This is a fantastic idea! It would resolve a great deal of transparency problems with how our government works... yes, you can pour through Thomas, but Thomas is only a barely usable system, and its versioning capabilities definitely don't give the kind of information that would actually be useful to people trying to figure out who put line X in bill Y.
If such an API existed (and was made truly useful in the ways being spoken of with versioning and robust searching), I would consider that a great victory for freedom of information.
Perhaps instead of worrying about the specific distro being worked on (and distro-specific apps), developers could unite to improve the libraries, services, and interfaces that are used universally.
Gnome and KDE, for example, are the "face" of Linux to the average user. And let's face it... KDE is modern but broken in many ways, and Gnome is stable but behind the times in many ways.
The specific distro being improved is less of a concern if the focus is on bringing stability, visual appeal, and new user interface innovations to the frontend of Linux itself: the GUI interfaces that the average user works with on the system. Working on that aspect would make every distro benefit.
It's unfortunate. A woman is dead, and the large majority of the tech community (myself included) has egg on their faces. We wanted to believe it wasn't true... well, the proof is in the pudding.
I was about to come over here and post pretty much the same thing. Britain has become a place that I would never, ever want to live. I only hope it's an aberration in the history of government rather than a glimpse into the future.
I'd like to see them follow this up by "open sourcing" some of their proprietary IP regarding their card games.
For instance, in order to make a Card game where cards are "tapped", you currently have to pay royalties to Wizards of the Coast. Ditto for many other mechanics that form the foundations of most CCGs.
I wonder why they chose to "open" the D&D system but left their CCG systems closed? Is it that they make more money with one versus the other? Does anyone have any insight into this?
This isn't the first frivolous lawsuit he's done lately. He tried to sue the pants off of this warehouse company a year ago or so because he kept his storage facility in bad condition and one of his R2D2 props got moldy.
I don't know the details of it, but my grandmother in law works for a sister company of the warehouse that was getting sued. Apparently it was enough that if it hadn't been dismissed, it would've sent them into immediate bankruptcy.
I agree that your statement is 100% correct... but it's also not as easy as you make it out to be.
Indeed, you should switch when the cost of switching is less than the cost of continuing with your current platform... but realizing that is obviously not the tricky part.
The tricky part is knowing WHEN switching costs less than continuing with the current platform. That can be a very difficult question to answer, and involves looking at many, many factors.
... I've been filing for continuation on a patent that was originally applied for in 1845. When I finally let rip, I'll begin suing people who make not just smartphones, but cellular phones, touch-tone phones, rotary phones, the estate of Alexander Graham Bell, and the guys who wrote the patent being talked about in this story.
"'x86 everywhere.'"
Can I pass on that? The x86 architecture may be POPULAR, but it's inefficient, forced into backwards compliance with horribly outdated standards, and has been horseshoed for the past 20 years into a full architecture chip when the initial design was never meant to become like this.
If a realm of computing has x86 as the non-dominant chipset, I think that's a blessing and it should remain that way. You can't do anything about the PC market at this point, for example... but I think the motto should be "x86 only where it already exists" rather than "x86 everywhere."
Maybe they keep releasing Duke Nukem screenshots on occasion as some kind of a running gag? I guess the real joke's on Duke Nukem fans in that case. =)
Could this have a positive effect on the search for a longer lasting electric car?
I don't know what the odds are that this new tech could be used in electric car batteries... but if it provided a comparable "usage" boost (2 hours vs. 20 hours for laptops = 10-fold increase)
The old Volt got ~100 miles on a charge... if a similar increase was had due to this technology, it'd make a car like the Volt get 1000 miles to a charge... which would be amazing. I'm just speculating, mind you.
I never really liked them, personally. I don't know if it was different on other regions of the country, but in the Sacramento area the CompUSAs were always overpriced. I guess it's sad to see any store that sells computer products die on some level, but there's better stores still on the market.
That being said, if CompUSA was the only brick and mortar computer store in your area, I guess this would be a sucky development. Maybe a Fry's will move in.;)
I think the article is overreacting. Being able to change an E-Book is very different from being able to erase all evidence of an event taking place from all media (as was the case in the book "1984").
He seems to draw the conclusion that this capability will lead to such a situation. I think it's got a long way to go before getting there. If the government begins censoring everything *other than* remotely editable E-Books, I'll begin to worry. Until then, there's plenty of media other than that where you can find out what's really happening.
I've been working with the SDK since it came out, and though it is still lacking in some of its promised features, by the time the first phones come out next year it's going to provide some very interesting competition in the industry.
