And I'm one of those millions of users even though I can't remember the last time I actually posted something on Google+ or even looked at it. And as somebody else already pointed out, the only reason a lot of Google+ users have an account is because Google goes out of its way to foist Google+ on users of its other services. And since when does a service have to be a failure for Google to abandon it? *cough* Reader *cough*.
Having said that I doubt that Google will end Google+ any time soon. At this point Google+ is to Google what Internet Explorer is to Windows. You may not like the former but if you want to use the latter, you're going to be stuck with the former anyway.
Maybe if you could run both Windows and Android apps at the same time. Oh wait. I can already do that with the Blue Stacks app that came with my Asus laptop. Or at least I could until I realized how pointless it was and uninstalled it.
Well it's been suggested that some of the Supersymmetric particles might be an explanation for Dark Matter which does appear to exist. Other than that, I'm not sure that Supersymmetry has much going for it these days.
More accurately, The Standard Model is the best theory we have right now but it's incomplete since it doesn't account for gravity and has a lot of parameters that are just there without a good explanation for them. Supersymmetry is an idea that is the basis for a lot of people's pet theories because it helps explain a lot of what the Standard Model does not by bringing in a lot of extra particles.
Those particles, if they exist, make other particles like the electron behave just a little differently than they do under the Standard Model. And this experiment provided evidence that supports the Standard Model and rules out a number of Supersymmetric pet theories. Whether or not it will rule them all out remains to be seen.
This is impossible, no private enterprise builds infrastructure, works on long term projects, etc. Only governments do that.
--
For the sarcastically challenged: Ellison is expecting some form of a return from this purchase, all purchases that are not for consumption are investments and he is not going to 'consume' his properties, so whatever it is he does with infrastructure, etc., it's all designed to try and create revenue streams, which is what private enterprise does and which is why infrastructure projects should all be privately funded, then their economic viability, success or failure are on the backs of the owners and not tax payers.
Well once someone owns nearly everything as Mr. Ellison does on the island of Lanai, is the distinction between government and the one super wealthy individual in question really that distinct anymore?
Well once someone owns nearly everything as Mr. Ellison does on the island of Lunai, is the distinction between government and this one super wealthy individual really that distinct anymore?
That's fine with me. They can have their ABC Family and Christian Broadcasting with their family friendly TV and I'll take my HBO with its Game of Thrones.
I tend to agree with the notion that Google would prefer to see SD cards go away. I upgraded from an EVO 3D with all kinds of bugs related to its micro-SD card. It was constantly running "out of storage space" despite the fact that it's 32GB card was only half full. The problem would crop up constantly when updating apps. Some apps would update happily, including games of more than 1GB in size. But other apps, including newer apps designed specifically to run on Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), would throw up the out of storage space error. (Facebook for example had to be uninstalled and reinstalled with every update once I'd installed more than a few dozen apps.)
Then I upgraded to Google’s own Nexus 4 and all those bugs went away. I now have half the storage of my old phone but none of the headaches. I have a installed a hundred or more apps and my new phone has never once complained about being low on storage. I can't store my entire music collection on my phone but I can stream it with Google Music. And it's so much faster than my old phone! I've yet to experience a moment of lag despite having loaded up my phone with apps. Would I like to have have the option to install extra storage space via an SD or micro-SD slot? Of course! But I'd rather not return to the headaches of my old phone's highly flawed expansion card support.
An older phone like the EVO 4G; rooted, with Cyanogen Mod installed in Airplane Mode? Seriously, I'm not aware of any wifi-only 4' Android tablets. (Although I'll bet Archos probably has one that no one buys.)
I'd rather have an F-22. At least that's a real plane now. Or better yet, an SR-71. Or while we're fantasizing, a YF-12, the missile armed variant of the SR-71. There's nothing cooler than a hypersonic dogfighter.
...instead of thinking "they spent $60,000 of our tax dollars on this?" You think, "Why are they using Next Generation uniforms on an Original Series set?"
It's hardly FUD when people who've used Google products for years, rightly or wrongly, complain when Google discontinues them. And it's also not FUD when these same people wonder how long the latest Google product lasts.
But I didn't use iGoogle, so I didn't speak up....
