I'm not going to say I completely disagree here, because I don't - I use folders myself and I find it to be more than adequate.
But the argument doesn't stand, the way you present it. If it did, you could have predicted the iPhone flopping on the premise of the Newton flopping; 3D would have never become a commercial succes based on prior tech; etc.
Instead, it seems to me that *sofar* nobody has come up with a way to implements "tags" or "arbitrarily ordered nesting folders" in a way that makes more sense than strictly hierarchical folders. It's an interface and usability thing, but it's by no means the proof that people "just don't bother".
This topic has all the usual/. goodness. Pedantic, Pointless and Puerile. So I'll join the fray...
Application meant something before computers, at least since the late 15th century in the meaning of "bringing something to bear on something else". An application on a device, in my opinion, has always been "some concrete way of applying what the system offers to a problem". Bringing what the system offers to bear on the problem at hand, to closely match the dictionary definition.
What you call an application simply changes based on what you view as "the system" and what you'd consider "the problem" that the user needs solved. A bookmark to google.com might seem like an application if "the problem" is to find something on the web and you view the device and the browser together as integral parts of "the system". The browser itself might be considered an application if you deem accessing the web "the problem" and the device with its OS "the system". A browser is generally more than an application, since it serves its own purpose (browsing the web) but in most cases also extends the functionality of the system as a whole (allowing urls to be launched and transferring the user to web-based applications).
Not everything is an application though. For example, I would never consider a hardware driver an application, since it does nothing but extend the technical possibilities of the system, enabling applications to solve new problems.
Of course, words change meaning over time and the word "application" appeared to have a very specific meaning in computer science for some time, but if anything, the current change is one towards the more general and original meaning of the word.
Although I can definitely see the point of getting Egyptians on the net by any means possible to assure their access to foreign and independant sources of news about the situation - I fail to see the point of allowing Egyptians to phone in Tweets. Twitter as a medium only works well (imo) if a sufficiently large percentage of the people is using it. If it is reduced to a small minority, wouldn't they be much better off with some way to publish their "tweets" to a service that has somewhat better tools to search and organize the information, like a simple forum or something similar, posting the transcribed message as well as the audio fragment for example?
The claim is that Android surpassed Symbian, not iOS. I'm willing to bet that Symbian sales are determined in much the same way as Android sales, considering the similarity in the way they are sold. Apple can offer hard numbers since they only allow their OS on their own hardware and the number of devices therefore equals the number of copies of their OS sold. Neither Symbian nor Android can do that.
You're saying Apple sold 32.8 million devices, but without a solid total number of devices sold, it's hard to say whether it would actually beat Symbian or Android. From the article, Apple's market share on the mobile market is supposed to be 16.2% - I doubt the difference will be made up. So, assuming the Symbian and Android numbers show similar skew, I'd bet the headline *is* in fact correct.
This suggests that Google will actively filter out sites that spread malware or are phishing? I'm sure Google will do a fine job at it and odds are I would leave such a feature on, but shouldn't there be an option to turn it off? I would feel way better about a search engine if I knew I could turn all its censoring features off. It's the same with SafeSearch, I have it turned to moderate, but I like the fact that I can opt to turn it off.
He's not making it up, but it's not clear what it means either and the article you linked doesn't provide a source we can verify online (not from what I managed to turn up Googling anyway). Saying "[..] Apple’s current share of the US consumer retail market at 20.7 percent [..]" could also mean Apple took 20% of total sales in the last quarter, or even a month. And sales of what exactly? Personal computers? Computers, phones, tablets, etc.? Consumer electronics in general?
People often mistake statistics like these and take them to mean that "20% of people now use Apple". The 8% quoted by the OP seems to be that kind of statistic. I'm inclined to believe the number of Mac users may well be 8%, though that still doesn't mean 8 out of a 100 use a Mac exclusively, it might just mean that 8 out of a 100 use at least one Mac (and possibly one or a few other machines too).
Someone keeping notes of all their ideas in a structured fashion may one day write an epic book
Someone cataloguing their collection of whatever may develop this into a true job or expertise
Someone keeping all their doodles may find it gives them the motivation to grow into a graphic artist
etc. Their work may not be world-changing or Great Art, but it will be important to them.
