FYI, alpine was pine. UW forked it, added a better build system, put it under a new license, released it as alpine, then discontinued development.
The community has taken that and created the re-alpine project on sourceforge, where you can find the latest version. re-alpine
Development continues, but isn't exactly what I'd call "active". But it's an ancient email client, and there's really not all that much that could be added. I still find it indispensable and use it constantly and I'm quite happy with it.
You never said you needed a windows-like UI, so this qualifies for the request, but YMMV.
...and then each of your friends will also share with a couple of their friends, and so on; and then you realise that this is exactly how bittorrent works.
No it isn't. Bittorrent lacks the circle of trust aspect that actually sharing with actual friends has. Of course, I'm assuming the usual use cases here... you could easily use bittorrent to do the "share with a couple of friends" by only giving your friends the torrent file, but I don't think that's what you meant. In normal use cases, media shared via P2P has a published link/torrent, and lots of random people pull things they want. Media shared the old way (make a copy on a tape, and hand it to a friend; or modernized version of that - copy the file and email to a friend) is a push process, rather than pull, and you know who you're dealing with.
These days, the Kindle supports the same library system that the Nook does. Public Library Books for Kindle
Personally, I strongly dislike the way the support was implemented on both of them. They could both use an Overdrive app built into the device to make it easy and accessible to average users. But they do both work (my g/f has a nook and I've got a kindle, so I've tried both).
Another nod in this direction. ebook prices are too high.
One solution I really hope to see come about (which I first saw with O'Reilly books that included a cdrom's with their books) is selling a combo of paperback + ebook, with zero or very very small extra price to get the ebook. That'd still let me loan out the paperback, or resell it, or read it in the tub, or whatever other benefit paper books have, and I'd still get the digital version which I like reading much much more and HAS SEARCH (which is indispensable in tech docs).
There are lots of parties to blame here too. Lot's of people point to the distributor (ex. Amazon), and many others point to the publisher. While both of those are valid, Apple should also get a lot of the blame. Their app store rules regarding pricing and no in-app purchases are hurting the entire industry (ex. AFAICT, you're not allowed to sell your book on Amazon for less than you sell it on the Apple App Store even though the Apple App Store takes a larger share of the profits, so you either have to raise your prices everywhere, or take a bigger loss on your App Store sales, or avoid the App Store altogether). Regardless of what red tape is in place, ebooks definitely need to find a way to come down in price.
*Responsive* color web browsing wouldn't work in e-ink. Everything else is possible though, including color (which is needed if it is to make more headway on comics/graphic novels and children's books).
The Kindle e-ink devices already have some apps. The technical underpinnings are there to support many more very helpful and useful apps, and I for one would love to see that happen. Some examples of apps that already exist:
IMO, the other replies to this are full of crap. Not only are these apps possible and useful, but they already exist.
One I would personally like to find ("find", because it'd surprise me if it didn't exist already) is a better music player. The one that's built in basically has no GUI. I'd love for one to be integrated so it could popup a mini gui on the top of the page with a menu press. I'd also love to see micro sd card support in one of the e-ink models, and more file format support (I don't care much about PDF myself, but adding support for non-drm'd epub would save me a lot of calibre time).
The "better PDF support" line has been mentioned a bunch, but I can't tell what it means.
I've had a Kindle since v2, and have the graphite one with the keyboard now. I don't read many PDF's, but on the rare occasion I need to, it seems to do the job. I could see a larger screen helping. Other than that, what needs to be better about it?
You may be a very generous and helpful person, but you seem to want people to have the freedom to choose not to contribute to helping others of certain minorities (ex. skill stuff users) because they brought that on themselves. That's an awful slippery slope... what if one doesn't want to help anyone that broke a bone skiing cause they put themselves in that known risky situation? Personally, this is why I think healthcare needs to be universal, at least on some level (ex. I don't think cosmetic surgery should be included).
That said, how does using the existing sin taxes not solve that problem?
(answering my own question - that wouldn't solve the heroin users problems, or any other illicit drug use... but I'm for legalizing and taxing the hell out of those too)
Everyone (not literally, but enough) is already breaking the law. That doesn't do anything to get laws overturned. That only works if everyone is also held to the law (sued/arrested/fined/etc). Ex - speeding. Damn near EVERYONE speeds, but that hasn't done a damn thing to get rid of that law. They just limit how many people they ticket to socially acceptable level.
I think there is another option, and believe it's time will come. Going back to the car analogy, this would be like filming the cops that are always filming us...
* Share non-RIAA artists' music (doesn't matter who does this) * Log downloading/uploading IP's via a bunch of clients (bittorrent) * Watch for RIAA related IP's (them, or the hired lapdogs that do their work) * Have non-RIAA artist sue the RIAA for copyright infringement under the same laws they use. (or have them sign over their management of their "IP" to your organization)
Do this enough, and it won't be profitable for the RIAA to do their tracking/monitoring/prosecuting of the P2P networks. That's how they're finding people right now - by joining the same P2P share, and watching for the IP's the upload parts of the content to them. This would make a great EFF or similar project.
It would take very little to pull this off. There are fairly small companies doing this for the RIAA already. Just do the same for non-members but only sue the RIAA related people. Those non-RIAA artists would also benefit from an RIAA with reduced power and influence, as they'd be more likely to be seen and distributed in mainstream places.
If the claim is made that you are targeting them and not protecting your "IP" from all the other downloaders, there is already a precedent set for that - the RIANZ, in this case, is only suing a handful of people... and there were certainly many others they saw while doing their tracking. Ditto on the relatively small number of RIAA suits in USA versus the number of people downloading/uploading.
The other possible outcome would be that the precedent is set such that, if one is doing this kind of monitoring/prosecuting, they must do it to all offenders that they ID. That would actually be great because a HUGE carpet bomb of claims to LOTS of people would have to be sent out by the RIAA and, while that might scare a lot of people, there are going to be FAR FAR FAR more people that are horribly pissed off by it, including many people in power positions. That shit would end quick.
One disclaimer - I don't believe in violating copyright and do not endorse it, but I do believe there are fair use situations (sharing a song with a couple friends; getting a drm-free copy of content you already purchased; format shifting (downloading a vhs rip of a vhs you already own)) that are perfectly acceptable (though possibly illegal).
