When Apple bolts OS X to specific hardware, it's justified in the name of user experience. Apple stabilises the user experience by limiting the OS to a certain subset of hardware: theirs.
Ubuntu, on the other hand, doesn't have that option. It does, however, have the option of pointing users in the direction of certain software by making it easy to install: repositories. Things that go into the repos are tested for compatibility, they install smoothly, and yet there are literally thousands of programs in the repos.
If you want something outside the repos, you have to install it yourself. Which is not that easy unless someone has packaged the application properly.
I like to look at this as a way of helping the Ubuntu user experience become as seamless and smooth as possible. Wide array of hardware, specific array of software.
Re:Blogs are like any other kind of media.
on
Blog Action Day
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· Score: 1
As if, somehow, interaction is limited only to communication?
If the intelligent redaction feature accidentally misses actual critical information and instead redacts non-critical information, that could be a good thing. I mean, for people who want to know things other people don't want them to know.
I have a rather exotic rig at home, mostly built from stuff I had lying around. A couple different network cards, an uncommon Intel mobo, a surround sound card, a USB microphone and 1/4 jack interface for recording, five or six hard drives of all sorts, and a MIDI card I found in a bin somewhere. Couple that with an NVidia card, and I pretty much expected Ubuntu to choke -- and choke hard -- on it.
But it identified all my hardware perfectly, and it all works. Now I'm using Rosegarden and Sooperlooper and Audacity and Hydrogen to produce my music (with Jack: sweet vishnu what a nice/confusing program). I'm running XP in a virtual machine. There's only one program I use (Notion, notation/symphonic playback software) that requires Windows.
For me, the most complicated setup on this entire rig was getting the virtual machine working. Which wasn't hard at all.
Blogs are like any other kind of media.
on
Blog Action Day
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Blogs are like any other kind of media. You have your large, successful, commercial entities that command a lot of power in people's mindspace.
Then you have all the other entities whose purposes are varied, and appeal either to a select audience, some sort of niche; and you have entities that essentially appeal to the author's vanity.
It's important to remember that, much like a crowd, blogs don't have a unified voice. And their voices are harder to find. Blogging does leave an impression on people, but let's not pretend it's this world-shaking thing that we've never had before. It's just another method of publishing and social interaction rolled into one.
That would be good times. The entire supply crashing, as it were, to a halt. The anguished cries of a million geeks raised in prayer. The five 250gb drives I have sitting doing nothing finally worth their weight in gold.
If such a device existed, and if it was monitoring a crowd of protesters, is it so far-fetched to believe that this device isn't being deployed as much as tested?
Putting all scepticism aside for a moment, can you think of a better place to test something like this out before deploying them? Crowds are unpredictable, they're noisy, they're potentially violent, and there are a lot of eyes present.
Take it one step further (though perhaps beyond the pale of credibility): would a crowd of protesters, nervous people who are looking for surveillance, not be the perfect place to find out how easily one of these craft can be spotted? All those eyes. Maybe that was the point, not the other way around.
Of course, I put no stock in any of this. I'm just saying.
The entire US government should IPO in chunks. Really, shareholding is a much more accurate form of representation that what we have now, and would allow corporations to actually and clearly own and control the state instead of doing so tacitly.
As a Canadian myself, I would like to note that the parent poster is patent product of our paternal sociopolitical society.
So much so, in fact, that he can't tell the difference between free speech and free drugs (that is to say, basic rights and freebasing). Which worries me.
It's not enough simply to excercise your own increasingly limited rights in such a beautifully softspoken manner, while being careful not to tread on the feet of oppressive regimes around the world.
If you stand for freedom--not the flag-waving, foaming-at-the-mouth Americanised version, but actual speech-in-the-wind freedom--you stand for it everywhere, and you aid it everywhere, governments and institutions be damned.
This is why the price of production should be augmented by advertising. And there are several ways to do this, for instance, product placements and inline adverts such as "throbber" ads in the lower righthand corner.
dan (coupled with a reasonable download price and ad revenue, studios can cut out the networks altogether...)
I agree - there's no way for Sony to measure what you're not buying. But isn't that exactly the argument they use to justify things like DRM? Which is - to me, at least - very, very odd.
dan (why can't we "share" things like PS3s already... give me a replicator, dammit!)
I'm not actually quite certain of the difference myself. We're nicer?:)
Nice 100,000 figure, by the way, very big, very rounded off. Where did you get it? Contrast that with the multiples of that figure that the deposed dictator is confirmed killing. Not to mention the possibility of WMD that Saddam had - and whether he had them is irrelevant, looking at the hide-and-reveal game he was constantly playing with the US, or the sponsoring of terrorism (confirmed again, although not with Al Queda), or the brutality of his regime. Feces in the water - if true - is an infrastructure problem, not a moral outrage.
The entire planet ows a debt of gratitude to the US for a lot of the stuff it's done. Not to say it hasn't made mistakes, but the vast majority of US doings are net positive. The internet is a prime example of that. Since you clearly enjoy supporting oppressive regimes - and the idiotic idea that nation-states, a novelty in world history, deserve self-determination regarless of what that means on a world level - explain to me how these good things would come about in a world without the US?
