This brings up a good issue. How many people out there have included a list of accounts and passwords with their will and designated what should be done with them? Who gets that information? Who gets the control? Do you want things like your Facebook page cancelled or do you want them to stand as a memorial? Can anyone even get to it to write what happened to you and inform those that would want to know but have no regular contact with your family? Do you want people to read your email after death? All sorts of information and issues are brought up in the digital age when a person dies.
There are a million of them. Why not buy one you don't have to jailbreak?
Because it already does what I want it to without jailbreaking and as far as I can tell better than the other phones. If it doesn't do what you want it to, then buy another phone.
Two minutes of Google and I have several answers that all say the same thing. Here is one quoted:
"The intensity of light is equal to the power per unit time that it delivers divided by the area measured over. "
That is a shit definition. A used SUV or a 50" TV costs essentially nothing compared to what the poor in the US really need. Education. Health care. Housing. Quality food. Security.
I think you are getting caught up on those (agreeably absurd) examples and not on what the post was actually implying. Poor in the US have free education. The quality might vary from neighborhood to neighborhood but it's still there. Our poor might need "quality food" while the rest of the world's poor simply would be satisfied with food. Our poor are fat while the rest of the world's poor starve. Security? You mean as opposed to having roving bands of bandits, no actual rights, or wondering if they'll be alive the next day that the poor normally have to deal with? The US has forgotten what is like to actually be poor. When this entire economic downturn started it was being compared to the great depression so I researched what it was like in the great depression. Then things were bad, real bad. bad enough that if we fell down to that level from where we are today, we'd consider it a step down from some dystopian post apocalyptic movie. Families actually were starving. Child mortality before age 5 was up into 25% in some states. Our current standards of lower class would be considered middle class in 1950 with regards to square footage of living space, amount of food to eat, and amount of clothes owned. Things have changed so much that entire classifications of housing have disappeared. One bedroom shotgun shacks that entire families would live in have been replaced by two bedroom apartments with washer, dryers and other appliances. Whatever problems the poor have in the US, it is still that people fight to come here to be poor rather than remain where they are and be poor.
MySpace ended up being killed by unattractive profiles, fake names were prevalent and the fact that there was just a small user base (teens and indie bands) didn't help things.
Facebook is good because it combines the best of everything. If you want to search for someone you don't have to search for xx_HaloPlayer43234, you can just type in "Bryan Smith" and find your friend. You can easily share images, video, etc. and chat (when it works) it a lot nicer than having 4 accounts for MSN, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger and ICQ, it easily embeds with phones (even dumb-phones via text) and has a huge userbase.
Of course, this is because MySpace gave users freedom while Facebook is a walled garden approach. MySpace had unattractive profiles because it gave the users the ability to change the layout and do it how they wanted. People that complain that they left MySpace because of horrible pages aren't actually complaining about MySpace as much as how bad their friends are at web page design. The entire real name things is just a privacy issue because now stalkers can search by name rather than needing person info about you to begin with (although You can create a fake name account in Facebook just as easily as MySpace). I see a lot of similarity between the MySpace/Facebook situation and the iOS/Android situation. The cases are different but I'm sure there are plenty of people who shun Apple's walled garden approach while praising Facebook for theirs.
GUI users tend to get completely lost when facing a new GUI. Even rearranging the menus is enough to get many people to give up and ask for help. Command line people, in contrast, can learn new syntax very easily, showing that they really ARE more proficient.
Citation please.
I suspect that their ability to learn a new GUIi is just as easy if not easier than CLI people learning a new CL syntax. Stick a command line person at a prompt that isn't one they are familiar with and they're going to be even more lost than the gui people unless it is a related syntax. Unless you know to type "ls" instead of "dir", I suspect there is much less a chance of a command line person coming up with an unknown command than a gui person figuring out the directory structure by clicking on things randomly (given people of equal ability).
Yes, it is the students, grants, and government that pay the university who funds their own libraries, but I felt that was too trivial to extrapolate because everybody reading would already realize that. We coudl go back evne a step further and talk about the parents that fund the students who fund the university who fund the libraries, but that would be just getting silly.
