So there are no gyroscopes telling them if they are level? That can't be right. Here is how it should have gone (according to my mind (read: fantasy)):
Everything except the gyroscopes (and radar altimeter?) went to hell and started blinking and making loud raucous noises designed to increase the panic level. The pilot walks in from his nap and authoritatively shuts all the damned noises off and does a quick assessment of the situation. He or she decides that, "this is some fucked up shit", and goes into guess mode. The pilot then levels the plane according to the gyroscopes and then applies 5% more thrust than a typical cruising speed would require. Prayers are then submitted to the appropriate deities that they will get out of the thunderstorm and/or the computers stop acting crazy before something Really Bad (TM) happens.
I am guessing what really happened is that everyone had a massive panic attack and tried to act on what they thought was happening and flew the plane directly in to the ocean.
Meh. If you do not frequently see the URL, how are you supposed to REMEMBER it. Sure, the OPs dystopian future may be a bit around the bend, but these stupid UI changes that REMOVE information and the ability to change things is going in EXACTLY the wrong direction.
You want changes to the UI, fine. I am all for experimentation.
STOP TAKING THE ABILITY TO KNOW AND CHANGE THINGS FROM ME.
Actually, RAM: would not survive reboot and you could not boot from it. It was RAD: that would survive a warm boot and could be booted from.
RAM: changed capacity as needed, RAD: stayed a fixed size once you set it.
That being said, I miss being able to reboot as quickly as it would take the bus to settle down. I think it was about 8 seconds. Of course, needing to reboot was a prime driver in enjoying those extremely short boot times. Flat memory was billions of times better than the segmented crap of the early x86 days, but protected memory is a godsend (and actually, protected memory is a logical form of flat memory).
"but underage pregnancy is still a symptom of the kids being naive so my point still stands."
Hm. I would say it is you who is being naive.
Do you really think that the fear of pregnancy will win a battle against the desire to have sex? It will not.
In my experience, most females will have their first sexual encounter before they are 18. The age of 17 was the most common and is the age at which my own daughter had sex for the first time.
Withholding birth control is probably the number one contributor to teenage pregnancy, not naivete. I posit that your argument is fallacious.
"Why are we doing it? There is just one reason, it helps get code shipped faster. "
Good morning sir. First, let me thank you for your efforts. Despite the rapid bloat that is emerging, I still use Firefox as my main browser. Again, thank you. I do feel the need to ask you a question:
What purpose does shipping code faster serve?
To be quite honest, if the 2.x series were still receiving security updates, I would be using it despite the memory leaks.
I guess what I am really asking is this:
Why not just improve the code you have rather than writing new code?
Yes, HTML 5 support needs to be added at some point, but surely most of the new additions should be implemented as plugins and the base browser should be lean and mean like it used to be. No?
Again, I sincerely thank you for your efforts in producing the most usable browser out there.
Or perhaps a person wants an address bar to be... wait for it: an address bar?
Or perhaps a search tool should be a search tool?
Or perhaps a person wants the history to be displayed when they use the drop-down functionality of the URL/Address bar?
Gnome, KDE, Firefox. The morons are legion. I will just stop using all of your products... Or perhaps that is what Microsoft wants?
What is with the designers nowadays? Have they been reading 1984? What twisted contortions of logic have to occur in order to assume taking away control from the user empowers the user? How does someone arrive at "4.0 is an alpha"? How does someone think that taking something from one paradigm and twisting it to another without any cues is a good thing?
Meh. I will eventually write my own software stack for *my* own use since what is currently out there is not even worthy of being called dog food (except the GNU command line utilities). Maybe if someone else likes it, I will share it with them... and then two decades from then, some smartass can "rework paradigms" again and claim everyone loves it.
"That anecdote presumes that she has a right to obtain the content on her terms or prices.
If we're going to assume that her (thrifty) needs trump the plans (or lack thereof) of the copyright holders, then perhaps the law of the land should reflect that. "
I am betting that she knows she broke the law and she does not care. I see it all the time. Copyright law is not respectable so expecting someone to respect it is as stupid as expecting someone volunteering to die just to make sure there is a little bit more food in the world for a starving person elsewhere in the world.
The copyright holders have poisoned the well with their greed. It will take generations and significant sacrifices on the parts of copyright holders to get people to respect copyright again. It will never happen. Game over. Everyone loses.
Actually, AFAIK, we have not extended life by even one minute with all of our medical advances. Sure, we have increased the number of people who can reasonably expect to live to the maximum life expectancy, but nobody has lived longer than ever before.
