There are many reasons I despise Gnome, and this is another illustration of their arrogance. You would think they would have learned by now. This kind of thing is why I continue to use KDE, XFCE, and LXDE. Remember them mucking up desktop management? Removing any start menu option? Trying to force everything to run full-screen? Moving the stupid window controls to the LEFT side? Lack of sub-menus for program organization? Inability to see background/minimized windows? Lack of tooltips? Changing default icons to color-less line drawings? Removing more and more customizations? Gobbling up RAM like there is no tomorrow?
**I AM NOT USING A FREAKING TABLET***
Message to Gnome: If you are going to continue to ignore your user base and do freaky things to the UI, the least you can do is to make such changes OPTIONAL through easy user configuration. And not just now [to remove the options later], but ALWAYS.
>"I just think that each customer should be able to decide whether they want privacy or convenience from each company."
I think customers should be able to decide to have BOTH. Right now, there is no choice at all. But I know the choice that WOULD be offered for those who don't want their cars to talk to the mothership- The infotainment system will just not work at all.
>"Why don't you just leave it in the car? What's really the big deal? Why are you so dependent on your cell phone that you can't be without it for three hours?"
>"I think Anonymous Coward #56004133's point is that just setting image.animation_mode to once would not stop animation driven by CSS or JavaScript that arranges the frames of an animation as CSS sprites [mozilla.org]."
That is true, and yet another problem that has to be addressed somehow. Unnecessary animation is the bane of modern sites.
>"Singer and guitarist Jack White has banned the use of mobile phones at upcoming live shows. NME reports that the policy will be strictly enforced, requiring concert-goers to lock up their smartphones in pouches." "
I have no interest in interacting with my cell phone during a concert (or movie or any other type of paid entertainment). But tell me I have to lock up my phone in a "pouch" and you can shove your concert where the sun doesn't shine. I am so tired of the lowest-common-denominator ruining everything for everyone. Either they ruin it directly by being rude, annoying, and/or irresponsible, or ruin it indirectly due to places creating draconian rules/procedures to try and combat it.
>"Of course, not autoplaying video was a rule for like 20 years, and had the added benefit of loading faster, less bandwidth, and just as many clicks to watch the video."
Bingo. It is not like ANY USER really wants to autoplay ANY video- muted or not. As if a single click on "play" or on the video container is too much effort. The only reason for autoplay existing is for web sites to further shove annoying S*** down the throats of the users. It is a huge step backwards.
>"Because then advertisers would fall back to using hacks and gifs rather than video."
And then you disallow animated GIF and PNG (like Firefox allows with user control) and then endlessly running scripts. Yes, it is a war, but one that needs to be fought.
>"The cynic in me says that Google is taking money from someone to leave autoplay enabled."
Agreed. It does make you wonder....
Now, keep in mind that disabling autoplay completely is actually pretty tricky. Firefox has been working on it, but it keeps breaking certain sites or having unintended actions. The muting part is easy. But we need a REAL fix that gives users full control.
>"It's difficult to reliably identify JavaScript hacks that would need disabling"
To disable animated GIF? That doesn't require identifying Javascript at all. The code that displays animated GIF (or animated PNG) just needs to look at a user option. Easy as pie and something Firefox has offered for many, many years. The user specifies the setting as something like:
1) Yes- then it plays all cells normally, which is almost always a loop. 2) Once- then it plays through once and stops. 2) Disable- then it displays the first cell ONLY (non-animated)
>"Google's rationale behind allowing muted autoplaying video [google.com] is that if the video fails to load, playback is likely to fall back to a GIF animation, which uses your bandwidth even less efficiently:"
Which is why browsers like Firefox ALSO allow the user to disable playback of animated GIFs. Perhaps that should be an option in Chrome....
Muting videos is nowhere near enough... it is a great start, but not a finish. Many people want that NO videos should ever play unless the user specifically requests it by clicking on something. THAT should be a user choice. Muted videos still chew through bandwidth and CPU and batteries. But most importantly, they are extremely annoying and distracting. And many sites now even force the damn things to FOLLOW the user while they are trying to read an article!
>"At first glance I feel like this is horrible and unfair, but if they ran the numbers and for some reason hotmail users have more accidents then it's only fair they charge more for hotmail users."
The problem with this whole theory is that most people have MANY Email addresses. I have a hotmail address (have haven't had an accident in zillions of years), and I would tend to use it for anything "spammy"- which is exactly the case with something like this. I have access to lots of other Email addresses, even those that I manage myself. So what are they ACTUALLY testing here? People who ONLY have access to Hotmail? Or people who CHOOSE to give them a Hotmail address? Are they assuming Hotmail users are less adapt, less educated, or less computer savvy? And how many other people will it suck in with that? What exactly IS fair to test?
