Go back and read... my entire post was based on adding new functionality as required by the user.
The confusion may have come in because that's the exact opposite of what the original article is about (that is, you mention the users that require change, rather than the ones that require stability). That brings up the point that there are dueling requirements; some users implicitly require the interface to stay exactly the same, even at the cost of not introducing new functionality. Other users explicitly require new functionality to be added, even at the cost of relearning a new interface. We need ways to serve both demographics.
What if most of your users want the new feature, but a few don't?
Well, Firefox allows a fair amount of UI customization. Some websites do, as well. I also like the idea of a "basic", "lite", or "classic" interface, where the most common functions are easily available and don't change around much, along with an "advanced" (but less stable) interface that gives easier access to all the bells and whistles.
Because a project thrives when it has users interested in it and (more importantly) using it. Projects that don't give users what they want, or which start doing things that users *don't* want will lose their mindshare to another project. Now, if it's just a case of developers scratching an itch and having users doesn't matter, then that's different, of course.
386 is supported up to the 3.7 kernel, and the 3.8 kernel was widely announced (and designed) to break 386 support. I've got an ARM system with 128MB of RAM, and it runs GCC 4.2 just fine. I can't imagine that an X86 version would be *that* much heavier that it wouldn't run. Of course, if I try to compile large, modern projects (with output binaries in the hundreds of MB, sometimes), it goes to swap *really* darned fast, but what did you expect? If I'm compiling the size of project that will actually run in the amount of RAM available on the system, without swapping, it works just fine.
Because it sucks when you realize that you don't have enough USB ports to plug in the full variety of external hardware that you might want to use in the system, and that'd be a goofy requirement anyhow. Either you have to plug in all the hardware you want to support, or you're back to enabling hardware one piece at a time manually in the kernel configuration.
Basically, it's a neat concept, but it might not be practical, and if you're at the point where you want/need to compile your own kernel, then it's reasonable to assume that you *will* know what hardware is in your machine, that you'll do the research to figure it out, or at least that you'll discover it by trial and error.
The problem is that we probably don't have perfect Windows emulation.
Of course we do; the emulator just emulates PC hardware, and Windows runs within that environment. Did you mean that we don't have a perfect open implementation of every Windows API?
About 14 years ago, I used Linux for the first time, after having used various versions of DOS and Windows starting around 1993. There was so much different about how you use the system, how things get done, and new mindsets to get used to. On top of that, discoverability of device paths, standard Unix utility names, etc is pretty terrible. So yes, "Learning" seems like the appropriate word.
This is my biggest problem with smartphones. The hard stuff about providing voice and SMS service is handled by the radio. My Nokia candybar running a microcontroller-like CPU can flawlessly handle the basic functions of the phone. So with a smartphone I gain some extra capabilities, but only at the expense of the core communication functions of the phone.
I was born around the time the first MicroVAX came out (heh, yes, username data leakage). The icons and interfaces don't bother me much, when they're "discoverable", at at least follow patterns that I've seen before. The things that bother me are services (like Hangouts) where the service itself doesn't work intuitively. For example, where is the contact from? Some e-mail address harvested from a gmail message, a phone number that I manually entered as a contact, a gchat username, or what? If I message them, will it go to their phone, some background e-mail tab in their browser, or what? It's like Pidgin (a mutliple-protocol instant messaging program) reimplemented by a brain-damaged monkey, taking direction from Google's marketing team.
I have limited access to Hangouts, but is there a way to insert a carriage return into a message?
There's a little button for smileys. If you hit shift, the smiley button becomes a carriage return.
Also, how to remove the stupid fucking smilie face icon from the keyboard?
The keyboard isn't really part of Hangouts itself, and you can use an alternate keyboard. There are at least dozens of options available, and probably more. Swiftkey is fairly popular, I believe, but it has the same smiley icon (although it *does* show a carriage return as the long-press action for that button). I don't have any other keyboards installed at the moment to compare.
Which doesn't work on some forms of screens, apparently (according to the product page). It seems like a lot of trouble to go through for something that isn't that important, anyhow.
Then how does one go about finding such a friend willing to offer such charity? Perhaps it appears easy to you, but a lot of people remain homeless because they lack certain social skills. This could result from autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, past abuse, or any of several other conditions.
If they're as disabled as you're describing, they're likely to be eligible for state mental health programs. Staying with family or friends would probably be a better option, but if mental issues or circumstance preclude that, then options are limited. These are the people who couldn't have signed lease papers on their own, anyhow.
No one can rely long-term on staying in shelters because it is too likely that on a given night, there are too many people there.