While I think health care should be provided across the board as a benefit to the society that pays into it via taxes (ie. socialized), there's also a very easy and immediate solution to your little selfish/greedy worry about those groups of people not having money to pay for it...
Sin taxes are already in place (and astronomically high). Just put that money where it needs to go, and stop diverting it into legislation, ad campaigns, and unrelated fields. Just put it into a big old fund to pay for any future health care needs associated with those items (booze, smokes, etc). I'm fine with some of that money (as much as needed, really) going towards helping people quit those vices too, but I'd count that under this healthcare umbrella.
I wanted to mod this up, cause I agree, but there's one point I haven't seen mentioned here or in most of the posts below (that I've read so far)...
If you do provide false information, and they (FBI) ask if it this little log of yours is true and you say "yes", then you can be held for lying to a federal officer (and/or obstruction of justice, etc). All they have to do is find one little line that isn't accurate... and that would probably be trivial. Then, even if your alibi is honest and someone is setting you up, you've just discounted your entire source of "facts" as inadmissible. They don't even need to find a lie to hint at the consequences - "You know... lying to a federal officer is a crime."
True story, I was questioned in relation to an FBI investigation many years ago (I worked at an ISP that had been "hacked" and claimed enormous damages and got the FBI involved). The night of the incident, I was drunk (along with most of my coworkers to boot). I was cooperating, but they found one of the things I said to be in conflict with something someone else said. They called us both in and had the company legal people there too, and he laid out the statements and then said that lying to a federal officer can get you N years in jail, etc etc.
I had told the truth, but with threats like that, I didn't want to talk to them at all anymore. We both fell back on "hey, I already told you I was very very drunk, and this is how I remember it." Nothing happened to us (except that we were soon fired without cause by an overly paranoid always-have-4-sources-of-white-noise-in-his-office owner), but a few people I knew had all their computers confiscated (included blank media, tv's, monitors, keyboards, etc), and they were completely innocent.
They even brought up the drunk thing, I assume trying to make me slip up... I had told them I drove back to the office as soon as I heard about the incident (as did everyone else). He's like, "So if you were supposedly very drunk, how did you drive back to the office?". I just shrugged and told "yep, both those things happened". He was nice enough not to use that as an admission of guilt and hand it over to the local policy to charge me with drunk driving, but he allowed the threat of that to hang in the air, so to speak.
Anyway, point being, whatever info you provide will likely be used against you, even if it's just as a threat to try to get more out of you. And you don't have to be guilty of what they're looking for to end up with some significant negative consequences.
FWIW, I wouldn't change a single thing I did. Getting fired from there was one of the best things that ever could have happened to me in the long run.
He has made many speeches where he says that pirating copyright software is the right thing to do [fsfe.org],...
Nowhere on that page is the string "pirating" or even "copyright software" used, and the only occurrence of "right thing to do" is this:
"However, to be the lesser evil does not mean it is good. It's never good - not entirely - to make some kind of agreement and then break it. It may be the right thing to do, but it's not entirely good."
And if you think there is any implication that he means you should still do it (violate a software license), then just read on just a tad further where he says:
"If you don't use proprietary software, that means you never put yourself at risk of the dilema happening to you. If a friend asks me for a copy of a program, I will never be in that dilema because I can always legally say yes because I only accept copies of Free Software. If someone offers me a program that's attractive to me, on the condition that I not share it with you, I will say no, because I want to be in a condition where I have nothing to be ashamed of."
He's very consistent. Here, he's only saying that if you are not consistent and you get yourself into this situation, then you are in danger of falling into a moral dilema and, if you find yourself having that dilema, you should choose the lesser evil. He believes the lesser evil at that point would be to give your friend a copy and violate the license of the program and goes on to explain that valuation.
He makes it very clear that his actual recommendation is not to get into that situation in the first place.
The rest of your comment is just personal attacks and do not warrant any additional attention:-p
1/50 of a second is the length of a single half field in PAL TV. I doubt very highly that you'd notice it though. I have a 3d projector which uses DLP-Link glasses to keep the sync. DLP-Link shows one flash of white to the screen every... I'm not sure exactly how often:-)
Point is though, that flash doesn't register to my eyes.
Using half a second (25 times as long) to demonstrate it, makes it look like they are afraid that if people saw the real 1/50 of a second, they would realize that it's not a big deal.
As another poster mentioned below, this is probably more to do with representing the afterimage that would come from a laser flash. Though, I believe this has less to do with cameras not registering an afterimage, and far more to do with displays not being capable of rendering a realistic spectrum of light... Have you ever looked at the sun? It's often blindingly bright. Far far far more bright than any monitor or projector output on full white output. It's the severe difference in brightness levels that cause the afterimage, and you simply can't reproduce that in a video unless you exaggerate the duration of the flash.
A better demo would be to trigger a camera flash right at your face while watching TV. I still think the claims of risk are exaggerated, but using a longer duration flash in videos makes sense to me.
I get what you're saying with the legal versus civil disobedience part, but that example was awful!
He was breaking the law? So fucking what?
So fucking what? Here, let me take your computer, and keep it for my own. "But you're breaking the law!" So fucking what, right?
The guy was breaking the law, and that is why Monsanto sued. This shouldn't be a hard thing to work out.
More like, I infect your computer with a virus that contains the sourcecode to build itself, and you use that source to build copies of it to put on all your computers. Because my source contains patented IP, you're breaking the law. So fucking what, right? YES, so fucking what! You shoved that shit onto my yard/computer, and I'll do whatever I want with it now.
It's not like the guy went out and bought seed from Monsato, agreed to the contract, and then violated that contract... he had shit just show up on his yard and corrupt his own crop, so it took advantage of that shitty situation.
You're right that it should be settled in court (in both directions - Monsato's product should not be capable of cross pollinating to non-GMO crops, or should be contained), but the outcome from this and similar cases is, IMO, simply appalling. And it really doesn't help to drag in an analogy referencing physical theft that deprives the owner of the use of the product they owned (and yes, I know you didn't say they are the same, but only referenced they both break the law).
