Oh come on. As much as I agree that girls don't commit in NYC, they sure get laid.:-P
Or then you're only asking out girls that are totally outside of your league in the most upscale clubs in manhattan, in case you're indeed wasting your time.
I mean, seriously... A 20-something male going out in the meat packer's district or tribeca cannot possibly go back home alone on a WE evening. It's just not possible, unless he hopelessly tried to hit on girls talking D&D and the arcades of optimizing brainf*ck programs -- in which case he deserves to go home alone irrespective of where he lives.
One of the biggest issues with Silicon Valley is that it is all tech nerds. If you work in a big city you can run into the opposite sex from time to time.
Especially in NYC, where single females outnumber single males by around 200k:
Krugman wrote a similar prediction back in the y2k special issue of the NYT:
Here again, there were straws in the wind. At the beginning of the 1990s, there was much speculation about which region would become the center of the burgeoning multimedia industry. Would it be Silicon Valley? Los Angeles? By 1996 the answer was clear; the winner was... Manhattan, whose urban density favored the kind of close, face-to-face interaction that turned out to be essential.
The topic you complain of (complexity of installing software) is a topic that can be mastered in very little time. Gaining a working understanding the linux filesystem, paths, editing config files, and basic use of make would take the average person only a few hours of study. Add the ability to copy/paste messages into google and follow instructions, and installing software simply will not be a difficult task any more.
Sorry, but you have me laughing out loud. Typical users aren't the slightest bit interested in studying or understanding any of this stuff. And frankly, typical IT folks aren't either.
However, instead of learning how to do these things, you'd prefer that someone develop some amazing automated installation system that Just Works. I can understand the appeal, but I just don't see any motivation for anyone to create such a thing.
(...) The number of open source hackers who would volunteer a massive chunk of their time so that the "average guy" doesn't have to spend a couple hours learning is just not very high.
And that, my friend, is amongst the reasons why Linux will remain confined to servers and embedded devices, while users download billions of apps from app stores.
There's absolutely zero excuses for why an app written three years ago shouldn't run fine today.
You sound like you're a paying customer or their boss. If said maintainers are volunteers and doing this in their spare time and juggling work and family and just having a life, I think they have an excuse.
If it were me and I heard horseshit like your post, I'd say, "Here's the code. Knock yourself out. I'm taking my kid to the movies like I promised him three releases ago."
Having maintained FOSS myself, I disagree with you. It is indeed inexcusable that API changes and behavior changes break code written three years earlier. It is also inexcusable that so much unmaintained code exists in the wild.
If you do not maintain whatever you're distributing, then either of:
1. You shouldn't be distributing it at all. 2. You should find a new maintainer, or build a team of maintainers. 3. You should make it crystal clear that the code is not being maintained or intended to be used.
When distributing software (free or not), developers or end-users may ultimately depend on what you released. Unless you make it crystal clear to them that they shouldn't, they'll do so based on the assumption that the software is being maintained in a timely manner. If you fail to do either, you simply shouldn't be distributing it.
There's nothing wrong with posting your evidently expiring code on the web, eg "my CS 201 homework" or "foobar v.0.1-alpha3" or "libABC interface for php 4.3" or "gem that does XYZ for ruby 1.8.6". If I run into either of those examples, I'm likely on my own if I ever come to rely on them.
In contrast, if you release "libABC for php" or "gem that does XYZ", and your site lacks an in-your-face "needs a new maintainer, use at your own risk" message, then I'll be less than impressed -- especially if you're blogging on the same site.
I'd be more interested in knowing if they could interbreed with us. (Which is likely, since 1-4% of DNA in Europeans and some Asians might actully come from Neanderthals.)
The problem is that you are left with a digital representation of the sequence you need, and turning that back into DNA is a very difficult and very expensive process.
That part isn't so hard or expensive, actually, and prices are dropping like a rock. A couple of companies offer gene synthesis services, in fact -- some for under $.5 per base pair. Also, the team that created the first artificial virus documented interesting techniques that should make synthesizing sequences of genes faster, cheaper and less error prone.
Christ, what fucked up distro were you installing??? And how long ago?.
It was a best-of-breed-and-user-friendliness RedHat distro, several years ago. After untold numbers of Debian and Slackware and Suze distros before it. I haven't looked back since, tbh, so possibly obsolete opinion inasfar as UX is concerned.