What I mean is this: There have been people living past 100 since the dawn of recorded history. Not very many people made it that far because of various diseases, famines, etc. We can take care of the diseases and famines much more often now, but those were just premature killers.
Maximum life expectancy has not increased by one minute even though average life expectancy has.
In so many ways, you and the OP are so incredibly correct... but answer me this:
Who is responsible for providing the generator or self-contained pump? Do they have a budget to buy one? Do they have a budget that allows them to rent a helicopter to fly one in? From the other side:
Who has such a pump or generator? Who will pay them for it? How will they transport it to the reactor? Who will pay for the transportation?
This is more of a story of poor planning and the default happening rather than simple incompetence or laziness. Nobody is empowered which is why strong central government is demanded more and more. The rallying cry is, "Someone should have done something!". And so big government is reinforced and entrenched. We will continue seeing things like this forever. There is nothing new here, history will continue rhyming.
CAPTCHA - executor (I swear to god those things are omniscient)
"(That said, I think the Galaxy Tab is freaking awesome and would love to have one.)"
The Galaxy Tab is relatively nice. It is not worth the price unless you do not have to save up to buy one. The screen is larger than a typical phone so it seems like it would be good for reading, but honestly, the screen is still to small for reading comfortably. It sure beats a phone for reading though.
You should not buy one in America. Buy an international version so it is not locked and has the phone enabled. You do not pay more for these features, you pay the same but the American versions are crippled. Who would have guessed?
The screen is reasonable quality. Numerous custom ROMs are available. The GPS works okay. The battery life sucks and will not last long if you are doing anything serious on it. It will last for several hours if all you are doing is reading with the back light set to dim. If you turn on 3G, expect your battery to get sucked dry fairly quickly.
All in all, it is a fun device with lots of interesting things that you can do with it. Honeycomb is not available for it yet. It can run Android 2.2.1 (not Honeycomb) if you hack it.
"Seeing as how Honeycomb is intended primarily (or even exclusively) for tablets I'd imagine it's UI elements (among other things) are absolutely not going to be the best implementation available for 3-4" screens. "
Hm. What about folks with a Samsung Galaxy Tab? Surely that is exactly what Honeycomb is designed for but Samsung is not putting it on the Tab; therefore, a source release would allow people to put it on their Tab.
Yelling and screaming about people putting it on their phones is just a distraction. They are not releasing the code so that they can assist tablet manufacturers in making (theoretically*) more cash by making the last generation of tablets obsolete.
* Theoretically: Because the manufacturer has to balance the possible purchase by some new person who was not in the market for a tablet prior to 3.0 and the definite withdrawal of future purchases by their alienated current customers.
I paid for mIRC. I never used Trumpet Winsock since I was using an Amiga back then and went to Linux after that. I eventually tried to tolerate Windows and used mIRC extensively. Since I was no longer poor and the price was reasonable, I paid for it.
I guess you have never had to use any of Cisco's products that are written in Java, They specify an exact version number and refuse to work with any other version number. I guess that is so the off-shored programmers can't be held responsible for changes in the JVM. *shrug*
WTF?! You seriously think there is one IT guy for the whole state of Alaska government and that one guy will be the one to review the emails and decide if they are fit for public consumption? Seriously dude, wake up. There is no way that anyone in IT is going to be reviewing those emails, much less deciding on whether or not they are releasable. It is not within the scope of IT to make such decisions for governments, state or otherwise.
No. The wording is correct due to the word "extend". In other words, you could unlock features that belong to a model with a higher price tag. The manufacturer would then not get as much money because the higher priced version will no longer sell because you can get the same features in the lower priced version.
Yes, that business model is crappy, but that is not the point.
Everything previous to this will require an in-depth discussion deeper than is appropriate for Slashdot. I also do not deeply disagree with a lot of what you said except for the very last line:
"Well, that's a pretty fine example of stupid emotional nationalism. "I will not consider any reasoned arguments about history, but would rather die than change my treasured mythology about my country." Whether I'm wrong or right, your statement displays an alarming disinterest in truth."
Believing in the power of the individual has nothing at all to do with Nationalism nor is my belief of the power of the individual a refutation of any arguments that groups working together are more powerful than individuals: How is my belief in the power of an individual displaying a disinterest in truth?
Regardless, tightly controlled groups kowtow to the leader and the entire group's success is based on that one individual. Groups which allows individuals to express themselves and take initiative, empowers each of the individuals and (if properly led) to a success greater than the single authoritarian leader could have achieved with the power of the previous group.