Of course, alternatively, you can create one or a couple of kids and add to the next generation of billions upon billions of people. But don't go around telling people whatever they are doing is pointless, just because some of your glands got to work and turned you into this all new, happy parent-person. It's great, how evolution has resulted in us feeling awesome when we produce kids. And of course, part of that awesomeness includes the need to tell everyone how great it is and how they should go about producing offspring as well. But keep some perspective. Your kids probably won't be president or win a Nobel Prize, but you'll love them.
For the record, I don't agree with the GP, you didn't 'replace one burden with another', I think that's just a downright depressing look at life. But you're at the other opposite, supposing some things just are better than all others, simply because they happen to be what you're doing - that's where the comparison with 'finding Jesus' is spot on. It's great that you're happy and what you're doing needs to be done by quite a few people for us to continue civilization, so we''re happy for you. But ultimately, people should free to do whatever the hell they like, as long as it doesn't get in the way of the rest of them, without having people tell them they are wasting their life.
I certainly hope so, because that will help overturn the rules that imply same for hotels. It simply doesn't make sense; if it has to be regulated, it could just as easily be changed to "a hotel has to register as an ISP if it provides network access to others than their guests". It's besides the point though, as far as TFA is concerned. However, trains already provide Wi-Fi as we speak and buses may just as well - and they'll have a harder time convincing the powers that be that they're not serving the public. It will be nigh impossible to restrict access to people inside the bus, unless you feel like changing the passkey for the connection every you hop onto a bus.
Since I think the distinction between thieves and pirates can be a useful one in the debate on software piracy, I'd say we're dealing with a thief here - not a pirate.
Yes, because telling everyone you're closing down and then waiting a couple of days to see them move to alternatives before announcing your clever plan works - way better than just coming out with the news "sorry guys, the only way we can survive is by charging a fee"
That's nonsense of course. You're creating a false dichotomy: either you do what XMarks did or "suddenly becoming a paid service". There would have been plenty of ways to deal with it more graciously, if they had planned to switch to a paid model. But the fact of the matter seems to be that they didn't think there would be enough paying customers. In fact, they've asked their users about this in the past, I've been with them since early beginnings. I think they were simply surprised by the number of users that turned out to be willing to pay, faced with the alternative of the service just disappearing.
What is strange about all this is the fact that XMarks was unable to find a buyer or investor, if it now turns out XMarks can make a living out of selling this service. What did these investors see that XMarks doesn't? Will XMarks survive, or will they come to the same conclusion as the investors and decide it will never make a decent profit?
Have you considered that it may well be the other way around?
If Mozilla, Google, MS, Apple or whoever truly believe that those particular aspects of a browser are the most important, doesn't it make sense that they would optimize their browsers for those aspects? I think it makes sense that they would write tests for the exact same aspects that they have been optimizing their browsers for, -because- they believe these are the key aspects.
Lacking an objective measure, all you can do right now is decide with whom you agree the most and probably use their browser or another browser that ranks well on their test - if these benchmarks are a critical decision factor for you.
People used to Windows should continue to use Windows on new computers.
So Dell is effectively saying everyone should use Windows, except if you somehow think of a strong reason not to, or are interested in "open source programming", as if this were impossible on Windows systems? (which invalidates that point, so we're back to "everyone should use Windows, except if they really don't want to")
I'm Dutch as well and feel there's plenty of reasons for national pride. However, the "invention of the windmill" is not one of them. Sure enough, the Dutch applied the windmills very effectively to create lots of dry land where there was none before, but the invention of the windmill itself should most likely be credited to some inventors in the Islamic world. The application of windmills in Holland is preceded by instances in north France, Flanders and south England.
Perhaps someone should bring this to the attention of our popular politician Geert Wilders, who sadly -is- a product of Dutch society. One of the national symbols, an Islamic invention:).
.. isn't it about time they ponied up the dough to register MyVideoConverter? (check the third video, with the implanted lung, it's got a message overlay)
I hardly think an open database is the solution. Having an open standard to access any databases with geodata is far more important. That way, developers wanting to combine geodata in their applications can pick whatever they need and either aggregate the information on the fly or draw any information that is available under the proper licenses into their own database for speedy access.