In my experience though, the Linux UX went from beneath zero to just above zero over the course of roughly 10 years of "the UI/UX sucks" criticism. I tried, tried and tried as much as I could hate Windows and Mac OS and BeOS for no other reason than being young. But truth be told, they were all wildly superior on the desktop back then, and -- considering friends gave me the same "what fucked up distro were you installing???" argument over and over again throughout those years -- I can only assume that Windows and OS X are still widely superior on destops today.
In fact, scratch the assumption. I had a whirl with Ubuntu recently and I was unimpressed by their petty and hugely inferior copy of OS X. It sucked, plain and simple. KDE 2.0 was WAY better and more intuitive back in the days, and so was Gnome 1.0. It was at most a notch above fwvm.
Linux desktop share is growing faster than Mac OS X is, neither is growing at any impressive rate though, but it is almost 5 years ago now that Mac OS X overtook Linux on the desktop, and more than a few years since it was growing faster.
Market domination isn't a goal of FOSS at all, ir shouldnt be. Software freedom is for those who want it and are willing to trade their own time and effort for it.
Funny how mindsets have changed over the years...
Back in the heydays, the rage was all about how and when FOSS would eventually wipe out commercial alternatives. Pundits, flame warriors and trolls all joined forces in predicting that it was going to be a tsunami. Because Free and Open always wins.
Linux killed Linux on the Desktop. "I would be on the Desktop, if it wasn't for those pesky Operating Systems with their fancy backward compatibility!"
It also helps to work out of the box.
Last I installed Linux on a desktop, I spent several hours configuring it and installing a deluge of cherry-picked packages, each with its own deluge of dependencies -- which were occasionally installed two or three times with different versions in the end. Adding insult to injury, I had to babysit the box during the whole process due to occasional prompts. It left me with the impression that only the most masochist end-users would ever endure the pain to its end, and that Linux distros, installs and package management were an incomprehensible mess for the non-expert.
Anyway, when you're a passionate tinkerer, and you've plenty of time to babysit and fine-tune your box, then go for Linux on your desktop if that makes you sleep at night. Have all the fun in the world bending it to your will using kilometer-long shell one-liners. When not, then I'd wager that OS X or Windows and a handful of apps, free or not, are probably a better way to go.
You can use macports or homebrew on OS X. Both have all of the key OSS packages, and the latter additionally allows to manage your own private packages. What else would you need? OS X is FreeBSD with a fancy UI (and Obj-C)... You can shell script the daylights out of your box all you want if that's your thing.
There's more than one way to implement pinch-to-zoom (...).
As this apparently doesn't qualify as prior art; Apple can't claim infringement either.
So specific implementation details must matter. The general idea cannot be what Apple claims ownership of. (...)
Best I'm aware, their claims are on the animations (spring, bounce, acceleration, etc.) that come with pinching, panning and swiping gestures. They're mighty important for UX, too. Imagine zooming or scrolling a page without them for a moment.
Why not? As an indie dev, it kind of freaks me out, but if it drives as little as half of th crap coders outside of the market, it might be a very good idea...
I can't even begin to imagine the kind of fuckhead that would want to hack into the rover.
Doing mischief on a corporate network is one thing. I could imagine hosts of reasons for doing so. You might be looking for stuff to sell; or to make a point that lavish CEO salaries and dividends are outrageous; spying for a foreign State; whatever.
Doing mischief on a rover that boasts a round-trip delay measured in minutes is another. You stand to gain absolutely nothing that you won't find on the NASA's web site, scientific literature, or by simply getting in touch with NASA. Except, perhaps, for the fame of getting in; if you do, I'd wager NASA will know quickly, and every three-letter acronym organization in the US would be on your ass until you're dead or in jail.
Plus as another poster suggested, hacking into a satellite requires less equipment. It additionally boasts a much shorter round-trip and a much greater potential for profit. I'd be surprised if it hasn't already been done, too.
One could also argue that you were able to tweet in spite of Twitter using open source for a long time. Remember the days when they were using Ruby on Rails?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh come on. As much as I agree that girls don't commit in NYC, they sure get laid. :-P
Or then you're only asking out girls that are totally outside of your league in the most upscale clubs in manhattan, in case you're indeed wasting your time.
I mean, seriously... A 20-something male going out in the meat packer's district or tribeca cannot possibly go back home alone on a WE evening. It's just not possible, unless he hopelessly tried to hit on girls talking D&D and the arcades of optimizing brainf*ck programs -- in which case he deserves to go home alone irrespective of where he lives.
Yeah... I am growing too old...
! Linux || Gnome even...
Logic doesn't work that way.
Err... Am I missing something?
Linux && ! Gnome = true / works
! Linux && Gnome = false / doesn't work
Maybe I'm just growing too old...