Don't kid yourself - Americans don't feel the need to be hated, and when the American dollar is worth shit, so will your currency. I don't think you understand how much the world rises and falls with the US, and if you did, you'd be making posts with a whole lot less anti-American alarmist rhetoric.
Nonsense. B2B trade with the US would be so disrupted, it would be incredible. And incredibly bad; do you have any idea how much the world trades with the US, and how much of that trade relies on the infrastructure of the internet as it exists now?
The world can "disconnect" from the US, sure. But that would be horrible for the world. Do you imagine that Europe or China could suddenly remove themselves from the internet and not be plunged into a crippling recession/depression?
I agree. The UN is effective when it has no internal resistance. But what makes anyone think that domain name services won't meet a great deal of internal resistance? Quite a few countries have a vested interest in that level of control of the internet; with that in mind, I believe the UN to be the very last people to control DNS, or possibly followed by oppressive states.
By the way, as a Canadian, I'm disinclined to like the US because it seems to be bred into us, even though we rely on them for pretty much everything we have, and are if anything more closely related to the US than any other country, ever. That said, I can't think of a convincing reason that the USA shouldn't have control over DNS. The US is generally a freedom-loving country. It may be headed toward hemespheric hegemony and this may help it along, but who cares? The US invented the internet, and largely financed its development and implimentation. Even the most jaded French citizen has to admit that the world is a better place due to US involvement in its affairs, and the freedoms provided by the internet are an example of that.
This may be controversial, but I would like to propose that the US retain "control" of DNS much the way it has - very well. ICANN may not be the ideal solution, but it's what we have, and it isn't that bad.
On a side note, I happen to believe that the US has made the world a better place - but it could do more, and hasn't. Why that is is anyone's guess.
One has to wonder what vested interest China has in implementing new protocols, especially with a view to becoming a leader amongst world powers when it comes to the internet. Especially when one factors in the way information is controlled (alright, less and less, but still controlled) in China at the moment.
Isn't this self-defeating for a communist country as it exists now?
Slashdot Mirror
When Apple bolts OS X to specific hardware, it's justified in the name of user experience. Apple stabilises the user experience by limiting the OS to a certain subset of hardware: theirs.
Ubuntu, on the other hand, doesn't have that option. It does, however, have the option of pointing users in the direction of certain software by making it easy to install: repositories. Things that go into the repos are tested for compatibility, they install smoothly, and yet there are literally thousands of programs in the repos.
If you want something outside the repos, you have to install it yourself. Which is not that easy unless someone has packaged the application properly.
I like to look at this as a way of helping the Ubuntu user experience become as seamless and smooth as possible. Wide array of hardware, specific array of software.
As if, somehow, interaction is limited only to communication?
If the intelligent redaction feature accidentally misses actual critical information and instead redacts non-critical information, that could be a good thing. I mean, for people who want to know things other people don't want them to know.
Totally offtopic, but who cares?
I have a rather exotic rig at home, mostly built from stuff I had lying around. A couple different network cards, an uncommon Intel mobo, a surround sound card, a USB microphone and 1/4 jack interface for recording, five or six hard drives of all sorts, and a MIDI card I found in a bin somewhere. Couple that with an NVidia card, and I pretty much expected Ubuntu to choke -- and choke hard -- on it.
But it identified all my hardware perfectly, and it all works. Now I'm using Rosegarden and Sooperlooper and Audacity and Hydrogen to produce my music (with Jack: sweet vishnu what a nice/confusing program). I'm running XP in a virtual machine. There's only one program I use (Notion, notation/symphonic playback software) that requires Windows.
For me, the most complicated setup on this entire rig was getting the virtual machine working. Which wasn't hard at all.
People can easily switch to Linux, right? Right?
Clearly, Netcraft must needs confirm this.
Blogs are like any other kind of media. You have your large, successful, commercial entities that command a lot of power in people's mindspace.
Then you have all the other entities whose purposes are varied, and appeal either to a select audience, some sort of niche; and you have entities that essentially appeal to the author's vanity.
It's important to remember that, much like a crowd, blogs don't have a unified voice. And their voices are harder to find. Blogging does leave an impression on people, but let's not pretend it's this world-shaking thing that we've never had before. It's just another method of publishing and social interaction rolled into one.
Ninjas don't need to have their interests protected. They protect their own interests with a combo of martial arts and awesome.
Pirates are weak sauce with their "associations". Ninjas don't have associations. Ninjas have bloodbaths.
That would be good times. The entire supply crashing, as it were, to a halt. The anguished cries of a million geeks raised in prayer. The five 250gb drives I have sitting doing nothing finally worth their weight in gold.
If such a device existed, and if it was monitoring a crowd of protesters, is it so far-fetched to believe that this device isn't being deployed as much as tested?
Putting all scepticism aside for a moment, can you think of a better place to test something like this out before deploying them? Crowds are unpredictable, they're noisy, they're potentially violent, and there are a lot of eyes present.
