failed. Apple with the iPod took an extremely fragmented industry and took the vast majority of the market share because they simply saw a market and ordered a million units so they got discounts nobody else could get and had high capacity for a reasonable price.
Sony was far to busy worrying about its music sales to pick up the billions in sales for a quality MP3 player they certainly could have made based on their Walkman brand name alone.
Same with the iPhone and the iPad. Everyone else tried, Apple achieved. Don't discount their achievement if you ever want to understand how to be half as successful as them.
You claim that the iPad came at the right time doesn't explain why almost a year later NOBODY else has come out with a competitor. Why not? If the time is now finally right surely it must be right for everyone else as well?
But nobody else got the balls of Jobs, to simply order a huge amount of iPads so you can get the quality hardware needed at a low price and be confident it will simply sell. THAT is why the Samsung Galaxy Tab is so small, they didn't have the balls to order large screens in volume DESPITE making those screens themselves.
This works, if EVERYTHING is streamline, the world isn't streamlined.
[.jpeg] [.jpg] [.jpe] [.jpg] [.gif] [.] []
The above where ALL extensions I found for jpeg images. Yes, the last one is empty and the gif? Just one of the many wrongly named ones. How do you deal with this uniformly? How do you write a super smooth UI that shows images if even determining what is an image is already that hard.
Link the weather to my airplane ticket? That only works if somehow the ticket data exposes location data in a way the weather plugin can understand AND if then the ticket plugin can understand the weather data. My airport is Eindhoven, my weather plugin only knows about Amsterdam (Schiphol is NEAR to it but NOT the same). So how does that work? Ah, only unified services work... nice lock-in you got going there then. This kind of stuff is a chain and chains are only as strong as the weakest link.
It is not like this kind of stuff hasn't been tried before, it is the intelligent home dream.
The dream where you put a carton of milk in your fridge and it tells a phone that it is getting old. My local supermarket has four brands of milk at least. That is ONE supermarket. If my carton I picked up at a new supermarket on the way doesn't register, the entire service is useless and I might well end up drinking spoiled milk trusting that my intelligent home would have warned me.
My flight can not be just delayed because of the weather at departure airport but also by weather enroute and arrival airport or indeed whatever area my plane is coming from in the first place. My ticket doesn't have route information or where the airplane is coming from, how can my PC check this info if even the airline company can't? And does any of this check the road conditions? How about public transport? Does it KNOW whether I will be driving, a friend, a cab or I will be going by train?
Another one, language and subtitle choices. this should be trivial as long as everyone and every coded uses ISO encoding and then agrees on how many letters. Should be trivial, it isn't. Nobody can ever agree on someone elses standard.
Oh, your services are ALL going to MS supplied? Better hand in that iPhone then, just give it to me, I will take it off your hands. GIVE IT... geez, you expect a Windows 8 experience to work out of the box with iOS? No? Then what is the point.
We can't even get MS to smoothly discover various makers MP3 players. They going to bother with any services that don't pay through the nose for it and share all their data?
There is a reason we don't have integrated services that could power such a UI. The world is filled with individuals who all like to do things their own way. See Google and its chrome window that doesn't work the same as every other window on Linux.
This kind of UI is limitted to the movies where god, the writer, knows exactly what is going to be needed to get done next.
The entire problem recently is simple. It is the MP3.
It has changed fundamentally how we listen to music, how we use music and how we expect to get it.
Napster wasn't just about not paying for music, it was about a different way to GET music. Only very recently has the music industry stopped the old practice of releasing a song for radio with a lead of a couple of weeks before it is available in the stores. The OLD logic was that they would advertise it through being played on the radio, create hype for the release , then have it released on a day with people queuing like they were selling iPhones or something. It worked because the consumer really didn't have much choice. There were few radio stations back then and you couldn't count on them playing the songs YOU wanted, so to hear your favorite artist when you wanted to, you needed a recording of it. Because only physical media existed this either meant buying one yourself OR getting a taped copy from someone else (and this happened a LOT, far more then the record industry would have you believe) OR borrowing an album from a friend (this happened a LOT as well).
There was no other choice, recording from radio was a lot of work and many stations talk(ed) through songs to try to stop this. The akwardness of LP's also meant people listened to music differently, you either had the radio on for casual listening OR had to flip a LP every twenty minutes or so for "serious" listening. While there were LP changers they were more expensive and couldn't play the B-side (at least mine couldn't, yes, I know I am old). The physical medium forced consumer behavior.
With the Sony Walkman this changed. While tapes had been available before, now people COULD play music on the go and HAD to make their own tapes (commercial tapes are to short). This helped create the era of the mix-tape, where people would create their own mix of music and share this as some sort of DJ on an individual basis. It made people see LP's not so much as things you listened to, but merely as containers for music which you then "downloaded" to your Walkman.
It was still a slow and akward process and the Walkman lost some of its original appeal. With the MP3 player it came back with a bang. Now people could create their own custom collection for hours upon hours of music. It changed the way people got their music.
Rather then having to buy an entire LP pre-filled with a music selection or get a friend to mix a tape during a slow process with a desired music collection, you could just pick music up from all sorts of places and use it in one long playback. Until you actually created your own tape with different music from different sources you just are not capable of understanding what a change a M3U playlist is. Just put a binary file on your MP3 player and it will be played. Guy at work has a new song? Copy it and you can listen to it. Among your collection, no quality loss like with a tape copy, no having to splice it in or create a new tape.
And because we could just take bits of music from anywhere, we did. My own early MP3 collections where a complete mix of different encoding settings and filename conventions, picking whatever song I liked from where I could find it.
AND then LISTENING to it, whenever and wherever I wanted it. Exactly the music I wanted, anytime, anyplace.
I don't just not buy music anymore, radio has all but disappeared from my life. If it wasn't for the radio on my MP3 player, I wouldn't even have a radio anymore. Oh wait, my clock radio has one and I use it because NOTHING wakes me up faster with the vile bitter hatred I need to get my day going then being woken by morning radio.
As for ads? Why should I listen to ads when I pick my own music? Ads are what we put up with on radio until something better came along. We no longer consume music this way.
And because we could pick up music anywhere, buying it is no longer an option. I had maybe a collection of 100-200 lp's. But that was build up over years and there were plen
Until you had to pull drivers from install CD's from outofdate versions on a korean site in chinese, to even get a input device working you payed thousands of dollars for the hardware, you ain't got a right to talk.
Oh come on, who here hasn't experienced FAR FAR worse in the past? Fill in a form three times? Ah, you poor baby. Ever had to fax your passport to some backwater place like the US back when all faxes didn't work with each other? Then find out you been trying their BBS because you got an old number? How about having to download 100mb of data on a stand alone PC with a 28.8 modem with only floppies available and no option to install any software for a fix that needs to go life NOW!
How about going into a server room to find the case padlocked by some past sys admin and NOBODY noticed in years, got to love quality hardware. BTW, sparks from an angle grinder do not go well with a dusty environment and electronics... OOPS!
