The fact that first-party apps are used commonly by a lot of people doesn't change the fact that this is actually a detriment to all third-party apps.
Yeah, instead of having to click on an icon to run a third-party app you'll now have to... er.... click on a tile? Swipe the page to the left and click on a tile? Not a huge detriment c.f. digging through the start menu or shuffling your window around so you can find the desktop icon.
Google was looking into the tablet/phone market for some time. And Android didn't happen overnight.
Phone, definitely - tablet, not so sure. Tablets had been on the market for years and failed to take off, remember. Netbooks were hot. Android for phones, ChromeOS for laptops makes sense until you throw new-style tablets, sitting between the two, into the equation. I don't think anybody will die of shock if ChromeOS gets dumped.
Apple and Google succeeded because they realized that you use touch interfaces on touch devices, and desktop interfaces on desktop devices.
...except Apple are making OS X look and work more like iOS and pushing multitouch trackpads on the desktop (even their mouse has a multitouch sensor on the top).
You're arguing that it is a good thing Microsoft is forcing a touch interface on a desktop. Microsoft sees that touch is popular, but they're still missing the bigger picture.
No, I'm arguing that what's good for Apple and Google isn't good for Microsoft. Apple and Google have a massive headstart over Microsoft in the tablet/phone market, and they're both attacking the ultraportable market. The one thing MS have that distinguishes them from Apple and Android is kosher Office/Outlook on ARM-based tablets, phones and ultraportables, and third-party Windows apps on larger x86 machines.
Now, maybe you don't personally think that's such a big advantage - I don't necessarily disagree - but MS needs to convince punters that it is a big deal or nobody will give MS phones & tablets a second look. If an MS marketdroid comes out and says, "Hey, know what? You don't really need full-fat desktop apps on your tablet!" then they may as well be wearing a black turtleneck with a big white apple on the chest...
The Windows 8 demo looks like they've made a fairly good stab at integrating desktop and tablet. That's all. Anyway, its a long way to launch so who's to say whether the ARM version will have the old-style desktop removed and/or if the x86 version will let you default to the desktop.
Your mouse has at least 3 buttons + a scroll wheel + a whole keyboard's worth of modifier keys to map on to multi-touch actions. Plus, the mouse has the distinction between moving the pointer and clicking (which is why its harder to go from mouse to touch than vice versa) so you could use context sensitivity (scrollwheel over a photo to zoom, over an edge to scroll) or implement mouse gestures.
Also, note that Apple have (a) been putting large multi-touch trackpads on all their laptops and (b) selling add-on trackpads for desktops for precisely this reason - the PC could follow this route (personally, I still prefer a mouse, but the current Apple glass trackpads are vastly better than trackpads of yore).
Don't be so sure. In 2003 they said all first party Microsoft apps would start using the Ribbon. It is 2011, and that still hasn't happened, though apparently that is still the goal. Apps like mspaint in Windows 7 did finally get the Ribbon, but not every app did.
Maybe they got the memo that the ribbon sucks, and that sticking a ribbon at the top of the screen when everybody is being squeezed (like it or not) into never-to-be-sufficiently-damned 16:9 screens with limited vertical real-estate might just have been a dumb move.
There is a very good chance the Office division didn't know Windows was going this route. And while Office may be the first set of apps to get tiles, not all apps will.
Steady on - I only said that I was impressed by the demo, not that MS weren't capable of fucking up. However, MS must realize by now that they're overdrawn in the fuckup bank.
And I don't simply use first-party Microsoft apps.
But millions of other people spend their time shuffling between Office, Outlook and IE.
Google has been asked why they have ChromeOS and Android as seperate projects, and they've said ChromeOS wouldn't be appropriate on a phone, or a touch tablet.
Google got caught with their pants down by the iPad coming along and making netbooks old hat. ChromeOS wouldn't make sense on a phone as it is an engine for running Google Docs and depends on a good network connection. I also suspect that its only chance is in the corporate market.
Apple keeps seperate UIs for touch and non-touch. There is a reason.
You should read the previews of OS X Lion - they're adding a shedload of iPad UI concepts to their desktop OS. Plus, Apple and Google have phone/tablet OSs that people like and are successful in their own rights. Microsoft doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation for mobile OSs, and as a result many people run MS desktops but still choose Apple or Android mobiles. Their Unique Selling Point is going to have to be "run GENUINE Microsoft Office and GENUINE Outlook on your mobile device!"