BAH! Sure,that's not bad to do, but if one drive does go tits up, then you (home user) order a replacement, wait, get new drive, try to rebuild, what's the chances just one in 7 of those remaining 2tb drives has just one read error? If so, raid array rebuild fails.
For comments about backups... my only real plan on using some consumer level external raid array would be for backup purposes. I should have a backup for my backup, but then it's turtles all the way down.
Blame your CRM system. What email system isn't capable of whitelisting an IP, or bayesian learning those messages are not spam? Sure, it seems simple to blame the cheaper system for lacking a feature that seems easy to add, but an email with same TO and FROM is not uncommon (I do it all the time to send myself notes from my phone, as do many people).
And if it's slow over RDP but fast if going directly, blame the RDP implementation. Ex. Dell DRAC is also incredibly slow, but I don't blame the bios.
Disclaimer: I've never used a Synology NAS. If these are the biggest complaints, I'm going to consider getting one though.
I like Android. I have one (evo shift). There's plenty that's easy to use, but there are extremely obvious parts that are way more complex than they need to be.
* ever try to hit a tiny Javascript created menu? my finger size has nothing to do with it. I can even zoom in, and it still hits the wrong thing 9 times out of 10 (ex. thebravest.com, listen to fdny live at top left, try to click the different boroughs).
* vpn setup and available vpn options. Ex. why won't "vpnc" (cisco vpn) work unless I have root? (I realize the technical reason, but it's that way on all Android devices unless you root them)
* full backup. How can "My Backup Pro" work, but not a single free (and/or open source) one work unless one has root? And why isn't that something that's built in (at least as backup to the cloud/google - ex. sms/mms/photos/music/app settings).
* calling. I haven't seen a single smart phone that was as easy to use on this feature (and the address book) as any of the non-smart-phones I've ever used. IMO, this should be the default screen when you unlock - right into a dialer with a smart bar for looking up someone from the address book.
* adding to the address book. If I dial a number, and want to add it to the address book before I call (or want to change to doing so and not call at all), it's a PITA. This was always super easy on any non-smartphone I've used (dial (no need to enter and app to do so, just start dialing); hit the add-to-addressbook button; enter the name; click save or save and dial or cancel; done).
* permissions. There's a cyanogen thing (feature/app/mod?) that gets this more-right. The all-or-nothing (ie. what the app asks for, or you don't get the app) is the problem here. The current system is effectively advisory. If you want to use some app, you'll say yes to whatever big buckets of info they need. Ex. "read phone state" - often used so the app can keep it from going to sleep while it's active. Yes, I want some apps to be able to do that, but I should be able to say, "nah, for this one, I'll live without that feature - just tell them X all the time".
* the app list. It's simple, yes. But you get more than a few handful of apps in there, and your wading through pages of alphabetized app icons. Gimme a frequently accessed list at top, and some way to categorize them (easily). There's probably an app for that:-)
I'm sure the list could go on and on, and I have no love for Windows or Windows Phone, but there are definitely plenty of brain dead things that could be improved.
Ballmer is overseeing Microsoft's passage into dull corporate middle age, and Microsoft's still totally reliant on the core product base of Windows and Office that it was a decade ago.
What I don't get is why this would be bad... continuing in, growing, and specializing in their OS and Office dominance (and I think, at the core, they're continuing to do just that). Their other ventures seem to mostly be so that those don't turn into gateway drugs ending in their core money makers going away.
It's where Apple was very smart - iPod took off, and they ran with it. I still don't see the iPod as being anything special in the start, but the capitalized on that initial growth and really started to focus a lot of stuff around it.
MS toyed with the xbox, and lost money. Yes, they're still in it, and one of the big 3 now, but it wasn't big enough to bet everything on it. It's not worth giving up yet either, but it's not their iPod.
HP (mentioned below) somehow took over the gauntlet from gateway (they were really big once) and outdid (or at least got on par with) Dell at one point in desktop/server sales. Now they're thinking of dropping that segment of themselves - WTF? They let it go stagnant. Why can't any of these big guys get and keep an easy way to pick and customize a machine? I tried building a Mac Pro PC clone via both Dell and HP - I'd encourage anyone go give that a try - it's awful!!! Apple actually had more flexibility in customizing theirs than Dell or HP, and it was cheaper for a comparable product - I never expected that.
Back to the topic, I think it'd be easy, profitable, and welcomed if MS started shipping both their OS and Office to run on more platforms (OS on arm/spark/itanium/whatever-else-is-left; Office (feature/function parity) on Mac/Linux/Android/iPhone/*BSD/Solaris/etc). Ditto on some of their other big money-makers: SQL Server, Exchange, Visual Studio, etc. Those might eat into their OS market, but who cares!?! Think of all the frontpage extensions that were installed on the gazillions of web hosts that would have been IIS vhosts if MS had offered that to run on linux and/or bsd.
I'm probably 100% wrong about at least 80% of this, but it's fun to look at stuff in hindsight:-)
...but I don't think we need a psych major here to tell you that certain fantasies tended to be acted upon more than others. Specifically, the darker ones associated with more mental problems.
That's BS.
Rephrased as the following, and I'd completely agree:...but I don't think we need a psych major here to tell you that certain fantasies, if acted upon, would cause more danger to people than other fantasies. Specifically, etc...
If your fantasy is about being in Star Trek, and you try to act on it, so what? If you fantasize about being with some celebrity (not raping or mauling them, but actually being with them), and you try to act on it (try to get to know them), big deal. If you fantasize about raping old ladies, and you try to act on it, things could end quite badly for the old lady involved.
The thing is, I HIGHLY doubt the problem is the percentage of fantasizers in a group that attempt to act on it. In fact, I'd be willing to wager the percentage goes the other way. For instance, I'd bet that, of those who fantasize about anthropomorphic behaviors, there is a high percentage of those that act on it and that, conversely, there are a lower percentage of those who fantasize about rape and act on it. Strong negative consequences do deter most people from actions.
I might be wrong, but I don't think he's talking about the launcher. He's said the "application menus". That's the thing you'll be spending all your time in, the application, and if its menus are moved to the top of the screen (like on a Mac), that's a significant change (argue good/bad as you see fit - personally, I don't like it).
