Which is quite funny, because I'd be moderately disappointed if my SSD had as many dips in it as the average pancake - far less flat than the average crepe, which is also less flat than an SSD really should be.
A browser that relies on the OS for support for thousands of different codecs
Such a browser could not run correctly on a free operating system because most popular audio and video codecs used on the Internet are covered by one or more patents licensed incompatibly with free software. Case in point: In Ubuntu, Software Center and Synaptic put up a big scary warning of potential patent infringement when the user tries to install anything related to FFmpeg.
So? If you need the codec, it has to come from somewhere, not the magical codec fairy in the sky. Either its in the OS (once), in each app (a few times), or provided as software as part of your stream (every video), but its coming from somewhere either way.
Do you expect every application to come with its own set of printer drivers, too?
I never understood the use of a separate view/edit mode either anyway.
Then you probably never understood the power, grace, simplicity and speed of regular expressions at your fingertips and the massively powerful "redo last command but from here." command ("."). When making a small number of repetitive changes to a complex file and wanting to make sure you're scanning them as they go, the combination of n and . is amazing.
Oh, come on. Next you'll be saying that Christian fundamentalists will want to impose their will on women's reproductive rights, even if they're not Christian, and to start using that as an unofficial litmus test for who could be elected President!
Yup. How many people in the US would be comfortable on a nude beach? Or even a topless beach? The fact that our broadcast TV standards can produce a half-million-dollar fine for a nipple while allowing gratuitous carnage to be shown is considered very strange to a lot of the rest of the West - much of it enthusiastically supported by our fairly conservative religious culture.
Even that's a little misleading I feel - I have a "day two" iPhone 4, and many of my friends and co-workers (tech field, tech town) have first-weekend phones as well. Nobody has any observable antenna issues, but many (including myself) have better reception on the 4 than the 3GS. It was an overblown media circus, nothing more.
And Google should be very careful not to turn Android into another highly complex and confusing OS with an desktop-like interface. This is exactly what most people are running away from. They want something plain, pretty and "magic". There's only a very small part of the population wanting widgets and full customization abilities. For *these* users tablets may well be a fad anyway.
Well, we will see.
That's really what Apple "got" from day one, that their competitors are still working towards. Whether its as simple as making sure that scrolling and panning "just works" instead of "mostly works" on a mobile device, or making sure that playing a DVD just happens on a Windows/OSX device, the Apple user experience really is a bit nicer. Its nothing that their competitors don't do, but....
There was a recent story about the new Streak 7. While the reviewer was quoting gigahertz numbers you could actually see the device's screen lagging ~1/3 of a second behind his finger. I'm sure that its processor has great specs, but figuring out that nobody (for most values of body) gives a rat's ass about the numbers while everybody (same proviso) cares about responsiveness is a Big Deal.
Oh, please. The iPhone 4 lasts for a solid day of heavy use, all most people need, and you can easily use a "boost" charger to juice it up mid-flight if you have to - something that's no bulkier than carrying around an additional battery, I might add. It also recharges amazingly quickly from wall outlets.
This isn't about a pissing contest. I'm sure that your phone is nice and meets your needs as well. But most people don't carry additional batteries (regardless of their phone brand), and the vast majority of the millions of iPhone users have no battery issues. Its not a big liberal-media-coverup, its just a boring fact.
The funny thing is that half of the Android comments are talking about "increased choice," while the other half are bashing "idiots" who purchased anything other than an HTC phone. Often, these comments are from the same person (not talking about your history personally, just an observation).
Having the power to make the wrong decision is indeed power. But it turns out that a benevolent dictatorship a la Apple actually works very well for many people to whom their phone's inner workings are not the focal point of their day.
Solutions providers have a place in the world, just as more discrete vendors do.
What I object to is comparing the iPhone (software+hardware) to Android (Software only).
Ah, but that's the key difference between the two platforms - indeed, its the same story in OSX vs. Windows. One is only sold as part of a solution, and one is available piecemeal. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. Personally, when I was young I greatly preferred the piecemeal approach - I had more time than money, and it rewarded me for making the effort to stay current. These days I find myself much happier making that somebody else's problem, and I find that the solution approach works for me.
To my mind, the iPhone/iOS solution runs about about 95% of ideal. The Android devices I've played with start at more like 80%, but I've been told that with a time and education investment on my part I can get them up to 98-99%. For me, the additional work compared to the payoff is a bad deal. Your balance may be different.
Here's hoping that 32 bit software has all been recompiled before the Y2.038K problem rears its ugly head, too. That's 32bits of seconds past the Epoch (1/1/1970 IIRC). Of course, most "modern" software doesn't have the fixed-record-layout problems that a lot of the older COBOL systems did, so it'll be easier to work with.