I was able to update Shotwell ahead of the next release by adding the Yorba PPA. I helped test an Empathy fix by adding the test PPAs. I was able to install VirtualBox and keep it updated by adding the VirtualBox PPA.
You lost 90% of the non-technical audience at "adding the Yorba PPA". Where do I find that under the "Add/remove Programs" menu? (That's rhetorical - don't answer it).
.DEBs and third-party repos are great when they work, provided you get the right one for your distro and don't hit any dependency hell problems.
The point is not that there aren't technical solutions to these problems, it is that they are relatively inaccessible to non-technical users c.f. windows (download and open the installer) or Mac (download the.dmg and drag the icon where the big arrow points) - assuming the apps don't have their own auto-update. and there are a zillion different distros to worry about. The best way to get upgrades to users is through the regular distros. Of course, I completely understand why distro maintainers working for nothing would rather add sexy new features to the OS than spend time backporting packages to a 2 year-old OS for the benefit of lusers who can't tell their.RPM from their.PPA.
The problem is - which software and from where? There's a big difference between asking someone if they want to install "Some Misleading Name" and asking them if they want to install something claiming to be "Some Misleading Name" from fishysoundingwebsite.com.
The problem is that a lot of legitimate downloads get directed to mirror sites or services like DigitalRiver that don't necessarily match the name of the provider, so you're back to the "crying wolf" problem again. The typical user wouldn't be able to spot the significant difference between (e.g.) http://somewords.apple.com/ and http://apple.somewords.com/ anyway.
Having said that, when you download an.app bundle in a.dmg file, you do get a "this package was downloaded from the internet - do you want to check the website" the first time you run it, so it might make sense to apply the same principle for.pkgs
Its not as if any of these proposals are right or wrong - its where to draw the balance between not giving enough warning and training people to ignore them. The important thing is you still can't run an.app or install a package without having to click something.
I don't want to touch my monitor on my desktop and get fingerprints all over it. This is great for tablets and phones, but making this the default UI for your desktop is nothing short of asinine.
I can't see any reason why the interface shouldn't work with a mouse or with gestures on a decent size (MacBook-style) trackpad. Its probably easier to take a touch-centric interface and map it on to mouse actions than it would be to make a mouse-centric interface usable with touch.
This is a pretty interface, but most real work will require skipping this whole Start grid and going to the desktop tile.
More likely, they'll go to the Word tile or the Excel tile - and by the time Win8 launches there will probably be an "Office 201x" suite that integrates properly with the tile-based interface, so you'll get a nice "preview" tile. My experience is that non-techie Windows users don't use the desktop much anyway, and live in full-screened Office apps (Unlike OS X, Windows' existing MDI structure promotes this style of working).
Also, its pretty clear that the focus of Win 8 is to win back ground from Apple and Google in the consumer PC/laptop/mobile market - the corporates will be using Win 7 (if not XP) for the forseeable future. MS may have come to the point where it is sensible to "fork" personal and corporate product lines to prevent the corporate demand for endless legacy support hindering their efforts in the consumer/mobile/small biz market while Apple and Google eat their lunch.
Both MS and Apple (with OS X Lion) seem to think this is the way the wind is blowing - if they're right then expect, 3-5 years down the line, to see the old-fangled desktop relegated to the same sort of "power users only" status as the current Command Line/Terminal.
And Windows 8 ARM might as well be dead on arrival given that it can't run x86 apps.
Windows 8 ARM will, initially, be for tablets, mobile devices and ultraportables only. Most tablets and mobiles already run on ARM and are doing quite nicely without being able to run x86 apps. For one thing, the issues moot because most "legacy" x86 apps were never designed for touch interfaces and small screens and would be unusably clunky. Win8 ARM should be able to run.NET bytecode apps and will almost certainly be accompanied by "official" versions of Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook which would be seen by some buyers as an end-of-argument advantage over iOS/Android: MS's domination of office software is just as significant as its OS near-monopoly.
Basically, I want to hate this due to its lack of a fruity logo and MS being Teh Evils, but it actually looks rather interesting and, while its clearly taken some cues from iOS and Android there seems to be a lot of original thinking, too. The big question is what is the perfomance on tablets going to be like when every "icon" is actually an Android-style "widget" requiring continuous updates from its App, and will it still grind to a halt with a borked registry after a few months of use? If only this was running on top of a proper *nix system instead of a CP/M emulator written by VMS engineers I might be sold.