I have little faith in people caring for something that is dead and off limits for very long.
People seem to forget that the stuff will exist somewhere, it does not disappear because you turn on an entertainment show and forget about it.
I completely agree. And people will forget a whole lot faster when it's not in someones face all the time (like it is now).
In case of most other scenarios, we will have more concern from the current storage methods and areas than Yucca Mountain Project.
Again, I completely agree. That extra concern for the current methods is what I want!
Sorry for turning your words around. I find it very odd that those statements (and many like it) are used in defense of using Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste storage facility.
FWIW, my take on it is that if it's too much work and too costly to store the waste safely, then that's a handy way of letting the market decide. Nuclear hasn't been around all that long yet, and there aren't that many reactors really, so if it's an obvious problem already, that doesn't bode well for the next 200+ years. I believe large scale solar can and will work (who knows which one, but the liquified salt ones sound good, and I like the idea of using a large dam and pumping the water back up during the day to sustain the night). If you ignore the environmental impact of coal/oil/nuclear, that type of solar install isn't cost effective yet. Coal/oil/co2 has been catching a lot of flack, and if that continues, it'll make solar more competitive... and someday way down the road, we'll run out or run very low. Making food into oil is neat, but I'm not too keen on the social impacts that'll likely have. Nuclear is great, but only as long as we're able to ignore or deal with the waste.
I'm honestly not an environmentalist type of guy. Solar just makes a lot of sense to me. We even have enough light up near NYC - if you cover New Jersey with solar, it'd make enough to power the whole US:-) (Arizona + improved power distribution sounds even better though).
As a developer, I see that list as a list of excellent examples of things that should not be allowed to be patented.
I'm tempted to get into who did what first, or the history of those features in other places, but putting that aside for a second...
Tabbed interface (and MDI before tabs) MDI is ancient, and all the info was readily available inside the apps already - it's just GUI stuff. Ditto on Tabbed interfaces - it's a nice and useful layer to get to all the stuff that was already available.
Saved Sessions I love these, but it's really just a very very small pre-existing action before closing (an on close hook), and one at startup - bookmark all; open bookmark group. They just hide that "bookmark group" and call it a session.
Previous windows re-opening when you launch the browser I think I confused the previous saved sessions with this... it's the same thing, and maybe saved sessions is just a manual bookmark all.
Mouse Gestures Gestures themselves are an interesting take on user input. Supporting them is just part of keyboard mapping of hotkeys, and those are some new hotkeys that are available.
Virtual folders in Mail These go by different names and implemented a little differently. Calling them virtual folders was a nice change in perspective, but saved searches are nothing new or unique (see pine/alpine for example).
RAM Cache Something that is just bloat and should be provided by the OS. Including it in the browser does make it more accessible to normal users, but it's just another route to something that is already readily available internally.
Zooming Is this just changing the font size preference to "+1, +2, +3, etc", something that's already there, but this provides a nice name for it and a shortcut? or is it full page zoom (ex. images zoom too), which (IMO) should be a window manager feature (and is in many places).
Integrated search A bookmark with an sprintf to inject the search string, separated out and called something else. (personally, I strongly dislike this feature, but I do like the keyword based location bar custom searches - where I can type CPAN[tab] and then search my custom bookmarklet for cpan). Either way, it's one of the simplest features ever added - a url handler to a web browser which already does a TON of url handling and has ample libraries for dealing with stuff like that.
Speed dial (I don't know what this one is)
Undo of closing tabs IE. shortcut to the browser history. I am VERY glad this was made easier, but it's just wrapping up some common actions to make them more accessible day-to-day (which is great, and what people should be doing, but I'm framing this in a should-not-get-patented light).
Using the user's CSS and Javascript instead of the site's First time I ever heard of CSS, I thought that was one of the primary ideas behind it. Once again, making it more accessible to the average user is certainly welcome, but all the internal to handle this were already in place in all browsers. A very simple proxy server could do it with ease (but it's not as "user friendly" and not integrated).
So many of these already had solid support outside the browser, and pulling those features in would often be labeled feature bloat... but Opera has remained quite fast and small. I've gotta admit, I'm impressed with that. It's what I had hoped gecko/mozilla/firefox would have turned into.
The above is not meant to be a negative review of what Opera has done (in fact, I meant the opposite)... just bothers me some of the very very simple things that somehow get patented, when all they often break down to is a macro with a shortcut and a new menu item for it.
As others have noted, you can just replace the text with "[redacted]", which also removes the length guessing.
Some people have noted some (ridiculous) concerns (like file formats storing changes, which could simply be disabled, and should be caught by the audit procedure afterwards - there is an audit, right?!?). So if you really want the print-out-and-scan-in type of dumbed down method, then:
* save to a bitmap or jpeg. * black out the text in there...no need for the useless media conversion (print/scan).
Even if one were looking for "metro" developers, there's no way to put in "5+ years experience with Metro development". At least with.Net in the posting, you'll get windows devs that are likely to know about Metro being in the pipeline.
I hear similar things about all sorts of stuff that people don't do because management doesn't allocate time for those things.
If you're hired to do a job, then you are a professional at it. Be one, and do things properly. It's your job to be the professional at your task. In my experience, it's EXTREMELY unlikely that they'll fire you for doing a good and thorough job, and it won't take long for them to notice the benefits if you're one of few doing it, and others are not - cause the others will end up having more ongoing problems, and you'll end up more productive (ex. taking the time to formalize a process and possibly automate it, rather than just get it done, and next time it won't take you any time at all).
I just don't get how so many people can recognize how important and obviously necessary documentation is, but can shrug it off and pass the blame to management so easily. If you've fully argued the case to management, and they simply won't allow you to document (threaten to fire you), let them fire you - take the unemployment (documentation is part of every developers job duties, and they can't justly fire you for doing your job, so you'll get unemployment) and find a better job. If they asked you to skip all input validation, stop using transactions, forbid version control, etc because those take extra time, would you put up with that as well?
Slashdot Mirror
alpine is also truly free software now.
