If by "Boice" you meant Voice, this has two drawbacks. First, Google Voice is unavailable in most countries. Second, a lot of these SMS verification services have blacklisted Google Voice and "cheap VoIP" because of their weaker identity guarantees.
The numbering plan in the United States goes like this: Area codes are the first 3 digits of a 10-digit number. Inside each area code are several local calling areas, which roughly correspond to cities and towns. Land line calls within a local calling area are free even on plans that charge extra for long distance. Within each local calling area are several exchanges, roughly corresponding to the fourth and fifth (and sometimes sixth) digits of the phone number. Each exchange is assigned to a single phone company, but a number on an exchange can be "ported" (see Local Number Portability) to another phone company that serves the same local calling area. Cell phones share local calling areas with land lines but have separate exchanges unless ported. So with your U.S. phone number, anyone can run a search on its exchange and thereby know with what city it is associated.
With all four major carriers and their MVNOs offering nationwide access, it's possible to choose an exchange elsewhere in the country, but this has two drawbacks. First, a lot of phone companies require the subscriber to be physically present in a local calling area to establish service there. And second, calls from land lines to a number in a different local calling area will be billed as long distance calls.
In CSS, 1px doesn't literally mean one pixel. It's whatever multiple of a hardware pixel is closest to 1/2700 of the distance from the eye to the display. On a 96 dpi display at arm's length, 1px is, yes, one pixel. A phone with a 160 dpi display, such as a pre-Retina iPhone may be held closer to the face and thus still one pixel per px. But on the higher-density displays of today's tablets and phones, 1px may equal 1.5 or 2 pixels. In any case, if you size everything in px, things will look perceptually the same size on all displays.
The thing that you are calling 'tiled windows" is very much available, and Android framework even provides convenient layouts for that.
I assume you're referring to the framework for displaying multiple views within a single app, called "fragments" and introduced in Honeycomb. But the limit of "fragments" is that it can't display views from two different apps, such as a web browser on one side and a text editor on the other. This makes it difficult to, say, write and test code on a small device while commuting on public transit to and from work. Right now my 10 inch laptop works for this purpose, but I don't know what will be available to replace it once it finally breaks. If I were to instead carry a larger laptop, I would run a greater risk of theft because I would need to carry it in something that's more obviously a laptop case.
I don't understand who is destroying open HTML documents.
Chrome for Android has a limit of how many documents it keeps loaded at once. I seem to remember reading that this limit was close to three. When more documents are opened in tabs, or when Chrome receives a memory pressure signal from the operating system, it will destroy a document instead of serializing its DOM to Chrome's cache folder.
So too many open web-pages leads to reload if same tab is revisited.
And this behavior causes data loss. For example, it causes the comment entered into a Slashdot comment form to be lost. Why did the paradigm change to excuse loss of the user's data?
Saving to disk at a RAM starved point of time might be thought of as too much work for little benefit, though it can be useful.
Saving to disk to avoid loss of user data is exactly the behavior I expected, as it's similar to what the virtual memory manager on a desktop OS does.
Historically, ["privilege" and "right"] were interchangeable.
Take care not to apply the etymological fallacy. If more recent statutes explicitly draw a distinction between "right" and "privilege", a judge will apply whatever definition was current at the time the word was added to the law. For example, would interpret "privileges" in the Fourteenth Amendment using the 1860s definition but "privilege" in a modern motor vehicle code under a newer definition.
Why can't they just ask the cell carrier if that phone was in use?
Because if the conversation isn't going over the voice or SMS network, the cell carrier can't easily distinguish data comprising a conversation over Skype or WhatsApp from another application's background data.
I have always communicated with the rule that if you don't understand what I am saying, it's my fault.
"This code uses a Patricia trie..." "What's a Patricia trie? And don't tell me to go look it up on Wikipedia."
Does this mean that every program using a well-known algorithm or data structure needs to contain a copy of the complete description of the algorithm or data structure that requires only CS101 to understand?
Restarting from here to avoid the personal attacks into which the other discussion degraded:
Why did the paradigm change from overlapping windows, which you claim that only a small minority can use, to forced maximization instead of from overlapping windows to tiled windows?
And why did the paradigm change from preserving the state of open HTML documents to destroying it?
Other than the Federal Courts there is no "US court system." They are individual States with individual courts and individual processes
Perhaps federal countries other than the United States have federal laws that define which such "individual processes" in provincial or state courts might be considered "excessive fines" or violation of "due process". For example, a federal legislature might rein in what court costs a province or state is allowed to assess against an acquitted defendant. The U.S. Congress has the theoretical authority to do this under the fines clause in the Eighth Amendment and the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. So why hasn't it, other than that Congress has been captured by judicial branches of the several states?