If only it were noted somewhere prominently on the download page: "...long-term support (LTS) releases are supported for three years on the desktop. Perfect for organizations that need more stability..." -- Perhaps it would be best to place such text right next to the download options [ubuntu.com], near the giant "Start Download" button.
If only they went the extra mile and made the giant "Start Download" button default to LTS. If only they warned people that, in Ubuntuspeak, "Latest" meant "Unstable" and "Long Term" meant "anything after six months" and "Support" meant security bug fixes rather than any application updates. If only they hadn't got the reputation as "the Linux for the rest of us" which lets them lead potential "switchers" up the garden path. If only Linux devs were as good at designing GUIs as they are at writing solid systems stuff. If only they'd finish playing (GUI) catch-up with OSX 10.2 and Windows XP before they tried to play catch-up with iOS and Android. If only Linux GUIs didn't still feel like a cargo-cult mishmash of eye-candy ideas from Mac and Windows thrown together by nerds who only ever use a GUI to run 6 copies of vim side-by-side.
Linux in general has a major problem with its model: the only user-friendly way of installing applications is via the distribution repositories, forcing such people to upgrade their entire OS when they just want to upgrade one application (unless they're lucky and someone backports it). Techies see only openness (I wouldn't run a server on anything else, and I usually end up building all the server-side software from tarballs anyway), but non-techies see a garden with even higher walls than an iPad.
but making it that easy for websites to convince users to install software - and giving them that much control over the messages displayed
Looking at the video: the "convincing" is done with images of OS X dialogs on a web page telling users that they have a virus. Heck, it might as well be an animated GIF. From there on, its the standard package installer with standard messages. The user has to voluntarily click two or three times to confirm that, yes, they want to install this software.
Adding a few more clicks and a couple of yellow triangles (to bring it in line with internet explorer) might deter some, but by this stage the victim has decided that they want to download and install the software: if they're prepared to click "continue" 2 times, they'll be prepared to click 4 times, and they'll be used to clicking 4 times whenever they've installed software before. Plastering warnings over everything just trains people to ignore warnings (the point of sticking a yellow triangle on something is to cover your ass).
The only solution to this type of VEBKAC attack is to lock down the computer and not tell the user the admin password or they're just as likely to type it in if they get conned into thinking they need to install something. Obviously, that's not something the vendor of a personal computer can arrange to happen.
Or River. Did she not say in a past episode that the reason she is in prison is because she killed a very good man.
Yes, but I think that has been telegraphed *too* clearly not to be a red herring (...along with the River==Mrs Who gag - he's a bugger, that Moffatt guy).
My prediction: Amy shot the Doctor in order to prevent some horrible timey-wimey disaster and/or to protect her baby (after all, she's been so concerned to try and save the Doc that its a matter of narrative causality that she should have been the one to kill him) but River turns out to be Amy's daughter, and takes the rap for her Mum (we know that she is staying in jail to keep some sort of "promise").
I think the problem is that R.T. Davis wrote the Daleks to be the ultimate, unstoppable enemy of the Time Lords because they were one of the most well-known elements of the brand and useful for marketing..
There's a far better plot-driven reason: in the classic "Genesis of the Daleks" Doctor #4 was sent back to wipe the Daleks out before they were created. So, basically, he fired the first shot in the Great Time War.
This just doesn't fit well with their retro design.
But the Daleks are also fanatical racial supremacists, so they would never accept that the design cobbled together by Davros in a bunker was anything but perfect.
the TARDIS generated the new one (and presumably destroyed the old one to prevent misuse)
Remember, he needs a spare at some stage that he will have been going to give to River. Plus, they're going to need a spare Doctor for space-suit guy* to going to has** killed, so presumably, we haven't seen the last of the "ganger" Doctor, either...
They solved the problem with the sonic screwdriver a few years ago by inventing the deadlock seal - anything that is deadlock sealed can't be opened by the magic wand.
(From TFA) the one we played with was physically compatible with the Apple iPhone 4
So... the iPhone fitted in the hole. Can they actually make it talk to the iPhone (i.e. make it act as a touchpad and external display that can do more than show video from compatible apps) without Apple's blessing?
...and if the phone rings you're going to look even more stupid than Galaxy Tab owners holding that thing to your ear.