The point is that our current public library system isn't set up to replace or even preform alongside out educational system. We could shift around funding so that it is instead of giving it to an educational system, but then we'd need a way to certify that people doing their own learning have actually learned what they think and say they have for them to show their potential employers which would lead to a need for some sort of cert system, which would create the need for teaching for that cert system, which would create a private educational system that would eventually be in such demand that public funds would be used to support it, and we'd be right back to where we are.
There's so little taught in a university course that I couldn't read off a public library.
Actually, I doubt that. Most public libraries simply aren't interested the technical books and journals needed to provide a university level education and research. They're more interested in what the public wants and reads and have limited budgets to provide it. After leaving the university system for the real world, I kept up with some of my research and tried using the local public library. The references were there to tell me what I needed, but they had none of the required reading. From there I had to go to the local university library and search for things, and even then I had to leave the main library and use the departmental libraries that were scatted across campus to find books and magazines I needed. Sure, you can get about anything you want via interlibrary loan, but guess where those technical books and journals are coming from, most likely a university library which is being paid for by the university.
Anyway, the 2nd amendment is completely redundant, like the rest of the Bill of Rights. Nothing in the Constitution gives the government the authority to prohibit ownership or non-aggressive use of any kind of weapon in the first place. Given that they needed an amendment to ban alcohol, they would certainly need one to ban guns (or drugs or anything else not specifically mentioned among their enumerated powers).
These days, they'd just use the interstate commerce clause like everything else as somebody with a gun might be able to affect interstate commerce.
Sorry but I get tired of this "You have to make things realistic," crowd. I don't care if you think that's what's needed to prevent war (here's a hint: it's not) that's not how things work. Games are for fun, and they can use a wide variety of topics for that, including those which themselves aren't fun. They don't have any "responsibility" to make it real, no matter how much you claim.
Sorry, but although it may not apply to the person you are replying to, I would suspect that the far larger segment of the "You have to make things realistic," crowd are the ones who find fun in realism. In any such game, there are the people who want things to be a simulation. They may enjoy a good storyline and winnable scenario, but more importantly, they want an accurate simulation. Just look at all the flight simulators out there. They are just one segment of the people telling developers what they want in a war game, but they are definately there and are consumers whose desires are just as important as yours.
Guy does his job even AFTER he's fired and he goes to prison for it? Ugh.
Nope. Wasn't his job anymore. Before he was fired he was reassigned to a different job. He was still employed by his job responsibilities no longer included maintaining that equipment. He was introduced to the new person that had that job and asked to give over the passwords. He didn't. It turned out he had booby trapped all the equipment so that only he could make any changes or repair the equipment if it lost power. Still, they were working with him to turn over the passwords to the new guy which he refused to do. The city was setting up another meeting to discuss this even when he decided to withdraw lots of cash and make signals that he was fleeing the country. That's when fed agents decided to arrest him. That's when he was fired. Only then did he say he would turn over the passwords to the mayor when he previously refused to turn them over to anybody because he was playing the "You can't fire me because I have all the passwords." routine a little to hardball. This was not a case of a worried system admin, it was a case of extortion. Perhaps a case of extortion because he is a paranoid nutcase rather than money, but still extortion.
Still, all of that is IIRC. Go back and look at the replies by one of the jurors here on/. who answered everybody's questions about the case and their decision and decide for yourself.
"Position" by definition requires "t" to be only one value, while "Velocity" (and so, momentum) by definition requires "t" to be more than one value.
What you have described is the average velocity: v= delta r/delta t. (those are greek deltas signifying difference) There is also instantaneous velocity which is v=dr/dt. (those are partial differentials) In the average velocity, the object could be speeding up and slowing down at any given point along the trip. For the instantaneous velocity, it is a vector quantity at that specific point in time.