RIM released a BETA that isn't all that convenient and stable... OH NO! Then don't develop for it, don't develop for one of the biggest platform that thanks to PING at least in europe is selling like hotcakes. The kids don't have iPhones, they got RIM and are typing away like mad on those keyboards.
As for limitting the amount of apps, maybe the just don't want their marketplace absolutely flooded with crap. Really, Android market gives me the warm fuzzy feeling of the days of finding software on tucows, but without that sense of high quality and service...
Basically, get of my lawn you whipper snapper. In my day we had to crawl uphill both ways throught ten meter snow and blazing heat to get a floppy that would work once if only it had been the right size for a piece of software that refused to run with any other software on our DOS machines, and we LIKED IT! Made us what we are today.
Not news that someone is tortured for watching a news program... just how jaded can you get?
Is it also not news if a person gets killed or wounded in a war? Well, I WANT to know, I NEED to know because else I might become one of those people who life only in their tiny self-made world filled with comforting lies.
No thanks, this is stuff that matters.
And if someone else in the world is merely detained by a polite police officer and given a cup of tea for watching the news, I STILL WANT TO FUCKING KNOW ABOUT IT.
By your logic, since the nazi's did every bad thing out there, we don't need to report on anything anymore.
The first you don't hear much about, they know the language, its stengths and its limitations and simply use it because nothing else out there can compete.
Then you got the second kind, that will be fuming at the last bit in the previous paragraph. They are forced to use it for some reason, mostly because the latest language they wish to use simply isn't supported enough. Personally, I think these are the lesser developers, the bad photographers who think if only they get a Hasselblad they will turn into a top class photographer instead of having to use this cheapo poloraid that nobody could ever possibly use to make art.
Personally I also think frameworks are silly. If you can lash up a site in 30 minutes, then the request simply isn't distinctive enough. Your site will be the Xth among thousands and fail. For the next job board site, you need to add something new, do it different, improve the process/experience else the monsterboards will simply keep the position they got.
If a wizard can write your code, you are not a developer but an assembly line worker. Granted there is a living to made at this, but please, don't call yourself a developer, you are a code monkey.
It is amusing for me to see the developers that every problem they encounter, they say: Oh if only we used tech X, this would be easy... WAY to sell your talent kiddo. It is even more amazing to see when they get away with it. Companies running everything from PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, ASP and god knows what else, in the same company and in one extreem case, the same site... I don't care how much you hate an individual language, more then one you need a BLOODY good reason, more then two and you are insane.
But hey, keep looking for the magical language that no longer requires you to express yourself to achieve what you want. If people could write amazing code in assembly then why can't you make the language the project uses just work?
Really, if you claimed that you would be a better driver if only you had a proper car, every real driver would laugh at you. Instant poloroids are used by the pro's. Some serious art is produced with nothing but paper and charcoal.
But for a website, you need the latest tech so you can never learn all its secrets. Right.
You would be to busy trying to skoop the shit out of your pants while quaking in your mothers basement.
Heroes are far and few between and NONE are on slashdot.
The Libyans ain't fighting with fancy gadgets. The twitterers are BEHIND the front lines. The real heroes are attacking army bases with tractors and rocks. Not worrying about some facebook page that won't load.
When the going gets though, the slashdotter hides under his bed. Don't pretend otherwise until you have proven yourself in battle which I hope none of us ever have to do. Because I know myself for the coward that I am.
Or make a stand, right now. KILL a US arms dealer whose weapons are RIGHT now being used to kill civilians. Yes, the US didn't know how fast to sell weapons once it lifted its own embargo. Make a stand now, in your own country and risk your life. Wanna bet you come up with a thousand and one excuses not even to post a nasty email to the politicians who approved the arms deals? It takes a coward to know one.
Funny, this. When Saddam killed Kurds, people cried out for western intervention. Then the west invades to dispose and it isn'y right either. Somalia erupts and again the same people cry out for intervention, but then complain when some war mongers get killed. Same with Afghanistan. Women get stoned, intervene! Intervention happens: GET OUT!
So, are you pro Iraq invasion? Pro-war? Pro-increased military budgets? Pro-conscription? Then what exactly do you mean with intervention.
The simple fact is that the real world is a hellishly difficult place and western governments are dealing with an electorate incapable of keeping a coherent train of thought in a single sentence. How can you make policy of any kind when one moment people want peace and war the next? When we should leave other nations alone but also stop them from doing anything we disagree with?
And do the Libyans even want intervention? By who? The reports coming from Libya are far from reliable. One thing that has been noted is that foreigners who have gotten out speak of plenty of HEARED violence and even some theft but not a single sign of the hardcore violence reported. Covering their tracks? Violence happens elsewhere or maybe the violence is over stated? Who knows for sure and you wish western officials to commit to what might turn into an extended decades long war based on this?
And if you start intervening, how soon? Intervene at any protest where people die at the hand of the police? That would have seen the US invaded by the west to stop its police killing protestors pretty much throughout its history. What of the many race riots, intervention?
Intervention is rarely used, it is just to drastic a tool.
And of course it would play right into the dictators hand, see, the rioters are lead by foreigners seeking to re-establish their colonies. You are away that Libya used to be a colony of, I believe, France? Send in the Foreign legion? Yeah, that would go over well.
No, the cries for intervention are best ignored by a politician because the exact same kids will be protesting ten seconds after you intervene about that as well. Best to ignore them.
Let the Libyans choose their own destiny. When they win, it will have been their own freedom they have won on their own terms. Imposed freedom will never taste as sweet as freedom you won yourself.
The true motivations of this guy are very clear, "we can circumvent the constitution by making everything private". Privatise everything and EVERY thing can be regulated without it coming down on the state. Right to have shelter? Sure you do, not out problem the renting industry doesn't want to rent to you. Right to counsel? Sure you do, not our problem you can't afford to pay for a private lawyer. Right to speech? Sure you do, not our fault you can't afford a spot on private television.
It is very effective and the Mafia knows this. Control the basics and you control the town. You don't have to pay protection money, your garbage just won't be collected by the private company they just happen to have a say in.
But they say, it says nowhere that your freedoms have to be available. Yes indeed, that is because they made bloody sure of that. It is how the system work. You are free from the state you elect and own yourself to the company store instead, that you don't elect.
Private enterprise is the chain that binds free men. Next time you see a repubilican claim that something should be run by private industry or go un-regulated, look further.
Remember, that republicans love freedom, their freedom to chain YOU. Because it is abundantly clear that Paypal indeed is not required to provide service to all, no US bank is. Doesn't that say it all? It means an essential service can be denied NOT after due process but simply because a board of directors decided to. In many ways I prefer outright dictatorship, at least the controls are clear then. Who made Paypal do this? Paypal has no morals on way or another, so which hidden master pulled its strings?
The anus has been used throughout history to smuggle things, this shouldn't be news to anyone who spend a second in the real world. Are you THAT out of touch with reality you never heard of drug mules swallowing rubber balls filled with drugs or the reason in jail they get you to spread them?
