"With its sweetener linked to obesity, some cancers and diabetes, the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) doesn't want you to think 'fructose' when you see high fructose corn syrup in your soda, ketchup or pickles. Instead, the AP reports, the CRA submitted an application to the FDA, hoping to change the name of their top-selling product to 'corn sugar.'"
What's in a name? High-fructose corn syrup by any other name would taste as sweet... and still make your cancer cells multiply.
And here thought that fraud and false advertising was illegal in this country. If the Feds go for this then they're not doing their jobs.
But you still need to sense red, green, and blue, which means three sensors per pixel. So, no. It's not triple the resolution, it is the same resolution. One sensor per pixel will give you monochrome.
Here's a question: how do you get an image out of a simple array of photosensitive elements?
Insightful??? Typical, non-real world developer comment. A virtual machine is NO USE for testing particular hardware setups, timing issues, system quirks, and a thousand other potential problems. You're like the idiots who are shocked when their code runs great in the debugger and fails horribly without it.
Yeah, that's why I have three machines at work running different OSes, so I can test the software for which I'm responsible in different environments at the same time. Even then, it's not a perfect reflection of what a customer's environment will be like, but I still wouldn't want a VM adding one more level of complexity to the mix. And a lot of what we do involves custom hardware and drivers.
Still, for many things the GP is correct: if you simply need to run specific existing applications in order to get your job done, virtual machines can be a great solution. If the software you write is pretty well divorced from any hardware or OS-dependent concerns, a VM can work great there too. Like anything else, use the right tool for the job.
Your gf wouldn't have switched on her own - you had to do it. That sort of proves my point, no?
Well, yes and no. In her case, she wanted something better but didn't know which way to jump. Anything was better at that point, from her perspective. But yes, generally I agree: for most people it's a matter of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
That's why I think Linux will be a long time eroding Microsoft's desktop marketshare, but I think we're going to see continuing advances in the market for portable devices.
Thank you for providing the perfect retort to anyone who challenges my assertion that Linux has an arrogant, snobbish support base.
Whoever said a random Anonymous Coward on Slashdot counted as a support base (no offense to the GP)?
If your reason for not learning something that might benefit you is because some people you communicated with were "snobs", well, that's just ridiculous. There's plenty of information out there to help you past any problem you might have, and you won't even have to have your ego bruised if you don't want to. You will, however, need a willingness to learn, to not require that information be spoon-fed to you. That's true with any operating system, even Windows.
Besides, all the current major Linux distros have pretty much point-and-click installation nowadays. Really, it's come a long way. My personal favorite for ease of installation is probably OpenSUSE, but that's just me. That's what I'm typing this on, and I didn't have to issue a single CLI command to install it, install Chrome, Firefox and a couple of dozen other apps. So far as ease of software installation goes... well, you're obviously a few years out of date. Windows should be this easy, and frankly the entire idea of repositories just makes life sooooo much easier than hunting down individual Windows installers off the Web (what do you think the Android Marketplace is, for example? It's a repository with a fancy GUI.) Even more impressive is how many multi-platform apps are in these repositories, programs that are available on both Windows and Linux (although the Windows versions you'd have to go to a Web site somewhere and manually download.)
The only place I've found where I wish there'd be some greater robustness in Linux is video. Windows (at least from XP onward) seems to handle multiple video cards and multi-headed displays much more cleanly than any recent Linux distro I've tried. I was playing with the X config files in my OpenSUSE box the other day, trying to get my second monitor light up. Screwed around for an hour or so, and by the time I was done I had no video at all on either monitor. Fortunately I was able to Ctl-Alt-F1 to a console and restore from some copies.
Actually, from my experience if you have a multiport video board you'll probably be okay. It's when I tried using two separate video cards that I got into trouble, yet XP had no problem with the same configuration.
Under windows, downloading and installing software, even using the built-in installer, is a confusing nightmare.
