I look forward to wasting my ample free time
on
GNOME 3.4 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
My graduate students and I happily live in blissful ignorance of all this, running GNOME 2 under Ubuntu LTS (long term support) 10.04. I am able to configure my entire desktop without any need for downloading extensions. I have been able to go for a long time without a reinstall; this wonderful stable setup was an LTS to LTS upgrade from Hardy.
Now 10.04 is not going to be supported forever. I am greatly looking forward to flushing all my hard-won knowledge of this desktop down the drain and spending time looking on line for this-or-that extension that will enable us to maintain the smooth workflow we have had so far. Indeed who am I to question to the wave of progress in GUI engineering. I bow down to my software engineer overlords who will enlighten me with the flaws in my current workflow and who will teach me to use my time in more efficient ways. I am grateful to you, GNOME 3 dev team, for this bountiful treasure of GUI improvement that awaits me in the near future.
You are either bitter, or were stuck in a bad department. While such sensationalist people certainly exist, few of them actually influence the broader debate. In my community such people are far outnumbered by brilliant and truly insightful researchers who work incredibly hard and whose contributions to our understanding of the universe are vastly undervalued by their pay. To think that some of the most brilliant minds in the world, working at the frontiers of science simply because they love it, are paid no more than a senior code monkeys, is the real travesty.
FWIW you can easily run Linux on a Mac Pro... been doing it since '08; it's an awesome Linux machine. It's actually better because you can use MD RAID-5 support on those four HDs, something you can't do on Mac OS X without a $1K raid card that they want you to buy.
The whole reason Solyndra went bankrupt was that their whole business model depended on a higher price for solar panels. They were totally caught off guard by the cheapness of Chinese panels. Yet another area of tension between the relatively privileged life we enjoy in the use and the rise of cheap yet adequately skilled label in East Asia.
Actually MSR is a place which buys really smart CS/Unix people, like Leslie Lamport, who wrote LaTeX, to get them to work on obscure useless shit so that they don't keep on working on stuff that's actually useful to F/OSS.
The really amazing thing is how nobody else has adopted Slashdot's commenting system. It was a brilliant invention 15 years ago and still no takers?
I mean, come on, it's not that hard. Assign random mod points to people, and more mod points to people who have been modded up. You don't need to work in the whole Karma thing, or work in the nuances of "Interesting, insightful" etc. Just have thumbs up/thumbs down allocated randomly in proportion to total number of thumbs ups posted (plus a few extra random ones to make the system work).
Big point missing here is that unlimited plans are no longer offered to new customers. They exist solely as grandfathered plans. So this brings up the question, why offer grandfathering anyways? Can't they issue a sunset clause a year in advance and then gradually fade them away? I'd wager not that many of the unlimited customers would leave.
The letter would say, "You are currently on an unlimited plan. Your actual usage is $$$. Under our new plan starting next year, your new cost would be $$$." By far the largest fraction of their users would stay.
(Yes, I'm disgruntled that I can't get an ATT unlimited plan because I joined too late).
I hear this said a lot, but would you care to back it up? What problem does it solve; how does it make you work better? The only things I've read so far from GNOME 3 supporters are statements are about how things like status notifications and multiple windows up at the same time are unnecessary distractions and that I need to change my work flow to fit this style.
I know I can download this or that tweak to make GNOME 3 behave like GNOME 2, but I'm interested in hearing arguments about how exactly these interface changes have improved the way you work over the old style.
Force your kid to go for a run with you. If the kid moans, offer a bribe of a stupid Wii video game AFTER (s)he run 20 minutes with you. Put yourselves on the "couch-to-5k" program (http://www.c25k.com/) if you're running-challenged yourself. Grab a couple of tennis rackets, a basketball, take your kid to the playground or the gym and do it WITH them, however goofy you feel you are.
In general, kids take from parents. Couch potato parent = couch potato kid.
While we were living in Canada, the government sent us a pamphlet saying that research shows a three year old needs a minimum of TWO HOURS of daily active outdoor movement (as in, running around and bouncing the ball, NOT going to jamba juice or whatever other calorie factory). The amount of activity that we provide our kids in the US is paltry compared to that.
FORCE yourselves and your kids to do it. TOGETHER. It's the only way.
Here's how to navigate this new DRM world. Have an app that you like? Do not update it. Be aware that if you update, you may lose everything.
On the iPhone, if you must update, find the physical copy of the app in your iTunes folder. Copy it somewhere safe. THEN update the app. If you don't like the upgraded version, delete it, drag the physical copy back to iTunes, and restore it. You're good to go again.
