...with something that actually works. (Maybe Usenet will make a comeback? I think I still have a Telebit modem in the garage...) Seriously, with DRM on everything, software in control with no concept of "fair use", the internet is pretty much useless. Already you can't even paste URLs of the original article in some cases -- not EVEN excerpts or screen scrapes but the actual URL -- without getting dinged on copyright. (Which just tells me that some people don't know or care how the internet really works.)
To effectively DRM screen shots would probably require strict prohibition on "side-loading" open source software, confining everyone to a strictly managed official "store". You can see the major OS players going that direction.
And you know, when everything is DRM'd, everything will cost money to have eyeballs on it. (Otherwise, what's the point?) And the problem with charging money for content is that the content owners are typically blinded by dollar signs and price their content out of market. And then complain that their business is failing. (It must be pirates.)
In no time at all, there won't be anything but pr0n. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much 70% of current traffic, so maybe things won't change that much.
Reasonable criticisms, especially compared to, say, Windows 7, but these are changes that Windows 10 inherited from Windows 8(.1).
Mind you, they're still incredibly annoying. And the way Windows 10 begs me to use Edge instead of whatever browser I happen to be using, and keeps insisting that my life would be so much better if I'd only use Cortana, makes me really really wish that the application for which I have to use Windows ran on, well, anything else.
But as far as Windows goes, the base OS, what I note is that 10 seems to work well, and that compatibility with older apps has actually improved from Windows 7.
So, Windows 10 is the least odious from a usability standpoint (leaving privacy aside for a moment) of the last four releases [1], and they ax the Windows boss? It's almost like Microsoft wants their users to suffer.
[1] I'm counting 8.1 as a major release, as it was marketed as such, even though it changed the UI in only the most trivial fashion.
I agree with other responders that running Windows in a VM would probably be sufficient, but I'm old, and tend to want some kind of physical solution. My first thought was having a laptop with a removable drive bay (Apple need not apply) and swap out SSDs between your "work" instance and your "don't care if it's pwned" instance.
Barring that, I'd encrypt my main Windows drive and boot Mint (substitute your Linux of choice, or even Windows) off a low profile flash drive for browsing and email in sketchy environments. I see low profile thumb drives are up to 128 Gb now. With two empty USB ports on your laptop, you could have an instance running on a quarter terabyte without touching your main drive.
Enlarging on that, now that I think about it, your Windows instance could contain a clean image of your "burner" OS, for easy restoration should it get pwned in an airport. Or to refresh regularly just on general principles.
I'd go with the graphic novels / compilations rather than try to start with individual comics, as with a compilation you're more likely to start at the beginning of a story arc.
As to which titles to read, that's a very individual choice. I can tell you what titles *I* liked, but your mileage may vary. Wildly.
I hadn't really followed the DC universe very closely in the last couple of decades, but ended up picking up the Supergirl: Power and Supergirl: Identity compilations a couple years ago and really enjoyed them. Kara is a more complex and tragic character in these stories than I'd remembered her being.
The first two Marvel: The Ultimates compilations are pretty good. Each is a complete story, of the "what if super heroes existed in the real world" type that Watchmen started in the 1980's. Extremely violent, character deaths, creepy in parts.
Just about anything by Neil Gaimen. Sandman, Coraline, Stardust, "How to talk to girls at parties", American Gods.
Pretty much any of this century's Green Lantern Corps compilations. Well written, engaging characters.
Alan Moore's Miracleman (Marvelman) compilations are finally available, after being in legal hell for a couple decades. Well worth reading. Start with "A dream of flying". It starts out as a straight superhero story, but rapidly takes a really dark, science-fiction turn.
In my opinion, Marvel had a good thing going with the Ultimate universe (Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four, The Ultimates, Ultimate Iron Man) until Marvel apparently got bored with the universe and destroyed it. The early Ultimate graphic novels were mature, interesting and lacked all the decades of baggage that their regular titles had.
And finally, I have to put in a word for Schlock Mercenary, a "comic space opera" webcomic that starts out a gag-a-day but over the years has become a complex and compelling science fiction story in a very plausible, scientific framework. The online strips are available as softbound compilations. Also recommended is the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries, the beat-up edition filled with handwritten notes from the Schlock characters who had previously owned it.
Also check out the Pibgorn webcomic. Start with "the girl in the coffee cup".
[...] It seems pretty clear that the purpose of this change is basically to advertise Edge: Microsoft is dissatisfied with how many people are choosing different browsers, [...]