I just woke up so I apologize for my low level of coherency. I sincerely hope that I was clear enough for you to understand my meaning.
"magine being able to record some video of some primo dickbag in his BMW X5, angrily following five feet behind you at 50mph because you aren't willing to go significantly above the speed limit for him."
I know this is a silly question... but why not move over and let him pass?
You know what? I am getting really fucking tired of everyone ragging on Americans being lazy and apathetic. How about we see how other populations act under the same bombardment of signals that the average American receives.
I am going to bet that humans are pretty much the same everywhere and that what nation you are from is not going to determine if you are apathetic, stupid, and lazy or not.
So yeah, okay, I get it, the American population is subjugated (by the media?). Either get off your high horse and do something constructive about it or shut the fuck up. You could end up in the same situation (or worse).
"If YOU get to live forever, you're going to have to deal with THEM forever too."
I want to live forever. I see several people giving you flack for implying that not wanting to live forever is sad. Each person has their own desires in life and I am not here to judge yours and I am unsure why others feel the need to judge yours. The reason I am responding is because you kind of a hit a nail that I suspect you were subconsciously trying to hit:
People need to die in order for change to occur. Think of a world without change: No wheel, no fire, no astronomy, no math, etc. All of the troublemakers would be silenced in order to keep the status quo. One ruler who owns everything and allows other to live at his (yes, his) whim.
But yeah, you are also right. Some people are assholes and I would rather not be around them.
"Closest to the internet I can recall was Asimov's "The Last Question", which had characters connected (various input/output methods, from voice to direct neural feed) to world- (and later galaxy- and universe-) wide computer systems."
Mr. Heinlein also had predicted the Internet somewhat in his book entitled Friday. In it, the main character temporarily had access to a vast store of information through electronic communications.
Slashdot Mirror
+5 +5 +5 (My first dittohead post. heheh)
So there are no gyroscopes telling them if they are level? That can't be right. Here is how it should have gone (according to my mind (read: fantasy)):
Everything except the gyroscopes (and radar altimeter?) went to hell and started blinking and making loud raucous noises designed to increase the panic level. The pilot walks in from his nap and authoritatively shuts all the damned noises off and does a quick assessment of the situation. He or she decides that, "this is some fucked up shit", and goes into guess mode. The pilot then levels the plane according to the gyroscopes and then applies 5% more thrust than a typical cruising speed would require. Prayers are then submitted to the appropriate deities that they will get out of the thunderstorm and/or the computers stop acting crazy before something Really Bad (TM) happens.
I am guessing what really happened is that everyone had a massive panic attack and tried to act on what they thought was happening and flew the plane directly in to the ocean.
MoooOOOOooo
Meh. If you do not frequently see the URL, how are you supposed to REMEMBER it. Sure, the OPs dystopian future may be a bit around the bend, but these stupid UI changes that REMOVE information and the ability to change things is going in EXACTLY the wrong direction.
You want changes to the UI, fine. I am all for experimentation.
STOP TAKING THE ABILITY TO KNOW AND CHANGE THINGS FROM ME.
That is all.
Actually, RAM: would not survive reboot and you could not boot from it. It was RAD: that would survive a warm boot and could be booted from.
RAM: changed capacity as needed, RAD: stayed a fixed size once you set it.
That being said, I miss being able to reboot as quickly as it would take the bus to settle down. I think it was about 8 seconds. Of course, needing to reboot was a prime driver in enjoying those extremely short boot times. Flat memory was billions of times better than the segmented crap of the early x86 days, but protected memory is a godsend (and actually, protected memory is a logical form of flat memory).
moo
"but underage pregnancy is still a symptom of the kids being naive so my point still stands."
Hm. I would say it is you who is being naive.
Do you really think that the fear of pregnancy will win a battle against the desire to have sex? It will not.
In my experience, most females will have their first sexual encounter before they are 18. The age of 17 was the most common and is the age at which my own daughter had sex for the first time.
Withholding birth control is probably the number one contributor to teenage pregnancy, not naivete. I posit that your argument is fallacious.
strike
"Why are we doing it? There is just one reason, it helps get code shipped faster. "
Good morning sir. First, let me thank you for your efforts. Despite the rapid bloat that is emerging, I still use Firefox as my main browser. Again, thank you. I do feel the need to ask you a question:
What purpose does shipping code faster serve?
To be quite honest, if the 2.x series were still receiving security updates, I would be using it despite the memory leaks.