Now, If I were designing a phone/tablet combo I'd go for a tiny phone that was just a phone and camera (maybe enough display for looking up numbers and predictive texting), and could tether to the tablet for internet/texting on a big screen.
Meanwhile, where's the Asus pad with sliding keyboard that they announced a few months back? That looked interesting.
Not sure how Asus have avoided Osbourning themselves - they always seem to announce their next product before their last product has made it into your local store.
PS: I know I shouldn't have put "void" in front of "main" but its 15 years since I wrote any serious C, and malware is supposed to be badly-written, isn't it?
Does the principle apply to Linux? If yes, then it matters, for nerds, for real.;)
Here's how to find out:
$ cat > nasty.c #include <stdio.h> void main() { puts("Oh No! The sky is falling!\n"); } $ gcc nasty.c $./a.out
If your Linux prints "Oh No! The sky is falling!" then yes you have the OMG, my computer lets me run code in user mode! vulnerability.
Remain calm - walk (don't run) to your local Apple store and buy an iPad, which is safely locked down so that you can't run any old code on it, even if you want to.
So what's it to be folks? Should the Holy Jobs lock down OS X like an iPad so that (unlike Windows or Linux) users can't run userspace code? Wasn't that exactly what we were slagging him off for (allegedly) planning last week? Anybody else know any brilliant way of stopping users clicking on the "Yes please I want to install and run this software that has just mysteriously popped up while I was browsing the web" button?
Try looking for a desktop monitor, as the market is growing vendors are blurring the difference between a monitor and a TV.
This. Forget glossy - I like glossy - but 1080p is not enough for a 20"-27" monitor, and although 16:10 isn't too bad, 16:9 is just too skinny.
I'd say the sweet spot is 23", 16:10 1920x1200: big enough for 2 A4 pages + window furniture and toolbars. Go to 16:9 and you lose that toolbar space, you have to go up to about 27" to get it back (the Apple 27", 1440p display is nice, though).
If you are talking about choice, one small observation: some of us like glossy screens and its a hell of a lot easier to stick an antiglare filter on a glossy screen than it is to apply a glossy filter to an antiglare screen.
Yes - I like glossy screens and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Not because they look shiny, but because they work better - I've used both side-by-side and glossy stays readable in conditions that completely wipe out matte. Occasionally the reflections bug me, but not as much as a completely washed-out screen.
On the other hand, a less glossy screen may have the reflection spread out over a larger area.. but so is its energy. If the less glossy screen 'blurs' the reflection by a factor 4, the energy per surface area within that reflection is decreased by a factor four as well.
Except that you see a quarter (lets use your numbers for the sake of argument) of the light hitting that area from every direction - on a glossy screen only the light hitting the screen at just the right angle makes it to your eye.
As long as you can position your glossy screen so that you can't see the light source reflected directly, all that light is reflected away from your eyes. Whatever angle light hits the matte screen, though, some of it gets diffused into your eyes.
I've used both, and any direct sunlight falling on a matte screen wipes out the image, while glossy is still usable as long as you can't see the sun's reflection.
Which additionally, due to the mirror-like reflection, means you're more easily distracted by the reflection with your eyes attempting to focus on those, rather than the screen.
Really? I find it means I can focus on the *screen image* and ignore the reflections - whereas with diffuse glare from a flat screen is inseperable the image. Of course, if a Glossy Screen killed your brother then you are so angry at the reflections that you can't ignore them.
GPL software is no problem at all, as long as none of the copyright holders threatens to sue Apple.
Well, that happened with VLC on the iOS App Store, and Apple simply pulled it rather than try for some sort of resolution. Some GPL software has multiples of copyright holders, and it only takes one (...and Apple and the "Software Libre" movement aren't exactly best buddies).
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The fact that first-party apps are used commonly by a lot of people doesn't change the fact that this is actually a detriment to all third-party apps.
Yeah, instead of having to click on an icon to run a third-party app you'll now have to... er.... click on a tile? Swipe the page to the left and click on a tile? Not a huge detriment c.f. digging through the start menu or shuffling your window around so you can find the desktop icon.
Google was looking into the tablet/phone market for some time. And Android didn't happen overnight.
Phone, definitely - tablet, not so sure. Tablets had been on the market for years and failed to take off, remember. Netbooks were hot. Android for phones, ChromeOS for laptops makes sense until you throw new-style tablets, sitting between the two, into the equation. I don't think anybody will die of shock if ChromeOS gets dumped.