...and may by these actions have the effect of driving people away from Microsoft's mail app. Which I personally don't use. In fact, I'm a little leery of using any Microsoft app because I'm never sure if it'll conform to my set preferences or do something completely different.
But what do I know? I see the OS as a framework to manage resources and load the programs *I* want to use, and *not* as some kind of interconnected environment of programs that the OS manufacturer wants me to use. Besides, Microsoft never did get how to do "seamless environments". "Seamless" to them has always been "you will be forced to use this set of apps no matter how craptastic they are or how badly they work together".
I don't use Windows 10 mail, Live Mail, or anything with the words "mail" and "windows" or "microsoft" in the same title. Previously it was because I happen to like the mailer I've been using (in various versions) since the nineties, but now I have an even better reason -- currently, when I click on a link, it opens in Firefox. Or Chrome, whatever one has one's default browser set to.
I understand Microsoft wanting people to use all Microsoft products whenever possible, but I have to wonder -- is this a sign that Edge isn't reaching estimated levels of popularity?
This is a real question. I don't have anything against Intel, and my current workstation has Intel Inside.
Does Intel have anything that plays well in the phone/tablet market? My understanding is that Qualcom and/or Samsung don't own the market just because they were there first, but because their products are designed specifically for the application, whereas Intel's offerings in that arena all appear to be relatively low power x86 chips. Key term being "relatively". Like Microsoft's early struggles with hand held devices, trying to shoehorn a desktop OS into something with a 4 inch screen, Intel appeared to be trying to leverage existing designs in a market where they weren't appropriate.
I could be missing something, but it seems like Intel's largest current issue is that they make the best possible processor for an increasingly smaller market, and don't make anything particularly appropriate for the most aggressively expanding markets. An issue they share to a certain extent with Microsoft.
It'll be interesting to see what happens should Intel acquire Broadcom. I think there's a good chance -- maybe 40% that after acquisition Intel will drop or severely de-emphasize Broadcom's SoC products in favor of one of their lower power laptop x86 processors. And fail miserably at it.
I think the number was 40. Anyway, I guess perpetually 15 years away is better than perpetually 40 years away. Especially with this generation's shorter attention span.
But seriously, this reminds me (entirely from memory as I don't have it in front of me) of Tom Wolfe's book on modern architecture, where he describes the first boxy modern skyscrapers with floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall windows. Tenants would put lamps or trash cans, bookcases, anything in front of the windows to create a demarcation between the office and empty air 20+ floors up. The architects would come by and patiently remove the obstacles and chide the tenants for spoiling the look.
The point, as I recall, being, what looks cool and progressive doesn't necessarily wear well in daily use. Buildings should first be designed to be usable for their intended purpose. If you can also make them cool looking, that's a bonus.
But this is Apple, so looking cool and innovative probably *is* the intended purpose. With usability a bit further down the list.
I use Mint for casual use and CentOS for heavy lifting. Mint because I like the interface and CentOS because having Red Hat skills is useful for finding and/or continuing employment. I'm sure that if my criteria were different my Linux flavor would be different also.
I was one of those who disagreed with your sentiment, back in the day. I saw a tablet as a more portable and intuitive way to get my work done, using hand motions rather than pounding a keyboard and scraping a rat. It really was going to change my workflow for the better.
But then reality set in. The "minority report"-style interface never materialized, except in movies and hugely expensive low volume products which... were primarily used in movies. In the consumer space, some companies repurposed their "ease of access" components as "touch screen" components. That didn't end well.
As one would imagine, companies concentrated on the lowest common denominator when designing their touch UIs, which was content consumption, and *not* content creation, which is a much smaller market. The UI never really got richer than necessary to open apps and page through content, plus some necessary housekeeping and system management gestures.
There was never a killer app for tablets. There might have been, but it required an infrastructure that just doesn't exist. And probably never will, at a consumer level.
So yeah, at one time I was gung ho for tablets, but when it became painfully obvious that I would never be able to do anything except watch movies, listen to music, read novels, and draw funny ears on photos, I abandoned the idea. As someone else said, tablets are just big smart phones that can't make calls. They could have been so much more. But it just wasn't in the cards.
Hadn't we decided earlier (like, over a decade ago) that SCO didn't own the rights to the source code, that it never transferred from Novell? Or am I misremembering. This has gone on sooooo loooooong....
I'm pretty sure I read about disco balls being launched in space before. Grade school science projects, weren't they, carried as part of larger payloads? How is this different?
Slashdot Mirror
To effectively DRM screen shots would probably require strict prohibition on "side-loading" open source software, confining everyone to a strictly managed official "store". You can see the major OS players going that direction.