Shelters aren't meant to be a long-term solution. The mentally ill and physically disabled ought to be provided for by the government. In many countries, they are. In the United States, there is some limited level of help (previously mentioned state institutions). Children that fall into homelessness may be forced to enter the foster system, which sucks, but I don't have a better answer, based on the available options that I know about. Physically and mentally able adults should be able to find some kind of work, and will probably qualify for government assistance, besides that.
And I was assuming that the lack of sit/lie laws in those half-dozen nearby cities would not last forever because those half-dozen nearby cities would want to try to shake that perception. ... Then how should somebody who is already homeless go about researching which nearby cities both A. lack a sit/lie law and B. are highly unlikely to adopt one in the next twelve months?
Isn't the homeless guy hanging out in the library all day a cliche? Information is more available now than it ever has been, and word of mouth is just as powerful as it ever was.
We don't have a perfect system, and there are "holes" that aren't well-handled. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on how to handle homelessness and mental illness, and how we can improve our current system, but I think we've gotten pretty badly off-topic from the statement that you originally made, and which I took exception to:
In cities that have criminalized homelessness, failure to own or rent an enclosed place in which to live lands a person in prison.
I might rephrase my reading of that as "All people who live in cities that criminalize homelessness, and who fail to own or rent shelter, land in prison". I think that I've sufficiently supported my objections to that statement. If you made a weaker claim, like that it "tends to land a person in prison", I probably wouldn't have replied, because I think that's a more reasonable claim, backed up by statistics.
But I think that this isn't even the argument that you're interested in making. I think that the root of the matter is that you're more stuck on the idea of whether sit/lie laws are governmental coercion with the non-choice to sign a rental lease or be thrown in jail, and whether any specific lease entered into under those circumstances could be considered to have been entered into of both parties' free wills. Is that a fair assessment, or have I missed the mark?
My first employer out of college did, and presumably still does. I've never seen it as a downside. They offered higher pay and better benefits than any of my other job offers did, and so the company itself was quite attractive. I consume a fair amount of alcohol and caffeine, but nothing more exotic than that. In a 70,000 person company, and even among the 300 in my office, I'm sure that there are some that partake. I don't know anyone that would have a problem giving up an illegal habit for a short time to get a job, provided that the offer was attractive enough.
And I don't have a problem with that; it's why we have government. It's the whole point: regulating anti-social behavior (or coercing "acceptable" behavior, if you want to word it that way). Certain behaviors are labeled crimes because it allows a higher standard of living for those that don't behave that way. The problem comes when there is a section of the population for whom there are no legal options that are open to them, and the government essentially forces those people into criminality. I don't believe that we're truly at that point, but options are constricting, and things are getting harder for people. This is a problem of course, and I'm not debating that. I just disagree that "coercion", in and of itself, and in the context of an elected government, is necessarily a bad thing, as so many in this thread seem to be arguing.
You can't tell me that living with a friend would be a crime. I'm not talking about a lease, I'm talking about charity. If the law precludes being homeless and we're excluding the option of renting for the purpose of the discussion, that's about the only option, in one form or another.
Shelters are chronically full.
So, kind of like "no one stays in shelters; there's too many people there."
Relocate where?
Another city where living in a park isn't a crime, if that's what you've been forced to do.
Setting foot in a different country is a crime. Does elsewhere in the same country also criminalize homelessness?
Setting foot in a different country is a crime? You'll need to explain that one a little more. I was assuming, though, that one could find another city with different laws. Where I live, there are sit/lie laws. There are a half-dozen cities in the region that don't have them, and they become known as places with lots of homeless people around.
governments coerce people into renting.
The purpose of government is to coerce certain behaviors out of its populace to maintain an overall higher standard of living for the people under its control, and there are certain categories that I can't help but consider less harmful than others. Then again, I'm convinced that most people have legal alternatives to homelessness or arrangements that include paying someone to stay somewhere. In the U.S. at least, there aren't national laws outlawing being homeless; those are usually left to cities, and those laws vary place-to-place.
failure to own or rent an enclosed place in which to live lands a person in prison.
Strictly speaking, this isn't true. One could live with someone else who rents or owns a space, stay in a shelter, or relocate. There are options aside from renting/owning in that particular place.
More generally speaking, government's business is coercing people to act in ways that they may not have on their own. It's what they do. Most people accept some level of government coercion in their lives because it's better than the alternative of living with other people doing strictly what they please.
You're talking about two different things, here. Requirements of survival are just a fact, but the slave's beatings are a consequence imposed by another person. For that reason, it doesn't make a good example.
I think that 2TB is currently the largest 2.5" drive. The system apparently supports up to 6TB, and I guess some people have done it with cable extensions to 3.5" drives, or something.