More to the point, when was the last time you had an application on a Linux/Unix box modify the operating system and break other applications? And that's not counting the number of times I've uninstalled a Windows app and had that break something. Yes, I know, Microsoft finally addressed their self-inflicted DLL hell by allowing side-loading and adding support for manifests as of XP SP2, but there are still a ton of applications out there that do things the old way.
Not blaming the OS at all. However, it is a reality and a fact. It is should that should be considered when choosing an OS. How often do we hear here on Slashdot "Well, I'd use Linux, but I play games and don't want to dual boot"
More correctly, "Well, I'd use Linux, but I play games and I'm too lazy to dual boot". I personally don't care for dual-boot systems: too much chance of ending up with one or the other OS unbootable. I just swap hard drives with a removable bay. It works well enough for me.
While I agree that Windows 7 is superior to Ubuntu in many respects, this comparison is weak because it's a Windows 7 user in a relatively foreign land.
I'm used to various flavours of Linux, and Windows 7 seems impressive in some respects, but strangeness makes it feel awkward sometimes.
You need to make the comparison between going from Windows XP (still the dominant Microsoft operating system) to either Windows 7 or a comparable Linux distro. Both Windows 7 and Linux are going to be very different from the perspective of that ex-XP user... but because Windows 7 is so different, either way he's going to hit a significant learning curve. I felt the same way when I first experienced the "Office Ribbon" when I was upgraded at work. It thoroughly irritated me because it was so different and I had things to get done now. So I went back to OpenOffice because it was more familiar, more like Microsoft Office than the new Office was.
Even among PC Pro’s technically literate readership, only 4% are running a Linux OS[...]
[...]then venture into Ubuntu’s equivalent of the command line – dubbed Terminal – and enter a couple of lines of code to start the installation. Hardly a user-friendly experience, and an unwanted throwback to the days of Windows 3.1.
Yeah...technical literacy at its finest...
Not very accurate either. The last four distros I've installed recently (OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Mepis) didn't require any command line operations at all. I just booted their Live CDs, clicked on the Installer icon and went from there. Not sure where they're getting that from. I find that the typical Linux graphical installer wants a little more information than Windows usually does (partitioning, for example, but they all offered reasonable defaults and didn't require the user to know anything about it) but not by much, and found it generally painless.
Sounds like they were just making stuff up to make installing Linux sound more difficult than it is. No, I didn't RTFA.
Keep marketing linux as a "replacement" for windows and you guarantee to always fail. Market it for what it is - better for many types of situations, but definitely not a rsimple eplacement for windows any more than osx is.
Otherwise you're fighting the battle on the other side's home turf - and they're bigger and more entrenched.
And when people try ubuntu and realize that it is not necessarily a matter of it being a replacement os, they tar all linux distros with the same fail.
Well, as more and more applications that people typically use start moving off the computer and into the "cloud" (whatever the hell that means at any given time) the superiority of one desktop OS over another will be less of an issue. Take my girlfriend for instance: she basically uses a lot of online services of one kind or another, although she prefers Thunderbird for her email, doesn't really care for Chrome so I leave her on Firefox. So far she's been through Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, Mepis, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu... and barely even noticed it. "Dear, did you upgrade my computer again? It looks a little different." Granted, I made the effort to port all her bookmarks over and make her desktops look similar, but the point is that for a lot of people the operating system is starting to become transparent, or nearly so. If she can get to her browser and her email, she's a happy person. God help me if she can't.
That is what has always terrified Microsoft: the true commoditization of the desktop operating system.
Sad, but true.... I am not regular home user, i am actually a developer, but nevertheless, i also play a lot of games, and thus i am forced to have both OS........ In fact, i solved my problems by having a lots of VM's. Windows, Linux, you named it, i have it.
I'm a developer too, but I just have either another computer, or a removable drive with Windows on it that I can pop in when I need to use Microsoft's stuff.
When you put your data out there... well, it's out there. Your choice. THis was Google's responsibility.. what was their punishment ? nothing.