I guess what I am really asking is this:
Why not just improve the code you have rather than writing new code?
Yes, HTML 5 support needs to be added at some point, but surely most of the new additions should be implemented as plugins and the base browser should be lean and mean like it used to be. No?
Again, I sincerely thank you for your efforts in producing the most usable browser out there.
Or perhaps a person wants an address bar to be... wait for it: an address bar?
Or perhaps a search tool should be a search tool?
Or perhaps a person wants the history to be displayed when they use the drop-down functionality of the URL/Address bar?
Gnome, KDE, Firefox. The morons are legion. I will just stop using all of your products... Or perhaps that is what Microsoft wants?
What is with the designers nowadays? Have they been reading 1984? What twisted contortions of logic have to occur in order to assume taking away control from the user empowers the user? How does someone arrive at "4.0 is an alpha"? How does someone think that taking something from one paradigm and twisting it to another without any cues is a good thing?
Meh. I will eventually write my own software stack for *my* own use since what is currently out there is not even worthy of being called dog food (except the GNU command line utilities). Maybe if someone else likes it, I will share it with them... and then two decades from then, some smartass can "rework paradigms" again and claim everyone loves it.
strike
"That anecdote presumes that she has a right to obtain the content on her terms or prices.
If we're going to assume that her (thrifty) needs trump the plans (or lack thereof) of the copyright holders, then perhaps the law of the land should reflect that.
"
I am betting that she knows she broke the law and she does not care. I see it all the time. Copyright law is not respectable so expecting someone to respect it is as stupid as expecting someone volunteering to die just to make sure there is a little bit more food in the world for a starving person elsewhere in the world.
The copyright holders have poisoned the well with their greed. It will take generations and significant sacrifices on the parts of copyright holders to get people to respect copyright again. It will never happen. Game over. Everyone loses.
Actually, AFAIK, we have not extended life by even one minute with all of our medical advances. Sure, we have increased the number of people who can reasonably expect to live to the maximum life expectancy, but nobody has lived longer than ever before.
What I mean is this: There have been people living past 100 since the dawn of recorded history. Not very many people made it that far because of various diseases, famines, etc. We can take care of the diseases and famines much more often now, but those were just premature killers.
Maximum life expectancy has not increased by one minute even though average life expectancy has.
WTF? CAPTCHA is hairless.
In so many ways, you and the OP are so incredibly correct... but answer me this:
Who is responsible for providing the generator or self-contained pump? Do they have a budget to buy one? Do they have a budget that allows them to rent a helicopter to fly one in? From the other side:
Who has such a pump or generator? Who will pay them for it? How will they transport it to the reactor? Who will pay for the transportation?
This is more of a story of poor planning and the default happening rather than simple incompetence or laziness. Nobody is empowered which is why strong central government is demanded more and more. The rallying cry is, "Someone should have done something!". And so big government is reinforced and entrenched. We will continue seeing things like this forever. There is nothing new here, history will continue rhyming.
CAPTCHA - executor (I swear to god those things are omniscient)
"(That said, I think the Galaxy Tab is freaking awesome and would love to have one.)"
The Galaxy Tab is relatively nice. It is not worth the price unless you do not have to save up to buy one. The screen is larger than a typical phone so it seems like it would be good for reading, but honestly, the screen is still to small for reading comfortably. It sure beats a phone for reading though.
You should not buy one in America. Buy an international version so it is not locked and has the phone enabled. You do not pay more for these features, you pay the same but the American versions are crippled. Who would have guessed?
The screen is reasonable quality. Numerous custom ROMs are available. The GPS works okay. The battery life sucks and will not last long if you are doing anything serious on it. It will last for several hours if all you are doing is reading with the back light set to dim. If you turn on 3G, expect your battery to get sucked dry fairly quickly.
All in all, it is a fun device with lots of interesting things that you can do with it. Honeycomb is not available for it yet. It can run Android 2.2.1 (not Honeycomb) if you hack it.
Have fun. :)
"Seeing as how Honeycomb is intended primarily (or even exclusively) for tablets I'd imagine it's UI elements (among other things) are absolutely not going to be the best implementation available for 3-4" screens. "
Hm. What about folks with a Samsung Galaxy Tab? Surely that is exactly what Honeycomb is designed for but Samsung is not putting it on the Tab; therefore, a source release would allow people to put it on their Tab.
Yelling and screaming about people putting it on their phones is just a distraction. They are not releasing the code so that they can assist tablet manufacturers in making (theoretically*) more cash by making the last generation of tablets obsolete.