I'm sure there's an analogue of this on Android.
Point being, if you've got an app, it's up to YOU to maintain version history, because you can't trust developers any more. A disturbingly large fraction of app upgrades are actually downgrades in preparation of a for-pay upgrade, and you just can't see these coming. Of course, on a jailbroken iPhone, you have more options, such as update-hider, which allows you ignore upgrades selectively in the app store.
Jailbroken/rooted is always going to be the key to freedom in this new world. Hooray for the hard working people who make it possible (better yet, donate $$$ to them).
You can disable in-app payments globally on iDevices, and *that* requires a separate passcode to undo compared to the regular app installation password.
Also, in my experience Apple are pretty good about refunding you money if things like this happen. Once I bought an expensive app for my parents and they charged it to my credit card rather than my gift card balance. I wrote them about it and they credited me back $50 and said they wouldn't charge me on my gift card either---freebee, just like that.
These scientists were irresponsible in their dealings with their press. Your likelihood of making a technical mistake here or there in a supremely complex experiment is far, far higher than the likelihood of special relativity being wrong. They should have kept it strictly within the community rather than embarrass themselves, and physics, in this manner.
Speaking from experience, you have got to be careful about these things. The press will pick up and magnify your slightest claim that you think Einstein was wrong. Science funding is in a dire situation in this economy. We want excellent, trustworthy science to be publicised so that we can get more funding for basic research. This kind of vain, selfish, publicizing of results you KNOW have got to be wrong is just plain idiocy.
I love these sites like MegaUpload and whatever its next iteration will be. By illegally making copyrighted files available for direct download from a unique source, they are easy to prosecute, easy to take down, which gives copyright owners a sense of satisfaction, and because of this focuses attention away from bittorrent.
Do you also have a 4S with a proxy server installed? Where are all these people getting access to a Siri proxy? Are you trying to tell me I can install Spire and it will "just work?"
A Chinese commenter to the NYT site said that if people had known the lives of these people prior to Foxconn, they would come to the opposite condition and call Apple philanthropists.
I want something with the power and configurability of KDE but the non-crazy, makes me feel claustrophobic window layout of GNOME.... Sadly after many years as a Linux users I find that that environment is called Windows 7 + VMWare.
Pre-A5 isn't what this news item or Absinthe is all about. The news item is about the A5 devices, which it will not be possible to downgrade once iOS 5.1 is made live. Yes, you can downgrade and untether A4 devices, but that is old news from December.
So one mistake and your jailbreak is gone for good, probably.
There isn't any guarantee that this will be remedied but I believe the jailbreakers make a living out of donations and expensive tweaks and such, and so they will eventually release some sort of tool to make downgrades possible on A5 devices.
The bigger problem is look how long it took them to find the 5.0.1 jailbreak. What will happen when the next iPhone is released? Will it be completely locked down?
The problem is that if you install something that makes your phone unstable, and need a restore, you will also lose your jailbreak when you restore. This wasn't true in previous jailbreaks.
I can't quite explain why, but this is the most amazing thing I've since on slashdot in quite some time. Something about that little lonely iPad going all the way up there... my colleagues were just gathered around my computer and everyone exclaimed aloud.
I can't tell you the number of times my iPhone has allowed me to take the kids to the playground while tending to work stuff. The kids can play, and I can spend 90% of the time playing with them, and 10% answering emails.
The alternative would have been the kids stay home and don't get a workout.
Do I *need* a smartphone? No. But has it saved time enough for everyone in my family to make it worthwhile, and improved family life? Yes. absolutely.
I am perpetually amazed at the amount of money companies spend on advertising. It's staggering---enough to support all of Google, Facebook, you name it.
Did companies always spend this much money? Does it work? Why don't more people block it? AdBlock has been around for almost a decade now and it didn't cut into this pie at all. It's just still geeks like us using it.
I don't know what's more amazing, this, or the resistance of most computer users to tweak or modify their browser setup in any way shape or form unless they absolutely have to.
Service quality is not so bad where I live. I can talk and surf at the same time. And there is no way, I repeat no way to have two iPhones under one plan for less than $100/month in the USA other than AT&T.
Would I prefer to have Verizon? Sure, but not $50 extra per month sure.
Slashdot Mirror
My graduate students and I happily live in blissful ignorance of all this, running GNOME 2 under Ubuntu LTS (long term support) 10.04. I am able to configure my entire desktop without any need for downloading extensions. I have been able to go for a long time without a reinstall; this wonderful stable setup was an LTS to LTS upgrade from Hardy.