If this is the level of your average tin-hatter it explains a lot. You should really get out some day, talk to another human being. Learn something about the big scary world.
The prosecutors do. The police in these cases is simply a service department working for the higher ups. There is no cop who wants to do this because it simply ain't what they signed up for and no, they don't get a bonus or a brown envelope. Regular cops in the US are reasonably uncorrupt despite what some 12yr olds might think.
This kind of corruption goes far further up with elected officials who need campaign contributions and a nice job for when they retire.
And if you care so much, stop voting for the fucktards and elect someone with a heart. Of course that might mean your taxes go up, can't have that can we?
What has changed in the world? Food prices? Yes, but not for the first time. The only really knew thing is the cable leaks showing some embarrising info for the first time presented as fact. It is one thing for rumors that your leaders are fat pigs stuffing themselves and another to see it in black and white.
The only other option I can think off is that the Chinese have been very busy. And even that is doubtful. Nobody really benefits from the current revolutions except the locals and who cares about them.
US has a risk that they loose allies (although Turkey is a democracy and a solid ally).
China uses paria nations to counter US influence, if Libya becomes a democracy, bye bye paria status.
The west has been very friendly to Libya recently, happily selling weapons (a sales trip is going on right now, watch the British prime-minister) for killing the locals.
Nobody WANTED this, except the locals and again, who cares about them.
To the guy below and others who think the locals can SEE what is going on... NO... they cannot. What they see is carefully staged news events. Same as you don't see Obama stuffing himself with caviar but instead eating a McD burger. Come on, how likely is that to be real. Bill Clinton okay, but Obama? He never been in a McD in his live. Not that that makes him a bad person but it makes the outward appearance a lie.
A lot of us "know (read believe)" that some leaders are corrupt. But the leaks PROVED it. Spelled it out in plain language making it impossible to ignore, to gloss over with a speech.
North Africa is on fire. Libya is in a civil war, dicator after dictator is making concensions they never have given before ALL within a few weeks. Something has to be causing this and the only real change leading up to this has been the cable leaks.
If suddenly two black left wing women who know each other had sex with Glen Beck and then came up with a TECHINICAL rape charge, I would be highly suspicious as well. Lets not forget that this is NOT the kind of rape most of the world would regonize. They did NOT say no to sex, they said no to unprotected sex, then had sex with a condom of their OWN free will, then cried rape when the condom broke. Come on, in most of the world the police would ignore this AND that is what happened until an investigator with an agenda stepped in.
It is all a little bit to convenient. In the vast majority of the world he would not even be under investigation. Only in Sweden can you be charged with rape when a woman agrees to have sex with you.
And gosh it just happened when the US and its leaders (the banks, you don't think some black guy has anything to say do you) are highly upset with him AND we then get leaks of plans to discredit Assange. Oh yeah, those plans were of a later date. So this means NOBODY else could have come up with the same plans earlier?
If it is for the Afghan war, then the US is using the wrong tactics. America keeps thinking in bases and convoys between them. They conquer a bit of ground, build some good will, then retreat to their bases, give the enemy time to do his work, then do it all over again.
The war needs feet on the ground, soldiers out in the field, every village a few soldiers so the enemy has now where to move to. That is risky for the individual soldier because he doesn't have a full base behind him and even riskier for the good will because there is NOTHING like meeting an American to get a deep seated hatred for them but it has been proven to work in the past.
Simply put, if you put a very small unit in each village and along important roads and crossings, you remove the capability for the enemy to move unseen and plants bombs. No bombs means you can have your convoys moving on your schedule, not that of the enemy and your soldiers can concentrate on fighting, not on when the truck they are in will blow up.
But it requires a total attitude change. No more bits of the USA imported into Afghanistan but soldiers mixing with the locals and living with the locals.
You don't need all that advanced gear for that. An ordinary jeep to make travel easy and to haul supplies and a small fortification. A constant air screen overhead so any attackers can be quickly responded to in force and voila, hearts and minds can be won without the enemy coming in every night to undo your work during the day.
It is the cop on the beat vs the high tech chopper that doesn't fly at night.
But you can't win a big defence contract with that, or make the bling at the pentagon at peace time.
Look at the docu Restrepo for a total failure in strategy and tactics. The soldiers comment on it themselves, they sit in their bases and the enemy has full freedom of movement everywhere else. No patrols don't help. You need to be out there ALL the time. Especially if your patrols are so easily spotted. The enemy can't subvert the locals if you are with the locals, you can then do it all every hour of the day by showing that you are... actually that seems to be the biggest problem. WATCH Restrepo again, through the eyes of a native. Winning you over yet?
No? Then that is the real problem and no fancy gadget will help.
This whole audiophile thing is also present in the car industry. Yes, there are plenty of scams like putting a magnet around your fuel line to improve performance BUT there is another side to the story.
There are those who claim the cost difference between a Mercedes Benz and a Rolls Royce isn't worth the supposed quality difference and that nobody's ass is senstive enough to feel the difference in the seats.
This is a statement only made by those who never have sat in a Rolls Royce. I have. It is worth the extra money. No, I don't have that kind of money but if I had, it would be worth it.
Same with some parts of audiophile equipment. There is a lot of crap, like monster cables. But at the real high end you are simply talking about equipment that is better produced for marginal gains that some find worth it. Take the RR again and say that it is 50% more comfortable but 1000% more expensive. Is that worth it? Yes, to some. Just as you pay through the nose for a performance car that goes only marginally faster then my clunker (if you push it off a hill, and mind you, you got to PUSH downhill) and some find it worth the money.
I had my own demonstration of relative sound quality in a large theather where the sound engineer claimed that MP3 players made horrible noise. He was right, hook up an early iPod to a theather system and you can hear the damage MP3 and subpar hardware do. Hooked my Cowon S9 and it was passable BUT not as good as the sound from the life orchastra with zero compression and other crap.
A good sound system sounds a lot better then a crap one. A high quality sound system sounds marginally better then a good sound system. If you then listen to crap music that is compressed to hell to create the wall of sound effect, then you might say it is not worth the money.
But there are people who can hear the difference. But it is also an area where there are a lot of scams. But because throwing a magnet in your tank is a scam doesn't mean a Koenigsegg Trevita is a scam.
Just try this excersise, listen with a half decent sound system to the difference between the voice of a reasonably talented pop starlet with big tits and a REALLY good singer selected for nothing but his/her voice. Even singing the same piece. You will hear a difference. Same with better audio equipment. But that isn't to be found in gold cables or other gadgets but speakers that fit correctly so they don't vibrate and are varied enough and fast enough to produce the sound.
But this doesn't have to cost a fortune. But we are talking to people here who think the speakers in their cheap TV produce a decent sound... there are the monster cable suckers and there are the completly deaf. Both should be whipped.
I know that some people don't get the meaning of simple words and we call them republicans. But failing to grasp the meaning of a single digit number?