With IPv6, you will get at least a/64 subnet, i.e. 2^64 addresses. Most ISPs will hopefully give you a/48 or a/56, which would allow for 65k or 256/64 subnets.
What, 2^64 (1,844,674,410,000,000,000) addresses aren't enough for your personal use?
Yup. And realistically, although its not something to be proud of, there's too much money for everyone in continuing to work with IPv4 addresses for years now to force anyone over the wall to IPv6 only.
Its probably going to come down from on high - want any new routable IPs? Your ISP will force you to be fully v6 compatible. Why? Because their upstream is doing the same to them...
In the next 6-24 months though, expect a remarkable amount of horse-trading of large IPv4 blocks.
A big part of this was the long-time lack of local "sandboxed" applications on Windows systems. If it had been easy for people to install lightweight software on their desktop in such a way that IT wasn't threatened by its very existence, we might never have reached this point.
Then again, one of the big "security features" of these apps is the idea that internet access is far less dangerous (when granted to an untrusted application) than local network access. On the desktop, we've been pushing the inverse model for years - which works better for trusted software. Its a very fun problem to watch.
I don't think there is enough money to be made in any other deployment scenario (e.g. home user) to drive the economics in another direction, and so you continue to see the push towards building and promoting more standards-compliant browsers.
We'll have to see how the Apple "Mac App Store" model does on this side. It might make a difference, especially if there's a way to add your enterprise app store into the mix. Might not. We'll see.
I believe that the only issue is that it was drawn up for the Neighborhood Association and then submitted, and that if it had been submitted directly it would have been fine. This blurs the line and allows the Assn to say "We had a traffic study performed (included)", etc., which has more weight with the politicians. Its a much grayer area than most blurbs (and/.) will grant it.
I still think that its reasonable in this case to request to have the board review it. Its also very reasonable for the board to say, "Yeah, that's all good, no worries." Its not as if the city engineer actually said something was wrong, simply that something might be wrong. For all we know, it was because of how the report was presented or even how it was received.
It still doesn't make a policy making an offer of employment contingent on certain behaviors the equivalent of a law that applies to all people in the State now, does it?
No, it isn't reasonable at all, not when you're a division of the government. The first amendment exists so that individuals can speak out against government acts with impunity - you can't be held accountable for speaking out against the government. By instituting this rule, they're essentially saying that the first amendment doesn't apply. Legally speaking, they have no right to do it, and morally speaking, it's abject in every sense of the word.
Your employer has no right to censor your speech - period. Even less so when that employer is part of the government who's supposed to be upholding that right in the first place. Conflict of interest.
That's right. They can't censor your speech.
You also can't insist that they continue to employ you after you call them asshats. Free speech has consequences too, you see.
Next thing you know, I won't be allowed to give my neighbor a band-aid because that would be practicing medicine without a licence.
If he is found guilty of something illegal, then so is every single engineering student. After all, they're "practicing", and certainly aren't licensed.
All he did was make a suggestion. The one who made the complaint is more guilty of a crime than the non-licensed engineer.
Interestingly enough, if you were to volunteer your time at an event as a "medic" there probably would be requirements that you be licensed to some degree. In this case, Cox prepared a report for an association that was then presented to the DOT, he didn't submit his personal findings as such. That's where the grey area comes into play.
Its entirely possible that, if it turns out that he was wrong, the association could then turn around and blame him for needlessly increasing their taxes and inconvenience by recommending that the light be installed. In that case, the fact that he was not licensed would actually protect him. But that's why you can't have it both ways.
It boggles the mind, doesn't it? "Non-engineers are incapable of producing engineering-quality work, therefore any non-engineer who does so is guilty of impersonating an engineer."
If it looks like it was drawn up by an engineer, then yes. A licensed (and therefore personally liable) engineer is able to include the work of another licensed engineer into their own work without incurring liability for that portion. Presenting something that appears to have been drawn up by a licensed engineer is tricky that way, in that it could indeed fool someone into incurring potentially massive personal liability.
The alternative is waiting and then complaining about the guv'mnt when they "redo that perfectly good traffic study at a cost to the taxpayers of $MANY..."
The risk is that it will appear that they have knowledge, but there's no actual guarantee that they do. That's the danger. Did you know that if a PE creates a detailed report like that, even if they don't seal it, that they can (and will) be held personally liable for the results if anything goes wrong? Not their employer, not the board, not the state, themselves, personally. That's the distinction, and its a damned important one.
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I remember the disgusting bullshit that spewed from that idiot we all called Senator Bono when he delivered his damaging blow to American creativity.
Well, its not like he had any personal ties to the recorded-entertainment industry himself...
Which is quite funny, because I'd be moderately disappointed if my SSD had as many dips in it as the average pancake - far less flat than the average crepe, which is also less flat than an SSD really should be.