That was a bit overly dramatic but that's the bottom line, when we're happy with a product, we'll continue to use it and ignore the warning signs about its parent company. It's probably not a good idea but it's the nature of the beast.
It's not just at the developer level. I was referring to the OS itself. Android has changed more over the years than iOS has and this is the case on every level: hardware, software, UI. Look at a T-Mobile G1 (the first Android device ever) and compare it to Nexus 4 or any other Android phone today. The former looks much more primitive compared to its descendant than the original iPhone looks next to an iPhone 5. Similarly, screenshots from Android 1.0 look far more primitive than those from 4.0. The transition from iOS 1 to 5 by comparison is far more gradual. And this is without bringing up the tremendous variation (both good and bad) that comes from the different Android handset makers customizing their individual versions of Android.
While the consistency that iOS has maintained over the years does have its charms it can also be stifling. Don't like how your Android phone looks? There are a million and one different options for reskinning it (and that's without rooting it and installing alternative ROMs) and you can bet that your next Android phone will look wildly different. Don't like how your iPhone looks? There aren't a whole lot of customization options unless you Jailbreak it and your next iPhone will probably look a lot like the current one.
this bit doesn't seem vacuous: "that emphasizes 'real objects' over buttons and menus"
But it doesn't seem to describe Android. Given that it has 4 hardware buttons, one of them that brings up a menu.
My Nexus 4 doesn't have any hardware buttons. Well, it does have volume buttons and a power button. But the four software "buttons" at the bottom of my screen right now are a down arrow which collapses the keyboard and turns into into a back button when the keyboard is not in use. Moving on there is also a house button (does that count presented "real object") which brings up the launcher. And there's Window button which brings up my list programs which now appear pear as thumbnails instead of icons as they appeared in previous versions of android.
Finally, there is indeed a menu icon but it no longer looks like the old Android menu button. I always thought that Android menus were pretty weird or rather that the old Android menu button was pretty incongruous. The old Android menu button resembles a traditional menu; a cascading set of lines of text hanging off the menubar. But Android menus are actually little blocks at the bottom of the screen. Worse, sometimes the Android menu button won't open a menu, will open a settings page. So there was a disconnect between the onscreen representation and the results presented to the user. The new Android menu is an ellipses (a set of three dots...). I find that change interesting because it subtly changes the expectations of the user. Instead of a specific type of menu which never really existed in Android, the new button merely suggests that there is more to see or do with your app.
I think a better way to describe what Android's developers are doing is by saying that they're constantly rethinking and refining the UI to make it more logical and accessible to the user. This is in stark contrast to iOS which has largely remained unchanged since the original iPhone. In some ways that is because iOS got a lot more right on its first try than Android did but there also seems to be a genuinely geeky love of experimentation to Android which rightly or wrongly seems missing from iOS.
I wonder what kind of weirdos would step into the vacuum left by a KJ-U defeat, though.
That's the problem. That population has been living under heavy oppression with extreme brainwashing for so many years that I doubt that they'd even be able to benefit from a free election for a number of years after.
Well it would be pretty hard to top the Kim dynasty in terms of overall weirdness. And the point of free and fair elections is less about their beneficial nature (I can think of a few American elections that were less than beneficial.) than about the notion that democracy is the worst sort of government except for all others that have been tried.
Sure they are. This is all part of the notion that all government is inherently bad and that they're going to come for your guns any second now and that society is on the verge of collapse and that the only way to survive in the Mad Max future is by arming yourself now. But hey, whatever helps them sleep at night is fine by me so long as they don’t actually go out and try to make that dystopian future happen.
Slashdot Mirror
The Egyptian protesters who used Twitter and Facebook to organize protests that drove two dictators from power say "hi."
Of course they're features. They are very important features for Facebook's real costumers. [1] Advertisers.
[1] Even though you have a Facebook account you are not a customer of Facebook. You're its product.
And I'm one of those millions of users even though I can't remember the last time I actually posted something on Google+ or even looked at it. And as somebody else already pointed out, the only reason a lot of Google+ users have an account is because Google goes out of its way to foist Google+ on users of its other services. And since when does a service have to be a failure for Google to abandon it? *cough* Reader *cough*.