And the fanbois will drop to their knees and chap their lips all the while singing the praises of both Msoft and Sony for finally giving them the storage they both should have been released with when they debuted.
....Or it'll give less-technical people another purchase option. The new PS4 version is apparently releasing for AUD550, which is what the previous versions launched at. I don't get where the vitriol is coming from.
Out of curiosity, what is attractive about using an external drive through a slow USB interface when you can use an internal drive over SATA? From my perspective: I've got an external drive on my Wii hosting disk images of games, and I hate having it outside the case of the system. The benefit that I see is increased functionality, but it seems like having the drive outside the system is a big drawback. Is your interest in having game saves on a USB stick, or something? Like for transportation to another system, for backup, etc?
There is no reason for "ethics" to cost extra. None. It is a complete fraud.
So, companies employ slave-level labor, irresponsible waste disposal, etc just because they like tenting their fingers and cackling evilly? Doing things properly costs more money, or we wouldn't have so many examples of companies cutting costs in unethical ways. If we somehow forced every company in existence to suddenly fly straight and do right by their employees and the environment, there would be increases in costs to them across the board. If it was just as cheap to do things in a way that would generate good PR, then why wouldn't corporations do that? If you have a way of running businesses in a friendlier way without increasing costs, then I'm sure that you're making a fortune as a business consultant.
...which doesn't matter, because I wasn't using it as a point in an argument, but rather, a statement of opinion based on what I've observed. I wasn't arguing against you; I was explaining that the post seemed typical of your regular style of argument.
It's not universal, but I imagine that there are plenty of places in U.S. cities without an RIAA-free grocer within reasonable cycling distance.
I'll go further than that. I'll say that I imagine that there are plenty of places in U.S. cities without a grocer of any kind within cycling distance. It's a claim that's just as vague and just as unsupported.
I'm not here to argue with you, though. There's no point.
Slashdot Mirror
Go back and read... my entire post was based on adding new functionality as required by the user.
The confusion may have come in because that's the exact opposite of what the original article is about (that is, you mention the users that require change, rather than the ones that require stability). That brings up the point that there are dueling requirements; some users implicitly require the interface to stay exactly the same, even at the cost of not introducing new functionality. Other users explicitly require new functionality to be added, even at the cost of relearning a new interface. We need ways to serve both demographics.
What if most of your users want the new feature, but a few don't?
Well, Firefox allows a fair amount of UI customization. Some websites do, as well. I also like the idea of a "basic", "lite", or "classic" interface, where the most common functions are easily available and don't change around much, along with an "advanced" (but less stable) interface that gives easier access to all the bells and whistles.
Because a project thrives when it has users interested in it and (more importantly) using it. Projects that don't give users what they want, or which start doing things that users *don't* want will lose their mindshare to another project. Now, if it's just a case of developers scratching an itch and having users doesn't matter, then that's different, of course.
386 is supported up to the 3.7 kernel, and the 3.8 kernel was widely announced (and designed) to break 386 support. I've got an ARM system with 128MB of RAM, and it runs GCC 4.2 just fine. I can't imagine that an X86 version would be *that* much heavier that it wouldn't run. Of course, if I try to compile large, modern projects (with output binaries in the hundreds of MB, sometimes), it goes to swap *really* darned fast, but what did you expect? If I'm compiling the size of project that will actually run in the amount of RAM available on the system, without swapping, it works just fine.
Because it sucks when you realize that you don't have enough USB ports to plug in the full variety of external hardware that you might want to use in the system, and that'd be a goofy requirement anyhow. Either you have to plug in all the hardware you want to support, or you're back to enabling hardware one piece at a time manually in the kernel configuration.
Basically, it's a neat concept, but it might not be practical, and if you're at the point where you want/need to compile your own kernel, then it's reasonable to assume that you *will* know what hardware is in your machine, that you'll do the research to figure it out, or at least that you'll discover it by trial and error.
The problem is that we probably don't have perfect Windows emulation.
Of course we do; the emulator just emulates PC hardware, and Windows runs within that environment. Did you mean that we don't have a perfect open implementation of every Windows API?
About 14 years ago, I used Linux for the first time, after having used various versions of DOS and Windows starting around 1993. There was so much different about how you use the system, how things get done, and new mindsets to get used to. On top of that, discoverability of device paths, standard Unix utility names, etc is pretty terrible. So yes, "Learning" seems like the appropriate word.
This is my biggest problem with smartphones. The hard stuff about providing voice and SMS service is handled by the radio. My Nokia candybar running a microcontroller-like CPU can flawlessly handle the basic functions of the phone. So with a smartphone I gain some extra capabilities, but only at the expense of the core communication functions of the phone.