They seriously don't get it. The very statement that it will be running a derivative of Win7 says that they are doomed from the start. Actually, not that Win7 is bad, on the contrary even as a MacFanBoy I like Win7 but it's not the right OS for a tablet platform. They keep trying to shoehorn the same thing to be a one OS meets all.
Depends what they mean. iOS is still OS X. Android is still Linux. Their new tablet OS could be Win7 just trimmed down to the bare essentials but still basically the same technology so it doesn't require a completely different development and OS change. Do I think they'll do that? Probably not. We probably will get a bloated full version of Win7 on either a large and heavy tablet version of a laptop or an underpowered and slow mobile device. Still, they might surprise us.
Microsoft are going to make a tablet? About fucking time. I want to take notes on it with a stylus, not wave my fingers over the screen going 'oooo, I can make pictures big'. I want to be able stuff a USB stick in the side of it and put directories of data on it, not sync it to a fucking iTunes program running on an entirely separate computer (because, amongst other things, my Gentoo box really loves running iTunes).
I'm sorry. Why haven't you bought one then? They've been out for years. I've got an HP Compaq TC1100 right here sitting on my desk. At 3 pounds, it's twice the weight of the iPad but a full computer that was available six years ago and does everything you want it to.
Seems like they were making an iPod with smart-device features (apps) while probing the possibilities of making a phone. I'm not buying that the large device was the genesis, sorry.
In Steve Jobs D* interview, he specifically says they were working on a tablet with a touch screen interface that he could use both hands to type on. Here is an uncomplete transcript:
"I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on," Jobs sai to Mossberg. "I asked our people about it. And six months later they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He then got inertial scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, 'my god, we can build a phone with this' and we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the phone." That is why Apple built the iPhone first.
They killed the genuinely interesting-looking Courier before it ever got anywhere near production.
Heh. I'm guessing that they killed it even before it got into development. Somehow I doubt anybody but the art department who did the demo video ever actually worked on that thing. iPad was coming out so they had to put something out there to try and kill the demand but suggesting that there would be a similar MS product on the market soon so they might not want to buy an Apple product.
False. Since when is anything Apple has ever done 'out of thin air'? Are we really to presume the iPad isn't merely just a large iPod Touch? Or that the iPod Touch was in no way inspired by the smart phone?
Other way around apparently from interviews that have been given, they were developing the iPad when they decided it would make a really great phone. Then they switched development over to the iPhone instead. Of course even the iPad is just a continuation of the tablet market with emphasis on an OS and hardware that is actually built to be a tablet rather than just a laptop with a stylus mouse.Or you could say that they were just making a feature filled color book reader.
Simple answer is because it is usually cheaper, quicker, and more reliable to actually perform the experiment in meat space and list the results in a chart for reference when needed by engineers.
If you look at your assumption that the only thing holding us back is computational resource, understand that this also includes programing the problems to begin with. Even if the physicists have come up with all the correct equations and variables, then they have to be programmed into code. Some of those equations are going to be fairly difficult differential equations that might not even be solvable. There are various ways to use numerical methods to approximate this but it just adds another layer of complexity and margin of error. Then there is simply real life intruding upon us. We might know the physical characteristics for a certain metal, but we are probably not taking into account things like crystal size, crystal boundry properties, and nuclear scale defects and doping. Then you have the simple fact that computers aren't instantaneous and all powerful. Modeling something like the rolling rubber band would be even harder than making a CGI movie out of it, and CGI movies can take many, many hours of render time. It can't be broken up, the number of calculations would be far greater than the number of pixels on a screen, so each frame/unit of time would have to be calculated in full before moving on to the next. When doing physics modeling, you can be dealing with a literally astronomical number of points (say when modeling the motion of a galaxy with 400 billion stars). Then you could be calculating that over an astronomical period of time. In the end, computers aren't all powerful and there are limits to how much can be modeled accurately.