FYI, alpine was pine. UW forked it, added a better build system, put it under a new license, released it as alpine, then discontinued development. The community has taken that and created the re-alpine project on sourceforge, where you can find the latest version. re-alpine
Development continues, but isn't exactly what I'd call "active". But it's an ancient email client, and there's really not all that much that could be added. I still find it indispensable and use it constantly and I'm quite happy with it.
You never said you needed a windows-like UI, so this qualifies for the request, but YMMV.
...and then each of your friends will also share with a couple of their friends, and so on; and then you realise that this is exactly how bittorrent works.
No it isn't. Bittorrent lacks the circle of trust aspect that actually sharing with actual friends has. Of course, I'm assuming the usual use cases here... you could easily use bittorrent to do the "share with a couple of friends" by only giving your friends the torrent file, but I don't think that's what you meant. In normal use cases, media shared via P2P has a published link/torrent, and lots of random people pull things they want. Media shared the old way (make a copy on a tape, and hand it to a friend; or modernized version of that - copy the file and email to a friend) is a push process, rather than pull, and you know who you're dealing with.
These days, the Kindle supports the same library system that the Nook does. Public Library Books for Kindle
Personally, I strongly dislike the way the support was implemented on both of them. They could both use an Overdrive app built into the device to make it easy and accessible to average users. But they do both work (my g/f has a nook and I've got a kindle, so I've tried both).
One solution I really hope to see come about (which I first saw with O'Reilly books that included a cdrom's with their books) is selling a combo of paperback + ebook, with zero or very very small extra price to get the ebook. That'd still let me loan out the paperback, or resell it, or read it in the tub, or whatever other benefit paper books have, and I'd still get the digital version which I like reading much much more and HAS SEARCH (which is indispensable in tech docs).
There are lots of parties to blame here too. Lot's of people point to the distributor (ex. Amazon), and many others point to the publisher. While both of those are valid, Apple should also get a lot of the blame. Their app store rules regarding pricing and no in-app purchases are hurting the entire industry (ex. AFAICT, you're not allowed to sell your book on Amazon for less than you sell it on the Apple App Store even though the Apple App Store takes a larger share of the profits, so you either have to raise your prices everywhere, or take a bigger loss on your App Store sales, or avoid the App Store altogether). Regardless of what red tape is in place, ebooks definitely need to find a way to come down in price.
The Kindle e-ink devices already have some apps. The technical underpinnings are there to support many more very helpful and useful apps, and I for one would love to see that happen. Some examples of apps that already exist:
IMO, the other replies to this are full of crap. Not only are these apps possible and useful, but they already exist.
One I would personally like to find ("find", because it'd surprise me if it didn't exist already) is a better music player. The one that's built in basically has no GUI. I'd love for one to be integrated so it could popup a mini gui on the top of the page with a menu press. I'd also love to see micro sd card support in one of the e-ink models, and more file format support (I don't care much about PDF myself, but adding support for non-drm'd epub would save me a lot of calibre time).
The "better PDF support" line has been mentioned a bunch, but I can't tell what it means.
I've had a Kindle since v2, and have the graphite one with the keyboard now. I don't read many PDF's, but on the rare occasion I need to, it seems to do the job. I could see a larger screen helping. Other than that, what needs to be better about it?
Amen!
You may be a very generous and helpful person, but you seem to want people to have the freedom to choose not to contribute to helping others of certain minorities (ex. skill stuff users) because they brought that on themselves. That's an awful slippery slope... what if one doesn't want to help anyone that broke a bone skiing cause they put themselves in that known risky situation? Personally, this is why I think healthcare needs to be universal, at least on some level (ex. I don't think cosmetic surgery should be included).
That said, how does using the existing sin taxes not solve that problem?
(answering my own question - that wouldn't solve the heroin users problems, or any other illicit drug use... but I'm for legalizing and taxing the hell out of those too)
Everyone (not literally, but enough) is already breaking the law. That doesn't do anything to get laws overturned. That only works if everyone is also held to the law (sued/arrested/fined/etc). Ex - speeding. Damn near EVERYONE speeds, but that hasn't done a damn thing to get rid of that law. They just limit how many people they ticket to socially acceptable level.
I think there is another option, and believe it's time will come. Going back to the car analogy, this would be like filming the cops that are always filming us...
* Share non-RIAA artists' music (doesn't matter who does this)
* Log downloading/uploading IP's via a bunch of clients (bittorrent)
* Watch for RIAA related IP's (them, or the hired lapdogs that do their work)
* Have non-RIAA artist sue the RIAA for copyright infringement under the same laws they use. (or have them sign over their management of their "IP" to your organization)
Do this enough, and it won't be profitable for the RIAA to do their tracking/monitoring/prosecuting of the P2P networks. That's how they're finding people right now - by joining the same P2P share, and watching for the IP's the upload parts of the content to them. This would make a great EFF or similar project.
It would take very little to pull this off. There are fairly small companies doing this for the RIAA already. Just do the same for non-members but only sue the RIAA related people. Those non-RIAA artists would also benefit from an RIAA with reduced power and influence, as they'd be more likely to be seen and distributed in mainstream places.
If the claim is made that you are targeting them and not protecting your "IP" from all the other downloaders, there is already a precedent set for that - the RIANZ, in this case, is only suing a handful of people... and there were certainly many others they saw while doing their tracking. Ditto on the relatively small number of RIAA suits in USA versus the number of people downloading/uploading.
The other possible outcome would be that the precedent is set such that, if one is doing this kind of monitoring/prosecuting, they must do it to all offenders that they ID. That would actually be great because a HUGE carpet bomb of claims to LOTS of people would have to be sent out by the RIAA and, while that might scare a lot of people, there are going to be FAR FAR FAR more people that are horribly pissed off by it, including many people in power positions. That shit would end quick.
One disclaimer - I don't believe in violating copyright and do not endorse it, but I do believe there are fair use situations (sharing a song with a couple friends; getting a drm-free copy of content you already purchased; format shifting (downloading a vhs rip of a vhs you already own)) that are perfectly acceptable (though possibly illegal).