I was born around the time the first MicroVAX came out (heh, yes, username data leakage). The icons and interfaces don't bother me much, when they're "discoverable", at at least follow patterns that I've seen before. The things that bother me are services (like Hangouts) where the service itself doesn't work intuitively. For example, where is the contact from? Some e-mail address harvested from a gmail message, a phone number that I manually entered as a contact, a gchat username, or what? If I message them, will it go to their phone, some background e-mail tab in their browser, or what? It's like Pidgin (a mutliple-protocol instant messaging program) reimplemented by a brain-damaged monkey, taking direction from Google's marketing team.
I have limited access to Hangouts, but is there a way to insert a carriage return into a message?
There's a little button for smileys. If you hit shift, the smiley button becomes a carriage return.
Also, how to remove the stupid fucking smilie face icon from the keyboard?
The keyboard isn't really part of Hangouts itself, and you can use an alternate keyboard. There are at least dozens of options available, and probably more. Swiftkey is fairly popular, I believe, but it has the same smiley icon (although it *does* show a carriage return as the long-press action for that button). I don't have any other keyboards installed at the moment to compare.
But given its prevalence, jQuery is probably essential to know,
It's clear enough that they're talking about web UI development, but when do you not hear someone complaining about assumptions made in the summary?
"Something that isn't that important anyhow" was meant to refer to whichever banned substance you're trying to mask.
Which doesn't work on some forms of screens, apparently (according to the product page). It seems like a lot of trouble to go through for something that isn't that important, anyhow.
Then how does one go about finding such a friend willing to offer such charity? Perhaps it appears easy to you, but a lot of people remain homeless because they lack certain social skills. This could result from autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, past abuse, or any of several other conditions.
If they're as disabled as you're describing, they're likely to be eligible for state mental health programs. Staying with family or friends would probably be a better option, but if mental issues or circumstance preclude that, then options are limited. These are the people who couldn't have signed lease papers on their own, anyhow.
No one can rely long-term on staying in shelters because it is too likely that on a given night, there are too many people there.
Shelters aren't meant to be a long-term solution. The mentally ill and physically disabled ought to be provided for by the government. In many countries, they are. In the United States, there is some limited level of help (previously mentioned state institutions). Children that fall into homelessness may be forced to enter the foster system, which sucks, but I don't have a better answer, based on the available options that I know about. Physically and mentally able adults should be able to find some kind of work, and will probably qualify for government assistance, besides that.
And I was assuming that the lack of sit/lie laws in those half-dozen nearby cities would not last forever because those half-dozen nearby cities would want to try to shake that perception.
...
Then how should somebody who is already homeless go about researching which nearby cities both A. lack a sit/lie law and B. are highly unlikely to adopt one in the next twelve months?
Isn't the homeless guy hanging out in the library all day a cliche? Information is more available now than it ever has been, and word of mouth is just as powerful as it ever was.
We don't have a perfect system, and there are "holes" that aren't well-handled. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on how to handle homelessness and mental illness, and how we can improve our current system, but I think we've gotten pretty badly off-topic from the statement that you originally made, and which I took exception to:
In cities that have criminalized homelessness, failure to own or rent an enclosed place in which to live lands a person in prison.
I might rephrase my reading of that as "All people who live in cities that criminalize homelessness, and who fail to own or rent shelter, land in prison". I think that I've sufficiently supported my objections to that statement. If you made a weaker claim, like that it "tends to land a person in prison", I probably wouldn't have replied, because I think that's a more reasonable claim, backed up by statistics.
But I think that this isn't even the argument that you're interested in making. I think that the root of the matter is that you're more stuck on the idea of whether sit/lie laws are governmental coercion with the non-choice to sign a rental lease or be thrown in jail, and whether any specific lease entered into under those circumstances could be considered to have been entered into of both parties' free wills. Is that a fair assessment, or have I missed the mark?
My first employer out of college did, and presumably still does. I've never seen it as a downside. They offered higher pay and better benefits than any of my other job offers did, and so the company itself was quite attractive. I consume a fair amount of alcohol and caffeine, but nothing more exotic than that. In a 70,000 person company, and even among the 300 in my office, I'm sure that there are some that partake. I don't know anyone that would have a problem giving up an illegal habit for a short time to get a job, provided that the offer was attractive enough.