Exactly what is so confusing about "7"? Windows Phone 7. That is the name. Can you even grasp the notion that this means there was a version 6? A version 5 etc etc? And unlike Vista, 6 and 6.5 were named just that for phones.
MS is a decades old company with experience in PC's, phones, consoles and they can't get a simple update right on a very high profile product.
This is however the reason MS does so poorly in this area. They keep listening to fanboys who excuse everything even if it means redefining numbers and just don't get that they need to work harder in a market where there is competition. They only did well on the console race because their opponents were to busy shooting themselves in the foot.
Everything you said has been said before to explain why North African countries won't rebel. And then they did.
New game, new rules. Why do you think western leaders allowed themselves to be photographed hugging the Libyan leader whatever his name is (see comment below) and indeed the British PM is on a weapon selling trip while the weapons sold in the previous trip are busy killing civilians? A bit embarrassing?
You also seem to have forgotten the violent repression of the earlier uprising in Iran. These are not the actions of a government willing to change. Neither are there continued attempts at making nukes. It was Libya that stopped, not Iran.
Really, LOOK at what is happening. Something has changed. Even if Iran stays the same for now, the Middle East has changed. The power balance is gone. If Egypt and Tunesia truly become democratic they would side far closer to Turkey then dictatorships. That is going to leave the remaining dictatorships far more isolated. Rewatch the fall of the Soviet Union. Once dominoes start falling,it is hard to stop.
I think all bets are off and considering Iran's reaction so far, they think the same thing. Why else block access to these events if they are sure their own people will stand behind the government?
Here they are raging against the great satan intervening in Islamic countries all the time, to little effect and then voila, couple of weeks and their Muslim brothers put the entire region on fire and overthrow government after government. Some in Iran must be pissing their pants by now. The world is changing and so far NOT to the extreme. All those cries for democracy in Muslim nations, that just ain't right is it. No burning of US flags, no cries for battle against Zionists. Just cries for democracy. Crazy stuff AND it is working.
The changes of it all working out okay are... well lets face it, nobody knows what the fuck is going to happen, if you had created a scenario in which North Africa would be in one big movement to overthrow local leaders last year, people would have told you to stop being a hollywood fantast and get a grip on reality. Just look at the map, a ribbon of rebellion and the end is not in sight. If Libya also falls... well then even outrageous violence doesn't work anymore or for that matter giving at least some of the oil wealth to the general public (Gadafhi might (now) be completely insane, but he was not as corrupt as some of his counter parts and at least the west of the country generally benefitted a bit from the oil income)
So, lets give the Iran cyber army its last few twitches before this guy will be in front of the firing squad for his allegiance to a overthrown regime.
There have been a LOT of Linux distro's over the years and more then one has been the darling and then lost in the crowd. Once Red Hat was the darling as well, then it got to the point that it didn't move fast enough on some releases, RPM dependency hell was getting old and people looked for something better.
Mandrake/Mandriva/whatever, Suse have been in the same position. Then one was hailed for its excellent hardware manager, then one for getting sound to work from the start and later Wifi.
Ubuntu has a path, it's path just as all the other distro's is based on what its controllers think is the best. By nature, it will be VERY rare for your idea of the best path to be the same as someone elses.
Do I agree with the moves Ubuntu has made? No, not really. Xorg is a beast but many of us actually make use of one its more obscure capabilties. Not everyone of us thinks a single screen or dual-head on a single GPU is enough. The unity interface seems yet another attempt to start something new which will suffer from lack of testing and not be able to deal with all the edge cases that are out there.
But does it matter? If Ubuntu guesses wrong, then it will simply become another also ran and someone else will take over. Or not.
The beauty about opensource is that ultimately the software does NOT have to be commercially successful to be successful. If ONE user, even the developer himself, finds it useful, then it is useful. Ignore all those "this is the year of Linux on the desktop" people. The very nature of opensource means that this will never happen (it would be Distro X on the desktop) and it just doesn't matter.
The simple fact is that bone headed choices that ruin a distro are nothing new. Just ask MS about ME, Bob, Vista and all its mobile versions. Just that somehow people accept they got no choice when it comes to MS software but think every opensource developer should be at their beg and call.
He! Apple fanboys, how much say did you have about the switch to OSX? He! MS fanboys, soundblaster support in Vista/7, did you give approval for the sound system to be overhauled and make your soundcard useless?
Gosh no. But Ubuntu changes the default layout that you can easily switch back and the sky is falling.
Don't like it? Then you as a user have to accept it because that is what users do. I don't go to McD and insist they serve a tofu-burger do I? No. Then why do you insist into going into the soupkitchen and insisting on what they should serve? Are you that entitled you can decide what other people should do with their time?
Ubuntu is only hated by those who have an agenda, usually the downfall of MS. The real unix/linux users simply see it as a distro that did remarkably well in the "just works" department but does need work if you want to get anything special done.
Egypt is a popular holiday destination for Israeli's. Remember that haters will always exist but most normal people are normal people. If Germans can visit Israel, Japanese can visit Korea/China, Americans can visit pretty much anywhere, Canadians can visit the US, Belgians can visit Holland etc etc then Jews can visit Egypt.
The real feelings in the middle east are far more complex then fits in a Fox news flash. In fact it is YOU that cares what religion a founder of a website is or even what the religion might be of a guy who worked on a cpu. YOU noticed this, not some random Egyptian whose own believes ain't even known.
Those protests you might have seen burning American/Israeli flags? Well, we know now what they really were. Staged protests not supported by the masses. We SAW what happened when the masses think something and gosh, no signs of hatred for the Zionists or the great Satan but for their own corrupt MUSLIM leaders.
Al Queda failed. They tried to install hatred and accomplished nothing. Peaceful protests without hate for other races/religions changed the region in a matter of weeks.
What is intresting to note is that their has been a regime change in Germany that might well be the cause of this. The switch was made under a left-wing government. Recently a right-wing government came into being and MS made some promises to invest and gosh, a switch back to windows is announced... how surprising.
But the war is not yet lost. The right-wing government has been clobbered in recent elections and the left is smelling blood and asking questions already, the same questions being asked here such as what the hell the driver issue is supposed to be. The German left-wing parties ain't swallowing the BS either. Don't expect this to be a done deal.
Really, this isn't hard, it is government. Just write in your spec it needs Linux support and then buy the printer that has it. This isn't some small shop that has to buy whatever is available in the local shop, it is the government. Anyway, they buy big brands, not from this non-player who can't even support unixes.
Do you know what REAL government use for printers? Machines that RUN Solaris as their OS. Betcha those got linux "drivers". It is a whole different ball park.
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Do you travel by public transport? Read up on PING. Rim's are very distinctive with their qwerty keypad that isn't a slideout. But it might depend on income, PING is cheap and I the kids I see are not the type who can afford an iPhone. This is in Holland by the way.
ANYONE could have produced the iPod but NOBODY did. MS failed, Sony failed, Philips failed, Samsung failed, Sharp failed. EVERYONE failed. Apple with the iPod took an extremely fragmented industry and took the vast majority of the market share because they simply saw a market and ordered a million units so they got discounts nobody else could get and had high capacity for a reasonable price.