And you know, when everything is DRM'd, everything will cost money to have eyeballs on it. (Otherwise, what's the point?) And the problem with charging money for content is that the content owners are typically blinded by dollar signs and price their content out of market. And then complain that their business is failing. (It must be pirates.)
In no time at all, there won't be anything but pr0n. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much 70% of current traffic, so maybe things won't change that much.
Yes, that.
Reasonable criticisms, especially compared to, say, Windows 7, but these are changes that Windows 10 inherited from Windows 8(.1).
Mind you, they're still incredibly annoying. And the way Windows 10 begs me to use Edge instead of whatever browser I happen to be using, and keeps insisting that my life would be so much better if I'd only use Cortana, makes me really really wish that the application for which I have to use Windows ran on, well, anything else.
But as far as Windows goes, the base OS, what I note is that 10 seems to work well, and that compatibility with older apps has actually improved from Windows 7.
So, Windows 10 is the least odious from a usability standpoint (leaving privacy aside for a moment) of the last four releases [1], and they ax the Windows boss? It's almost like Microsoft wants their users to suffer.
[1] I'm counting 8.1 as a major release, as it was marketed as such, even though it changed the UI in only the most trivial fashion.
I agree with other responders that running Windows in a VM would probably be sufficient, but I'm old, and tend to want some kind of physical solution. My first thought was having a laptop with a removable drive bay (Apple need not apply) and swap out SSDs between your "work" instance and your "don't care if it's pwned" instance.
Barring that, I'd encrypt my main Windows drive and boot Mint (substitute your Linux of choice, or even Windows) off a low profile flash drive for browsing and email in sketchy environments. I see low profile thumb drives are up to 128 Gb now. With two empty USB ports on your laptop, you could have an instance running on a quarter terabyte without touching your main drive.
Enlarging on that, now that I think about it, your Windows instance could contain a clean image of your "burner" OS, for easy restoration should it get pwned in an airport. Or to refresh regularly just on general principles.
"Sorry, I can't, Skype doesn't allow it."
"Cortana listening at the wrong moment"?? That's so wrong on several levels.
Oh, and Matt Wagner's "Mage". A lot of people are fond of Wagner's "Grendel" but I personally couldn't get into it.
I'd go with the graphic novels / compilations rather than try to start with individual comics, as with a compilation you're more likely to start at the beginning of a story arc.
As to which titles to read, that's a very individual choice. I can tell you what titles *I* liked, but your mileage may vary. Wildly.
I hadn't really followed the DC universe very closely in the last couple of decades, but ended up picking up the Supergirl: Power and Supergirl: Identity compilations a couple years ago and really enjoyed them. Kara is a more complex and tragic character in these stories than I'd remembered her being.
The first two Marvel: The Ultimates compilations are pretty good. Each is a complete story, of the "what if super heroes existed in the real world" type that Watchmen started in the 1980's. Extremely violent, character deaths, creepy in parts.
Just about anything by Neil Gaimen. Sandman, Coraline, Stardust, "How to talk to girls at parties", American Gods.
Pretty much any of this century's Green Lantern Corps compilations. Well written, engaging characters.
Alan Moore's Miracleman (Marvelman) compilations are finally available, after being in legal hell for a couple decades. Well worth reading. Start with "A dream of flying". It starts out as a straight superhero story, but rapidly takes a really dark, science-fiction turn.
In my opinion, Marvel had a good thing going with the Ultimate universe (Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four, The Ultimates, Ultimate Iron Man) until Marvel apparently got bored with the universe and destroyed it. The early Ultimate graphic novels were mature, interesting and lacked all the decades of baggage that their regular titles had.
And finally, I have to put in a word for Schlock Mercenary, a "comic space opera" webcomic that starts out a gag-a-day but over the years has become a complex and compelling science fiction story in a very plausible, scientific framework. The online strips are available as softbound compilations. Also recommended is the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries, the beat-up edition filled with handwritten notes from the Schlock characters who had previously owned it.
Also check out the Pibgorn webcomic. Start with "the girl in the coffee cup".
[...] It seems pretty clear that the purpose of this change is basically to advertise Edge: Microsoft is dissatisfied with how many people are choosing different browsers, [...]
But what do I know? I see the OS as a framework to manage resources and load the programs *I* want to use, and *not* as some kind of interconnected environment of programs that the OS manufacturer wants me to use. Besides, Microsoft never did get how to do "seamless environments". "Seamless" to them has always been "you will be forced to use this set of apps no matter how craptastic they are or how badly they work together".