While I think health care should be provided across the board as a benefit to the society that pays into it via taxes (ie. socialized), there's also a very easy and immediate solution to your little selfish/greedy worry about those groups of people not having money to pay for it...
Sin taxes are already in place (and astronomically high). Just put that money where it needs to go, and stop diverting it into legislation, ad campaigns, and unrelated fields. Just put it into a big old fund to pay for any future health care needs associated with those items (booze, smokes, etc). I'm fine with some of that money (as much as needed, really) going towards helping people quit those vices too, but I'd count that under this healthcare umbrella.
I wanted to mod this up, cause I agree, but there's one point I haven't seen mentioned here or in most of the posts below (that I've read so far)...
If you do provide false information, and they (FBI) ask if it this little log of yours is true and you say "yes", then you can be held for lying to a federal officer (and/or obstruction of justice, etc). All they have to do is find one little line that isn't accurate... and that would probably be trivial. Then, even if your alibi is honest and someone is setting you up, you've just discounted your entire source of "facts" as inadmissible. They don't even need to find a lie to hint at the consequences - "You know... lying to a federal officer is a crime."
True story, I was questioned in relation to an FBI investigation many years ago (I worked at an ISP that had been "hacked" and claimed enormous damages and got the FBI involved). The night of the incident, I was drunk (along with most of my coworkers to boot). I was cooperating, but they found one of the things I said to be in conflict with something someone else said. They called us both in and had the company legal people there too, and he laid out the statements and then said that lying to a federal officer can get you N years in jail, etc etc.
I had told the truth, but with threats like that, I didn't want to talk to them at all anymore. We both fell back on "hey, I already told you I was very very drunk, and this is how I remember it." Nothing happened to us (except that we were soon fired without cause by an overly paranoid always-have-4-sources-of-white-noise-in-his-office owner), but a few people I knew had all their computers confiscated (included blank media, tv's, monitors, keyboards, etc), and they were completely innocent.
They even brought up the drunk thing, I assume trying to make me slip up... I had told them I drove back to the office as soon as I heard about the incident (as did everyone else). He's like, "So if you were supposedly very drunk, how did you drive back to the office?". I just shrugged and told "yep, both those things happened". He was nice enough not to use that as an admission of guilt and hand it over to the local policy to charge me with drunk driving, but he allowed the threat of that to hang in the air, so to speak.
Anyway, point being, whatever info you provide will likely be used against you, even if it's just as a threat to try to get more out of you. And you don't have to be guilty of what they're looking for to end up with some significant negative consequences.
FWIW, I wouldn't change a single thing I did. Getting fired from there was one of the best things that ever could have happened to me in the long run.
Nice flaimbait.
He has made many speeches where he says that pirating copyright software is the right thing to do [fsfe.org],...
Nowhere on that page is the string "pirating" or even "copyright software" used, and the only occurrence of "right thing to do" is this:
"However, to be the lesser evil does not mean it is good. It's never good - not entirely - to make some kind of agreement and then break it. It may be the right thing to do, but it's not entirely good."
And if you think there is any implication that he means you should still do it (violate a software license), then just read on just a tad further where he says:
"If you don't use proprietary software, that means you never put yourself at risk of the dilema happening to you. If a friend asks me for a copy of a program, I will never be in that dilema because I can always legally say yes because I only accept copies of Free Software. If someone offers me a program that's attractive to me, on the condition that I not share it with you, I will say no, because I want to be in a condition where I have nothing to be ashamed of."
He's very consistent. Here, he's only saying that if you are not consistent and you get yourself into this situation, then you are in danger of falling into a moral dilema and, if you find yourself having that dilema, you should choose the lesser evil. He believes the lesser evil at that point would be to give your friend a copy and violate the license of the program and goes on to explain that valuation.
He makes it very clear that his actual recommendation is not to get into that situation in the first place.
The rest of your comment is just personal attacks and do not warrant any additional attention :-p
Good example and bad interpretation.
1/50 of a second is the length of a single half field in PAL TV. I doubt very highly that you'd notice it though. I have a 3d projector which uses DLP-Link glasses to keep the sync. DLP-Link shows one flash of white to the screen every... I'm not sure exactly how often :-)
Point is though, that flash doesn't register to my eyes.
Using half a second (25 times as long) to demonstrate it, makes it look like they are afraid that if people saw the real 1/50 of a second, they would realize that it's not a big deal.
As another poster mentioned below, this is probably more to do with representing the afterimage that would come from a laser flash. Though, I believe this has less to do with cameras not registering an afterimage, and far more to do with displays not being capable of rendering a realistic spectrum of light... Have you ever looked at the sun? It's often blindingly bright. Far far far more bright than any monitor or projector output on full white output. It's the severe difference in brightness levels that cause the afterimage, and you simply can't reproduce that in a video unless you exaggerate the duration of the flash.
A better demo would be to trigger a camera flash right at your face while watching TV. I still think the claims of risk are exaggerated, but using a longer duration flash in videos makes sense to me.
I get what you're saying with the legal versus civil disobedience part, but that example was awful!
He was breaking the law? So fucking what?
So fucking what? Here, let me take your computer, and keep it for my own. "But you're breaking the law!" So fucking what, right?
The guy was breaking the law, and that is why Monsanto sued. This shouldn't be a hard thing to work out.
More like, I infect your computer with a virus that contains the sourcecode to build itself, and you use that source to build copies of it to put on all your computers. Because my source contains patented IP, you're breaking the law. So fucking what, right? YES, so fucking what! You shoved that shit onto my yard/computer, and I'll do whatever I want with it now.
It's not like the guy went out and bought seed from Monsato, agreed to the contract, and then violated that contract... he had shit just show up on his yard and corrupt his own crop, so it took advantage of that shitty situation.
You're right that it should be settled in court (in both directions - Monsato's product should not be capable of cross pollinating to non-GMO crops, or should be contained), but the outcome from this and similar cases is, IMO, simply appalling. And it really doesn't help to drag in an analogy referencing physical theft that deprives the owner of the use of the product they owned (and yes, I know you didn't say they are the same, but only referenced they both break the law).
BAH! Sure,that's not bad to do, but if one drive does go tits up, then you (home user) order a replacement, wait, get new drive, try to rebuild, what's the chances just one in 7 of those remaining 2tb drives has just one read error? If so, raid array rebuild fails.