I think it would hold up. I can remember when Yahoo was a verb and nobody had ever heard of Google. Internet users have been found to be a fickle crowd and they can change around like college kids going to the new bar that's in vogue at the given time. If Facebook wants to keep its position, it'll have to keep up with times and fill in any weak spots. Besides security, they need a decent blogging function and ways to group friends and other pages into separate categories so we can see what we want to see. If somebody makes a better widget, people will start using that widget, especially if one sits on their laurels and doesn't add in new features as they are developed in a still growing web.
You seem to rely on facebook to maintain stronger friendships, while offloading and distancing yourself from the actual interaction that stronger friendships result in.
No, strong friendships are maintained the same way they always are, going out and doing stuff. I'm not getting rid of my phone or car and giving up on traditional methods when they're appropriate, but they are not the solution to everything. It's the medium and weak friendships that are maintained by Facebook so they can mature into strong ones again rather than drift away into being forgotten. That it allows certain functions such as announcements and events coordination be handled for all types of friends easier than other methods and in less time seems to be Facebooks killer app. Nevermind simply wasting time with games or status changes which lots of people seem to do that put them on Facebook and thus enhances the other features for people who don't.
I said communicate with friends, not "friends". I doubt that more than 10% of those 254 "friends" give a shit about your last vacation, and maybe 25% of that 10% give a shit about your BBQ.
If that is your experience, then I suspect your life is sad and lonely. I can tell it's already bitter since you've degenerated into swearing.
Still, especially in a case such as you propose, this is where Facebook excels over other communication methods. Such things as pictures or invites are out there for them to see if they want to. It keeps me from trying to figure out which 10% are interested which is probably variable according to what they are currently busy with and if they have any other plans as much as anything. Friends do drift in and out one ones life as things change. Even at 10%, assuming I knew which ones they were, phone calls would take a couple of hours and visiting probably a couple of days if kept to local friends. If I would have kept it to traditional methods, non-local friends would have drifted farther apart and I'd have even less ability to manage to contact or visit when I had need or was traveling nearby them. Even if not interested at this time, it's collected there for them to look at later. Even the traditional method of a personal web page is harder to maintain as well as keep track of everybody else's. This puts everything in one place for those who do care. Now I can go through and check up on what old high school or college friends have been doing without worrying about losing their phone numbers or email addresses. What it all comes down to is that you don't understand the tool and seem to get angry that other people do and use it.
So, what, physicists only do physics during lunch?
No, first we each lunch. Then we get distracted. Everything else is paperwork. First you have the theoretical physics which is paperwork, then after you do the experiments and have to write down all your data and findings, then write up the paper, which is more paperwork.
Also, if you would like to communicate with your friends, you can also:
1. Call them (yes on the telephone).
Let's see, time to call all my 254 friends to tell them the URL where the photos of my latest vacation are: Somewhere around 21 hours if I don't stop to talk about anything, eat, or go to the bathroom. Even if I limit to the friends that are local because I'm inviting them to BBQ this weekend, it's still around 10 hours.
2. Visit them.
Multiply the above times by 6 for local friends or turn hours into days for non-local friends.
3. Use one of dozens of Instant Messanger applications including: SMS, MS Messenger, and Blackberry Messenger.
Less people use those than use Facebook and you'd have to use multiple methods and keep track of which methods were used to contact which people.
Face it, your solutions are trivial and irrational. We already used those methods and still have them to use. If it was easier, quicker, or of better quality to use those methods, Facebook and other social networking services, or even the internet never would have become widely used. It's like telling people to go back to reading magazines and dead tree newspapers rather than use the internet. Next you'll be telling people that if they want to visit friends or family, they can use a horse and buggy instead of a car. The simple matter of fact is that Facebook has features that work better than other methods and has reached critical mass where it can be considered a standard. For making announcements, posting photos, or scheduling events, there's not much else that does it as well with as many people using it. It is also one of those "dozens of Instant Messanger applications" that you were talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
This brings up a good issue. How many people out there have included a list of accounts and passwords with their will and designated what should be done with them? Who gets that information? Who gets the control? Do you want things like your Facebook page cancelled or do you want them to stand as a memorial? Can anyone even get to it to write what happened to you and inform those that would want to know but have no regular contact with your family? Do you want people to read your email after death? All sorts of information and issues are brought up in the digital age when a person dies.