* Theoretically: Because the manufacturer has to balance the possible purchase by some new person who was not in the market for a tablet prior to 3.0 and the definite withdrawal of future purchases by their alienated current customers.
(CAPTCHA was pompous. Hilarious.)
You ask: Why do you deserve to have it for free?
I ask: Why should it be a felony?
I paid for mIRC. I never used Trumpet Winsock since I was using an Amiga back then and went to Linux after that. I eventually tried to tolerate Windows and used mIRC extensively. Since I was no longer poor and the price was reasonable, I paid for it.
strike
I guess you have never had to use any of Cisco's products that are written in Java, They specify an exact version number and refuse to work with any other version number. I guess that is so the off-shored programmers can't be held responsible for changes in the JVM. *shrug*
"Please confirm that you weren't the teacher, and she's not a student in this class..."
What makes you think it was a "she"?
(and yet another prescient CAPTCHA: confides)
If you run Microsoft Products, there are numerous ports enabled by default, some of which (445 for example) which can not ever be disabled.
ROFL. The CAPTCHA was "herded". I swear to god these CAPTCHAs are prescient.
WTF?! You seriously think there is one IT guy for the whole state of Alaska government and that one guy will be the one to review the emails and decide if they are fit for public consumption? Seriously dude, wake up. There is no way that anyone in IT is going to be reviewing those emails, much less deciding on whether or not they are releasable. It is not within the scope of IT to make such decisions for governments, state or otherwise.
strike
No. The wording is correct due to the word "extend". In other words, you could unlock features that belong to a model with a higher price tag. The manufacturer would then not get as much money because the higher priced version will no longer sell because you can get the same features in the lower priced version.
Yes, that business model is crappy, but that is not the point.
Everything previous to this will require an in-depth discussion deeper than is appropriate for Slashdot. I also do not deeply disagree with a lot of what you said except for the very last line:
"Well, that's a pretty fine example of stupid emotional nationalism. "I will not consider any reasoned arguments about history, but would rather die than change my treasured mythology about my country." Whether I'm wrong or right, your statement displays an alarming disinterest in truth."
Believing in the power of the individual has nothing at all to do with Nationalism nor is my belief of the power of the individual a refutation of any arguments that groups working together are more powerful than individuals: How is my belief in the power of an individual displaying a disinterest in truth?
Regardless, tightly controlled groups kowtow to the leader and the entire group's success is based on that one individual. Groups which allows individuals to express themselves and take initiative, empowers each of the individuals and (if properly led) to a success greater than the single authoritarian leader could have achieved with the power of the previous group.
I just woke up so I apologize for my low level of coherency. I sincerely hope that I was clear enough for you to understand my meaning.
strike
"magine being able to record some video of some primo dickbag in his BMW X5, angrily following five feet behind you at 50mph because you aren't willing to go significantly above the speed limit for him."
I know this is a silly question... but why not move over and let him pass?
strike
You know what? I am getting really fucking tired of everyone ragging on Americans being lazy and apathetic. How about we see how other populations act under the same bombardment of signals that the average American receives.
I am going to bet that humans are pretty much the same everywhere and that what nation you are from is not going to determine if you are apathetic, stupid, and lazy or not.
So yeah, okay, I get it, the American population is subjugated (by the media?). Either get off your high horse and do something constructive about it or shut the fuck up. You could end up in the same situation (or worse).
strike
+5 Funny? Screw that. +5 inciteful... erm Insightful.
strike
"If YOU get to live forever, you're going to have to deal with THEM forever too."
I want to live forever. I see several people giving you flack for implying that not wanting to live forever is sad. Each person has their own desires in life and I am not here to judge yours and I am unsure why others feel the need to judge yours. The reason I am responding is because you kind of a hit a nail that I suspect you were subconsciously trying to hit:
People need to die in order for change to occur. Think of a world without change: No wheel, no fire, no astronomy, no math, etc. All of the troublemakers would be silenced in order to keep the status quo. One ruler who owns everything and allows other to live at his (yes, his) whim.
But yeah, you are also right. Some people are assholes and I would rather not be around them.
strike
"Closest to the internet I can recall was Asimov's "The Last Question", which had characters connected (various input/output methods, from voice to direct neural feed) to world- (and later galaxy- and universe-) wide computer systems."
Mr. Heinlein also had predicted the Internet somewhat in his book entitled Friday. In it, the main character temporarily had access to a vast store of information through electronic communications.
strike