Much better car analogy: some car manufacturer comes out with a model where, if you hit the driver's door with your hand in the right place, the door unlocks. Lots of people buy the car and enjoy it, since you don't need to carry the keys around with you. Then the car manufacturer fixes the fault, and many people cry foul. Everyone misses the point that it is a generally bad idea to allow criminals to trivially get in to your car, and that locks are a *good* thing.
The device we are discussing here is a book reader. An appliance. It is not meant as a general purpose computer.
There are CPUs running code in my TV set, my microwave oven, and my coffee maker. I don't have the root password for any of those, but it doesn't particularly bother me.
That's a writing/funding problem, NOT a technical issue.
This.
People will happily watch YouTube clips at 480 x 320 resolution, low frame rate, highly compressed, on their smartphones. Technology is not the answer.
Monopoly or not - they have pledged to both raise speeds and lower rates. AT&T engages in "monopolistic practices", but I don't see them lowering their rates any time soon.
SGI? You're blaming the people who took their closed 3D programming language, and made it public and available to all as OpenGL, for being a walled garden??
Technically the Aptera would have been classified as a motorcycle as its a reverse tricycle
This depends on where you are. Each country is different, and each US state is different. This has been a problem in the past for three-wheeled vehicle designs; it means that (a) to drive it you must have the motorcycle endorsement on your driving license (which few people have), and (b) in some places you would still need to wear a helmet.
And as far as your Edsel comparison goes - yes, this is *just* like an Edsel. Hideously ugly with no redeeming engineering features.
By "dock" I mean, some form graphical display that lists currently running programs intermingled with programs that you can lauch if you wish.
So, a mashup of popular items from the 'Start' menu and the currently running windows list. A list of two completely different things - action buttons and status buttons - slammed together in a random sort of order.
I suppose this follows the trend of using nouns as verbs, and vice versa.
I'm starting to like this LinuxMint distro more and more, especially for casual use.
I heard all of the great press, so I downloaded Mint 11, which was okay, and Mint 12, which is so horribly bad I fed the DVD to my paper shredder.
User Interface Manifesto:
We do not want a dock. If we wanted a dock, we'd be Apple fanboys.
Calling a dock something else, like an "Activities Panel", does not get you around rule #1.
We will launch programs via a menu system, or via shortcuts. No other nonsense, please. I'm looking at you, Mr. Activities Panel.
Once you have a facility like panel applets, that people like and use, do NOT take them away. If you want to add some other way of doing the same thing - like "Gnome Shell Extensions" - then keep the ability to run panel applets for at LEAST one major revision, so that all existing applets can be ported.
I'm curious to know why Apple is never implicated in such privacy and tracking discussions.
CarrierIQ was discovered because it is a third party program - and so it shows up in the Android debugger. Much of Android is open source, so even if it did not, people could write their own debuggers to expose it.
Apple develops the hardware, the OS, and the debugger - and it is all closed source. If they wanted to build complete tracking into the kernel, and not have it show up in the debugger at all, they could. So - how do you know that they didn't? Just because nobody has exposed it yet, does not mean that it does not exist.
Private corporations have financially invested people - but they are typically not referred to as shareholders. Stakeholders, perhaps; or owners; or angel investors. Yes, English is a peculiar thing.
In any case, the mental attitude is different. Once public, the corporation is indeed very subject to the whims of shareholders. While they are still private - and especially if they are in the angel investor stage - they are more interested in growing the company and becoming better known and more popular than they are in bottom line profits. This is certainly not out of the kindness of their hearts; it is their aim to eventually go public as a billion dollar corporation, rather than a 100 million dollar one.
their responsibility is purely to the shareholders.
Shareholders?? Did Valve go public, or is your premise incorrect?
Personally I think Steam is the best thing since sliced bread: I don't need to go to the mall and deal with the idiots at GameStop just to get the latest game; I get it faster, cheaper, and easier - and it automatically plays on all of my computers. To Gabe: a hearty thank you for bringing software delivery into the 21st century.
Who actually cares if the prison breaks out in a riot? Pull the guards back to the perimeter, and wait them out. With no food/supplies going in, the riot will come to an end eventually. If the rioters can cause damage to anything you didn't build your prison very well.
Or, just plumb in some gas pipe alongside the sprinkler system, and send sleeping gas through the entire facility.
The idea of an autonomous robot with cameras and potentially pepper spray would be fine in an outdoor, public situation - but is not needed in a purpose-built building.
Slashdot Mirror
Much better car analogy: some car manufacturer comes out with a model where, if you hit the driver's door with your hand in the right place, the door unlocks. Lots of people buy the car and enjoy it, since you don't need to carry the keys around with you. Then the car manufacturer fixes the fault, and many people cry foul. Everyone misses the point that it is a generally bad idea to allow criminals to trivially get in to your car, and that locks are a *good* thing.
The device we are discussing here is a book reader. An appliance. It is not meant as a general purpose computer.