I'm sure someone around here will be able to point out what standards for this purpose are already around and could be used for such a scheme. If not, then that's the first problem that requires solving. Otherwise, these companies will just enter an endless debate about who owns what and why it should or shouldn't be them controlling such a database.
There's so many books out there that tell you how to write decent HTML+CSS that this seems superfluous, especially considering all its shortcomings.
One glaring omission is the lack of attention for accessibility. Many web developers will do just fine writing a new page for some mom-and-pop shop or other small business but once you start writing for government or large business, lack of knowledge about stuff like WCAG can be crippling. It's mostly a matter of avoiding bad habits and learning some best practices and I feel any book on this topic should include it.
Both sides of this arguments have entered Ridiculousland a long time ago.
If we assume that these body scanners actually help in preventing terrorist attacks on airplanes, it's silly to exclude children. Pictures of naked kids are only a problem if there's a reasonable possibility that they will end up in the wrong hands. Also, I doubt these scans have any erotic effect on even the most desperate pedophile except for those with some freaky scanner fetish.
Surely you don't think x-rays of children in hospitals should be banned? Or pictures of naked kids for medical purposes in files of pediatricians?
But the other side of the argument is the one making that assumption, that these body scanners will do any good in preventing terrorism. Sure, they may help a bit to prevent all sorts of smuggling and they will prevent people from bringing most weaponry on board. But what's to stop me from implanting some C4, or putting a balloon of liquid explosive in my bladder? Does that mean we'll start x-raying everyone next? Fine, I'll have the bone marrow in my legs replaced with high explosive, don't need it where I'm going anyway, right?
Terrorists will always find a way to get explosives on planes if they feel they need to. The only thing we can do is remove their reasons for wanting to do so in the first place.
I suppose you can't blame the guy for trying to sucker some fools out of their money at no higher cost to him than the time required to setup that page.
But why anyone would give him any money, considering his own best effort (i.e. "write a game for the iPhone" - brilliant Get-Rich-Quick scheme there) is beyond me.
Frankly, his site gives me that tingle in the back of my mind that's either caffeine deprivation or that feeling I get when a page is run by some guy in Nigeria who happens to be of royalty and needs my money quick.
But we'd have to come to accept this as preservation instead of euthanasia.
Let's start thinking about accepting it when someone actually succeeds in thawing out and reanimating a corpsicle. Sofar, I've only heard of people being turned into eerily life-like ice busts of their former selves. I'll believe it when I see it, until then I think this discussion is about as useful as discussing close encounter of the third kind protocols.
Monovision does not prevent you from watching movies in 3D. Your brain will do what it is always doing: processing the input from both eyes, giving preference to either and you will see what "normal" people would see if they closed either eye. You'll see the movie from a single vantage point, whereas people with normal depth perception will use dual vantage points to infer depth.
Frankly, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to watch a movie with the old red/green tech either though? Granted, you're likely to be more bothered by the hue of your dominant eye, but you should be able to follow the image just fine. You don't actually need both left -and- right to make sense of it.
Perhaps some movies split up the content, showing some of it to only one of the eyes, in which case it would explain your trouble, but you can rest assured that either eye in modern 3D gets enough information to get all of the movie in 2D. By the way: even people who are blind to one eye would still need to wear the glasses, since not wearing them will allow both eyes to see the image for both, blended together.
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I'm not going to say I completely disagree here, because I don't - I use folders myself and I find it to be more than adequate.
But the argument doesn't stand, the way you present it. If it did, you could have predicted the iPhone flopping on the premise of the Newton flopping; 3D would have never become a commercial succes based on prior tech; etc.
Instead, it seems to me that *sofar* nobody has come up with a way to implements "tags" or "arbitrarily ordered nesting folders" in a way that makes more sense than strictly hierarchical folders. It's an interface and usability thing, but it's by no means the proof that people "just don't bother".
This topic has all the usual /. goodness. Pedantic, Pointless and Puerile. So I'll join the fray...
Application meant something before computers, at least since the late 15th century in the meaning of "bringing something to bear on something else". An application on a device, in my opinion, has always been "some concrete way of applying what the system offers to a problem". Bringing what the system offers to bear on the problem at hand, to closely match the dictionary definition.
