"I understand that Android does not ship with much GNU or GNOME software, but GNU and GNOME are what built Linux."
Nonsense. Linux would be as well off, if not better, without GNOME. Without GNU Linux would have used other solutions.
"Without either, the foundations upon which Android runs would never have accreted enough functionality to even think about running a smartphone."
No reason to believe that, but even if Linux would not have evolved FreeBSD would have.
"As mostly non-rich people, often not closely allied with specific companies, we don't have publicists or agents."
RMS is a silver-spooner who never had to think about where his next meal is coming from. He doesn't come off as polished because he is a freak, not because he's a working man.
What an ignorant article. MS OS/2? OS/2 was IBM's abortion, not Microsoft's. Win32 existed less than the *10 years* after the introduction of the 386. Would have been sooner if it weren't for IBM.
The G5 was not faster than its x86 competition when it came out, certainly not "much faster". The other PPC processors available where generations behind. The G5 made for a Power Mac that sounded like a hurricane as well. PPC had already been crushed by Intel by then.
Power and PowerPC are not the same thing. Desktop PowerPC died with the 970/G5 and should have died much earlier.
"The x86 brilliantly hid this by translating CISC to RISC superbly..."
Nonsense. Describing the internal architecture of modern processors as "RISC" is something only fanboys do and Intel is far more than just "one of many vendors". Intel not only proved RISC experts wrong generation after generation, they showed the industry how all processors should be designed, not just x86 ones.
You know a 1TB drive goes for about 80 bucks now...and you own it. No one you don't know looking at your stuff or holding it for ransom down the road and you don't have to access it through a soda straw that you pay a continual toll for.
Hard to understand the foolishness of paying $1800 for a 3 year rental of something that costs less than a 100 bucks, much less paying a huge price for a machine that is useless without it. This reads like a justification but it just points out how stupid this is.
Pretty sad when your rant has to have a lengthy disclaimer because a massive swath of the market that doesn't line up with your point of view. Even sadder that you are modded insightful.
There's nothing sane about 3:2 proportions. They faded from existence because 16:10 is better. This notebook has a whopping 100 pixels more than a 13" retina MBP, a whole 6% more! That's something you can really pat yourself on the back over. Hopefully it will make up for not being able to install apps despite paying nearly the same price for a lot less machine.
He said that the ethical implications of the deceit might be "disqualifying for users of free software", not the technical details themselves. Talking about "ethics and such" is certainly relevant in that context especially in a community that thinks it's so ethically-minded.
The GPL doesn't ensure that you can "actually contribute to or even see developmental android code" and Google not offering that doesn't mean that their products are a "proprietary exploitation". The problem here is a nerd's sense of entitlement.
The winner-takes-all rule in most states is a core problem but not the only problem with the electoral college. A solution, though, that promotes a different version of us-versus-them tribalism like you suggest isn't a solution at all. Changing from red state/blue state to urban/rural is a step backwards. We need to break the stranglehold of the two-sides-of-the-same-coin, two party monopoly that ruins our representative government. Restoring the proper role of corporations and breaking the power of money would help greatly too. Then the electoral college might return to providing the function for which it was designed.
BTW, Texas has the same urban/rural divide as California but in different proportions, so if you think that making California more like Texas would help the country you are misguided. It's not even clear that would help if it was done in lock-step with making Texas more like California. We have a "choice" between two terrible options. We need better options, not different rules for making the same crappy choices.
You are correct, and judging by the collective responses, most here don't either. The problems of the electoral college have nothing to do with state boundaries.
Sadly, this just another of countless examples of the internet enabling fools to masquerade as experts to the detriment of us all. Now we have, in addition to real problems, more misinformation to overcome.
The opposite of "tyranny of the majority" is not "tyranny of the minority". The problem you complain about does not result from a failure of democratic process, it is due to the monopoly enjoyed jointly by the two-party system. The electoral college does not contribute to that, it is victimized by it.
To the founders, the "Senate problem" was a solution, not a problem. Proportional representation was not the ultimate goal; it was a goal that needed to be tempered. The Senate does that.
Government dysfunction is not a result of geographic or population inequalities among states. Addressing that doesn't help....and no, direct election of the President doesn't make the most sense.
Apple didn't copy Gateway, it copied Bang & Olufsen. B&O was doing prestige electronics boutiques in the 90's and still has them. Apple steals its design philosophy from much the same sources. It is straight Scandinavian design...uninspired at that. It's also ironic when you consider the reason behind the form originated from an inability to afford anything more.
People want to believe that lots of text editing is somehow more complex than a little text editing. It's just text editing.