Because it already does what I want it to without jailbreaking and as far as I can tell better than the other phones. If it doesn't do what you want it to, then buy another phone.
Those are proton beams from "unlicensed nuclear accelerators", not lasers.
Two minutes of Google and I have several answers that all say the same thing. Here is one quoted:
"The intensity of light is equal to the power per unit time that it delivers divided by the area measured over. "
I think you are getting caught up on those (agreeably absurd) examples and not on what the post was actually implying. Poor in the US have free education. The quality might vary from neighborhood to neighborhood but it's still there. Our poor might need "quality food" while the rest of the world's poor simply would be satisfied with food. Our poor are fat while the rest of the world's poor starve. Security? You mean as opposed to having roving bands of bandits, no actual rights, or wondering if they'll be alive the next day that the poor normally have to deal with? The US has forgotten what is like to actually be poor. When this entire economic downturn started it was being compared to the great depression so I researched what it was like in the great depression. Then things were bad, real bad. bad enough that if we fell down to that level from where we are today, we'd consider it a step down from some dystopian post apocalyptic movie. Families actually were starving. Child mortality before age 5 was up into 25% in some states. Our current standards of lower class would be considered middle class in 1950 with regards to square footage of living space, amount of food to eat, and amount of clothes owned. Things have changed so much that entire classifications of housing have disappeared. One bedroom shotgun shacks that entire families would live in have been replaced by two bedroom apartments with washer, dryers and other appliances. Whatever problems the poor have in the US, it is still that people fight to come here to be poor rather than remain where they are and be poor.
Of course, this is because MySpace gave users freedom while Facebook is a walled garden approach. MySpace had unattractive profiles because it gave the users the ability to change the layout and do it how they wanted. People that complain that they left MySpace because of horrible pages aren't actually complaining about MySpace as much as how bad their friends are at web page design. The entire real name things is just a privacy issue because now stalkers can search by name rather than needing person info about you to begin with (although You can create a fake name account in Facebook just as easily as MySpace). I see a lot of similarity between the MySpace/Facebook situation and the iOS/Android situation. The cases are different but I'm sure there are plenty of people who shun Apple's walled garden approach while praising Facebook for theirs.
Citation please.
I suspect that their ability to learn a new GUIi is just as easy if not easier than CLI people learning a new CL syntax. Stick a command line person at a prompt that isn't one they are familiar with and they're going to be even more lost than the gui people unless it is a related syntax. Unless you know to type "ls" instead of "dir", I suspect there is much less a chance of a command line person coming up with an unknown command than a gui person figuring out the directory structure by clicking on things randomly (given people of equal ability).
Yes, it is the students, grants, and government that pay the university who funds their own libraries, but I felt that was too trivial to extrapolate because everybody reading would already realize that. We coudl go back evne a step further and talk about the parents that fund the students who fund the university who fund the libraries, but that would be just getting silly.
The point is that our current public library system isn't set up to replace or even preform alongside out educational system. We could shift around funding so that it is instead of giving it to an educational system, but then we'd need a way to certify that people doing their own learning have actually learned what they think and say they have for them to show their potential employers which would lead to a need for some sort of cert system, which would create the need for teaching for that cert system, which would create a private educational system that would eventually be in such demand that public funds would be used to support it, and we'd be right back to where we are.
Actually, I doubt that. Most public libraries simply aren't interested the technical books and journals needed to provide a university level education and research. They're more interested in what the public wants and reads and have limited budgets to provide it. After leaving the university system for the real world, I kept up with some of my research and tried using the local public library. The references were there to tell me what I needed, but they had none of the required reading. From there I had to go to the local university library and search for things, and even then I had to leave the main library and use the departmental libraries that were scatted across campus to find books and magazines I needed. Sure, you can get about anything you want via interlibrary loan, but guess where those technical books and journals are coming from, most likely a university library which is being paid for by the university.