I mean, I bet I could come up with HUNDREDS of things they could test- hair color, if they wear glasses, where they went to school, how quickly bills are paid, how well they speak or write English, how many pets they own, if they are a Netflix customer, their political affiliation, in what industry they work, how much debt they carry, how many children they have, what their first name is, etc, etc, etc. At what point are such metrics considered unfair or just plain spying? Should they have access to our medical records?? I bet I could pull a correlation between any of those I listed and metrics that are not ALLOWED to be used, like race, gender, religion, etc. It is a tricky thing.
>Democrats do not care about abuse of executive power or legislative branches. Unless they can use it to empower themselves and enrich their corporate friends.
I believe BOTH parties abuse executive power, and more specifically the "executive order." BOTH parties spend too much. BOTH parties enrich themselves. BOTH parties erode civil liberties (just differently) and trample the Constitution. Welcome to our two-party system!
Regardless of your stance on Net Neutrality, this looks to me to be a clear abuse of the "executive order." We have legislative branches for such things.
Yeah, that seems to be what they are doing based on additional research. I think in many ways, this will be a DIS-service to the end users- presenting constantly inaccurate/outdated or irrelevant information. A whole lot of complexity with little real-world meaning.
Exactly how does one know how "fast" a WiFi network is without "joining" it? All you can tell is what the signal strength is (something already shown), the frequency, and the protocol (a/b/g/n/whatever). None of those will tell you how fast your actual Internet speed will be without connecting to it and trying it. It might indicate a cap on top theoretical speed, but how useful is that?
I mean, a 100% signal perfect signal on an N access point with nobody else connected to it that is on a saturated uplink which manages 0.1 Mb/s with horrendous latency is pretty crappy.
Are they saying that your Android device will, behind the scenes, actually connect to everything it can, without asking you, and TEST the link? What does that do for battery life? How much will that delay your connecting? How does that interfere with networks you have specifically chosen to automatically connect? How accurate is a quick test that might have touched the worst few seconds of use in the last hour?
Or is this based on Google "sharing" speed information from one user into a cloud database? I don't see how that is going to be very accurate either- things change constantly. And that speed rating will very much depend on your EXACT signal quality.
More questions than answers... the article doesn't help much, either.
>"for a piece of the high-end, eco-conscious luxury market."
But what would work better is to focus on the tangible advantages of electric vehicles, instead of feel-good "eco" ones. Things like incredible performance, simplicity, reliability, lack of noise, smoothness, lower cost of operation, ability to power it at home, etc. There are a lot of good reasons to be excited about electric vehicles. To many consumers, slapping "eco" on it just means "oh, this will cost a lot more, and be inconvenient, and sacrifice performance and comfort and features, but will 'save the earth'."
>"I would imagine that would cause more shutdowns (that might last a shorter duration) as they spend money up to/over the limit until there is a new influx of money from taxes. "
There is a word for that- "savings." Make savings part of the budget and then we have a buffer until we can, again, lower spending or raise taxes.
The problem is the mentality that we can just borrow our way out of problems. It doesn't work. "In 2015, the United States government spent $223 billion in tax dollars just to service the national debt."
And the biggest root problem is that people keep voting for leaders who will spend more AND tax less. It is very unfortunate that there was not some mandate in the Constitution to deal with this that can't be so easily overridden. Of course, the Constitution didn't stop the Fed from spending trillions on things clearly "reserved to the States or the People".
A) Fed no longer allowed to borrow any money B) Fed adjusts taxes to match spending
Yep, it is just that simple. Spend only what you make. Chose your poison- either raise taxes or cut spending or both. And when they find that is really, really hard, then they should re-read the Constitution about what the Fed is supposed to doing (hint: probably 90% of the spending isn't really Constitutional).
>"one vehicle ends up costing taxpayers over $15 a mile to use."
What do they care? It is California. Money means nothing to them, which is why they have more debt than any other state and the worse credit rating of ANY state. But keep on pushing that "feel good" stuff... gotta spend, spend, spend, raise taxes to the highest in the nation and yet still spend, spend, spend some more.
Slashdot Mirror
+1000
There are many reasons I despise Gnome, and this is another illustration of their arrogance. You would think they would have learned by now. This kind of thing is why I continue to use KDE, XFCE, and LXDE. Remember them mucking up desktop management? Removing any start menu option? Trying to force everything to run full-screen? Moving the stupid window controls to the LEFT side? Lack of sub-menus for program organization? Inability to see background/minimized windows? Lack of tooltips? Changing default icons to color-less line drawings? Removing more and more customizations? Gobbling up RAM like there is no tomorrow?