Apple and Google succeeded because they realized that you use touch interfaces on touch devices, and desktop interfaces on desktop devices.
...except Apple are making OS X look and work more like iOS and pushing multitouch trackpads on the desktop (even their mouse has a multitouch sensor on the top).
You're arguing that it is a good thing Microsoft is forcing a touch interface on a desktop. Microsoft sees that touch is popular, but they're still missing the bigger picture.
No, I'm arguing that what's good for Apple and Google isn't good for Microsoft. Apple and Google have a massive headstart over Microsoft in the tablet/phone market, and they're both attacking the ultraportable market. The one thing MS have that distinguishes them from Apple and Android is kosher Office/Outlook on ARM-based tablets, phones and ultraportables, and third-party Windows apps on larger x86 machines.
Now, maybe you don't personally think that's such a big advantage - I don't necessarily disagree - but MS needs to convince punters that it is a big deal or nobody will give MS phones & tablets a second look. If an MS marketdroid comes out and says, "Hey, know what? You don't really need full-fat desktop apps on your tablet!" then they may as well be wearing a black turtleneck with a big white apple on the chest...
The Windows 8 demo looks like they've made a fairly good stab at integrating desktop and tablet. That's all. Anyway, its a long way to launch so who's to say whether the ARM version will have the old-style desktop removed and/or if the x86 version will let you default to the desktop.
Your mouse can't replicate multi-touch.
Your mouse has at least 3 buttons + a scroll wheel + a whole keyboard's worth of modifier keys to map on to multi-touch actions. Plus, the mouse has the distinction between moving the pointer and clicking (which is why its harder to go from mouse to touch than vice versa) so you could use context sensitivity (scrollwheel over a photo to zoom, over an edge to scroll) or implement mouse gestures.
Also, note that Apple have (a) been putting large multi-touch trackpads on all their laptops and (b) selling add-on trackpads for desktops for precisely this reason - the PC could follow this route (personally, I still prefer a mouse, but the current Apple glass trackpads are vastly better than trackpads of yore).
Don't be so sure. In 2003 they said all first party Microsoft apps would start using the Ribbon. It is 2011, and that still hasn't happened, though apparently that is still the goal. Apps like mspaint in Windows 7 did finally get the Ribbon, but not every app did.
Maybe they got the memo that the ribbon sucks, and that sticking a ribbon at the top of the screen when everybody is being squeezed (like it or not) into never-to-be-sufficiently-damned 16:9 screens with limited vertical real-estate might just have been a dumb move.
There is a very good chance the Office division didn't know Windows was going this route. And while Office may be the first set of apps to get tiles, not all apps will.
Steady on - I only said that I was impressed by the demo, not that MS weren't capable of fucking up. However, MS must realize by now that they're overdrawn in the fuckup bank.
And I don't simply use first-party Microsoft apps.
But millions of other people spend their time shuffling between Office, Outlook and IE.
Google has been asked why they have ChromeOS and Android as seperate projects, and they've said ChromeOS wouldn't be appropriate on a phone, or a touch tablet.
Google got caught with their pants down by the iPad coming along and making netbooks old hat. ChromeOS wouldn't make sense on a phone as it is an engine for running Google Docs and depends on a good network connection. I also suspect that its only chance is in the corporate market.
Apple keeps seperate UIs for touch and non-touch. There is a reason.
You should read the previews of OS X Lion - they're adding a shedload of iPad UI concepts to their desktop OS. Plus, Apple and Google have phone/tablet OSs that people like and are successful in their own rights. Microsoft doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation for mobile OSs, and as a result many people run MS desktops but still choose Apple or Android mobiles. Their Unique Selling Point is going to have to be "run GENUINE Microsoft Office and GENUINE Outlook on your mobile device!"
I was able to update Shotwell ahead of the next release by adding the Yorba PPA. I helped test an Empathy fix by adding the test PPAs. I was able to install VirtualBox and keep it updated by adding the VirtualBox PPA.
You lost 90% of the non-technical audience at "adding the Yorba PPA". Where do I find that under the "Add/remove Programs" menu? (That's rhetorical - don't answer it).
.DEBs and third-party repos are great when they work, provided you get the right one for your distro and don't hit any dependency hell problems.