Now that makes no sense whatsoever. Really, it doesn't. On the one hand, you don't want Google to have the power that comes with such a vast accumulation of information because you're a. afraid of any organization having it and b. afraid of what happens with abusive employees misusing it, and then, on the other hand, you seem to want to imbue Google with the powers of law enforcement and a court of law. Is that really what you want? Google is a corporation, nothing more, and it's ability to "punish" an employee is pretty much limited to firing his ass. If anything more happens to that individual it will be at the hands of actual cops, and you can bet your bottom dollar the Google will provide them will any information that it can, if nothing else to help mitigate any liability.
I know you just want to rag on Google for this, and that's fine... this shouldn't be taken lightly, I agree. But the same thing and worse has happened at every major online service provider... we only hear about the most egregious ones. Matter of fact, what's more scary are the breaches we don't hear about that involve truly important data (not just a few emails) because nobody detects them and the perpetrators get away with it. Data theft at organizations like banks, credit card companies, Lexis-Nexis, Choicepoint and other aggregators that could be used to commit identity theft or other crimes are where you should worry.
notorious "if you want privacy, you have something to hide" remark.
Citation needed? The only similar quote I remember was more along the lines of "if you have something to hide, don't put it on google's servers (or anyone else's servers) because the government can force us to give it up"
Google should of stepped it up a bit and sent this guy off to jail to set an example.
Uh... what? You do realize that a publicly-held corporation is not a law enforcement agency or a court of law, and can't actually send anyone to jail? The guy was fired, the company reported the incident, and if the cops think they have anything on the guy that will stick they'll charge him with something. That's how it works. The best an employer can do is to co-operate with law enforcement.
Besides, if you're that concerned about people reading your emails, run your own server, it's not hard, and the software is free.
He no longer has access to Google. He's no longer in the program where he first met the teens. What else would you want them to do? Reading the article it does not seem that he did anything illegal that the police can charge. His position allowed him to access the information but he violated the company policies.
That's the thing isn't it... besides, good luck finding another job administering anything more than the computers in a dentist's office. Some people want to jump on the "Do No Evil" bandwagon here but I don't think that's the case. Stupid or bad people sometimes get into positions of responsibility. Google got rid of the man promptly, which I think was the right thing to do here. Besides, given all the laws we now have on the books regarding this kind of thing, my guess is this guy will get charged with something, and may well serve some jail time. That should be enough to satisfy anyone's need for a pound of flesh.
It's hard to control a free man who is innocent of any wrongdoing. He'll just tell you to fuck off. But if you make that free man a criminal, even if he doesn't know it yet, you've got him by the balls.
I think you just paraphrased Ayn Rand.
Damn! I knew I heard that somewhere before.
Besides, if the current state of affairs in the United States is any indication, she was dead right.
This sounds comparable to firing a bullet from a gun which seems like it would be a rather violent launch.
Depends. If you used a linear accelerator (e.g. a mass driver) of sufficient length, you could accelerate at one G. You'd probably want more than that, though, to keep the size of the launcher manageable.
If I've learned one thing from Superman, it's that the formula for flight is up, up, and away. Therefor it is 2/3 up, and 1/3 away.
Yes, but I understand that for other countries the formula may be different. Remember, he was all about Truth, Justice and the American way. So, for example, when Russia wants to launch a spacecraft, they have to use Up, Up, and the Soviet way, which as we all know, is somewhat different.
Slashdot Mirror
"With its sweetener linked to obesity, some cancers and diabetes, the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) doesn't want you to think 'fructose' when you see high fructose corn syrup in your soda, ketchup or pickles. Instead, the AP reports, the CRA submitted an application to the FDA, hoping to change the name of their top-selling product to 'corn sugar.'"
What's in a name? High-fructose corn syrup by any other name would taste as sweet ... and still make your cancer cells multiply.
And here thought that fraud and false advertising was illegal in this country. If the Feds go for this then they're not doing their jobs.
He may not have invented the comsat, but he did invent the waterbed!
Arguable as important a technological and social advance as the geosynchronous satellite, I'd say.