**I AM NOT USING A FREAKING TABLET***
Message to Gnome: If you are going to continue to ignore your user base and do freaky things to the UI, the least you can do is to make such changes OPTIONAL through easy user configuration. And not just now [to remove the options later], but ALWAYS.
>"so the most you can theoretically say is being wasted is a few thousand dollars"
OK, well that is a lot better!
>"No matter where you are in the world, rich or in poverty, in conflict or at peace, everyone will be able to see the bright"
Kumba freaking ya.
So the impoverished can look up and see how millions of dollars was wasted. I am sure it will really fill them with love and appreciation.
"With an expected launch total of $4.9 million per mission, " http://observer.com/2018/01/ro...
>"I just think that each customer should be able to decide whether they want privacy or convenience from each company."
I think customers should be able to decide to have BOTH. Right now, there is no choice at all. But I know the choice that WOULD be offered for those who don't want their cars to talk to the mothership- The infotainment system will just not work at all.
>"Therefore, you don't need your phone in the concert."
I am on-call 24/7 for emergencies, unfortunately.
>"Why don't you just leave it in the car? What's really the big deal? Why are you so dependent on your cell phone that you can't be without it for three hours?"
I am on-call 24/7 for emergencies- no choice.
>"Firefox does this to stop bogging down the browser playing many GIFs at a time. It still loads downloads them completely in the background."
That is true. So it will stop most of the CPU/battery waste, and all of the annoyance and frustration, but will not help with bandwidth.
>"I think Anonymous Coward #56004133's point is that just setting image.animation_mode to once would not stop animation driven by CSS or JavaScript that arranges the frames of an animation as CSS sprites [mozilla.org]."
That is true, and yet another problem that has to be addressed somehow. Unnecessary animation is the bane of modern sites.
Actually, no it wouldn't (as long as licensed)
>"Singer and guitarist Jack White has banned the use of mobile phones at upcoming live shows. NME reports that the policy will be strictly enforced, requiring concert-goers to lock up their smartphones in pouches." "
I have no interest in interacting with my cell phone during a concert (or movie or any other type of paid entertainment). But tell me I have to lock up my phone in a "pouch" and you can shove your concert where the sun doesn't shine. I am so tired of the lowest-common-denominator ruining everything for everyone. Either they ruin it directly by being rude, annoying, and/or irresponsible, or ruin it indirectly due to places creating draconian rules/procedures to try and combat it.
>"Of course, not autoplaying video was a rule for like 20 years, and had the added benefit of loading faster, less bandwidth, and just as many clicks to watch the video."
Bingo. It is not like ANY USER really wants to autoplay ANY video- muted or not. As if a single click on "play" or on the video container is too much effort. The only reason for autoplay existing is for web sites to further shove annoying S*** down the throats of the users. It is a huge step backwards.
>"Because then advertisers would fall back to using hacks and gifs rather than video."
And then you disallow animated GIF and PNG (like Firefox allows with user control) and then endlessly running scripts. Yes, it is a war, but one that needs to be fought.
>"The cynic in me says that Google is taking money from someone to leave autoplay enabled."
Agreed. It does make you wonder....
Now, keep in mind that disabling autoplay completely is actually pretty tricky. Firefox has been working on it, but it keeps breaking certain sites or having unintended actions. The muting part is easy. But we need a REAL fix that gives users full control.
Searching, I found these:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...
>"It's difficult to reliably identify JavaScript hacks that would need disabling"
To disable animated GIF? That doesn't require identifying Javascript at all. The code that displays animated GIF (or animated PNG) just needs to look at a user option. Easy as pie and something Firefox has offered for many, many years. The user specifies the setting as something like:
1) Yes- then it plays all cells normally, which is almost always a loop.
2) Once- then it plays through once and stops.
2) Disable- then it displays the first cell ONLY (non-animated)
The about:config or user.js is:
user_pref("image.animation_mode", "once");
for example
>"Google's rationale behind allowing muted autoplaying video [google.com] is that if the video fails to load, playback is likely to fall back to a GIF animation, which uses your bandwidth even less efficiently:"
Which is why browsers like Firefox ALSO allow the user to disable playback of animated GIFs. Perhaps that should be an option in Chrome....
>How about not loading the videos, period?
+100
Muting videos is nowhere near enough... it is a great start, but not a finish. Many people want that NO videos should ever play unless the user specifically requests it by clicking on something. THAT should be a user choice. Muted videos still chew through bandwidth and CPU and batteries. But most importantly, they are extremely annoying and distracting. And many sites now even force the damn things to FOLLOW the user while they are trying to read an article!
>"At first glance I feel like this is horrible and unfair, but if they ran the numbers and for some reason hotmail users have more accidents then it's only fair they charge more for hotmail users."