The point is not that there aren't technical solutions to these problems, it is that they are relatively inaccessible to non-technical users c.f. windows (download and open the installer) or Mac (download the .dmg and drag the icon where the big arrow points) - assuming the apps don't have their own auto-update. and there are a zillion different distros to worry about. The best way to get upgrades to users is through the regular distros. Of course, I completely understand why distro maintainers working for nothing would rather add sexy new features to the OS than spend time backporting packages to a 2 year-old OS for the benefit of lusers who can't tell their .RPM from their .PPA.
Yikes! When did slashdot start automatically turning URLs into lickable clinks? Nooo...
The problem is - which software and from where? There's a big difference between asking someone if they want to install "Some Misleading Name" and asking them if they want to install something claiming to be "Some Misleading Name" from fishysoundingwebsite.com.
The problem is that a lot of legitimate downloads get directed to mirror sites or services like DigitalRiver that don't necessarily match the name of the provider, so you're back to the "crying wolf" problem again. The typical user wouldn't be able to spot the significant difference between (e.g.) http://somewords.apple.com/ and http://apple.somewords.com/ anyway.
Having said that, when you download an .app bundle in a .dmg file, you do get a "this package was downloaded from the internet - do you want to check the website" the first time you run it, so it might make sense to apply the same principle for .pkgs
Its not as if any of these proposals are right or wrong - its where to draw the balance between not giving enough warning and training people to ignore them. The important thing is you still can't run an .app or install a package without having to click something.
I don't want to touch my monitor on my desktop and get fingerprints all over it. This is great for tablets and phones, but making this the default UI for your desktop is nothing short of asinine.
I can't see any reason why the interface shouldn't work with a mouse or with gestures on a decent size (MacBook-style) trackpad. Its probably easier to take a touch-centric interface and map it on to mouse actions than it would be to make a mouse-centric interface usable with touch.
This is a pretty interface, but most real work will require skipping this whole Start grid and going to the desktop tile.
More likely, they'll go to the Word tile or the Excel tile - and by the time Win8 launches there will probably be an "Office 201x" suite that integrates properly with the tile-based interface, so you'll get a nice "preview" tile. My experience is that non-techie Windows users don't use the desktop much anyway, and live in full-screened Office apps (Unlike OS X, Windows' existing MDI structure promotes this style of working).
Also, its pretty clear that the focus of Win 8 is to win back ground from Apple and Google in the consumer PC/laptop/mobile market - the corporates will be using Win 7 (if not XP) for the forseeable future. MS may have come to the point where it is sensible to "fork" personal and corporate product lines to prevent the corporate demand for endless legacy support hindering their efforts in the consumer/mobile/small biz market while Apple and Google eat their lunch.
Both MS and Apple (with OS X Lion) seem to think this is the way the wind is blowing - if they're right then expect, 3-5 years down the line, to see the old-fangled desktop relegated to the same sort of "power users only" status as the current Command Line/Terminal.
And Windows 8 ARM might as well be dead on arrival given that it can't run x86 apps.
Windows 8 ARM will, initially, be for tablets, mobile devices and ultraportables only. Most tablets and mobiles already run on ARM and are doing quite nicely without being able to run x86 apps. For one thing, the issues moot because most "legacy" x86 apps were never designed for touch interfaces and small screens and would be unusably clunky. Win8 ARM should be able to run .NET bytecode apps and will almost certainly be accompanied by "official" versions of Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook which would be seen by some buyers as an end-of-argument advantage over iOS/Android: MS's domination of office software is just as significant as its OS near-monopoly.
Basically, I want to hate this due to its lack of a fruity logo and MS being Teh Evils, but it actually looks rather interesting and, while its clearly taken some cues from iOS and Android there seems to be a lot of original thinking, too. The big question is what is the perfomance on tablets going to be like when every "icon" is actually an Android-style "widget" requiring continuous updates from its App, and will it still grind to a halt with a borked registry after a few months of use? If only this was running on top of a proper *nix system instead of a CP/M emulator written by VMS engineers I might be sold.
If only it were noted somewhere prominently on the download page: "...long-term support (LTS) releases are supported for three years on the desktop. Perfect for organizations that need more stability..." -- Perhaps it would be best to place such text right next to the download options [ubuntu.com], near the giant "Start Download" button.