What is it with people having some sort of fetish for putting EVERYTHING into the frigging browser?
This is what happens when people try to replace emacs.
A browser that relies on the OS for support for thousands of different codecs
Such a browser could not run correctly on a free operating system because most popular audio and video codecs used on the Internet are covered by one or more patents licensed incompatibly with free software. Case in point: In Ubuntu, Software Center and Synaptic put up a big scary warning of potential patent infringement when the user tries to install anything related to FFmpeg.
So? If you need the codec, it has to come from somewhere, not the magical codec fairy in the sky. Either its in the OS (once), in each app (a few times), or provided as software as part of your stream (every video), but its coming from somewhere either way.
Do you expect every application to come with its own set of printer drivers, too?
... with either the player installed or available for download.
Gee, I wish that I could announce my application usage statistics using that metric and get press coverage.
I never understood the use of a separate view/edit mode either anyway.
Then you probably never understood the power, grace, simplicity and speed of regular expressions at your fingertips and the massively powerful "redo last command but from here." command ("."). When making a small number of repetitive changes to a complex file and wanting to make sure you're scanning them as they go, the combination of n and . is amazing.
The segregation of women is NOT a religious obligation, it is a social choice.
So you would deny them the freedom to make that choice? Its not as if people only get to belong to a single Facebook group, after all.
Oh, come on. Next you'll be saying that Christian fundamentalists will want to impose their will on women's reproductive rights, even if they're not Christian, and to start using that as an unofficial litmus test for who could be elected President!
Yup. How many people in the US would be comfortable on a nude beach? Or even a topless beach? The fact that our broadcast TV standards can produce a half-million-dollar fine for a nipple while allowing gratuitous carnage to be shown is considered very strange to a lot of the rest of the West - much of it enthusiastically supported by our fairly conservative religious culture.
Even that's a little misleading I feel - I have a "day two" iPhone 4, and many of my friends and co-workers (tech field, tech town) have first-weekend phones as well. Nobody has any observable antenna issues, but many (including myself) have better reception on the 4 than the 3GS. It was an overblown media circus, nothing more.
And Google should be very careful not to turn Android into another highly complex and confusing OS with an desktop-like interface. This is exactly what most people are running away from. They want something plain, pretty and "magic". There's only a very small part of the population wanting widgets and full customization abilities. For *these* users tablets may well be a fad anyway.
Well, we will see.
That's really what Apple "got" from day one, that their competitors are still working towards. Whether its as simple as making sure that scrolling and panning "just works" instead of "mostly works" on a mobile device, or making sure that playing a DVD just happens on a Windows/OSX device, the Apple user experience really is a bit nicer. Its nothing that their competitors don't do, but ....
There was a recent story about the new Streak 7. While the reviewer was quoting gigahertz numbers you could actually see the device's screen lagging ~1/3 of a second behind his finger. I'm sure that its processor has great specs, but figuring out that nobody (for most values of body) gives a rat's ass about the numbers while everybody (same proviso) cares about responsiveness is a Big Deal.
Oh, please. The iPhone 4 lasts for a solid day of heavy use, all most people need, and you can easily use a "boost" charger to juice it up mid-flight if you have to - something that's no bulkier than carrying around an additional battery, I might add. It also recharges amazingly quickly from wall outlets.
This isn't about a pissing contest. I'm sure that your phone is nice and meets your needs as well. But most people don't carry additional batteries (regardless of their phone brand), and the vast majority of the millions of iPhone users have no battery issues. Its not a big liberal-media-coverup, its just a boring fact.
The funny thing is that half of the Android comments are talking about "increased choice," while the other half are bashing "idiots" who purchased anything other than an HTC phone. Often, these comments are from the same person (not talking about your history personally, just an observation).
Having the power to make the wrong decision is indeed power. But it turns out that a benevolent dictatorship a la Apple actually works very well for many people to whom their phone's inner workings are not the focal point of their day.
Solutions providers have a place in the world, just as more discrete vendors do.
What I object to is comparing the iPhone (software+hardware) to Android (Software only).
Ah, but that's the key difference between the two platforms - indeed, its the same story in OSX vs. Windows. One is only sold as part of a solution, and one is available piecemeal. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. Personally, when I was young I greatly preferred the piecemeal approach - I had more time than money, and it rewarded me for making the effort to stay current. These days I find myself much happier making that somebody else's problem, and I find that the solution approach works for me.
To my mind, the iPhone/iOS solution runs about about 95% of ideal. The Android devices I've played with start at more like 80%, but I've been told that with a time and education investment on my part I can get them up to 98-99%. For me, the additional work compared to the payoff is a bad deal. Your balance may be different.