I don't use Windows 10 mail, Live Mail, or anything with the words "mail" and "windows" or "microsoft" in the same title. Previously it was because I happen to like the mailer I've been using (in various versions) since the nineties, but now I have an even better reason -- currently, when I click on a link, it opens in Firefox. Or Chrome, whatever one has one's default browser set to.
I understand Microsoft wanting people to use all Microsoft products whenever possible, but I have to wonder -- is this a sign that Edge isn't reaching estimated levels of popularity?
That's why you suck them. Don't swallow them.
And "now" seems almost like a desperate attempt at catch-up. I think Intel should have made their move a few years ago.
This is a real question. I don't have anything against Intel, and my current workstation has Intel Inside.
Does Intel have anything that plays well in the phone/tablet market? My understanding is that Qualcom and/or Samsung don't own the market just because they were there first, but because their products are designed specifically for the application, whereas Intel's offerings in that arena all appear to be relatively low power x86 chips. Key term being "relatively". Like Microsoft's early struggles with hand held devices, trying to shoehorn a desktop OS into something with a 4 inch screen, Intel appeared to be trying to leverage existing designs in a market where they weren't appropriate.
I could be missing something, but it seems like Intel's largest current issue is that they make the best possible processor for an increasingly smaller market, and don't make anything particularly appropriate for the most aggressively expanding markets. An issue they share to a certain extent with Microsoft.
It'll be interesting to see what happens should Intel acquire Broadcom. I think there's a good chance -- maybe 40% that after acquisition Intel will drop or severely de-emphasize Broadcom's SoC products in favor of one of their lower power laptop x86 processors. And fail miserably at it.
I think the number was 40. Anyway, I guess perpetually 15 years away is better than perpetually 40 years away. Especially with this generation's shorter attention span.
But seriously, this reminds me (entirely from memory as I don't have it in front of me) of Tom Wolfe's book on modern architecture, where he describes the first boxy modern skyscrapers with floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall windows. Tenants would put lamps or trash cans, bookcases, anything in front of the windows to create a demarcation between the office and empty air 20+ floors up. The architects would come by and patiently remove the obstacles and chide the tenants for spoiling the look.
The point, as I recall, being, what looks cool and progressive doesn't necessarily wear well in daily use. Buildings should first be designed to be usable for their intended purpose. If you can also make them cool looking, that's a bonus.
But this is Apple, so looking cool and innovative probably *is* the intended purpose. With usability a bit further down the list.
Best support?
Best security?
Best feature set (for what purpose?)?
Best for non-technical users?
Best for power users and/or developers?
Most mature/robust?
Highest performance?
Best to know for getting a job?
I use Mint for casual use and CentOS for heavy lifting. Mint because I like the interface and CentOS because having Red Hat skills is useful for finding and/or continuing employment. I'm sure that if my criteria were different my Linux flavor would be different also.
How do they taste?
I was one of those who disagreed with your sentiment, back in the day. I saw a tablet as a more portable and intuitive way to get my work done, using hand motions rather than pounding a keyboard and scraping a rat. It really was going to change my workflow for the better.
But then reality set in. The "minority report"-style interface never materialized, except in movies and hugely expensive low volume products which ... were primarily used in movies. In the consumer space, some companies repurposed their "ease of access" components as "touch screen" components. That didn't end well.
As one would imagine, companies concentrated on the lowest common denominator when designing their touch UIs, which was content consumption, and *not* content creation, which is a much smaller market. The UI never really got richer than necessary to open apps and page through content, plus some necessary housekeeping and system management gestures.
There was never a killer app for tablets. There might have been, but it required an infrastructure that just doesn't exist. And probably never will, at a consumer level.
So yeah, at one time I was gung ho for tablets, but when it became painfully obvious that I would never be able to do anything except watch movies, listen to music, read novels, and draw funny ears on photos, I abandoned the idea. As someone else said, tablets are just big smart phones that can't make calls. They could have been so much more. But it just wasn't in the cards.
If so, in his defense, there's been an awful lot of bullshit to be baffled by.
> That was a war in which everybody lost.
"The Unix wars are over. Unix lost."
Hadn't we decided earlier (like, over a decade ago) that SCO didn't own the rights to the source code, that it never transferred from Novell? Or am I misremembering. This has gone on sooooo loooooong....
I'm pretty sure I read about disco balls being launched in space before. Grade school science projects, weren't they, carried as part of larger payloads? How is this different?
I did not. That would explain it.