If only they went the extra mile and made the giant "Start Download" button default to LTS. If only they warned people that, in Ubuntuspeak, "Latest" meant "Unstable" and "Long Term" meant "anything after six months" and "Support" meant security bug fixes rather than any application updates. If only they hadn't got the reputation as "the Linux for the rest of us" which lets them lead potential "switchers" up the garden path. If only Linux devs were as good at designing GUIs as they are at writing solid systems stuff. If only they'd finish playing (GUI) catch-up with OSX 10.2 and Windows XP before they tried to play catch-up with iOS and Android. If only Linux GUIs didn't still feel like a cargo-cult mishmash of eye-candy ideas from Mac and Windows thrown together by nerds who only ever use a GUI to run 6 copies of vim side-by-side.
Linux in general has a major problem with its model: the only user-friendly way of installing applications is via the distribution repositories, forcing such people to upgrade their entire OS when they just want to upgrade one application (unless they're lucky and someone backports it). Techies see only openness (I wouldn't run a server on anything else, and I usually end up building all the server-side software from tarballs anyway), but non-techies see a garden with even higher walls than an iPad.
but making it that easy for websites to convince users to install software - and giving them that much control over the messages displayed
Looking at the video: the "convincing" is done with images of OS X dialogs on a web page telling users that they have a virus. Heck, it might as well be an animated GIF. From there on, its the standard package installer with standard messages. The user has to voluntarily click two or three times to confirm that, yes, they want to install this software.
Adding a few more clicks and a couple of yellow triangles (to bring it in line with internet explorer) might deter some, but by this stage the victim has decided that they want to download and install the software: if they're prepared to click "continue" 2 times, they'll be prepared to click 4 times, and they'll be used to clicking 4 times whenever they've installed software before. Plastering warnings over everything just trains people to ignore warnings (the point of sticking a yellow triangle on something is to cover your ass).
The only solution to this type of VEBKAC attack is to lock down the computer and not tell the user the admin password or they're just as likely to type it in if they get conned into thinking they need to install something. Obviously, that's not something the vendor of a personal computer can arrange to happen.
An OS which doesn't allow the user to download and install random executable files can.
Apple have an App for that - its called iOS.
Or River. Did she not say in a past episode that the reason she is in prison is because she killed a very good man.
Yes, but I think that has been telegraphed *too* clearly not to be a red herring (...along with the River==Mrs Who gag - he's a bugger, that Moffatt guy).
My prediction: Amy shot the Doctor in order to prevent some horrible timey-wimey disaster and/or to protect her baby (after all, she's been so concerned to try and save the Doc that its a matter of narrative causality that she should have been the one to kill him) but River turns out to be Amy's daughter, and takes the rap for her Mum (we know that she is staying in jail to keep some sort of "promise").
Problem is that the redesigned Daleks look really stupid... like shitty appliances from Sharper Image or Brookstone, from a decade ago.
I'd put it like this:
Old Daleks: Mini Classic
New Daleks: BMW Mini
I think the problem is that R.T. Davis wrote the Daleks to be the ultimate, unstoppable enemy of the Time Lords because they were one of the most well-known elements of the brand and useful for marketing..
There's a far better plot-driven reason: in the classic "Genesis of the Daleks" Doctor #4 was sent back to wipe the Daleks out before they were created. So, basically, he fired the first shot in the Great Time War.
This just doesn't fit well with their retro design.
But the Daleks are also fanatical racial supremacists, so they would never accept that the design cobbled together by Davros in a bunker was anything but perfect.
the TARDIS generated the new one (and presumably destroyed the old one to prevent misuse)
Remember, he needs a spare at some stage that he will have been going to give to River. Plus, they're going to need a spare Doctor for space-suit guy* to going to has** killed, so presumably, we haven't seen the last of the "ganger" Doctor, either...
(* My money is on Amy )
(** Dr Dan Streetmentioner, where are you...)
They solved the problem with the sonic screwdriver a few years ago by inventing the deadlock seal - anything that is deadlock sealed can't be opened by the magic wand.
Plus - it can't do wood...
(From TFA) the one we played with was physically compatible with the Apple iPhone 4
So... the iPhone fitted in the hole. Can they actually make it talk to the iPhone (i.e. make it act as a touchpad and external display that can do more than show video from compatible apps) without Apple's blessing?
...and if the phone rings you're going to look even more stupid than Galaxy Tab owners holding that thing to your ear.
Now, If I were designing a phone/tablet combo I'd go for a tiny phone that was just a phone and camera (maybe enough display for looking up numbers and predictive texting), and could tether to the tablet for internet/texting on a big screen.