We're approaching the per-disk capacity and failure rate where raid 5 isn't enough (there's an EXCELLENT article on this somewhere - looked it up... I think this was it: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/162)
For comments about backups... my only real plan on using some consumer level external raid array would be for backup purposes. I should have a backup for my backup, but then it's turtles all the way down.
Blame your CRM system. What email system isn't capable of whitelisting an IP, or bayesian learning those messages are not spam?
Sure, it seems simple to blame the cheaper system for lacking a feature that seems easy to add, but an email with same TO and FROM is not uncommon (I do it all the time to send myself notes from my phone, as do many people).
And if it's slow over RDP but fast if going directly, blame the RDP implementation. Ex. Dell DRAC is also incredibly slow, but I don't blame the bios.
Disclaimer: I've never used a Synology NAS. If these are the biggest complaints, I'm going to consider getting one though.
I like Android. I have one (evo shift). There's plenty that's easy to use, but there are extremely obvious parts that are way more complex than they need to be.
* ever try to hit a tiny Javascript created menu? my finger size has nothing to do with it. I can even zoom in, and it still hits the wrong thing 9 times out of 10 (ex. thebravest.com, listen to fdny live at top left, try to click the different boroughs).
* vpn setup and available vpn options. Ex. why won't "vpnc" (cisco vpn) work unless I have root? (I realize the technical reason, but it's that way on all Android devices unless you root them)
* full backup. How can "My Backup Pro" work, but not a single free (and/or open source) one work unless one has root? And why isn't that something that's built in (at least as backup to the cloud/google - ex. sms/mms/photos/music/app settings).
* calling. I haven't seen a single smart phone that was as easy to use on this feature (and the address book) as any of the non-smart-phones I've ever used. IMO, this should be the default screen when you unlock - right into a dialer with a smart bar for looking up someone from the address book.
* adding to the address book. If I dial a number, and want to add it to the address book before I call (or want to change to doing so and not call at all), it's a PITA. This was always super easy on any non-smartphone I've used (dial (no need to enter and app to do so, just start dialing); hit the add-to-addressbook button; enter the name; click save or save and dial or cancel; done).
* permissions. There's a cyanogen thing (feature/app/mod?) that gets this more-right. The all-or-nothing (ie. what the app asks for, or you don't get the app) is the problem here. The current system is effectively advisory. If you want to use some app, you'll say yes to whatever big buckets of info they need. Ex. "read phone state" - often used so the app can keep it from going to sleep while it's active. Yes, I want some apps to be able to do that, but I should be able to say, "nah, for this one, I'll live without that feature - just tell them X all the time".
* the app list. It's simple, yes. But you get more than a few handful of apps in there, and your wading through pages of alphabetized app icons. Gimme a frequently accessed list at top, and some way to categorize them (easily). There's probably an app for that :-)
I'm sure the list could go on and on, and I have no love for Windows or Windows Phone, but there are definitely plenty of brain dead things that could be improved.
Ballmer is overseeing Microsoft's passage into dull corporate middle age, and Microsoft's still totally reliant on the core product base of Windows and Office that it was a decade ago.
What I don't get is why this would be bad... continuing in, growing, and specializing in their OS and Office dominance (and I think, at the core, they're continuing to do just that). Their other ventures seem to mostly be so that those don't turn into gateway drugs ending in their core money makers going away.
It's where Apple was very smart - iPod took off, and they ran with it. I still don't see the iPod as being anything special in the start, but the capitalized on that initial growth and really started to focus a lot of stuff around it.
MS toyed with the xbox, and lost money. Yes, they're still in it, and one of the big 3 now, but it wasn't big enough to bet everything on it. It's not worth giving up yet either, but it's not their iPod.
HP (mentioned below) somehow took over the gauntlet from gateway (they were really big once) and outdid (or at least got on par with) Dell at one point in desktop/server sales. Now they're thinking of dropping that segment of themselves - WTF? They let it go stagnant. Why can't any of these big guys get and keep an easy way to pick and customize a machine? I tried building a Mac Pro PC clone via both Dell and HP - I'd encourage anyone go give that a try - it's awful!!! Apple actually had more flexibility in customizing theirs than Dell or HP, and it was cheaper for a comparable product - I never expected that.
Back to the topic, I think it'd be easy, profitable, and welcomed if MS started shipping both their OS and Office to run on more platforms (OS on arm/spark/itanium/whatever-else-is-left; Office (feature/function parity) on Mac/Linux/Android/iPhone/*BSD/Solaris/etc). Ditto on some of their other big money-makers: SQL Server, Exchange, Visual Studio, etc. Those might eat into their OS market, but who cares!?! Think of all the frontpage extensions that were installed on the gazillions of web hosts that would have been IIS vhosts if MS had offered that to run on linux and/or bsd.
I'm probably 100% wrong about at least 80% of this, but it's fun to look at stuff in hindsight :-)
...but I don't think we need a psych major here to tell you that certain fantasies tended to be acted upon more than others. Specifically, the darker ones associated with more mental problems.
That's BS.
Rephrased as the following, and I'd completely agree: ...but I don't think we need a psych major here to tell you that certain fantasies, if acted upon, would cause more danger to people than other fantasies. Specifically, etc...
If your fantasy is about being in Star Trek, and you try to act on it, so what?
If you fantasize about being with some celebrity (not raping or mauling them, but actually being with them), and you try to act on it (try to get to know them), big deal.
If you fantasize about raping old ladies, and you try to act on it, things could end quite badly for the old lady involved.
The thing is, I HIGHLY doubt the problem is the percentage of fantasizers in a group that attempt to act on it. In fact, I'd be willing to wager the percentage goes the other way. For instance, I'd bet that, of those who fantasize about anthropomorphic behaviors, there is a high percentage of those that act on it and that, conversely, there are a lower percentage of those who fantasize about rape and act on it. Strong negative consequences do deter most people from actions.
I might be wrong, but I don't think he's talking about the launcher. He's said the "application menus". That's the thing you'll be spending all your time in, the application, and if its menus are moved to the top of the screen (like on a Mac), that's a significant change (argue good/bad as you see fit - personally, I don't like it).