One of the biggest issues with Silicon Valley is that it is all tech nerds. If you work in a big city you can run into the opposite sex from time to time.
Especially in NYC, where single females outnumber single males by around 200k:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/20/worlds-best-city-for-men-new-york-city-no-1-in-survey/
Krugman wrote a similar prediction back in the y2k special issue of the NYT:
Here again, there were straws in the wind. At the beginning of the 1990s, there was much speculation about which region would become the center of the burgeoning multimedia industry. Would it be Silicon Valley? Los Angeles? By 1996 the answer was clear; the winner was ... Manhattan, whose urban density favored the kind of close, face-to-face interaction that turned out to be essential.
http://mit.edu/krugman/www/BACKWRD2.html
The topic you complain of (complexity of installing software) is a topic that can be mastered in very little time. Gaining a working understanding the linux filesystem, paths, editing config files, and basic use of make would take the average person only a few hours of study. Add the ability to copy/paste messages into google and follow instructions, and installing software simply will not be a difficult task any more.
Sorry, but you have me laughing out loud. Typical users aren't the slightest bit interested in studying or understanding any of this stuff. And frankly, typical IT folks aren't either.
However, instead of learning how to do these things, you'd prefer that someone develop some amazing automated installation system that Just Works. I can understand the appeal, but I just don't see any motivation for anyone to create such a thing.
(...) The number of open source hackers who would volunteer a massive chunk of their time so that the "average guy" doesn't have to spend a couple hours learning is just not very high.
And that, my friend, is amongst the reasons why Linux will remain confined to servers and embedded devices, while users download billions of apps from app stores.
There's absolutely zero excuses for why an app written three years ago shouldn't run fine today.
You sound like you're a paying customer or their boss. If said maintainers are volunteers and doing this in their spare time and juggling work and family and just having a life, I think they have an excuse.
If it were me and I heard horseshit like your post, I'd say, "Here's the code. Knock yourself out. I'm taking my kid to the movies like I promised him three releases ago."
Having maintained FOSS myself, I disagree with you. It is indeed inexcusable that API changes and behavior changes break code written three years earlier. It is also inexcusable that so much unmaintained code exists in the wild.
If you do not maintain whatever you're distributing, then either of:
1. You shouldn't be distributing it at all.
2. You should find a new maintainer, or build a team of maintainers.
3. You should make it crystal clear that the code is not being maintained or intended to be used.
When distributing software (free or not), developers or end-users may ultimately depend on what you released. Unless you make it crystal clear to them that they shouldn't, they'll do so based on the assumption that the software is being maintained in a timely manner. If you fail to do either, you simply shouldn't be distributing it.
There's nothing wrong with posting your evidently expiring code on the web, eg "my CS 201 homework" or "foobar v.0.1-alpha3" or "libABC interface for php 4.3" or "gem that does XYZ for ruby 1.8.6". If I run into either of those examples, I'm likely on my own if I ever come to rely on them.
In contrast, if you release "libABC for php" or "gem that does XYZ", and your site lacks an in-your-face "needs a new maintainer, use at your own risk" message, then I'll be less than impressed -- especially if you're blogging on the same site.
I'd be more interested in knowing if they could interbreed with us. (Which is likely, since 1-4% of DNA in Europeans and some Asians might actully come from Neanderthals.)
The problem is that you are left with a digital representation of the sequence you need, and turning that back into DNA is a very difficult and very expensive process.
That part isn't so hard or expensive, actually, and prices are dropping like a rock. A couple of companies offer gene synthesis services, in fact -- some for under $.5 per base pair. Also, the team that created the first artificial virus documented interesting techniques that should make synthesizing sequences of genes faster, cheaper and less error prone.
Christ, what fucked up distro were you installing??? And how long ago?.
It was a best-of-breed-and-user-friendliness RedHat distro, several years ago. After untold numbers of Debian and Slackware and Suze distros before it. I haven't looked back since, tbh, so possibly obsolete opinion inasfar as UX is concerned.
In my experience though, the Linux UX went from beneath zero to just above zero over the course of roughly 10 years of "the UI/UX sucks" criticism. I tried, tried and tried as much as I could hate Windows and Mac OS and BeOS for no other reason than being young. But truth be told, they were all wildly superior on the desktop back then, and -- considering friends gave me the same "what fucked up distro were you installing???" argument over and over again throughout those years -- I can only assume that Windows and OS X are still widely superior on destops today.