The problem with this whole theory is that most people have MANY Email addresses. I have a hotmail address (have haven't had an accident in zillions of years), and I would tend to use it for anything "spammy"- which is exactly the case with something like this. I have access to lots of other Email addresses, even those that I manage myself. So what are they ACTUALLY testing here? People who ONLY have access to Hotmail? Or people who CHOOSE to give them a Hotmail address? Are they assuming Hotmail users are less adapt, less educated, or less computer savvy? And how many other people will it suck in with that? What exactly IS fair to test?
I mean, I bet I could come up with HUNDREDS of things they could test- hair color, if they wear glasses, where they went to school, how quickly bills are paid, how well they speak or write English, how many pets they own, if they are a Netflix customer, their political affiliation, in what industry they work, how much debt they carry, how many children they have, what their first name is, etc, etc, etc. At what point are such metrics considered unfair or just plain spying? Should they have access to our medical records?? I bet I could pull a correlation between any of those I listed and metrics that are not ALLOWED to be used, like race, gender, religion, etc. It is a tricky thing.
>Democrats do not care about abuse of executive power or legislative branches. Unless they can use it to empower themselves and enrich their corporate friends.
I believe BOTH parties abuse executive power, and more specifically the "executive order." BOTH parties spend too much. BOTH parties enrich themselves. BOTH parties erode civil liberties (just differently) and trample the Constitution. Welcome to our two-party system!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you want it to change, we have to get some type of ranking voting system in place. http://www.fairvote.org/
Regardless of your stance on Net Neutrality, this looks to me to be a clear abuse of the "executive order." We have legislative branches for such things.
Yeah, that seems to be what they are doing based on additional research. I think in many ways, this will be a DIS-service to the end users- presenting constantly inaccurate/outdated or irrelevant information. A whole lot of complexity with little real-world meaning.
Exactly how does one know how "fast" a WiFi network is without "joining" it? All you can tell is what the signal strength is (something already shown), the frequency, and the protocol (a/b/g/n/whatever). None of those will tell you how fast your actual Internet speed will be without connecting to it and trying it. It might indicate a cap on top theoretical speed, but how useful is that?
I mean, a 100% signal perfect signal on an N access point with nobody else connected to it that is on a saturated uplink which manages 0.1 Mb/s with horrendous latency is pretty crappy.
Are they saying that your Android device will, behind the scenes, actually connect to everything it can, without asking you, and TEST the link? What does that do for battery life? How much will that delay your connecting? How does that interfere with networks you have specifically chosen to automatically connect? How accurate is a quick test that might have touched the worst few seconds of use in the last hour?
Or is this based on Google "sharing" speed information from one user into a cloud database? I don't see how that is going to be very accurate either- things change constantly. And that speed rating will very much depend on your EXACT signal quality.
More questions than answers... the article doesn't help much, either.
>"for a piece of the high-end, eco-conscious luxury market."
But what would work better is to focus on the tangible advantages of electric vehicles, instead of feel-good "eco" ones. Things like incredible performance, simplicity, reliability, lack of noise, smoothness, lower cost of operation, ability to power it at home, etc. There are a lot of good reasons to be excited about electric vehicles. To many consumers, slapping "eco" on it just means "oh, this will cost a lot more, and be inconvenient, and sacrifice performance and comfort and features, but will 'save the earth'."
>"I would imagine that would cause more shutdowns (that might last a shorter duration) as they spend money up to/over the limit until there is a new influx of money from taxes. "
There is a word for that- "savings." Make savings part of the budget and then we have a buffer until we can, again, lower spending or raise taxes.
The problem is the mentality that we can just borrow our way out of problems. It doesn't work. "In 2015, the United States government spent $223 billion in tax dollars just to service the national debt."
http://nationalinterest.org/bl...
And the biggest root problem is that people keep voting for leaders who will spend more AND tax less. It is very unfortunate that there was not some mandate in the Constitution to deal with this that can't be so easily overridden. Of course, the Constitution didn't stop the Fed from spending trillions on things clearly "reserved to the States or the People".
Approaching $21 trillion now and still growing at $10k PER SECOND...
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
There is a better way to prevent shutdowns:
A) Fed no longer allowed to borrow any money
B) Fed adjusts taxes to match spending
Yep, it is just that simple. Spend only what you make. Chose your poison- either raise taxes or cut spending or both. And when they find that is really, really hard, then they should re-read the Constitution about what the Fed is supposed to doing (hint: probably 90% of the spending isn't really Constitutional).
>"one vehicle ends up costing taxpayers over $15 a mile to use."
What do they care? It is California. Money means nothing to them, which is why they have more debt than any other state and the worse credit rating of ANY state. But keep on pushing that "feel good" stuff... gotta spend, spend, spend, raise taxes to the highest in the nation and yet still spend, spend, spend some more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...