I don't know.
AAArrrrrrrrrrgh.
Damn, guys, nicely worked in Monty Python reference.
30cm? That's silly, why didn't they go with transparent aluminum? Aquariums have been using it since '86...
Yes, but how do we know they didn't invent the stuff?
But you still need to sense red, green, and blue, which means three sensors per pixel. So, no. It's not triple the resolution, it is the same resolution. One sensor per pixel will give you monochrome.
Here's a question: how do you get an image out of a simple array of photosensitive elements?
Insightful??? Typical, non-real world developer comment. A virtual machine is NO USE for testing particular hardware setups, timing issues, system quirks, and a thousand other potential problems. You're like the idiots who are shocked when their code runs great in the debugger and fails horribly without it.
Yeah, that's why I have three machines at work running different OSes, so I can test the software for which I'm responsible in different environments at the same time. Even then, it's not a perfect reflection of what a customer's environment will be like, but I still wouldn't want a VM adding one more level of complexity to the mix. And a lot of what we do involves custom hardware and drivers.
Still, for many things the GP is correct: if you simply need to run specific existing applications in order to get your job done, virtual machines can be a great solution. If the software you write is pretty well divorced from any hardware or OS-dependent concerns, a VM can work great there too. Like anything else, use the right tool for the job.
Your gf wouldn't have switched on her own - you had to do it. That sort of proves my point, no?
Well, yes and no. In her case, she wanted something better but didn't know which way to jump. Anything was better at that point, from her perspective. But yes, generally I agree: for most people it's a matter of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
That's why I think Linux will be a long time eroding Microsoft's desktop marketshare, but I think we're going to see continuing advances in the market for portable devices.
Thank you for providing the perfect retort to anyone who challenges my assertion that Linux has an arrogant, snobbish support base.
Whoever said a random Anonymous Coward on Slashdot counted as a support base (no offense to the GP)?
... well, you're obviously a few years out of date. Windows should be this easy, and frankly the entire idea of repositories just makes life sooooo much easier than hunting down individual Windows installers off the Web (what do you think the Android Marketplace is, for example? It's a repository with a fancy GUI.) Even more impressive is how many multi-platform apps are in these repositories, programs that are available on both Windows and Linux (although the Windows versions you'd have to go to a Web site somewhere and manually download.)
If your reason for not learning something that might benefit you is because some people you communicated with were "snobs", well, that's just ridiculous. There's plenty of information out there to help you past any problem you might have, and you won't even have to have your ego bruised if you don't want to. You will, however, need a willingness to learn, to not require that information be spoon-fed to you. That's true with any operating system, even Windows.
Besides, all the current major Linux distros have pretty much point-and-click installation nowadays. Really, it's come a long way. My personal favorite for ease of installation is probably OpenSUSE, but that's just me. That's what I'm typing this on, and I didn't have to issue a single CLI command to install it, install Chrome, Firefox and a couple of dozen other apps. So far as ease of software installation goes
The only place I've found where I wish there'd be some greater robustness in Linux is video. Windows (at least from XP onward) seems to handle multiple video cards and multi-headed displays much more cleanly than any recent Linux distro I've tried. I was playing with the X config files in my OpenSUSE box the other day, trying to get my second monitor light up. Screwed around for an hour or so, and by the time I was done I had no video at all on either monitor. Fortunately I was able to Ctl-Alt-F1 to a console and restore from some copies.
Actually, from my experience if you have a multiport video board you'll probably be okay. It's when I tried using two separate video cards that I got into trouble, yet XP had no problem with the same configuration.
Under windows, downloading and installing software, even using the built-in installer, is a confusing nightmare.
More to the point, when was the last time you had an application on a Linux/Unix box modify the operating system and break other applications? And that's not counting the number of times I've uninstalled a Windows app and had that break something. Yes, I know, Microsoft finally addressed their self-inflicted DLL hell by allowing side-loading and adding support for manifests as of XP SP2, but there are still a ton of applications out there that do things the old way.