Meanwhile, where's the Asus pad with sliding keyboard that they announced a few months back? That looked interesting.
Not sure how Asus have avoided Osbourning themselves - they always seem to announce their next product before their last product has made it into your local store.
PS: I know I shouldn't have put "void" in front of "main" but its 15 years since I wrote any serious C, and malware is supposed to be badly-written, isn't it?
Does the principle apply to Linux? If yes, then it matters, for nerds, for real. ;)
Here's how to find out: ./a.out
$ cat > nasty.c
#include <stdio.h>
void main() { puts("Oh No! The sky is falling!\n"); }
$ gcc nasty.c
$
If your Linux prints "Oh No! The sky is falling!" then yes you have the OMG, my computer lets me run code in user mode! vulnerability. Remain calm - walk (don't run) to your local Apple store and buy an iPad, which is safely locked down so that you can't run any old code on it, even if you want to.
So what's it to be folks? Should the Holy Jobs lock down OS X like an iPad so that (unlike Windows or Linux) users can't run userspace code? Wasn't that exactly what we were slagging him off for (allegedly) planning last week? Anybody else know any brilliant way of stopping users clicking on the "Yes please I want to install and run this software that has just mysteriously popped up while I was browsing the web" button?
If Knuth announces version pi of TeX...
Where is the comparison? What I was told in school is it is a comparison, similar to a similie that does not use "like" or "as"
All of those statements are intended to be used as part of a comparison along the lines of:
The US Intelligence Agency compiling a list of metaphors is like X
...thus representing an ironic conflation of concepts or "joke".
Fiddling while Rome burns?
Rearranging the deckchairs on the boat-deck of the Titanic?
Alphabetizing your record collection?
The Devil making work for Idle hands?
Living in ivory towers?
The mice playing while the cat is away?
Counting the number of angels that can dance on a pinhead?
Try looking for a desktop monitor, as the market is growing vendors are blurring the difference between a monitor and a TV.
This. Forget glossy - I like glossy - but 1080p is not enough for a 20"-27" monitor, and although 16:10 isn't too bad, 16:9 is just too skinny.
I'd say the sweet spot is 23", 16:10 1920x1200: big enough for 2 A4 pages + window furniture and toolbars. Go to 16:9 and you lose that toolbar space, you have to go up to about 27" to get it back (the Apple 27", 1440p display is nice, though).
MacBook Pro models are glossy - got to pay $150.00 extra to get matte on a 15" and $50.00 on the 17"
Apart from the reading comprehension fail, you gloss over the fact that the $150 option includes a $100 upgrade to a higher-res screen.
If you are talking about choice, one small observation: some of us like glossy screens and its a hell of a lot easier to stick an antiglare filter on a glossy screen than it is to apply a glossy filter to an antiglare screen.
Yes - I like glossy screens and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Not because they look shiny, but because they work better - I've used both side-by-side and glossy stays readable in conditions that completely wipe out matte. Occasionally the reflections bug me, but not as much as a completely washed-out screen.
On the other hand, a less glossy screen may have the reflection spread out over a larger area.. but so is its energy. If the less glossy screen 'blurs' the reflection by a factor 4, the energy per surface area within that reflection is decreased by a factor four as well.
Except that you see a quarter (lets use your numbers for the sake of argument) of the light hitting that area from every direction - on a glossy screen only the light hitting the screen at just the right angle makes it to your eye.
As long as you can position your glossy screen so that you can't see the light source reflected directly, all that light is reflected away from your eyes. Whatever angle light hits the matte screen, though, some of it gets diffused into your eyes.
I've used both, and any direct sunlight falling on a matte screen wipes out the image, while glossy is still usable as long as you can't see the sun's reflection.
Which additionally, due to the mirror-like reflection, means you're more easily distracted by the reflection with your eyes attempting to focus on those, rather than the screen.
Really? I find it means I can focus on the *screen image* and ignore the reflections - whereas with diffuse glare from a flat screen is inseperable the image. Of course, if a Glossy Screen killed your brother then you are so angry at the reflections that you can't ignore them.
GPL software is no problem at all, as long as none of the copyright holders threatens to sue Apple.
Well, that happened with VLC on the iOS App Store, and Apple simply pulled it rather than try for some sort of resolution. Some GPL software has multiples of copyright holders, and it only takes one (...and Apple and the "Software Libre" movement aren't exactly best buddies).