Sony was far to busy worrying about its music sales to pick up the billions in sales for a quality MP3 player they certainly could have made based on their Walkman brand name alone.
Same with the iPhone and the iPad. Everyone else tried, Apple achieved. Don't discount their achievement if you ever want to understand how to be half as successful as them.
You claim that the iPad came at the right time doesn't explain why almost a year later NOBODY else has come out with a competitor. Why not? If the time is now finally right surely it must be right for everyone else as well?
But nobody else got the balls of Jobs, to simply order a huge amount of iPads so you can get the quality hardware needed at a low price and be confident it will simply sell. THAT is why the Samsung Galaxy Tab is so small, they didn't have the balls to order large screens in volume DESPITE making those screens themselves.
This works, if EVERYTHING is streamline, the world isn't streamlined.
[.jpeg] [.jpg] [.jpe] [.jpg] [.gif] [.] []
The above where ALL extensions I found for jpeg images. Yes, the last one is empty and the gif? Just one of the many wrongly named ones. How do you deal with this uniformly? How do you write a super smooth UI that shows images if even determining what is an image is already that hard.
Link the weather to my airplane ticket? That only works if somehow the ticket data exposes location data in a way the weather plugin can understand AND if then the ticket plugin can understand the weather data. My airport is Eindhoven, my weather plugin only knows about Amsterdam (Schiphol is NEAR to it but NOT the same). So how does that work? Ah, only unified services work... nice lock-in you got going there then. This kind of stuff is a chain and chains are only as strong as the weakest link.
It is not like this kind of stuff hasn't been tried before, it is the intelligent home dream.
The dream where you put a carton of milk in your fridge and it tells a phone that it is getting old. My local supermarket has four brands of milk at least. That is ONE supermarket. If my carton I picked up at a new supermarket on the way doesn't register, the entire service is useless and I might well end up drinking spoiled milk trusting that my intelligent home would have warned me.
My flight can not be just delayed because of the weather at departure airport but also by weather enroute and arrival airport or indeed whatever area my plane is coming from in the first place. My ticket doesn't have route information or where the airplane is coming from, how can my PC check this info if even the airline company can't? And does any of this check the road conditions? How about public transport? Does it KNOW whether I will be driving, a friend, a cab or I will be going by train?
Another one, language and subtitle choices. this should be trivial as long as everyone and every coded uses ISO encoding and then agrees on how many letters. Should be trivial, it isn't. Nobody can ever agree on someone elses standard.
Oh, your services are ALL going to MS supplied? Better hand in that iPhone then, just give it to me, I will take it off your hands. GIVE IT... geez, you expect a Windows 8 experience to work out of the box with iOS? No? Then what is the point.
We can't even get MS to smoothly discover various makers MP3 players. They going to bother with any services that don't pay through the nose for it and share all their data?
There is a reason we don't have integrated services that could power such a UI. The world is filled with individuals who all like to do things their own way. See Google and its chrome window that doesn't work the same as every other window on Linux.
This kind of UI is limitted to the movies where god, the writer, knows exactly what is going to be needed to get done next.
The entire problem recently is simple. It is the MP3.
It has changed fundamentally how we listen to music, how we use music and how we expect to get it.
Napster wasn't just about not paying for music, it was about a different way to GET music. Only very recently has the music industry stopped the old practice of releasing a song for radio with a lead of a couple of weeks before it is available in the stores. The OLD logic was that they would advertise it through being played on the radio, create hype for the release , then have it released on a day with people queuing like they were selling iPhones or something. It worked because the consumer really didn't have much choice. There were few radio stations back then and you couldn't count on them playing the songs YOU wanted, so to hear your favorite artist when you wanted to, you needed a recording of it. Because only physical media existed this either meant buying one yourself OR getting a taped copy from someone else (and this happened a LOT, far more then the record industry would have you believe) OR borrowing an album from a friend (this happened a LOT as well).
There was no other choice, recording from radio was a lot of work and many stations talk(ed) through songs to try to stop this. The akwardness of LP's also meant people listened to music differently, you either had the radio on for casual listening OR had to flip a LP every twenty minutes or so for "serious" listening. While there were LP changers they were more expensive and couldn't play the B-side (at least mine couldn't, yes, I know I am old). The physical medium forced consumer behavior.
With the Sony Walkman this changed. While tapes had been available before, now people COULD play music on the go and HAD to make their own tapes (commercial tapes are to short). This helped create the era of the mix-tape, where people would create their own mix of music and share this as some sort of DJ on an individual basis. It made people see LP's not so much as things you listened to, but merely as containers for music which you then "downloaded" to your Walkman.
It was still a slow and akward process and the Walkman lost some of its original appeal. With the MP3 player it came back with a bang. Now people could create their own custom collection for hours upon hours of music. It changed the way people got their music.
Rather then having to buy an entire LP pre-filled with a music selection or get a friend to mix a tape during a slow process with a desired music collection, you could just pick music up from all sorts of places and use it in one long playback. Until you actually created your own tape with different music from different sources you just are not capable of understanding what a change a M3U playlist is. Just put a binary file on your MP3 player and it will be played. Guy at work has a new song? Copy it and you can listen to it. Among your collection, no quality loss like with a tape copy, no having to splice it in or create a new tape.
And because we could just take bits of music from anywhere, we did. My own early MP3 collections where a complete mix of different encoding settings and filename conventions, picking whatever song I liked from where I could find it.
AND then LISTENING to it, whenever and wherever I wanted it. Exactly the music I wanted, anytime, anyplace.
I don't just not buy music anymore, radio has all but disappeared from my life. If it wasn't for the radio on my MP3 player, I wouldn't even have a radio anymore. Oh wait, my clock radio has one and I use it because NOTHING wakes me up faster with the vile bitter hatred I need to get my day going then being woken by morning radio.
As for ads? Why should I listen to ads when I pick my own music? Ads are what we put up with on radio until something better came along. We no longer consume music this way.
And because we could pick up music anywhere, buying it is no longer an option. I had maybe a collection of 100-200 lp's. But that was build up over years and there were plen
Until you had to pull drivers from install CD's from outofdate versions on a korean site in chinese, to even get a input device working you payed thousands of dollars for the hardware, you ain't got a right to talk.
Oh come on, who here hasn't experienced FAR FAR worse in the past? Fill in a form three times? Ah, you poor baby. Ever had to fax your passport to some backwater place like the US back when all faxes didn't work with each other? Then find out you been trying their BBS because you got an old number? How about having to download 100mb of data on a stand alone PC with a 28.8 modem with only floppies available and no option to install any software for a fix that needs to go life NOW!
How about going into a server room to find the case padlocked by some past sys admin and NOBODY noticed in years, got to love quality hardware. BTW, sparks from an angle grinder do not go well with a dusty environment and electronics... OOPS!