These days, they'd just use the interstate commerce clause like everything else as somebody with a gun might be able to affect interstate commerce.
Sorry, but although it may not apply to the person you are replying to, I would suspect that the far larger segment of the "You have to make things realistic," crowd are the ones who find fun in realism. In any such game, there are the people who want things to be a simulation. They may enjoy a good storyline and winnable scenario, but more importantly, they want an accurate simulation. Just look at all the flight simulators out there. They are just one segment of the people telling developers what they want in a war game, but they are definately there and are consumers whose desires are just as important as yours.
I read /.
Nope. Wasn't his job anymore. Before he was fired he was reassigned to a different job. He was still employed by his job responsibilities no longer included maintaining that equipment. He was introduced to the new person that had that job and asked to give over the passwords. He didn't. It turned out he had booby trapped all the equipment so that only he could make any changes or repair the equipment if it lost power. Still, they were working with him to turn over the passwords to the new guy which he refused to do. The city was setting up another meeting to discuss this even when he decided to withdraw lots of cash and make signals that he was fleeing the country. That's when fed agents decided to arrest him. That's when he was fired. Only then did he say he would turn over the passwords to the mayor when he previously refused to turn them over to anybody because he was playing the "You can't fire me because I have all the passwords." routine a little to hardball. This was not a case of a worried system admin, it was a case of extortion. Perhaps a case of extortion because he is a paranoid nutcase rather than money, but still extortion.
Still, all of that is IIRC. Go back and look at the replies by one of the jurors here on /. who answered everybody's questions about the case and their decision and decide for yourself.
What you have described is the average velocity: v= delta r/delta t. (those are greek deltas signifying difference) There is also instantaneous velocity which is v=dr/dt. (those are partial differentials) In the average velocity, the object could be speeding up and slowing down at any given point along the trip. For the instantaneous velocity, it is a vector quantity at that specific point in time.
Depends what they mean. iOS is still OS X. Android is still Linux. Their new tablet OS could be Win7 just trimmed down to the bare essentials but still basically the same technology so it doesn't require a completely different development and OS change. Do I think they'll do that? Probably not. We probably will get a bloated full version of Win7 on either a large and heavy tablet version of a laptop or an underpowered and slow mobile device. Still, they might surprise us.
I'm sorry. Why haven't you bought one then? They've been out for years. I've got an HP Compaq TC1100 right here sitting on my desk. At 3 pounds, it's twice the weight of the iPad but a full computer that was available six years ago and does everything you want it to.
In Steve Jobs D* interview, he specifically says they were working on a tablet with a touch screen interface that he could use both hands to type on. Here is an uncomplete transcript:
Here, you can go and watch the video (second one down, "On the origins of the iPhone" is title above video) of him saying it and determine for yourself.
Heh. I'm guessing that they killed it even before it got into development. Somehow I doubt anybody but the art department who did the demo video ever actually worked on that thing. iPad was coming out so they had to put something out there to try and kill the demand but suggesting that there would be a similar MS product on the market soon so they might not want to buy an Apple product.
Other way around apparently from interviews that have been given, they were developing the iPad when they decided it would make a really great phone. Then they switched development over to the iPhone instead. Of course even the iPad is just a continuation of the tablet market with emphasis on an OS and hardware that is actually built to be a tablet rather than just a laptop with a stylus mouse.Or you could say that they were just making a feature filled color book reader.
Simple answer is because it is usually cheaper, quicker, and more reliable to actually perform the experiment in meat space and list the results in a chart for reference when needed by engineers.