The niche emacs succeeded in was editor tribalism. emacs vs. vi has been a successful implementation of nerd clan wars for decades. Intelligent people understand it's meaningless and that there have been viable, and superior, alternatives to both as long as each has existed. Perhaps not on Unix or in open source, but that itself is a niche. There's a whole world out there.
It's just text editing. You learn the commands and the motions to execute them, then it's muscle memory. That's what matters, not that it's Lisp. People who think that editing should be done through on-demand coding are trapped in a 70's low-bandwidth terminal mentality and are thinking too hard.
Windows 95 was a quick and dirty hack? It has no security? It was needed due to limitations in hardware? You're an idiot.
Windows 95 was a monumental effort at the time. It included Plug and Play for the very first time, a feature which took literally years for the industry to develop. It had a substantially new UI, a completely new OS integral to Windows, it ran DOS apps in a virtual 86 environment, it was preemptive and had protected memory (although that was not new to Windows). Windows was the OPPOSITE of a quick and dirty hack, it was a colossal effort and a massive step forward for the PC. In the history of the PC there has been NO OS that took more time and effort to bring to market than Windows 95.
Windows 95 did not have multiprocessor support. It would not be faster at many things, if any at all, than a 2010 PC with Windows 7.
As long as that serious work fit into tiny memory model. Turbo Pascal didn't support anything else. Turbo Pascal was a toy for people learning to program, serious work was done in Lattice C, and later in MSC (which originally was Lattice C).
Of course, by 1990 PCs were flooded with affordable compilers and Turbo Pascal was gone.
Slashdot Mirror
"I understand that Android does not ship with much GNU or GNOME software, but GNU and GNOME are what built Linux."
Nonsense. Linux would be as well off, if not better, without GNOME. Without GNU Linux would have used other solutions.
"Without either, the foundations upon which Android runs would never have accreted enough functionality to even think about running a smartphone."
No reason to believe that, but even if Linux would not have evolved FreeBSD would have.
"As mostly non-rich people, often not closely allied with specific companies, we don't have publicists or agents."
RMS is a silver-spooner who never had to think about where his next meal is coming from. He doesn't come off as polished because he is a freak, not because he's a working man.
What an ignorant article. MS OS/2? OS/2 was IBM's abortion, not Microsoft's. Win32 existed less than the *10 years* after the introduction of the 386. Would have been sooner if it weren't for IBM.
But hey, as long as it get you page hits, right?
The G5 was not faster than its x86 competition when it came out, certainly not "much faster". The other PPC processors available where generations behind. The G5 made for a Power Mac that sounded like a hurricane as well. PPC had already been crushed by Intel by then.
Power and PowerPC are not the same thing. Desktop PowerPC died with the 970/G5 and should have died much earlier.
Spoken like someone who knows nothing about the DEC Alpha.
"The x86 brilliantly hid this by translating CISC to RISC superbly..."
Nonsense. Describing the internal architecture of modern processors as "RISC" is something only fanboys do and Intel is far more than just "one of many vendors". Intel not only proved RISC experts wrong generation after generation, they showed the industry how all processors should be designed, not just x86 ones.
You are an idiot and so are the morons who modded you insightful.
"A basic task scheduler and process messaging could be thrown together in an afternoon, ..."
Right, kernels are things you throw together in an afternoon. I'm sure most of them are. Bootstrapping code takes, what, 5-10 minutes?
"Narrowly looking at sales figures just after the mini was available & attempting to draw long term conclusions is extremely premature."
It's not premature to conclude that there are customers who prefer the smaller size nor is looking at sales figures "narrow" when considering that.
"Glossy fine print magazines are horrible on anything less than a 9.7" retina display."
Yes, horrible! How did we manage until the retina iPad came out?
What the world needs is one tablet for the sofa and another for "everywhere else".
You know a 1TB drive goes for about 80 bucks now...and you own it. No one you don't know looking at your stuff or holding it for ransom down the road and you don't have to access it through a soda straw that you pay a continual toll for.
Hard to understand the foolishness of paying $1800 for a 3 year rental of something that costs less than a 100 bucks, much less paying a huge price for a machine that is useless without it. This reads like a justification but it just points out how stupid this is.
Pretty sad when your rant has to have a lengthy disclaimer because a massive swath of the market that doesn't line up with your point of view. Even sadder that you are modded insightful.
There's nothing sane about 3:2 proportions. They faded from existence because 16:10 is better. This notebook has a whopping 100 pixels more than a 13" retina MBP, a whole 6% more! That's something you can really pat yourself on the back over. Hopefully it will make up for not being able to install apps despite paying nearly the same price for a lot less machine.