RIM released a BETA that isn't all that convenient and stable... OH NO! Then don't develop for it, don't develop for one of the biggest platform that thanks to PING at least in europe is selling like hotcakes. The kids don't have iPhones, they got RIM and are typing away like mad on those keyboards.
As for limitting the amount of apps, maybe the just don't want their marketplace absolutely flooded with crap. Really, Android market gives me the warm fuzzy feeling of the days of finding software on tucows, but without that sense of high quality and service...
Basically, get of my lawn you whipper snapper. In my day we had to crawl uphill both ways throught ten meter snow and blazing heat to get a floppy that would work once if only it had been the right size for a piece of software that refused to run with any other software on our DOS machines, and we LIKED IT! Made us what we are today.
Bitter.
Not news that someone is tortured for watching a news program... just how jaded can you get?
Is it also not news if a person gets killed or wounded in a war? Well, I WANT to know, I NEED to know because else I might become one of those people who life only in their tiny self-made world filled with comforting lies.
No thanks, this is stuff that matters.
And if someone else in the world is merely detained by a polite police officer and given a cup of tea for watching the news, I STILL WANT TO FUCKING KNOW ABOUT IT.
By your logic, since the nazi's did every bad thing out there, we don't need to report on anything anymore.
The first you don't hear much about, they know the language, its stengths and its limitations and simply use it because nothing else out there can compete.
Then you got the second kind, that will be fuming at the last bit in the previous paragraph. They are forced to use it for some reason, mostly because the latest language they wish to use simply isn't supported enough. Personally, I think these are the lesser developers, the bad photographers who think if only they get a Hasselblad they will turn into a top class photographer instead of having to use this cheapo poloraid that nobody could ever possibly use to make art.
Personally I also think frameworks are silly. If you can lash up a site in 30 minutes, then the request simply isn't distinctive enough. Your site will be the Xth among thousands and fail. For the next job board site, you need to add something new, do it different, improve the process/experience else the monsterboards will simply keep the position they got.
If a wizard can write your code, you are not a developer but an assembly line worker. Granted there is a living to made at this, but please, don't call yourself a developer, you are a code monkey.
It is amusing for me to see the developers that every problem they encounter, they say: Oh if only we used tech X, this would be easy... WAY to sell your talent kiddo. It is even more amazing to see when they get away with it. Companies running everything from PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, ASP and god knows what else, in the same company and in one extreem case, the same site... I don't care how much you hate an individual language, more then one you need a BLOODY good reason, more then two and you are insane.
But hey, keep looking for the magical language that no longer requires you to express yourself to achieve what you want. If people could write amazing code in assembly then why can't you make the language the project uses just work?
Really, if you claimed that you would be a better driver if only you had a proper car, every real driver would laugh at you. Instant poloroids are used by the pro's. Some serious art is produced with nothing but paper and charcoal.
But for a website, you need the latest tech so you can never learn all its secrets. Right.
You would be to busy trying to skoop the shit out of your pants while quaking in your mothers basement.
Heroes are far and few between and NONE are on slashdot.
The Libyans ain't fighting with fancy gadgets. The twitterers are BEHIND the front lines. The real heroes are attacking army bases with tractors and rocks. Not worrying about some facebook page that won't load.
When the going gets though, the slashdotter hides under his bed. Don't pretend otherwise until you have proven yourself in battle which I hope none of us ever have to do. Because I know myself for the coward that I am.
Or make a stand, right now. KILL a US arms dealer whose weapons are RIGHT now being used to kill civilians. Yes, the US didn't know how fast to sell weapons once it lifted its own embargo. Make a stand now, in your own country and risk your life. Wanna bet you come up with a thousand and one excuses not even to post a nasty email to the politicians who approved the arms deals? It takes a coward to know one.
Funny, this. When Saddam killed Kurds, people cried out for western intervention. Then the west invades to dispose and it isn'y right either. Somalia erupts and again the same people cry out for intervention, but then complain when some war mongers get killed. Same with Afghanistan. Women get stoned, intervene! Intervention happens: GET OUT!
So, are you pro Iraq invasion? Pro-war? Pro-increased military budgets? Pro-conscription? Then what exactly do you mean with intervention.
The simple fact is that the real world is a hellishly difficult place and western governments are dealing with an electorate incapable of keeping a coherent train of thought in a single sentence. How can you make policy of any kind when one moment people want peace and war the next? When we should leave other nations alone but also stop them from doing anything we disagree with?
And do the Libyans even want intervention? By who? The reports coming from Libya are far from reliable. One thing that has been noted is that foreigners who have gotten out speak of plenty of HEARED violence and even some theft but not a single sign of the hardcore violence reported. Covering their tracks? Violence happens elsewhere or maybe the violence is over stated? Who knows for sure and you wish western officials to commit to what might turn into an extended decades long war based on this?
And if you start intervening, how soon? Intervene at any protest where people die at the hand of the police? That would have seen the US invaded by the west to stop its police killing protestors pretty much throughout its history. What of the many race riots, intervention?
Intervention is rarely used, it is just to drastic a tool.
And of course it would play right into the dictators hand, see, the rioters are lead by foreigners seeking to re-establish their colonies. You are away that Libya used to be a colony of, I believe, France? Send in the Foreign legion? Yeah, that would go over well.
No, the cries for intervention are best ignored by a politician because the exact same kids will be protesting ten seconds after you intervene about that as well. Best to ignore them.
Let the Libyans choose their own destiny. When they win, it will have been their own freedom they have won on their own terms. Imposed freedom will never taste as sweet as freedom you won yourself.
The true motivations of this guy are very clear, "we can circumvent the constitution by making everything private". Privatise everything and EVERY thing can be regulated without it coming down on the state. Right to have shelter? Sure you do, not out problem the renting industry doesn't want to rent to you. Right to counsel? Sure you do, not our problem you can't afford to pay for a private lawyer. Right to speech? Sure you do, not our fault you can't afford a spot on private television.
It is very effective and the Mafia knows this. Control the basics and you control the town. You don't have to pay protection money, your garbage just won't be collected by the private company they just happen to have a say in.
But they say, it says nowhere that your freedoms have to be available. Yes indeed, that is because they made bloody sure of that. It is how the system work. You are free from the state you elect and own yourself to the company store instead, that you don't elect.
Private enterprise is the chain that binds free men. Next time you see a repubilican claim that something should be run by private industry or go un-regulated, look further.
Remember, that republicans love freedom, their freedom to chain YOU. Because it is abundantly clear that Paypal indeed is not required to provide service to all, no US bank is. Doesn't that say it all? It means an essential service can be denied NOT after due process but simply because a board of directors decided to. In many ways I prefer outright dictatorship, at least the controls are clear then. Who made Paypal do this? Paypal has no morals on way or another, so which hidden master pulled its strings?
The anus has been used throughout history to smuggle things, this shouldn't be news to anyone who spend a second in the real world. Are you THAT out of touch with reality you never heard of drug mules swallowing rubber balls filled with drugs or the reason in jail they get you to spread them?