But there's a big difference between video game consoles and PCs in this respect. The owner of a PC is more likely to allow these defects to be automatically patched as they are discovered and fixed because the user has a legitimate way to install homemade software. On a console, on the other hand, the user is more likely to leave them unpatched because they are the only way that a user can run homemade (that is, unapproved) software.
99% of USB devices work with completely generic drivers.
True only because keyboards, mice, and flash drives are produced in mass quantities. I was referring to more specialized devices that do not "use[] completely standard protocols", such as printers, webcams, and fitness trackers.
Plus there's USB passthrough for virtualization anyway, so worst case you can jus fire up a Windows VM.
Virtualizing Windows requires purchasing and installing a genuine copy of sufficiently recent Windows for a given machine.
In addition, running a second OS alongside your primary one also requires purchasing data transfer allowance from your Internet service provider to keep that OS updated. Windows nowadays automatically downloads and installs a 3 GB update every few months. This 3 GB update is far larger and more frequent than that of (say) Ubuntu LTS, which this hurts people who are stuck on satellite or fixed cellular at home because they can't get FTTH, DOCSIS, or DSL service.
it's only recently that artists have started bucking the trend.
The following may not affect people in 2016. But by 2026, there will likely be more recording artists whose entire oeuvre is download-only from day one because they consider pressing CDs and negotiating with record stores to be an unnecessary expense. And by then, not everybody will have the discipline to develop musical tastes suitable for shunning all download-only artists. "Only luddites boycott an artist solely because the artist doesn't release on a medium from 1982, which was decades ago."
At least with the game consoles, there's a real cost to porting the games -- the underlying graphics/controller APIs are radically different.
Unless the games are developed with something like Unity or Unreal, in which case the engine handles the graphics API for you. Controller APIs are something that can be wrapped in one day per platform. So it's more like mastering a finished album for a new format, which is something you might have to do anyway for the streaming services.
If a game uses only XInput, not the classic joystick API, it won't work at all with non-Xbox controllers.
BS. I have a Logitech F310 gamepad that has a switch which lets me change between XInput and DirectInput.
If you slide your Logitech F310's mode switch to X and plug it into an Xbox 360 game console, does it work? If not, then the F310 is the only non-Xbox controller I've heard of that works with XInput.
The key difference is that ActiveX controls ran as native code with full permissions to everything in your user profile, while these web APIs run as managed code with finer-grained permissions. How common are JavaScript sandbox escapes lately?
Say you have been given a particular USB device as a gift, but the program to make the USB device work is available only for Windows, and your computer runs GNU/LInux. Would you prefer to buy and install a copy of Windows or refuse the gift?
Or if you happen to be a Windows user, I will reword: Say you have been given a particular USB device as a gift, but the program to make the USB device work is available only for OS X, and your computer runs Windows. Would you prefer to buy a Mac or refuse the gift?
Or are you willing to pay more for all USB devices so that they can come with drivers for Windows, OS X, and GNU/Linux?
I "don't even anecdotally counter [your] observation of no non-geek ever using overlapping windows" because I am willing to acquiesce to the absence of overlapping windows if tiled windows are also available. The problem is that tiled windows aren't available either.
And even that seven notes is a risk; muscians have been successfully sued for incorporating a sound-alike riff from someone else's song, even if not sampled.
So what steps should a songwriter take to avoid accidentally "incorporating a sound-alike riff from someone else's song"?
I understand that many Slashdot users outside the United States of America (USA) haven't been following politics in the USA. So I'll spell it out:
In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (GB), ripping CDs is illegal. There exist other countries where ripping CDs is legal, such as the USA. Residents of GB who want to rip CDs need to leave Britain in favor of one of those countries. Entering a country requires permission from that country, granted by the country's immigration department. The office of President of the USA (POTUS) is up for reelection in a few months. One of the front-runners for POTUS, by the name of Donald Trump, promises to significantly tighten the USA's immigration policy in an effort to ensure jobs to unemployed citizens of the USA. So residents of GB who want to move to the USA for CD ripping may need to begin the immigration process promptly in order to get in before Mr. Trump becomes POTUS and closes the door to immigrants.
He's probably thinking of the surprising number of PC games that have default mappings specifically for the XBox controller.
That and the fact that only Xbox 360 and Xbox One controllers support XInput. If a game uses only XInput, not the classic joystick API, it won't work at all with non-Xbox controllers. Perhaps developers decide to support XInput exclusively even in Windows desktop games because it's quicker and cheaper than trying to include default mappings for all brands of generic HID.
You are correct that doing so in public is not theft but copyright infringement. The owner of copyright in a musical work has the exclusive right to perform it publicly.
Slashdot Mirror
IIRC Google Boice can get SMS
If by "Boice" you meant Voice, this has two drawbacks. First, Google Voice is unavailable in most countries. Second, a lot of these SMS verification services have blacklisted Google Voice and "cheap VoIP" because of their weaker identity guarantees.