Here's hoping that 32 bit software has all been recompiled before the Y2.038K problem rears its ugly head, too. That's 32bits of seconds past the Epoch (1/1/1970 IIRC). Of course, most "modern" software doesn't have the fixed-record-layout problems that a lot of the older COBOL systems did, so it'll be easier to work with.
Not easy, mind you. But easier.
With IPv6, you will get at least a /64 subnet, i.e. 2^64 addresses. Most ISPs will hopefully give you a /48 or a /56, which would allow for 65k or 256 /64 subnets.
What, 2^64 (1,844,674,410,000,000,000) addresses aren't enough for your personal use?
Yup. And realistically, although its not something to be proud of, there's too much money for everyone in continuing to work with IPv4 addresses for years now to force anyone over the wall to IPv6 only.
Its probably going to come down from on high - want any new routable IPs? Your ISP will force you to be fully v6 compatible. Why? Because their upstream is doing the same to them...
In the next 6-24 months though, expect a remarkable amount of horse-trading of large IPv4 blocks.
A big part of this was the long-time lack of local "sandboxed" applications on Windows systems. If it had been easy for people to install lightweight software on their desktop in such a way that IT wasn't threatened by its very existence, we might never have reached this point.
Then again, one of the big "security features" of these apps is the idea that internet access is far less dangerous (when granted to an untrusted application) than local network access. On the desktop, we've been pushing the inverse model for years - which works better for trusted software. Its a very fun problem to watch.
I don't think there is enough money to be made in any other deployment scenario (e.g. home user) to drive the economics in another direction, and so you continue to see the push towards building and promoting more standards-compliant browsers.
We'll have to see how the Apple "Mac App Store" model does on this side. It might make a difference, especially if there's a way to add your enterprise app store into the mix. Might not. We'll see.
I believe that the only issue is that it was drawn up for the Neighborhood Association and then submitted, and that if it had been submitted directly it would have been fine. This blurs the line and allows the Assn to say "We had a traffic study performed (included)", etc., which has more weight with the politicians. Its a much grayer area than most blurbs (and /.) will grant it.
I still think that its reasonable in this case to request to have the board review it. Its also very reasonable for the board to say, "Yeah, that's all good, no worries." Its not as if the city engineer actually said something was wrong, simply that something might be wrong. For all we know, it was because of how the report was presented or even how it was received.
It still doesn't make a policy making an offer of employment contingent on certain behaviors the equivalent of a law that applies to all people in the State now, does it?
What part of "[The US] Congress shall make no law..." do you think applies to the State? Besides, an employment policy is different than a law anyway.
No, it isn't reasonable at all, not when you're a division of the government. The first amendment exists so that individuals can speak out against government acts with impunity - you can't be held accountable for speaking out against the government. By instituting this rule, they're essentially saying that the first amendment doesn't apply. Legally speaking, they have no right to do it, and morally speaking, it's abject in every sense of the word.
Your employer has no right to censor your speech - period. Even less so when that employer is part of the government who's supposed to be upholding that right in the first place. Conflict of interest.
That's right. They can't censor your speech.
You also can't insist that they continue to employ you after you call them asshats. Free speech has consequences too, you see.
Next thing you know, I won't be allowed to give my neighbor a band-aid because that would be practicing medicine without a licence.
If he is found guilty of something illegal, then so is every single engineering student. After all, they're "practicing", and certainly aren't licensed.
All he did was make a suggestion. The one who made the complaint is more guilty of a crime than the non-licensed engineer.
Interestingly enough, if you were to volunteer your time at an event as a "medic" there probably would be requirements that you be licensed to some degree. In this case, Cox prepared a report for an association that was then presented to the DOT, he didn't submit his personal findings as such. That's where the grey area comes into play.
Its entirely possible that, if it turns out that he was wrong, the association could then turn around and blame him for needlessly increasing their taxes and inconvenience by recommending that the light be installed. In that case, the fact that he was not licensed would actually protect him. But that's why you can't have it both ways.
It boggles the mind, doesn't it? "Non-engineers are incapable of producing engineering-quality work, therefore any non-engineer who does so is guilty of impersonating an engineer."
If it looks like it was drawn up by an engineer, then yes. A licensed (and therefore personally liable) engineer is able to include the work of another licensed engineer into their own work without incurring liability for that portion. Presenting something that appears to have been drawn up by a licensed engineer is tricky that way, in that it could indeed fool someone into incurring potentially massive personal liability.
The alternative is waiting and then complaining about the guv'mnt when they "redo that perfectly good traffic study at a cost to the taxpayers of $MANY..."
Somedays, you just can't win.
The risk is that it will appear that they have knowledge, but there's no actual guarantee that they do. That's the danger. Did you know that if a PE creates a detailed report like that, even if they don't seal it, that they can (and will) be held personally liable for the results if anything goes wrong? Not their employer, not the board, not the state, themselves, personally. That's the distinction, and its a damned important one.