And I don't have a problem with that; it's why we have government. It's the whole point: regulating anti-social behavior (or coercing "acceptable" behavior, if you want to word it that way). Certain behaviors are labeled crimes because it allows a higher standard of living for those that don't behave that way. The problem comes when there is a section of the population for whom there are no legal options that are open to them, and the government essentially forces those people into criminality. I don't believe that we're truly at that point, but options are constricting, and things are getting harder for people. This is a problem of course, and I'm not debating that. I just disagree that "coercion", in and of itself, and in the context of an elected government, is necessarily a bad thing, as so many in this thread seem to be arguing.
Not where subletting is a crime.
This is renting.
You can't tell me that living with a friend would be a crime. I'm not talking about a lease, I'm talking about charity. If the law precludes being homeless and we're excluding the option of renting for the purpose of the discussion, that's about the only option, in one form or another.
Shelters are chronically full.
So, kind of like "no one stays in shelters; there's too many people there."
Relocate where?
Another city where living in a park isn't a crime, if that's what you've been forced to do.
Setting foot in a different country is a crime. Does elsewhere in the same country also criminalize homelessness?
Setting foot in a different country is a crime? You'll need to explain that one a little more. I was assuming, though, that one could find another city with different laws. Where I live, there are sit/lie laws. There are a half-dozen cities in the region that don't have them, and they become known as places with lots of homeless people around.
governments coerce people into renting.
The purpose of government is to coerce certain behaviors out of its populace to maintain an overall higher standard of living for the people under its control, and there are certain categories that I can't help but consider less harmful than others. Then again, I'm convinced that most people have legal alternatives to homelessness or arrangements that include paying someone to stay somewhere. In the U.S. at least, there aren't national laws outlawing being homeless; those are usually left to cities, and those laws vary place-to-place.
failure to own or rent an enclosed place in which to live lands a person in prison.
Strictly speaking, this isn't true. One could live with someone else who rents or owns a space, stay in a shelter, or relocate. There are options aside from renting/owning in that particular place.
More generally speaking, government's business is coercing people to act in ways that they may not have on their own. It's what they do. Most people accept some level of government coercion in their lives because it's better than the alternative of living with other people doing strictly what they please.
You're talking about two different things, here. Requirements of survival are just a fact, but the slave's beatings are a consequence imposed by another person. For that reason, it doesn't make a good example.
You could probably buy a 3 or 4 TB drive.
I think that 2TB is currently the largest 2.5" drive. The system apparently supports up to 6TB, and I guess some people have done it with cable extensions to 3.5" drives, or something.
And the fanbois will drop to their knees and chap their lips all the while singing the praises of both Msoft and Sony for finally giving them the storage they both should have been released with when they debuted.
....Or it'll give less-technical people another purchase option. The new PS4 version is apparently releasing for AUD550, which is what the previous versions launched at. I don't get where the vitriol is coming from.
Don't know of any games that used it.
There were a number of games in North America with HDD support, and a larger list with online support.
Out of curiosity, what is attractive about using an external drive through a slow USB interface when you can use an internal drive over SATA? From my perspective: I've got an external drive on my Wii hosting disk images of games, and I hate having it outside the case of the system. The benefit that I see is increased functionality, but it seems like having the drive outside the system is a big drawback. Is your interest in having game saves on a USB stick, or something? Like for transportation to another system, for backup, etc?
There is no reason for "ethics" to cost extra. None. It is a complete fraud.
So, companies employ slave-level labor, irresponsible waste disposal, etc just because they like tenting their fingers and cackling evilly? Doing things properly costs more money, or we wouldn't have so many examples of companies cutting costs in unethical ways. If we somehow forced every company in existence to suddenly fly straight and do right by their employees and the environment, there would be increases in costs to them across the board. If it was just as cheap to do things in a way that would generate good PR, then why wouldn't corporations do that? If you have a way of running businesses in a friendlier way without increasing costs, then I'm sure that you're making a fortune as a business consultant.
What I am saying is that companies that see "ethical" as an avoidable expense are sociopathic
Companies are sociopathic by nature. Their purpose is to seek profit, with any other considerations coming in at a distant second place.
Lower demand means lower volume of production means higher price. Small production runs are much more expensive than large ones.
Ad hominem is also a fallacy.
...which doesn't matter, because I wasn't using it as a point in an argument, but rather, a statement of opinion based on what I've observed. I wasn't arguing against you; I was explaining that the post seemed typical of your regular style of argument.
It's not universal, but I imagine that there are plenty of places in U.S. cities without an RIAA-free grocer within reasonable cycling distance.
I'll go further than that. I'll say that I imagine that there are plenty of places in U.S. cities without a grocer of any kind within cycling distance. It's a claim that's just as vague and just as unsupported.
I'm not here to argue with you, though. There's no point.