I'm glad that a major provider is jumping on. From a development perspective at least, Android is a breath of fresh air in the mobile phone industry. Hopefully it will be for end users as well, but I suppose that remains to be seen. =)
Actually, I save the expenses in general by not owning a phone at all. No cell phone, no landline.
Yes, if I need to call 9-11 for an emergency I'm pretty much fucked. And I can see the benefits of Cell phone (and normal phone) use. I can trust that, with all the cell phones around in the world, I'll be able to find someone within 50 feet of me that has one I can use should the emergency need ever arise. So far, that assumption has proven to be quite true.
If it turns out not to be one day... well, then I'll take whatever happens as a result. My fault for being a miserly poor bastard that had to choose between paying for internet or paying for phone, and chose the one he found to be less annoying and more useful for day-to-day operations.
I'm curious if Slashdot posters who own more than one cellphone can post here about WHY they have more than one.
As a person who's intentionally tried to avoid the devices (and thus owns none), I genuinely don't know why a person would ever need MORE than one. My choice not to own one is mostly due to stubborn anachronism, and I can see the usefulness of having one. But the article said that in some countries people on the average own more than one... why?
I wouldn't be a fan of a game that's trying to give a *secret* moral/political message (as in some kind of brainwashing technique/subliminal message).
However, like a good novel, a video game sometimes has something important to say. If they've woven it artfully into the plotline (i.e. not hammered it into place or constructed a poor plotline around the idea), I find the game to be even more entertaining than when it's purely "for fun".
For instance, in the book world I loved the message from "Speaker of the Dead". It was a good message about cultural tolerance and humanity's inherently distrustful nature. It was also a damn entertaining book.
In games, I'd have to point to Deus Ex (the first one). It was a game that had a strong political/historical message, and that only made the game *more* entertaining.
So in other words, it depends on how well its done.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a fantastic idea! It would resolve a great deal of transparency problems with how our government works... yes, you can pour through Thomas, but Thomas is only a barely usable system, and its versioning capabilities definitely don't give the kind of information that would actually be useful to people trying to figure out who put line X in bill Y. If such an API existed (and was made truly useful in the ways being spoken of with versioning and robust searching), I would consider that a great victory for freedom of information.
Perhaps instead of worrying about the specific distro being worked on (and distro-specific apps), developers could unite to improve the libraries, services, and interfaces that are used universally. Gnome and KDE, for example, are the "face" of Linux to the average user. And let's face it... KDE is modern but broken in many ways, and Gnome is stable but behind the times in many ways. The specific distro being improved is less of a concern if the focus is on bringing stability, visual appeal, and new user interface innovations to the frontend of Linux itself: the GUI interfaces that the average user works with on the system. Working on that aspect would make every distro benefit.
A Windows OS for Cloud Computing sounds like Kryptonite for Richard Stallman.
Of course, we already knew that Microsoft was our industry's Lex Luthor.
It's unfortunate. A woman is dead, and the large majority of the tech community (myself included) has egg on their faces. We wanted to believe it wasn't true... well, the proof is in the pudding.
I was about to come over here and post pretty much the same thing. Britain has become a place that I would never, ever want to live. I only hope it's an aberration in the history of government rather than a glimpse into the future.
I'd like to see them follow this up by "open sourcing" some of their proprietary IP regarding their card games. For instance, in order to make a Card game where cards are "tapped", you currently have to pay royalties to Wizards of the Coast. Ditto for many other mechanics that form the foundations of most CCGs. I wonder why they chose to "open" the D&D system but left their CCG systems closed? Is it that they make more money with one versus the other? Does anyone have any insight into this?
This isn't the first frivolous lawsuit he's done lately. He tried to sue the pants off of this warehouse company a year ago or so because he kept his storage facility in bad condition and one of his R2D2 props got moldy.
I don't know the details of it, but my grandmother in law works for a sister company of the warehouse that was getting sued. Apparently it was enough that if it hadn't been dismissed, it would've sent them into immediate bankruptcy.
I agree that your statement is 100% correct... but it's also not as easy as you make it out to be.
Indeed, you should switch when the cost of switching is less than the cost of continuing with your current platform... but realizing that is obviously not the tricky part.
The tricky part is knowing WHEN switching costs less than continuing with the current platform. That can be a very difficult question to answer, and involves looking at many, many factors.
... I've been filing for continuation on a patent that was originally applied for in 1845. When I finally let rip, I'll begin suing people who make not just smartphones, but cellular phones, touch-tone phones, rotary phones, the estate of Alexander Graham Bell, and the guys who wrote the patent being talked about in this story.