Now 10.04 is not going to be supported forever. I am greatly looking forward to flushing all my hard-won knowledge of this desktop down the drain and spending time looking on line for this-or-that extension that will enable us to maintain the smooth workflow we have had so far. Indeed who am I to question to the wave of progress in GUI engineering. I bow down to my software engineer overlords who will enlighten me with the flaws in my current workflow and who will teach me to use my time in more efficient ways. I am grateful to you, GNOME 3 dev team, for this bountiful treasure of GUI improvement that awaits me in the near future.
You are either bitter, or were stuck in a bad department. While such sensationalist people certainly exist, few of them actually influence the broader debate. In my community such people are far outnumbered by brilliant and truly insightful researchers who work incredibly hard and whose contributions to our understanding of the universe are vastly undervalued by their pay. To think that some of the most brilliant minds in the world, working at the frontiers of science simply because they love it, are paid no more than a senior code monkeys, is the real travesty.
FWIW you can easily run Linux on a Mac Pro... been doing it since '08; it's an awesome Linux machine. It's actually better because you can use MD RAID-5 support on those four HDs, something you can't do on Mac OS X without a $1K raid card that they want you to buy.
The whole reason Solyndra went bankrupt was that their whole business model depended on a higher price for solar panels. They were totally caught off guard by the cheapness of Chinese panels. Yet another area of tension between the relatively privileged life we enjoy in the use and the rise of cheap yet adequately skilled label in East Asia.
Actually MSR is a place which buys really smart CS/Unix people, like Leslie Lamport, who wrote LaTeX, to get them to work on obscure useless shit so that they don't keep on working on stuff that's actually useful to F/OSS.
The really amazing thing is how nobody else has adopted Slashdot's commenting system. It was a brilliant invention 15 years ago and still no takers?
I mean, come on, it's not that hard. Assign random mod points to people, and more mod points to people who have been modded up. You don't need to work in the whole Karma thing, or work in the nuances of "Interesting, insightful" etc. Just have thumbs up/thumbs down allocated randomly in proportion to total number of thumbs ups posted (plus a few extra random ones to make the system work).
Big point missing here is that unlimited plans are no longer offered to new customers. They exist solely as grandfathered plans. So this brings up the question, why offer grandfathering anyways? Can't they issue a sunset clause a year in advance and then gradually fade them away? I'd wager not that many of the unlimited customers would leave.
The letter would say, "You are currently on an unlimited plan. Your actual usage is $$$. Under our new plan starting next year, your new cost would be $$$." By far the largest fraction of their users would stay.
(Yes, I'm disgruntled that I can't get an ATT unlimited plan because I joined too late).
I hear this said a lot, but would you care to back it up? What problem does it solve; how does it make you work better? The only things I've read so far from GNOME 3 supporters are statements are about how things like status notifications and multiple windows up at the same time are unnecessary distractions and that I need to change my work flow to fit this style.
I know I can download this or that tweak to make GNOME 3 behave like GNOME 2, but I'm interested in hearing arguments about how exactly these interface changes have improved the way you work over the old style.
What is the advantage of geohashing over longitude + latitude.
Force your kid to go for a run with you. If the kid moans, offer a bribe of a stupid Wii video game AFTER (s)he run 20 minutes with you. Put yourselves on the "couch-to-5k" program (http://www.c25k.com/) if you're running-challenged yourself. Grab a couple of tennis rackets, a basketball, take your kid to the playground or the gym and do it WITH them, however goofy you feel you are.
In general, kids take from parents. Couch potato parent = couch potato kid.
While we were living in Canada, the government sent us a pamphlet saying that research shows a three year old needs a minimum of TWO HOURS of daily active outdoor movement (as in, running around and bouncing the ball, NOT going to jamba juice or whatever other calorie factory). The amount of activity that we provide our kids in the US is paltry compared to that.
FORCE yourselves and your kids to do it. TOGETHER. It's the only way.
Here's how to navigate this new DRM world. Have an app that you like? Do not update it. Be aware that if you update, you may lose everything.
On the iPhone, if you must update, find the physical copy of the app in your iTunes folder. Copy it somewhere safe. THEN update the app. If you don't like the upgraded version, delete it, drag the physical copy back to iTunes, and restore it. You're good to go again.
I'm sure there's an analogue of this on Android.