There are CPUs running code in my TV set, my microwave oven, and my coffee maker. I don't have the root password for any of those, but it doesn't particularly bother me.
This is why I hate going to meetings and feeling stupid. Come to my cube and I'll know the answers.
That's a writing/funding problem, NOT a technical issue.
This.
People will happily watch YouTube clips at 480 x 320 resolution, low frame rate, highly compressed, on their smartphones. Technology is not the answer.
[Chrome] is Google's most prominent software product
Really? You can't think of any Google software that people use more often than Chrome??
Monopoly or not - they have pledged to both raise speeds and lower rates. AT&T engages in "monopolistic practices", but I don't see them lowering their rates any time soon.
SGI? You're blaming the people who took their closed 3D programming language, and made it public and available to all as OpenGL, for being a walled garden??
Technically the Aptera would have been classified as a motorcycle as its a reverse tricycle
This depends on where you are. Each country is different, and each US state is different. This has been a problem in the past for three-wheeled vehicle designs; it means that (a) to drive it you must have the motorcycle endorsement on your driving license (which few people have), and (b) in some places you would still need to wear a helmet.
And as far as your Edsel comparison goes - yes, this is *just* like an Edsel. Hideously ugly with no redeeming engineering features.
the existence of excessively large and frequently full buffers
Seems better than the existence of excessively large and seldom if ever full buffers.
By "dock" I mean, some form graphical display that lists currently running programs intermingled with programs that you can lauch if you wish.
So, a mashup of popular items from the 'Start' menu and the currently running windows list. A list of two completely different things - action buttons and status buttons - slammed together in a random sort of order.
I suppose this follows the trend of using nouns as verbs, and vice versa.
I'm starting to like this LinuxMint distro more and more, especially for casual use.
I heard all of the great press, so I downloaded Mint 11, which was okay, and Mint 12, which is so horribly bad I fed the DVD to my paper shredder.
User Interface Manifesto:
Several OSes are UNIX, including Mac OS and Solaris.
Right, of course, I had *totally* forgotten that MacOS and Solaris were binary compatible. My bad.
Good thing I didn't confuse the terms "Unix" and "POSIX compliant". That would have been embarrasing.
Wouldn't it be awesome to port Irix to the Chinese MIPS laptop?
Do you really consider Unix and Linux to be two separate things?
If lawyers didn't exist, Linux would not have been needed.
They don't have too much data, they have insufficient affordable storage.
This is *great* news for gay mice. Ever try to put on one of those tiny little condoms without tearing it with your claws?
Just because one day they might make perfect safe cars, you don't skip putting on your helmet when you go drive a motor cycle
Worst. Analogy. Ever. What does car safety have to do with motorbike helmets??
Cars in MA routinely run a red lights because they are afraid of being tailended it they stop. Seriously.
This is why MIT did the study in Virginia.
Any cancelled project that was *truly* useful has several open-source versions of the same idea. So, where is hypercard for linux?
I'm curious to know why Apple is never implicated in such privacy and tracking discussions.
CarrierIQ was discovered because it is a third party program - and so it shows up in the Android debugger. Much of Android is open source, so even if it did not, people could write their own debuggers to expose it.
Apple develops the hardware, the OS, and the debugger - and it is all closed source. If they wanted to build complete tracking into the kernel, and not have it show up in the debugger at all, they could. So - how do you know that they didn't? Just because nobody has exposed it yet, does not mean that it does not exist.
A crack dealer's customers are happy. That doesn't make selling crack a good idea, and it doesn't mean people should not criticize crack dealers.
Private corporations have financially invested people - but they are typically not referred to as shareholders. Stakeholders, perhaps; or owners; or angel investors. Yes, English is a peculiar thing.
In any case, the mental attitude is different. Once public, the corporation is indeed very subject to the whims of shareholders. While they are still private - and especially if they are in the angel investor stage - they are more interested in growing the company and becoming better known and more popular than they are in bottom line profits. This is certainly not out of the kindness of their hearts; it is their aim to eventually go public as a billion dollar corporation, rather than a 100 million dollar one.
their responsibility is purely to the shareholders.
Shareholders?? Did Valve go public, or is your premise incorrect?
Personally I think Steam is the best thing since sliced bread: I don't need to go to the mall and deal with the idiots at GameStop just to get the latest game; I get it faster, cheaper, and easier - and it automatically plays on all of my computers. To Gabe: a hearty thank you for bringing software delivery into the 21st century.
Who actually cares if the prison breaks out in a riot? Pull the guards back to the perimeter, and wait them out. With no food/supplies going in, the riot will come to an end eventually. If the rioters can cause damage to anything you didn't build your prison very well.
Or, just plumb in some gas pipe alongside the sprinkler system, and send sleeping gas through the entire facility.
The idea of an autonomous robot with cameras and potentially pepper spray would be fine in an outdoor, public situation - but is not needed in a purpose-built building.
Bug? Who says it was a bug? The *real* conspiracy theorists would say that it was a feature intentionally designed in for exactly this sort of use.