The numbering plan in the United States goes like this: Area codes are the first 3 digits of a 10-digit number. Inside each area code are several local calling areas, which roughly correspond to cities and towns. Land line calls within a local calling area are free even on plans that charge extra for long distance. Within each local calling area are several exchanges, roughly corresponding to the fourth and fifth (and sometimes sixth) digits of the phone number. Each exchange is assigned to a single phone company, but a number on an exchange can be "ported" (see Local Number Portability) to another phone company that serves the same local calling area. Cell phones share local calling areas with land lines but have separate exchanges unless ported. So with your U.S. phone number, anyone can run a search on its exchange and thereby know with what city it is associated.
With all four major carriers and their MVNOs offering nationwide access, it's possible to choose an exchange elsewhere in the country, but this has two drawbacks. First, a lot of phone companies require the subscriber to be physically present in a local calling area to establish service there. And second, calls from land lines to a number in a different local calling area will be billed as long distance calls.
In CSS, 1px doesn't literally mean one pixel. It's whatever multiple of a hardware pixel is closest to 1/2700 of the distance from the eye to the display. On a 96 dpi display at arm's length, 1px is, yes, one pixel. A phone with a 160 dpi display, such as a pre-Retina iPhone may be held closer to the face and thus still one pixel per px. But on the higher-density displays of today's tablets and phones, 1px may equal 1.5 or 2 pixels. In any case, if you size everything in px, things will look perceptually the same size on all displays.
The thing that you are calling 'tiled windows" is very much available, and Android framework even provides convenient layouts for that.
I assume you're referring to the framework for displaying multiple views within a single app, called "fragments" and introduced in Honeycomb. But the limit of "fragments" is that it can't display views from two different apps, such as a web browser on one side and a text editor on the other. This makes it difficult to, say, write and test code on a small device while commuting on public transit to and from work. Right now my 10 inch laptop works for this purpose, but I don't know what will be available to replace it once it finally breaks. If I were to instead carry a larger laptop, I would run a greater risk of theft because I would need to carry it in something that's more obviously a laptop case.
I don't understand who is destroying open HTML documents.
Chrome for Android has a limit of how many documents it keeps loaded at once. I seem to remember reading that this limit was close to three. When more documents are opened in tabs, or when Chrome receives a memory pressure signal from the operating system, it will destroy a document instead of serializing its DOM to Chrome's cache folder.
So too many open web-pages leads to reload if same tab is revisited.
And this behavior causes data loss. For example, it causes the comment entered into a Slashdot comment form to be lost. Why did the paradigm change to excuse loss of the user's data?
Saving to disk at a RAM starved point of time might be thought of as too much work for little benefit, though it can be useful.
Saving to disk to avoid loss of user data is exactly the behavior I expected, as it's similar to what the virtual memory manager on a desktop OS does.
Historically, ["privilege" and "right"] were interchangeable.
Take care not to apply the etymological fallacy. If more recent statutes explicitly draw a distinction between "right" and "privilege", a judge will apply whatever definition was current at the time the word was added to the law. For example, would interpret "privileges" in the Fourteenth Amendment using the 1860s definition but "privilege" in a modern motor vehicle code under a newer definition.
It's just as distracting for a driver to dictate out loud to the passenger holding the phone.
Why can't they just ask the cell carrier if that phone was in use?
Because if the conversation isn't going over the voice or SMS network, the cell carrier can't easily distinguish data comprising a conversation over Skype or WhatsApp from another application's background data.
I agree with your first four pet enragers. As for the fifth:
I need the image in 300dpi (web development, where print resolution means squat).
What's the pixel density of an iPad mini tablet with Retina display? Wikipedia says 326 dpi.
I have always communicated with the rule that if you don't understand what I am saying, it's my fault.
"This code uses a Patricia trie..."
"What's a Patricia trie? And don't tell me to go look it up on Wikipedia."
Does this mean that every program using a well-known algorithm or data structure needs to contain a copy of the complete description of the algorithm or data structure that requires only CS101 to understand?
Restarting from here to avoid the personal attacks into which the other discussion degraded:
Why did the paradigm change from overlapping windows, which you claim that only a small minority can use, to forced maximization instead of from overlapping windows to tiled windows?
And why did the paradigm change from preserving the state of open HTML documents to destroying it?
If the police officer's vehicle is behind yours, then its dashcam can probably see through your vehicle's rear window.
Other than the Federal Courts there is no "US court system." They are individual States with individual courts and individual processes
Perhaps federal countries other than the United States have federal laws that define which such "individual processes" in provincial or state courts might be considered "excessive fines" or violation of "due process". For example, a federal legislature might rein in what court costs a province or state is allowed to assess against an acquitted defendant. The U.S. Congress has the theoretical authority to do this under the fines clause in the Eighth Amendment and the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. So why hasn't it, other than that Congress has been captured by judicial branches of the several states?