Take it one step further (though perhaps beyond the pale of credibility): would a crowd of protesters, nervous people who are looking for surveillance, not be the perfect place to find out how easily one of these craft can be spotted? All those eyes. Maybe that was the point, not the other way around.
Of course, I put no stock in any of this. I'm just saying.
The entire US government should IPO in chunks. Really, shareholding is a much more accurate form of representation that what we have now, and would allow corporations to actually and clearly own and control the state instead of doing so tacitly.
I mean, it just makes sense.
As a Canadian myself, I would like to note that the parent poster is patent product of our paternal sociopolitical society.
So much so, in fact, that he can't tell the difference between free speech and free drugs (that is to say, basic rights and freebasing). Which worries me.
It's not enough simply to excercise your own increasingly limited rights in such a beautifully softspoken manner, while being careful not to tread on the feet of oppressive regimes around the world.
If you stand for freedom--not the flag-waving, foaming-at-the-mouth Americanised version, but actual speech-in-the-wind freedom--you stand for it everywhere, and you aid it everywhere, governments and institutions be damned.
This is why the price of production should be augmented by advertising. And there are several ways to do this, for instance, product placements and inline adverts such as "throbber" ads in the lower righthand corner.
dan (coupled with a reasonable download price and ad revenue, studios can cut out the networks altogether...)
You would think, wouldn't you... but somebody has to evaluate unreleased versions of Windows. Microsoft clearly doesn't.
dan (taking the cheap shots)
I agree - there's no way for Sony to measure what you're not buying. But isn't that exactly the argument they use to justify things like DRM? Which is - to me, at least - very, very odd.
dan (why can't we "share" things like PS3s already... give me a replicator, dammit!)
wtf has happened to reading comprehension in the 21st century ?
I imagine the same thing that happened to capitalization.
dan (a bit snarky)
I'm not actually quite certain of the difference myself. We're nicer? :)
Nice 100,000 figure, by the way, very big, very rounded off. Where did you get it? Contrast that with the multiples of that figure that the deposed dictator is confirmed killing. Not to mention the possibility of WMD that Saddam had - and whether he had them is irrelevant, looking at the hide-and-reveal game he was constantly playing with the US, or the sponsoring of terrorism (confirmed again, although not with Al Queda), or the brutality of his regime. Feces in the water - if true - is an infrastructure problem, not a moral outrage.
The entire planet ows a debt of gratitude to the US for a lot of the stuff it's done. Not to say it hasn't made mistakes, but the vast majority of US doings are net positive. The internet is a prime example of that. Since you clearly enjoy supporting oppressive regimes - and the idiotic idea that nation-states, a novelty in world history, deserve self-determination regarless of what that means on a world level - explain to me how these good things would come about in a world without the US?
dan (the US is, in that way, a lot like Rome)
Um, I'm Canadian, actually, but nice try.
Don't kid yourself - Americans don't feel the need to be hated, and when the American dollar is worth shit, so will your currency. I don't think you understand how much the world rises and falls with the US, and if you did, you'd be making posts with a whole lot less anti-American alarmist rhetoric.
dan (speaks perfect Queen's English)
Nonsense. B2B trade with the US would be so disrupted, it would be incredible. And incredibly bad; do you have any idea how much the world trades with the US, and how much of that trade relies on the infrastructure of the internet as it exists now?
The world can "disconnect" from the US, sure. But that would be horrible for the world. Do you imagine that Europe or China could suddenly remove themselves from the internet and not be plunged into a crippling recession/depression?
dan (the world without America is a pipe dream)
I agree. The UN is effective when it has no internal resistance. But what makes anyone think that domain name services won't meet a great deal of internal resistance? Quite a few countries have a vested interest in that level of control of the internet; with that in mind, I believe the UN to be the very last people to control DNS, or possibly followed by oppressive states.
By the way, as a Canadian, I'm disinclined to like the US because it seems to be bred into us, even though we rely on them for pretty much everything we have, and are if anything more closely related to the US than any other country, ever. That said, I can't think of a convincing reason that the USA shouldn't have control over DNS. The US is generally a freedom-loving country. It may be headed toward hemespheric hegemony and this may help it along, but who cares? The US invented the internet, and largely financed its development and implimentation. Even the most jaded French citizen has to admit that the world is a better place due to US involvement in its affairs, and the freedoms provided by the internet are an example of that.
This may be controversial, but I would like to propose that the US retain "control" of DNS much the way it has - very well. ICANN may not be the ideal solution, but it's what we have, and it isn't that bad.
On a side note, I happen to believe that the US has made the world a better place - but it could do more, and hasn't. Why that is is anyone's guess.
dan (Canadian... whatever that means)
Having just read Noam Comsky's "Hegemony or Survival", this doesn't come as a particular suprise.
And as a Canadian, it's worrying. Although ridiculous.
You'd better be trying to run Linux on the Xbox 360, traitor ;)
One has to wonder what vested interest China has in implementing new protocols, especially with a view to becoming a leader amongst world powers when it comes to the internet. Especially when one factors in the way information is controlled (alright, less and less, but still controlled) in China at the moment.
Isn't this self-defeating for a communist country as it exists now?