Not blaming the OS at all. However, it is a reality and a fact. It is should that should be considered when choosing an OS. How often do we hear here on Slashdot "Well, I'd use Linux, but I play games and don't want to dual boot"
More correctly, "Well, I'd use Linux, but I play games and I'm too lazy to dual boot". I personally don't care for dual-boot systems: too much chance of ending up with one or the other OS unbootable. I just swap hard drives with a removable bay. It works well enough for me.
While I agree that Windows 7 is superior to Ubuntu in many respects, this comparison is weak because it's a Windows 7 user in a relatively foreign land.
I'm used to various flavours of Linux, and Windows 7 seems impressive in some respects, but strangeness makes it feel awkward sometimes.
You need to make the comparison between going from Windows XP (still the dominant Microsoft operating system) to either Windows 7 or a comparable Linux distro. Both Windows 7 and Linux are going to be very different from the perspective of that ex-XP user ... but because Windows 7 is so different, either way he's going to hit a significant learning curve. I felt the same way when I first experienced the "Office Ribbon" when I was upgraded at work. It thoroughly irritated me because it was so different and I had things to get done now. So I went back to OpenOffice because it was more familiar, more like Microsoft Office than the new Office was.
Even among PC Pro’s technically literate readership, only 4% are running a Linux OS[...]
[...]then venture into Ubuntu’s equivalent of the command line – dubbed Terminal – and enter a couple of lines of code to start the installation. Hardly a user-friendly experience, and an unwanted throwback to the days of Windows 3.1.
Yeah...technical literacy at its finest...
Not very accurate either. The last four distros I've installed recently (OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Mepis) didn't require any command line operations at all. I just booted their Live CDs, clicked on the Installer icon and went from there. Not sure where they're getting that from. I find that the typical Linux graphical installer wants a little more information than Windows usually does (partitioning, for example, but they all offered reasonable defaults and didn't require the user to know anything about it) but not by much, and found it generally painless.
Sounds like they were just making stuff up to make installing Linux sound more difficult than it is. No, I didn't RTFA.
Keep marketing linux as a "replacement" for windows and you guarantee to always fail. Market it for what it is - better for many types of situations, but definitely not a rsimple eplacement for windows any more than osx is.
Otherwise you're fighting the battle on the other side's home turf - and they're bigger and more entrenched.
And when people try ubuntu and realize that it is not necessarily a matter of it being a replacement os, they tar all linux distros with the same fail.
Well, as more and more applications that people typically use start moving off the computer and into the "cloud" (whatever the hell that means at any given time) the superiority of one desktop OS over another will be less of an issue. Take my girlfriend for instance: she basically uses a lot of online services of one kind or another, although she prefers Thunderbird for her email, doesn't really care for Chrome so I leave her on Firefox. So far she's been through Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, Mepis, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu ... and barely even noticed it. "Dear, did you upgrade my computer again? It looks a little different." Granted, I made the effort to port all her bookmarks over and make her desktops look similar, but the point is that for a lot of people the operating system is starting to become transparent, or nearly so. If she can get to her browser and her email, she's a happy person. God help me if she can't.
That is what has always terrified Microsoft: the true commoditization of the desktop operating system.
Sad, but true.... I am not regular home user, i am actually a developer, but nevertheless, i also play a lot of games, and thus i am forced to have both OS........ In fact, i solved my problems by having a lots of VM's. Windows, Linux, you named it, i have it.
I'm a developer too, but I just have either another computer, or a removable drive with Windows on it that I can pop in when I need to use Microsoft's stuff.
When you put your data out there... well, it's out there. Your choice. THis was Google's responsibility.. what was their punishment ? nothing.