If this is the level of your average tin-hatter it explains a lot. You should really get out some day, talk to another human being. Learn something about the big scary world.
The prosecutors do. The police in these cases is simply a service department working for the higher ups. There is no cop who wants to do this because it simply ain't what they signed up for and no, they don't get a bonus or a brown envelope. Regular cops in the US are reasonably uncorrupt despite what some 12yr olds might think.
This kind of corruption goes far further up with elected officials who need campaign contributions and a nice job for when they retire.
And if you care so much, stop voting for the fucktards and elect someone with a heart. Of course that might mean your taxes go up, can't have that can we?
What has changed in the world? Food prices? Yes, but not for the first time. The only really knew thing is the cable leaks showing some embarrising info for the first time presented as fact. It is one thing for rumors that your leaders are fat pigs stuffing themselves and another to see it in black and white.
The only other option I can think off is that the Chinese have been very busy. And even that is doubtful. Nobody really benefits from the current revolutions except the locals and who cares about them.
US has a risk that they loose allies (although Turkey is a democracy and a solid ally).
China uses paria nations to counter US influence, if Libya becomes a democracy, bye bye paria status.
The west has been very friendly to Libya recently, happily selling weapons (a sales trip is going on right now, watch the British prime-minister) for killing the locals.
Nobody WANTED this, except the locals and again, who cares about them.
To the guy below and others who think the locals can SEE what is going on... NO... they cannot. What they see is carefully staged news events. Same as you don't see Obama stuffing himself with caviar but instead eating a McD burger. Come on, how likely is that to be real. Bill Clinton okay, but Obama? He never been in a McD in his live. Not that that makes him a bad person but it makes the outward appearance a lie.
A lot of us "know (read believe)" that some leaders are corrupt. But the leaks PROVED it. Spelled it out in plain language making it impossible to ignore, to gloss over with a speech.
North Africa is on fire. Libya is in a civil war, dicator after dictator is making concensions they never have given before ALL within a few weeks. Something has to be causing this and the only real change leading up to this has been the cable leaks.
If suddenly two black left wing women who know each other had sex with Glen Beck and then came up with a TECHINICAL rape charge, I would be highly suspicious as well. Lets not forget that this is NOT the kind of rape most of the world would regonize. They did NOT say no to sex, they said no to unprotected sex, then had sex with a condom of their OWN free will, then cried rape when the condom broke. Come on, in most of the world the police would ignore this AND that is what happened until an investigator with an agenda stepped in.
It is all a little bit to convenient. In the vast majority of the world he would not even be under investigation. Only in Sweden can you be charged with rape when a woman agrees to have sex with you.
And gosh it just happened when the US and its leaders (the banks, you don't think some black guy has anything to say do you) are highly upset with him AND we then get leaks of plans to discredit Assange. Oh yeah, those plans were of a later date. So this means NOBODY else could have come up with the same plans earlier?
No, I smell a rat.
What is this vehicle supposed to do?
If it is for the Afghan war, then the US is using the wrong tactics. America keeps thinking in bases and convoys between them. They conquer a bit of ground, build some good will, then retreat to their bases, give the enemy time to do his work, then do it all over again.
The war needs feet on the ground, soldiers out in the field, every village a few soldiers so the enemy has now where to move to. That is risky for the individual soldier because he doesn't have a full base behind him and even riskier for the good will because there is NOTHING like meeting an American to get a deep seated hatred for them but it has been proven to work in the past.
Simply put, if you put a very small unit in each village and along important roads and crossings, you remove the capability for the enemy to move unseen and plants bombs. No bombs means you can have your convoys moving on your schedule, not that of the enemy and your soldiers can concentrate on fighting, not on when the truck they are in will blow up.
But it requires a total attitude change. No more bits of the USA imported into Afghanistan but soldiers mixing with the locals and living with the locals.
You don't need all that advanced gear for that. An ordinary jeep to make travel easy and to haul supplies and a small fortification. A constant air screen overhead so any attackers can be quickly responded to in force and voila, hearts and minds can be won without the enemy coming in every night to undo your work during the day.
It is the cop on the beat vs the high tech chopper that doesn't fly at night.
But you can't win a big defence contract with that, or make the bling at the pentagon at peace time.
Look at the docu Restrepo for a total failure in strategy and tactics. The soldiers comment on it themselves, they sit in their bases and the enemy has full freedom of movement everywhere else. No patrols don't help. You need to be out there ALL the time. Especially if your patrols are so easily spotted. The enemy can't subvert the locals if you are with the locals, you can then do it all every hour of the day by showing that you are... actually that seems to be the biggest problem. WATCH Restrepo again, through the eyes of a native. Winning you over yet?
No? Then that is the real problem and no fancy gadget will help.
This whole audiophile thing is also present in the car industry. Yes, there are plenty of scams like putting a magnet around your fuel line to improve performance BUT there is another side to the story.
There are those who claim the cost difference between a Mercedes Benz and a Rolls Royce isn't worth the supposed quality difference and that nobody's ass is senstive enough to feel the difference in the seats.
This is a statement only made by those who never have sat in a Rolls Royce. I have. It is worth the extra money. No, I don't have that kind of money but if I had, it would be worth it.
Same with some parts of audiophile equipment. There is a lot of crap, like monster cables. But at the real high end you are simply talking about equipment that is better produced for marginal gains that some find worth it. Take the RR again and say that it is 50% more comfortable but 1000% more expensive. Is that worth it? Yes, to some. Just as you pay through the nose for a performance car that goes only marginally faster then my clunker (if you push it off a hill, and mind you, you got to PUSH downhill) and some find it worth the money.
I had my own demonstration of relative sound quality in a large theather where the sound engineer claimed that MP3 players made horrible noise. He was right, hook up an early iPod to a theather system and you can hear the damage MP3 and subpar hardware do. Hooked my Cowon S9 and it was passable BUT not as good as the sound from the life orchastra with zero compression and other crap.
A good sound system sounds a lot better then a crap one. A high quality sound system sounds marginally better then a good sound system. If you then listen to crap music that is compressed to hell to create the wall of sound effect, then you might say it is not worth the money.
But there are people who can hear the difference. But it is also an area where there are a lot of scams. But because throwing a magnet in your tank is a scam doesn't mean a Koenigsegg Trevita is a scam.
Just try this excersise, listen with a half decent sound system to the difference between the voice of a reasonably talented pop starlet with big tits and a REALLY good singer selected for nothing but his/her voice. Even singing the same piece. You will hear a difference. Same with better audio equipment. But that isn't to be found in gold cables or other gadgets but speakers that fit correctly so they don't vibrate and are varied enough and fast enough to produce the sound.
But this doesn't have to cost a fortune. But we are talking to people here who think the speakers in their cheap TV produce a decent sound... there are the monster cable suckers and there are the completly deaf. Both should be whipped.
I know that some people don't get the meaning of simple words and we call them republicans. But failing to grasp the meaning of a single digit number?