Having said that I doubt that Google will end Google+ any time soon. At this point Google+ is to Google what Internet Explorer is to Windows. You may not like the former but if you want to use the latter, you're going to be stuck with the former anyway.
Maybe if you could run both Windows and Android apps at the same time. Oh wait. I can already do that with the Blue Stacks app that came with my Asus laptop. Or at least I could until I realized how pointless it was and uninstalled it.
Well it's been suggested that some of the Supersymmetric particles might be an explanation for Dark Matter which does appear to exist. Other than that, I'm not sure that Supersymmetry has much going for it these days.
More accurately, The Standard Model is the best theory we have right now but it's incomplete since it doesn't account for gravity and has a lot of parameters that are just there without a good explanation for them. Supersymmetry is an idea that is the basis for a lot of people's pet theories because it helps explain a lot of what the Standard Model does not by bringing in a lot of extra particles.
Those particles, if they exist, make other particles like the electron behave just a little differently than they do under the Standard Model. And this experiment provided evidence that supports the Standard Model and rules out a number of Supersymmetric pet theories. Whether or not it will rule them all out remains to be seen.
Fine, we'll install WINE along with apt. They'll never know the difference.
This is impossible, no private enterprise builds infrastructure, works on long term projects, etc. Only governments do that.
--
For the sarcastically challenged: Ellison is expecting some form of a return from this purchase, all purchases that are not for consumption are investments and he is not going to 'consume' his properties, so whatever it is he does with infrastructure, etc., it's all designed to try and create revenue streams, which is what private enterprise does and which is why infrastructure projects should all be privately funded, then their economic viability, success or failure are on the backs of the owners and not tax payers.
Well once someone owns nearly everything as Mr. Ellison does on the island of Lanai, is the distinction between government and the one super wealthy individual in question really that distinct anymore?
Well once someone owns nearly everything as Mr. Ellison does on the island of Lunai, is the distinction between government and this one super wealthy individual really that distinct anymore?
This is just as creepy as all the prism crap:/
At least at the grocery store you can get beef, beer, and potato chips. Now try getting that from the NSA.
The same Palin that had quotes miss-attrributed to her that were spoken by a half rate SNL actress...
Admittedly she must have been a reasonable actress if people were quoting her and thinking that they were quoting Palin.
Tina Fey is an excellent actress and her "I can see Alaska from my house!" joke wasn't too far from Palin's actual words.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXL86v8NoGk
That's fine with me. They can have their ABC Family and Christian Broadcasting with their family friendly TV and I'll take my HBO with its Game of Thrones.
If you really want to be precise about it then that old lady did not claim that Obama is a Muslim, she claimed that he is an Arab.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QhJJBfwJME
People value a smaller, prettier phone over an easily removed battery.
People who keep their small, pretty phone in a bulky, ugly case.
Posting from my Nexus 4 for the irony.
I tend to agree with the notion that Google would prefer to see SD cards go away. I upgraded from an EVO 3D with all kinds of bugs related to its micro-SD card. It was constantly running "out of storage space" despite the fact that it's 32GB card was only half full. The problem would crop up constantly when updating apps. Some apps would update happily, including games of more than 1GB in size. But other apps, including newer apps designed specifically to run on Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), would throw up the out of storage space error. (Facebook for example had to be uninstalled and reinstalled with every update once I'd installed more than a few dozen apps.)
Then I upgraded to Google’s own Nexus 4 and all those bugs went away. I now have half the storage of my old phone but none of the headaches. I have a installed a hundred or more apps and my new phone has never once complained about being low on storage. I can't store my entire music collection on my phone but I can stream it with Google Music. And it's so much faster than my old phone! I've yet to experience a moment of lag despite having loaded up my phone with apps. Would I like to have have the option to install extra storage space via an SD or micro-SD slot? Of course! But I'd rather not return to the headaches of my old phone's highly flawed expansion card support.
An older phone like the EVO 4G; rooted, with Cyanogen Mod installed in Airplane Mode? Seriously, I'm not aware of any wifi-only 4' Android tablets. (Although I'll bet Archos probably has one that no one buys.)