If you look at your assumption that the only thing holding us back is computational resource, understand that this also includes programing the problems to begin with. Even if the physicists have come up with all the correct equations and variables, then they have to be programmed into code. Some of those equations are going to be fairly difficult differential equations that might not even be solvable. There are various ways to use numerical methods to approximate this but it just adds another layer of complexity and margin of error. Then there is simply real life intruding upon us. We might know the physical characteristics for a certain metal, but we are probably not taking into account things like crystal size, crystal boundry properties, and nuclear scale defects and doping. Then you have the simple fact that computers aren't instantaneous and all powerful. Modeling something like the rolling rubber band would be even harder than making a CGI movie out of it, and CGI movies can take many, many hours of render time. It can't be broken up, the number of calculations would be far greater than the number of pixels on a screen, so each frame/unit of time would have to be calculated in full before moving on to the next. When doing physics modeling, you can be dealing with a literally astronomical number of points (say when modeling the motion of a galaxy with 400 billion stars). Then you could be calculating that over an astronomical period of time. In the end, computers aren't all powerful and there are limits to how much can be modeled accurately.
I think it would hold up. I can remember when Yahoo was a verb and nobody had ever heard of Google. Internet users have been found to be a fickle crowd and they can change around like college kids going to the new bar that's in vogue at the given time. If Facebook wants to keep its position, it'll have to keep up with times and fill in any weak spots. Besides security, they need a decent blogging function and ways to group friends and other pages into separate categories so we can see what we want to see. If somebody makes a better widget, people will start using that widget, especially if one sits on their laurels and doesn't add in new features as they are developed in a still growing web.
No, strong friendships are maintained the same way they always are, going out and doing stuff. I'm not getting rid of my phone or car and giving up on traditional methods when they're appropriate, but they are not the solution to everything. It's the medium and weak friendships that are maintained by Facebook so they can mature into strong ones again rather than drift away into being forgotten. That it allows certain functions such as announcements and events coordination be handled for all types of friends easier than other methods and in less time seems to be Facebooks killer app. Nevermind simply wasting time with games or status changes which lots of people seem to do that put them on Facebook and thus enhances the other features for people who don't.
If that is your experience, then I suspect your life is sad and lonely. I can tell it's already bitter since you've degenerated into swearing.
Still, especially in a case such as you propose, this is where Facebook excels over other communication methods. Such things as pictures or invites are out there for them to see if they want to. It keeps me from trying to figure out which 10% are interested which is probably variable according to what they are currently busy with and if they have any other plans as much as anything. Friends do drift in and out one ones life as things change. Even at 10%, assuming I knew which ones they were, phone calls would take a couple of hours and visiting probably a couple of days if kept to local friends. If I would have kept it to traditional methods, non-local friends would have drifted farther apart and I'd have even less ability to manage to contact or visit when I had need or was traveling nearby them. Even if not interested at this time, it's collected there for them to look at later. Even the traditional method of a personal web page is harder to maintain as well as keep track of everybody else's. This puts everything in one place for those who do care. Now I can go through and check up on what old high school or college friends have been doing without worrying about losing their phone numbers or email addresses. What it all comes down to is that you don't understand the tool and seem to get angry that other people do and use it.
No, first we each lunch. Then we get distracted. Everything else is paperwork. First you have the theoretical physics which is paperwork, then after you do the experiments and have to write down all your data and findings, then write up the paper, which is more paperwork.
Let's see, time to call all my 254 friends to tell them the URL where the photos of my latest vacation are: Somewhere around 21 hours if I don't stop to talk about anything, eat, or go to the bathroom. Even if I limit to the friends that are local because I'm inviting them to BBQ this weekend, it's still around 10 hours.
Multiply the above times by 6 for local friends or turn hours into days for non-local friends.
Less people use those than use Facebook and you'd have to use multiple methods and keep track of which methods were used to contact which people.
Face it, your solutions are trivial and irrational. We already used those methods and still have them to use. If it was easier, quicker, or of better quality to use those methods, Facebook and other social networking services, or even the internet never would have become widely used. It's like telling people to go back to reading magazines and dead tree newspapers rather than use the internet. Next you'll be telling people that if they want to visit friends or family, they can use a horse and buggy instead of a car. The simple matter of fact is that Facebook has features that work better than other methods and has reached critical mass where it can be considered a standard. For making announcements, posting photos, or scheduling events, there's not much else that does it as well with as many people using it. It is also one of those "dozens of Instant Messanger applications" that you were talking about.