Point being, if you've got an app, it's up to YOU to maintain version history, because you can't trust developers any more. A disturbingly large fraction of app upgrades are actually downgrades in preparation of a for-pay upgrade, and you just can't see these coming. Of course, on a jailbroken iPhone, you have more options, such as update-hider, which allows you ignore upgrades selectively in the app store.
Jailbroken/rooted is always going to be the key to freedom in this new world. Hooray for the hard working people who make it possible (better yet, donate $$$ to them).
You can disable in-app payments globally on iDevices, and *that* requires a separate passcode to undo compared to the regular app installation password.
Also, in my experience Apple are pretty good about refunding you money if things like this happen. Once I bought an expensive app for my parents and they charged it to my credit card rather than my gift card balance. I wrote them about it and they credited me back $50 and said they wouldn't charge me on my gift card either---freebee, just like that.
These scientists were irresponsible in their dealings with their press. Your likelihood of making a technical mistake here or there in a supremely complex experiment is far, far higher than the likelihood of special relativity being wrong. They should have kept it strictly within the community rather than embarrass themselves, and physics, in this manner.
Speaking from experience, you have got to be careful about these things. The press will pick up and magnify your slightest claim that you think Einstein was wrong. Science funding is in a dire situation in this economy. We want excellent, trustworthy science to be publicised so that we can get more funding for basic research. This kind of vain, selfish, publicizing of results you KNOW have got to be wrong is just plain idiocy.
I love these sites like MegaUpload and whatever its next iteration will be. By illegally making copyrighted files available for direct download from a unique source, they are easy to prosecute, easy to take down, which gives copyright owners a sense of satisfaction, and because of this focuses attention away from bittorrent.
Those who play primarily for being part of an interactive story, and those who play primarily for the gameplay mechanic.
Neither is better or worse---they just are.
Do you also have a 4S with a proxy server installed? Where are all these people getting access to a Siri proxy? Are you trying to tell me I can install Spire and it will "just work?"
A Chinese commenter to the NYT site said that if people had known the lives of these people prior to Foxconn, they would come to the opposite condition and call Apple philanthropists.
I want something with the power and configurability of KDE but the non-crazy, makes me feel claustrophobic window layout of GNOME.... Sadly after many years as a Linux users I find that that environment is called Windows 7 + VMWare.
Pre-A5 isn't what this news item or Absinthe is all about. The news item is about the A5 devices, which it will not be possible to downgrade once iOS 5.1 is made live. Yes, you can downgrade and untether A4 devices, but that is old news from December.
So one mistake and your jailbreak is gone for good, probably.
There isn't any guarantee that this will be remedied but I believe the jailbreakers make a living out of donations and expensive tweaks and such, and so they will eventually release some sort of tool to make downgrades possible on A5 devices.
The bigger problem is look how long it took them to find the 5.0.1 jailbreak. What will happen when the next iPhone is released? Will it be completely locked down?
The problem is that if you install something that makes your phone unstable, and need a restore, you will also lose your jailbreak when you restore. This wasn't true in previous jailbreaks.
I can't quite explain why, but this is the most amazing thing I've since on slashdot in quite some time. Something about that little lonely iPad going all the way up there... my colleagues were just gathered around my computer and everyone exclaimed aloud.
Their walled garden takes cash from people who can afford it AND (want to support the times OR are too stupid to clear cookies).
The rest of us can either not read it or read it for free.
I like it. This should be the funding model for the Internet. Kind of like the art patrons of the renaissance.
I can't tell you the number of times my iPhone has allowed me to take the kids to the playground while tending to work stuff. The kids can play, and I can spend 90% of the time playing with them, and 10% answering emails.
The alternative would have been the kids stay home and don't get a workout.
Do I *need* a smartphone? No. But has it saved time enough for everyone in my family to make it worthwhile, and improved family life? Yes. absolutely.
I am perpetually amazed at the amount of money companies spend on advertising. It's staggering---enough to support all of Google, Facebook, you name it.
Did companies always spend this much money? Does it work? Why don't more people block it? AdBlock has been around for almost a decade now and it didn't cut into this pie at all. It's just still geeks like us using it.
I don't know what's more amazing, this, or the resistance of most computer users to tweak or modify their browser setup in any way shape or form unless they absolutely have to.
Service quality is not so bad where I live. I can talk and surf at the same time. And there is no way, I repeat no way to have two iPhones under one plan for less than $100/month in the USA other than AT&T. Would I prefer to have Verizon? Sure, but not $50 extra per month sure.