Sincerely,
SCO
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/multimedia/phone_crater.html
NASA says that crater looks like it has a phone shape in it. The first thing I thought was "Damnit, someone put a copyright on Mercury."
"'x86 everywhere.'"
Can I pass on that? The x86 architecture may be POPULAR, but it's inefficient, forced into backwards compliance with horribly outdated standards, and has been horseshoed for the past 20 years into a full architecture chip when the initial design was never meant to become like this.
If a realm of computing has x86 as the non-dominant chipset, I think that's a blessing and it should remain that way. You can't do anything about the PC market at this point, for example... but I think the motto should be "x86 only where it already exists" rather than "x86 everywhere."
Maybe they keep releasing Duke Nukem screenshots on occasion as some kind of a running gag? I guess the real joke's on Duke Nukem fans in that case. =)
Could this have a positive effect on the search for a longer lasting electric car?
I don't know what the odds are that this new tech could be used in electric car batteries... but if it provided a comparable "usage" boost (2 hours vs. 20 hours for laptops = 10-fold increase)
The old Volt got ~100 miles on a charge... if a similar increase was had due to this technology, it'd make a car like the Volt get 1000 miles to a charge... which would be amazing. I'm just speculating, mind you.
Apparently the server's done (like Nixon, not like Dinner).
I never really liked them, personally. I don't know if it was different on other regions of the country, but in the Sacramento area the CompUSAs were always overpriced. I guess it's sad to see any store that sells computer products die on some level, but there's better stores still on the market. ;)
That being said, if CompUSA was the only brick and mortar computer store in your area, I guess this would be a sucky development. Maybe a Fry's will move in.
I think the article is overreacting. Being able to change an E-Book is very different from being able to erase all evidence of an event taking place from all media (as was the case in the book "1984").
He seems to draw the conclusion that this capability will lead to such a situation. I think it's got a long way to go before getting there. If the government begins censoring everything *other than* remotely editable E-Books, I'll begin to worry. Until then, there's plenty of media other than that where you can find out what's really happening.
Reading? What's that? Is that some kind of new data bus?
I've been working with the SDK since it came out, and though it is still lacking in some of its promised features, by the time the first phones come out next year it's going to provide some very interesting competition in the industry.
I'm glad that a major provider is jumping on. From a development perspective at least, Android is a breath of fresh air in the mobile phone industry. Hopefully it will be for end users as well, but I suppose that remains to be seen. =)
Can we play the Final Fantasy "fanfare" music?
You got 20 gil.
You found an MP3!
Actually, I save the expenses in general by not owning a phone at all. No cell phone, no landline.
Yes, if I need to call 9-11 for an emergency I'm pretty much fucked. And I can see the benefits of Cell phone (and normal phone) use. I can trust that, with all the cell phones around in the world, I'll be able to find someone within 50 feet of me that has one I can use should the emergency need ever arise. So far, that assumption has proven to be quite true.
If it turns out not to be one day... well, then I'll take whatever happens as a result. My fault for being a miserly poor bastard that had to choose between paying for internet or paying for phone, and chose the one he found to be less annoying and more useful for day-to-day operations.
I'm curious if Slashdot posters who own more than one cellphone can post here about WHY they have more than one.
As a person who's intentionally tried to avoid the devices (and thus owns none), I genuinely don't know why a person would ever need MORE than one. My choice not to own one is mostly due to stubborn anachronism, and I can see the usefulness of having one. But the article said that in some countries people on the average own more than one... why?
I wouldn't be a fan of a game that's trying to give a *secret* moral/political message (as in some kind of brainwashing technique/subliminal message).
However, like a good novel, a video game sometimes has something important to say. If they've woven it artfully into the plotline (i.e. not hammered it into place or constructed a poor plotline around the idea), I find the game to be even more entertaining than when it's purely "for fun".
For instance, in the book world I loved the message from "Speaker of the Dead". It was a good message about cultural tolerance and humanity's inherently distrustful nature. It was also a damn entertaining book.
In games, I'd have to point to Deus Ex (the first one). It was a game that had a strong political/historical message, and that only made the game *more* entertaining.
So in other words, it depends on how well its done.
The person who wrote this report better shut up or I'll kill him and air hump over his corpse in front of all my friends!
/sarcasm
In Soviet Russia, intentionally non-humorous statements are considered their own brand of humor. ;)
Who was saying it was climate change? I didn't see anyone saying that. It seems more like a harmonic resonance issue to me.