I'd rather have an F-22. At least that's a real plane now. Or better yet, an SR-71. Or while we're fantasizing, a YF-12, the missile armed variant of the SR-71. There's nothing cooler than a hypersonic dogfighter.
...instead of thinking "they spent $60,000 of our tax dollars on this?" You think, "Why are they using Next Generation uniforms on an Original Series set?"
It's hardly FUD when people who've used Google products for years, rightly or wrongly, complain when Google discontinues them. And it's also not FUD when these same people wonder how long the latest Google product lasts.
But I didn't use iGoogle, so I didn't speak up....
That was a bit overly dramatic but that's the bottom line, when we're happy with a product, we'll continue to use it and ignore the warning signs about its parent company. It's probably not a good idea but it's the nature of the beast.
It's not just at the developer level. I was referring to the OS itself. Android has changed more over the years than iOS has and this is the case on every level: hardware, software, UI. Look at a T-Mobile G1 (the first Android device ever) and compare it to Nexus 4 or any other Android phone today. The former looks much more primitive compared to its descendant than the original iPhone looks next to an iPhone 5. Similarly, screenshots from Android 1.0 look far more primitive than those from 4.0. The transition from iOS 1 to 5 by comparison is far more gradual. And this is without bringing up the tremendous variation (both good and bad) that comes from the different Android handset makers customizing their individual versions of Android.
While the consistency that iOS has maintained over the years does have its charms it can also be stifling. Don't like how your Android phone looks? There are a million and one different options for reskinning it (and that's without rooting it and installing alternative ROMs) and you can bet that your next Android phone will look wildly different. Don't like how your iPhone looks? There aren't a whole lot of customization options unless you Jailbreak it and your next iPhone will probably look a lot like the current one.
this bit doesn't seem vacuous:
"that emphasizes 'real objects' over buttons and
menus"
But it doesn't seem to describe Android. Given that it has 4 hardware buttons, one of them that brings up a menu.
My Nexus 4 doesn't have any hardware buttons. Well, it does have volume buttons and a power button. But the four software "buttons" at the bottom of my screen right now are a down arrow which collapses the keyboard and turns into into a back button when the keyboard is not in use. Moving on there is also a house button (does that count presented "real object") which brings up the launcher. And there's Window button which brings up my list programs which now appear pear as thumbnails instead of icons as they appeared in previous versions of android.
Finally, there is indeed a menu icon but it no longer looks like the old Android menu button. I always thought that Android menus were pretty weird or rather that the old Android menu button was pretty incongruous. The old Android menu button resembles a traditional menu; a cascading set of lines of text hanging off the menubar. But Android menus are actually little blocks at the bottom of the screen. Worse, sometimes the Android menu button won't open a menu, will open a settings page. So there was a disconnect between the onscreen representation and the results presented to the user. The new Android menu is an ellipses (a set of three dots...). I find that change interesting because it subtly changes the expectations of the user. Instead of a specific type of menu which never really existed in Android, the new button merely suggests that there is more to see or do with your app.
I think a better way to describe what Android's developers are doing is by saying that they're constantly rethinking and refining the UI to make it more logical and accessible to the user. This is in stark contrast to iOS which has largely remained unchanged since the original iPhone. In some ways that is because iOS got a lot more right on its first try than Android did but there also seems to be a genuinely geeky love of experimentation to Android which rightly or wrongly seems missing from iOS.
I wonder what kind of weirdos would step into the vacuum left by a KJ-U defeat, though.
That's the problem. That population has been living under heavy oppression with extreme brainwashing for so many years that I doubt that they'd even be able to benefit from a free election for a number of years after.
Well it would be pretty hard to top the Kim dynasty in terms of overall weirdness. And the point of free and fair elections is less about their beneficial nature (I can think of a few American elections that were less than beneficial.) than about the notion that democracy is the worst sort of government except for all others that have been tried.
Sure they are. This is all part of the notion that all government is inherently bad and that they're going to come for your guns any second now and that society is on the verge of collapse and that the only way to survive in the Mad Max future is by arming yourself now. But hey, whatever helps them sleep at night is fine by me so long as they don’t actually go out and try to make that dystopian future happen.
If that were the case, they'd have to stop selling Bluetooth headsets.