In fact, scratch the assumption. I had a whirl with Ubuntu recently and I was unimpressed by their petty and hugely inferior copy of OS X. It sucked, plain and simple. KDE 2.0 was WAY better and more intuitive back in the days, and so was Gnome 1.0. It was at most a notch above fwvm.
Linux desktop share is growing faster than Mac OS X is, neither is growing at any impressive rate though, but it is almost 5 years ago now that Mac OS X overtook Linux on the desktop, and more than a few years since it was growing faster.
Source please?
PC sales trend suggest a different trend, btw:
http://www.cultofmac.com/139839/mac-market-share-continues-to-rise-while-pc-shipments-decline-report/
Market domination isn't a goal of FOSS at all, ir shouldnt be. Software freedom is for those who want it and are willing to trade their own time and effort for it.
Funny how mindsets have changed over the years...
Back in the heydays, the rage was all about how and when FOSS would eventually wipe out commercial alternatives. Pundits, flame warriors and trolls all joined forces in predicting that it was going to be a tsunami. Because Free and Open always wins.
(Some still do, mind you... eg Noyes.)
Linux killed Linux on the Desktop. "I would be on the Desktop, if it wasn't for those pesky Operating Systems with their fancy backward compatibility!"
It also helps to work out of the box.
Last I installed Linux on a desktop, I spent several hours configuring it and installing a deluge of cherry-picked packages, each with its own deluge of dependencies -- which were occasionally installed two or three times with different versions in the end. Adding insult to injury, I had to babysit the box during the whole process due to occasional prompts. It left me with the impression that only the most masochist end-users would ever endure the pain to its end, and that Linux distros, installs and package management were an incomprehensible mess for the non-expert.
Anyway, when you're a passionate tinkerer, and you've plenty of time to babysit and fine-tune your box, then go for Linux on your desktop if that makes you sleep at night. Have all the fun in the world bending it to your will using kilometer-long shell one-liners. When not, then I'd wager that OS X or Windows and a handful of apps, free or not, are probably a better way to go.
You can use macports or homebrew on OS X. Both have all of the key OSS packages, and the latter additionally allows to manage your own private packages. What else would you need? OS X is FreeBSD with a fancy UI (and Obj-C)... You can shell script the daylights out of your box all you want if that's your thing.
There's more than one way to implement pinch-to-zoom (...).
As this apparently doesn't qualify as prior art; Apple can't claim infringement either.
So specific implementation details must matter. The general idea cannot be what Apple claims ownership of. (...)
Best I'm aware, their claims are on the animations (spring, bounce, acceleration, etc.) that come with pinching, panning and swiping gestures. They're mighty important for UX, too. Imagine zooming or scrolling a page without them for a moment.
Or more simply, that cutting taxes makes it hard to balance a budget:
http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
Why not? As an indie dev, it kind of freaks me out, but if it drives as little as half of th crap coders outside of the market, it might be a very good idea...
In other news, superbugs are growing resistant to bug-resistant gmo crops:
http://www.rodale.com/gmo-corn
Typically, hell banned users can see each others' posts. That way, trolls and spammers get to interact with other trolls and spammers.
Teach me the ways of the Legendary 1.5 Hours work, master. I am a meager 12 hours peasant.
Rule #1: the shortest path to making money is to make other people work for you.
Rule #2: see rule #1.
Rule #3: when you make more than you need, work less.
What good is a 2880x1800 display with only 1GB of graphics memory?
Displaying fonts and graphics at double resolution with sub-pixel antialiasing.
I can't even begin to imagine the kind of fuckhead that would want to hack into the rover.
Doing mischief on a corporate network is one thing. I could imagine hosts of reasons for doing so. You might be looking for stuff to sell; or to make a point that lavish CEO salaries and dividends are outrageous; spying for a foreign State; whatever.
Doing mischief on a rover that boasts a round-trip delay measured in minutes is another. You stand to gain absolutely nothing that you won't find on the NASA's web site, scientific literature, or by simply getting in touch with NASA. Except, perhaps, for the fame of getting in; if you do, I'd wager NASA will know quickly, and every three-letter acronym organization in the US would be on your ass until you're dead or in jail.
Plus as another poster suggested, hacking into a satellite requires less equipment. It additionally boasts a much shorter round-trip and a much greater potential for profit. I'd be surprised if it hasn't already been done, too.
One could also argue that you were able to tweet in spite of Twitter using open source for a long time. Remember the days when they were using Ruby on Rails?
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899.
It's actually a tiny rover made with a few dozen pieces, with no built-in engine or the like.
Please wake me up for something the size of the Millenium Falcon:
http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Millennium-Falcon-7965