But there's a big difference between video game consoles and PCs in this respect. The owner of a PC is more likely to allow these defects to be automatically patched as they are discovered and fixed because the user has a legitimate way to install homemade software. On a console, on the other hand, the user is more likely to leave them unpatched because they are the only way that a user can run homemade (that is, unapproved) software.
99% of USB devices work with completely generic drivers.
True only because keyboards, mice, and flash drives are produced in mass quantities. I was referring to more specialized devices that do not "use[] completely standard protocols", such as printers, webcams, and fitness trackers.
Plus there's USB passthrough for virtualization anyway, so worst case you can jus fire up a Windows VM.
Virtualizing Windows requires purchasing and installing a genuine copy of sufficiently recent Windows for a given machine.
In addition, running a second OS alongside your primary one also requires purchasing data transfer allowance from your Internet service provider to keep that OS updated. Windows nowadays automatically downloads and installs a 3 GB update every few months. This 3 GB update is far larger and more frequent than that of (say) Ubuntu LTS, which this hurts people who are stuck on satellite or fixed cellular at home because they can't get FTTH, DOCSIS, or DSL service.
it's only recently that artists have started bucking the trend.
The following may not affect people in 2016. But by 2026, there will likely be more recording artists whose entire oeuvre is download-only from day one because they consider pressing CDs and negotiating with record stores to be an unnecessary expense. And by then, not everybody will have the discipline to develop musical tastes suitable for shunning all download-only artists. "Only luddites boycott an artist solely because the artist doesn't release on a medium from 1982, which was decades ago."
Because errors and omissions insurers have historically been unwilling to cover fair use.
At least with the game consoles, there's a real cost to porting the games -- the underlying graphics/controller APIs are radically different.
Unless the games are developed with something like Unity or Unreal, in which case the engine handles the graphics API for you. Controller APIs are something that can be wrapped in one day per platform. So it's more like mastering a finished album for a new format, which is something you might have to do anyway for the streaming services.
If a game uses only XInput, not the classic joystick API, it won't work at all with non-Xbox controllers.
BS. I have a Logitech F310 gamepad that has a switch which lets me change between XInput and DirectInput.
If you slide your Logitech F310's mode switch to X and plug it into an Xbox 360 game console, does it work? If not, then the F310 is the only non-Xbox controller I've heard of that works with XInput.
The key difference is that ActiveX controls ran as native code with full permissions to everything in your user profile, while these web APIs run as managed code with finer-grained permissions. How common are JavaScript sandbox escapes lately?
Say you have been given a particular USB device as a gift, but the program to make the USB device work is available only for Windows, and your computer runs GNU/LInux. Would you prefer to buy and install a copy of Windows or refuse the gift?
Or if you happen to be a Windows user, I will reword:
Say you have been given a particular USB device as a gift, but the program to make the USB device work is available only for OS X, and your computer runs Windows. Would you prefer to buy a Mac or refuse the gift?
Or are you willing to pay more for all USB devices so that they can come with drivers for Windows, OS X, and GNU/Linux?
I "don't even anecdotally counter [your] observation of no non-geek ever using overlapping windows" because I am willing to acquiesce to the absence of overlapping windows if tiled windows are also available. The problem is that tiled windows aren't available either.
And even that seven notes is a risk; muscians have been successfully sued for incorporating a sound-alike riff from someone else's song, even if not sampled.
So what steps should a songwriter take to avoid accidentally "incorporating a sound-alike riff from someone else's song"?
I understand that many Slashdot users outside the United States of America (USA) haven't been following politics in the USA. So I'll spell it out:
In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (GB), ripping CDs is illegal.
There exist other countries where ripping CDs is legal, such as the USA.
Residents of GB who want to rip CDs need to leave Britain in favor of one of those countries.
Entering a country requires permission from that country, granted by the country's immigration department.
The office of President of the USA (POTUS) is up for reelection in a few months.
One of the front-runners for POTUS, by the name of Donald Trump, promises to significantly tighten the USA's immigration policy in an effort to ensure jobs to unemployed citizens of the USA.
So residents of GB who want to move to the USA for CD ripping may need to begin the immigration process promptly in order to get in before Mr. Trump becomes POTUS and closes the door to immigrants.
He's probably thinking of the surprising number of PC games that have default mappings specifically for the XBox controller.
That and the fact that only Xbox 360 and Xbox One controllers support XInput. If a game uses only XInput, not the classic joystick API, it won't work at all with non-Xbox controllers. Perhaps developers decide to support XInput exclusively even in Windows desktop games because it's quicker and cheaper than trying to include default mappings for all brands of generic HID.
Humming a tune you heard isn't theft.
You are correct that doing so in public is not theft but copyright infringement. The owner of copyright in a musical work has the exclusive right to perform it publicly.