Now that makes no sense whatsoever. Really, it doesn't. On the one hand, you don't want Google to have the power that comes with such a vast accumulation of information because you're a. afraid of any organization having it and b. afraid of what happens with abusive employees misusing it, and then, on the other hand, you seem to want to imbue Google with the powers of law enforcement and a court of law. Is that really what you want? Google is a corporation, nothing more, and it's ability to "punish" an employee is pretty much limited to firing his ass. If anything more happens to that individual it will be at the hands of actual cops, and you can bet your bottom dollar the Google will provide them will any information that it can, if nothing else to help mitigate any liability.
... this shouldn't be taken lightly, I agree. But the same thing and worse has happened at every major online service provider ... we only hear about the most egregious ones. Matter of fact, what's more scary are the breaches we don't hear about that involve truly important data (not just a few emails) because nobody detects them and the perpetrators get away with it. Data theft at organizations like banks, credit card companies, Lexis-Nexis, Choicepoint and other aggregators that could be used to commit identity theft or other crimes are where you should worry.
I know you just want to rag on Google for this, and that's fine
notorious "if you want privacy, you have something to hide" remark.
Citation needed? The only similar quote I remember was more along the lines of "if you have something to hide, don't put it on google's servers (or anyone else's servers) because the government can force us to give it up"
Which was an honest appraisal of the situation.
Google should of stepped it up a bit and sent this guy off to jail to set an example.
Uh ... what? You do realize that a publicly-held corporation is not a law enforcement agency or a court of law, and can't actually send anyone to jail? The guy was fired, the company reported the incident, and if the cops think they have anything on the guy that will stick they'll charge him with something. That's how it works. The best an employer can do is to co-operate with law enforcement.
Besides, if you're that concerned about people reading your emails, run your own server, it's not hard, and the software is free.
He no longer has access to Google. He's no longer in the program where he first met the teens. What else would you want them to do? Reading the article it does not seem that he did anything illegal that the police can charge. His position allowed him to access the information but he violated the company policies.
That's the thing isn't it ... besides, good luck finding another job administering anything more than the computers in a dentist's office. Some people want to jump on the "Do No Evil" bandwagon here but I don't think that's the case. Stupid or bad people sometimes get into positions of responsibility. Google got rid of the man promptly, which I think was the right thing to do here. Besides, given all the laws we now have on the books regarding this kind of thing, my guess is this guy will get charged with something, and may well serve some jail time. That should be enough to satisfy anyone's need for a pound of flesh.
It's hard to control a free man who is innocent of any wrongdoing. He'll just tell you to fuck off. But if you make that free man a criminal, even if he doesn't know it yet, you've got him by the balls.
I think you just paraphrased Ayn Rand.
Damn! I knew I heard that somewhere before.
Besides, if the current state of affairs in the United States is any indication, she was dead right.
IIRC he's generally credited with the concept of communications satellites
Nope. That was Arthur C. Clarke [lakdiva.org], another of the grand masters of hard science-fiction.
Ahh, right you are! Clarke and Heinlein are two of my favorite sci-fi authors. I really should have gotten that right. :/
Strat
Me too. If there's a story one of them wrote that I haven't read, well, somebody please tell me so I can read it.
You'd end up nothing more than a Gaussian blur.
Yes, but you could use a CSI-style reverse algorithmic to recover the pilot's data.
IIRC he's generally credited with the concept of communications satellites
Nope. That was Arthur C. Clarke, another of the grand masters of hard science-fiction.
This sounds comparable to firing a bullet from a gun which seems like it would be a rather violent launch.
Depends. If you used a linear accelerator (e.g. a mass driver) of sufficient length, you could accelerate at one G. You'd probably want more than that, though, to keep the size of the launcher manageable.
If I've learned one thing from Superman, it's that the formula for flight is up, up, and away. Therefor it is 2/3 up, and 1/3 away.
Yes, but I understand that for other countries the formula may be different. Remember, he was all about Truth, Justice and the American way. So, for example, when Russia wants to launch a spacecraft, they have to use Up, Up, and the Soviet way, which as we all know, is somewhat different.
Even a slow nice steady boost will get you to orbit without needing to hit escape velocity.
Well, sure, you could do at a walking pace ... if you had the reaction mass.