He said that the ethical implications of the deceit might be "disqualifying for users of free software", not the technical details themselves. Talking about "ethics and such" is certainly relevant in that context especially in a community that thinks it's so ethically-minded.
The GPL doesn't ensure that you can "actually contribute to or even see developmental android code" and Google not offering that doesn't mean that their products are a "proprietary exploitation". The problem here is a nerd's sense of entitlement.
The winner-takes-all rule in most states is a core problem but not the only problem with the electoral college. A solution, though, that promotes a different version of us-versus-them tribalism like you suggest isn't a solution at all. Changing from red state/blue state to urban/rural is a step backwards. We need to break the stranglehold of the two-sides-of-the-same-coin, two party monopoly that ruins our representative government. Restoring the proper role of corporations and breaking the power of money would help greatly too. Then the electoral college might return to providing the function for which it was designed.
BTW, Texas has the same urban/rural divide as California but in different proportions, so if you think that making California more like Texas would help the country you are misguided. It's not even clear that would help if it was done in lock-step with making Texas more like California. We have a "choice" between two terrible options. We need better options, not different rules for making the same crappy choices.
You are correct, and judging by the collective responses, most here don't either. The problems of the electoral college have nothing to do with state boundaries.
Sadly, this just another of countless examples of the internet enabling fools to masquerade as experts to the detriment of us all. Now we have, in addition to real problems, more misinformation to overcome.
The opposite of "tyranny of the majority" is not "tyranny of the minority". The problem you complain about does not result from a failure of democratic process, it is due to the monopoly enjoyed jointly by the two-party system. The electoral college does not contribute to that, it is victimized by it.
To the founders, the "Senate problem" was a solution, not a problem. Proportional representation was not the ultimate goal; it was a goal that needed to be tempered. The Senate does that.
Government dysfunction is not a result of geographic or population inequalities among states. Addressing that doesn't help. ...and no, direct election of the President doesn't make the most sense.
Apple didn't copy Gateway, it copied Bang & Olufsen. B&O was doing prestige electronics boutiques in the 90's and still has them. Apple steals its design philosophy from much the same sources. It is straight Scandinavian design...uninspired at that. It's also ironic when you consider the reason behind the form originated from an inability to afford anything more.
If it took you 2 months to figure that out you should have been fired.
People want to believe that lots of text editing is somehow more complex than a little text editing. It's just text editing.
The niche emacs succeeded in was editor tribalism. emacs vs. vi has been a successful implementation of nerd clan wars for decades. Intelligent people understand it's meaningless and that there have been viable, and superior, alternatives to both as long as each has existed. Perhaps not on Unix or in open source, but that itself is a niche. There's a whole world out there.
It's just text editing. You learn the commands and the motions to execute them, then it's muscle memory. That's what matters, not that it's Lisp. People who think that editing should be done through on-demand coding are trapped in a 70's low-bandwidth terminal mentality and are thinking too hard.
Stunningly stupid, oxymoronic comment.
Because over a decade ago a kernel was based on a decades-old "drop-in replacement" that's specifically NOT BSD, OS X is BSD.
Windows 95 was a quick and dirty hack? It has no security? It was needed due to limitations in hardware? You're an idiot.
Windows 95 was a monumental effort at the time. It included Plug and Play for the very first time, a feature which took literally years for the industry to develop. It had a substantially new UI, a completely new OS integral to Windows, it ran DOS apps in a virtual 86 environment, it was preemptive and had protected memory (although that was not new to Windows). Windows was the OPPOSITE of a quick and dirty hack, it was a colossal effort and a massive step forward for the PC. In the history of the PC there has been NO OS that took more time and effort to bring to market than Windows 95.
Windows 95 did not have multiprocessor support. It would not be faster at many things, if any at all, than a 2010 PC with Windows 7.
It's sad what /. has become.
As long as that serious work fit into tiny memory model. Turbo Pascal didn't support anything else. Turbo Pascal was a toy for people learning to program, serious work was done in Lattice C, and later in MSC (which originally was Lattice C).
Of course, by 1990 PCs were flooded with affordable compilers and Turbo Pascal was gone.
Specifics please? Graphical UIs in setup have nothing to do with UEFI. What are these "mind-boggling" UEFI implementations?
You tribalists are pathetic.
"seriously, the bootloader on modern hardware doesn't need all that bullshit..."
Just what is "all that bullshit"? People that make these comments have no idea.
"The rest of UEFI is fluff. "
Point out some of this "fluff" specifically.