I have little faith in people caring for something that is dead and off limits for very long.
People seem to forget that the stuff will exist somewhere, it does not disappear because you turn on an entertainment show and forget about it.
I completely agree. And people will forget a whole lot faster when it's not in someones face all the time (like it is now).
In case of most other scenarios, we will have more concern from the current storage methods and areas than Yucca Mountain Project.
Again, I completely agree. That extra concern for the current methods is what I want!
Sorry for turning your words around. I find it very odd that those statements (and many like it) are used in defense of using Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste storage facility.
FWIW, my take on it is that if it's too much work and too costly to store the waste safely, then that's a handy way of letting the market decide. Nuclear hasn't been around all that long yet, and there aren't that many reactors really, so if it's an obvious problem already, that doesn't bode well for the next 200+ years. I believe large scale solar can and will work (who knows which one, but the liquified salt ones sound good, and I like the idea of using a large dam and pumping the water back up during the day to sustain the night). If you ignore the environmental impact of coal/oil/nuclear, that type of solar install isn't cost effective yet. Coal/oil/co2 has been catching a lot of flack, and if that continues, it'll make solar more competitive... and someday way down the road, we'll run out or run very low. Making food into oil is neat, but I'm not too keen on the social impacts that'll likely have. Nuclear is great, but only as long as we're able to ignore or deal with the waste.
I'm honestly not an environmentalist type of guy. Solar just makes a lot of sense to me. We even have enough light up near NYC - if you cover New Jersey with solar, it'd make enough to power the whole US :-) (Arizona + improved power distribution sounds even better though).
As a developer, I see that list as a list of excellent examples of things that should not be allowed to be patented.
I'm tempted to get into who did what first, or the history of those features in other places, but putting that aside for a second...
Tabbed interface (and MDI before tabs)
MDI is ancient, and all the info was readily available inside the apps already - it's just GUI stuff. Ditto on Tabbed interfaces - it's a nice and useful layer to get to all the stuff that was already available.
Saved Sessions
I love these, but it's really just a very very small pre-existing action before closing (an on close hook), and one at startup - bookmark all; open bookmark group. They just hide that "bookmark group" and call it a session.
Previous windows re-opening when you launch the browser
I think I confused the previous saved sessions with this... it's the same thing, and maybe saved sessions is just a manual bookmark all.
Mouse Gestures
Gestures themselves are an interesting take on user input. Supporting them is just part of keyboard mapping of hotkeys, and those are some new hotkeys that are available.
Virtual folders in Mail
These go by different names and implemented a little differently. Calling them virtual folders was a nice change in perspective, but saved searches are nothing new or unique (see pine/alpine for example).
RAM Cache
Something that is just bloat and should be provided by the OS. Including it in the browser does make it more accessible to normal users, but it's just another route to something that is already readily available internally.
Zooming
Is this just changing the font size preference to "+1, +2, +3, etc", something that's already there, but this provides a nice name for it and a shortcut? or is it full page zoom (ex. images zoom too), which (IMO) should be a window manager feature (and is in many places).
Integrated search
A bookmark with an sprintf to inject the search string, separated out and called something else. (personally, I strongly dislike this feature, but I do like the keyword based location bar custom searches - where I can type CPAN[tab] and then search my custom bookmarklet for cpan). Either way, it's one of the simplest features ever added - a url handler to a web browser which already does a TON of url handling and has ample libraries for dealing with stuff like that.
Speed dial (I don't know what this one is)
Undo of closing tabs
IE. shortcut to the browser history. I am VERY glad this was made easier, but it's just wrapping up some common actions to make them more accessible day-to-day (which is great, and what people should be doing, but I'm framing this in a should-not-get-patented light).
Using the user's CSS and Javascript instead of the site's
First time I ever heard of CSS, I thought that was one of the primary ideas behind it. Once again, making it more accessible to the average user is certainly welcome, but all the internal to handle this were already in place in all browsers. A very simple proxy server could do it with ease (but it's not as "user friendly" and not integrated).
So many of these already had solid support outside the browser, and pulling those features in would often be labeled feature bloat... but Opera has remained quite fast and small. I've gotta admit, I'm impressed with that. It's what I had hoped gecko/mozilla/firefox would have turned into.
The above is not meant to be a negative review of what Opera has done (in fact, I meant the opposite)... just bothers me some of the very very simple things that somehow get patented, when all they often break down to is a macro with a shortcut and a new menu item for it.
Huh!?!?!
As others have noted, you can just replace the text with "[redacted]", which also removes the length guessing.
Some people have noted some (ridiculous) concerns (like file formats storing changes, which could simply be disabled, and should be caught by the audit procedure afterwards - there is an audit, right?!?). So if you really want the print-out-and-scan-in type of dumbed down method, then:
* save to a bitmap or jpeg. ...no need for the useless media conversion (print/scan).
* black out the text in there
100% agree.
Even if one were looking for "metro" developers, there's no way to put in "5+ years experience with Metro development". At least with .Net in the posting, you'll get windows devs that are likely to know about Metro being in the pipeline.
I hate this.
I hear similar things about all sorts of stuff that people don't do because management doesn't allocate time for those things.
If you're hired to do a job, then you are a professional at it. Be one, and do things properly. It's your job to be the professional at your task. In my experience, it's EXTREMELY unlikely that they'll fire you for doing a good and thorough job, and it won't take long for them to notice the benefits if you're one of few doing it, and others are not - cause the others will end up having more ongoing problems, and you'll end up more productive (ex. taking the time to formalize a process and possibly automate it, rather than just get it done, and next time it won't take you any time at all).
I just don't get how so many people can recognize how important and obviously necessary documentation is, but can shrug it off and pass the blame to management so easily. If you've fully argued the case to management, and they simply won't allow you to document (threaten to fire you), let them fire you - take the unemployment (documentation is part of every developers job duties, and they can't justly fire you for doing your job, so you'll get unemployment) and find a better job. If they asked you to skip all input validation, stop using transactions, forbid version control, etc because those take extra time, would you put up with that as well?