Exactly what is so confusing about "7"? Windows Phone 7. That is the name. Can you even grasp the notion that this means there was a version 6? A version 5 etc etc? And unlike Vista, 6 and 6.5 were named just that for phones.
MS is a decades old company with experience in PC's, phones, consoles and they can't get a simple update right on a very high profile product.
This is however the reason MS does so poorly in this area. They keep listening to fanboys who excuse everything even if it means redefining numbers and just don't get that they need to work harder in a market where there is competition. They only did well on the console race because their opponents were to busy shooting themselves in the foot.
Everything you said has been said before to explain why North African countries won't rebel. And then they did.
New game, new rules. Why do you think western leaders allowed themselves to be photographed hugging the Libyan leader whatever his name is (see comment below) and indeed the British PM is on a weapon selling trip while the weapons sold in the previous trip are busy killing civilians? A bit embarrassing?
You also seem to have forgotten the violent repression of the earlier uprising in Iran. These are not the actions of a government willing to change. Neither are there continued attempts at making nukes. It was Libya that stopped, not Iran.
Really, LOOK at what is happening. Something has changed. Even if Iran stays the same for now, the Middle East has changed. The power balance is gone. If Egypt and Tunesia truly become democratic they would side far closer to Turkey then dictatorships. That is going to leave the remaining dictatorships far more isolated. Rewatch the fall of the Soviet Union. Once dominoes start falling,it is hard to stop.
I think all bets are off and considering Iran's reaction so far, they think the same thing. Why else block access to these events if they are sure their own people will stand behind the government?
She knew her son and his best mate were WAY to close. But still, nobody should have to see two naked slashdotters humping. NOBODY!
Here they are raging against the great satan intervening in Islamic countries all the time, to little effect and then voila, couple of weeks and their Muslim brothers put the entire region on fire and overthrow government after government. Some in Iran must be pissing their pants by now. The world is changing and so far NOT to the extreme. All those cries for democracy in Muslim nations, that just ain't right is it. No burning of US flags, no cries for battle against Zionists. Just cries for democracy. Crazy stuff AND it is working.
The changes of it all working out okay are... well lets face it, nobody knows what the fuck is going to happen, if you had created a scenario in which North Africa would be in one big movement to overthrow local leaders last year, people would have told you to stop being a hollywood fantast and get a grip on reality. Just look at the map, a ribbon of rebellion and the end is not in sight. If Libya also falls... well then even outrageous violence doesn't work anymore or for that matter giving at least some of the oil wealth to the general public (Gadafhi might (now) be completely insane, but he was not as corrupt as some of his counter parts and at least the west of the country generally benefitted a bit from the oil income)
So, lets give the Iran cyber army its last few twitches before this guy will be in front of the firing squad for his allegiance to a overthrown regime.
There have been a LOT of Linux distro's over the years and more then one has been the darling and then lost in the crowd. Once Red Hat was the darling as well, then it got to the point that it didn't move fast enough on some releases, RPM dependency hell was getting old and people looked for something better.
Mandrake/Mandriva/whatever, Suse have been in the same position. Then one was hailed for its excellent hardware manager, then one for getting sound to work from the start and later Wifi.
Ubuntu has a path, it's path just as all the other distro's is based on what its controllers think is the best. By nature, it will be VERY rare for your idea of the best path to be the same as someone elses.
Do I agree with the moves Ubuntu has made? No, not really. Xorg is a beast but many of us actually make use of one its more obscure capabilties. Not everyone of us thinks a single screen or dual-head on a single GPU is enough. The unity interface seems yet another attempt to start something new which will suffer from lack of testing and not be able to deal with all the edge cases that are out there.
But does it matter? If Ubuntu guesses wrong, then it will simply become another also ran and someone else will take over. Or not.
The beauty about opensource is that ultimately the software does NOT have to be commercially successful to be successful. If ONE user, even the developer himself, finds it useful, then it is useful. Ignore all those "this is the year of Linux on the desktop" people. The very nature of opensource means that this will never happen (it would be Distro X on the desktop) and it just doesn't matter.
The simple fact is that bone headed choices that ruin a distro are nothing new. Just ask MS about ME, Bob, Vista and all its mobile versions. Just that somehow people accept they got no choice when it comes to MS software but think every opensource developer should be at their beg and call.
He! Apple fanboys, how much say did you have about the switch to OSX? He! MS fanboys, soundblaster support in Vista/7, did you give approval for the sound system to be overhauled and make your soundcard useless?
Gosh no. But Ubuntu changes the default layout that you can easily switch back and the sky is falling.
Don't like it? Then you as a user have to accept it because that is what users do. I don't go to McD and insist they serve a tofu-burger do I? No. Then why do you insist into going into the soupkitchen and insisting on what they should serve? Are you that entitled you can decide what other people should do with their time?
Ubuntu is only hated by those who have an agenda, usually the downfall of MS. The real unix/linux users simply see it as a distro that did remarkably well in the "just works" department but does need work if you want to get anything special done.
Lets see. Faust got in a exchange for his immortal soul: Satan himself as his servant.
A facebook befriending gets you a shared wifi hotspot.
Somehow I don't think this will make as good a story.
Probably also at the end God will slap you.
Egypt is a popular holiday destination for Israeli's. Remember that haters will always exist but most normal people are normal people. If Germans can visit Israel, Japanese can visit Korea/China, Americans can visit pretty much anywhere, Canadians can visit the US, Belgians can visit Holland etc etc then Jews can visit Egypt.
The real feelings in the middle east are far more complex then fits in a Fox news flash. In fact it is YOU that cares what religion a founder of a website is or even what the religion might be of a guy who worked on a cpu. YOU noticed this, not some random Egyptian whose own believes ain't even known.
Those protests you might have seen burning American/Israeli flags? Well, we know now what they really were. Staged protests not supported by the masses. We SAW what happened when the masses think something and gosh, no signs of hatred for the Zionists or the great Satan but for their own corrupt MUSLIM leaders.
Al Queda failed. They tried to install hatred and accomplished nothing. Peaceful protests without hate for other races/religions changed the region in a matter of weeks.
Do you judge the US by the KKK?
What is intresting to note is that their has been a regime change in Germany that might well be the cause of this. The switch was made under a left-wing government. Recently a right-wing government came into being and MS made some promises to invest and gosh, a switch back to windows is announced... how surprising.
But the war is not yet lost. The right-wing government has been clobbered in recent elections and the left is smelling blood and asking questions already, the same questions being asked here such as what the hell the driver issue is supposed to be. The German left-wing parties ain't swallowing the BS either. Don't expect this to be a done deal.
Really, this isn't hard, it is government. Just write in your spec it needs Linux support and then buy the printer that has it. This isn't some small shop that has to buy whatever is available in the local shop, it is the government. Anyway, they buy big brands, not from this non-player who can't even support unixes.
Do you know what REAL government use for printers? Machines that RUN Solaris as their OS. Betcha those got linux "drivers". It is a whole different ball park.