What you call an application simply changes based on what you view as "the system" and what you'd consider "the problem" that the user needs solved. A bookmark to google.com might seem like an application if "the problem" is to find something on the web and you view the device and the browser together as integral parts of "the system". The browser itself might be considered an application if you deem accessing the web "the problem" and the device with its OS "the system". A browser is generally more than an application, since it serves its own purpose (browsing the web) but in most cases also extends the functionality of the system as a whole (allowing urls to be launched and transferring the user to web-based applications).
Not everything is an application though. For example, I would never consider a hardware driver an application, since it does nothing but extend the technical possibilities of the system, enabling applications to solve new problems.
Of course, words change meaning over time and the word "application" appeared to have a very specific meaning in computer science for some time, but if anything, the current change is one towards the more general and original meaning of the word.
Although I can definitely see the point of getting Egyptians on the net by any means possible to assure their access to foreign and independant sources of news about the situation - I fail to see the point of allowing Egyptians to phone in Tweets. Twitter as a medium only works well (imo) if a sufficiently large percentage of the people is using it. If it is reduced to a small minority, wouldn't they be much better off with some way to publish their "tweets" to a service that has somewhat better tools to search and organize the information, like a simple forum or something similar, posting the transcribed message as well as the audio fragment for example?
The claim is that Android surpassed Symbian, not iOS. I'm willing to bet that Symbian sales are determined in much the same way as Android sales, considering the similarity in the way they are sold. Apple can offer hard numbers since they only allow their OS on their own hardware and the number of devices therefore equals the number of copies of their OS sold. Neither Symbian nor Android can do that.
You're saying Apple sold 32.8 million devices, but without a solid total number of devices sold, it's hard to say whether it would actually beat Symbian or Android. From the article, Apple's market share on the mobile market is supposed to be 16.2% - I doubt the difference will be made up. So, assuming the Symbian and Android numbers show similar skew, I'd bet the headline *is* in fact correct.
This suggests that Google will actively filter out sites that spread malware or are phishing? I'm sure Google will do a fine job at it and odds are I would leave such a feature on, but shouldn't there be an option to turn it off? I would feel way better about a search engine if I knew I could turn all its censoring features off. It's the same with SafeSearch, I have it turned to moderate, but I like the fact that I can opt to turn it off.
He's not making it up, but it's not clear what it means either and the article you linked doesn't provide a source we can verify online (not from what I managed to turn up Googling anyway). Saying "[..] Apple’s current share of the US consumer retail market at 20.7 percent [..]" could also mean Apple took 20% of total sales in the last quarter, or even a month. And sales of what exactly? Personal computers? Computers, phones, tablets, etc.? Consumer electronics in general?
People often mistake statistics like these and take them to mean that "20% of people now use Apple". The 8% quoted by the OP seems to be that kind of statistic. I'm inclined to believe the number of Mac users may well be 8%, though that still doesn't mean 8 out of a 100 use a Mac exclusively, it might just mean that 8 out of a 100 use at least one Mac (and possibly one or a few other machines too).
"Lies, damned lies and statistics."
etc. Their work may not be world-changing or Great Art, but it will be important to them.
Of course, alternatively, you can create one or a couple of kids and add to the next generation of billions upon billions of people. But don't go around telling people whatever they are doing is pointless, just because some of your glands got to work and turned you into this all new, happy parent-person. It's great, how evolution has resulted in us feeling awesome when we produce kids. And of course, part of that awesomeness includes the need to tell everyone how great it is and how they should go about producing offspring as well. But keep some perspective. Your kids probably won't be president or win a Nobel Prize, but you'll love them.
For the record, I don't agree with the GP, you didn't 'replace one burden with another', I think that's just a downright depressing look at life. But you're at the other opposite, supposing some things just are better than all others, simply because they happen to be what you're doing - that's where the comparison with 'finding Jesus' is spot on. It's great that you're happy and what you're doing needs to be done by quite a few people for us to continue civilization, so we''re happy for you. But ultimately, people should free to do whatever the hell they like, as long as it doesn't get in the way of the rest of them, without having people tell them they are wasting their life.
I certainly hope so, because that will help overturn the rules that imply same for hotels. It simply doesn't make sense; if it has to be regulated, it could just as easily be changed to "a hotel has to register as an ISP if it provides network access to others than their guests". It's besides the point though, as far as TFA is concerned. However, trains already provide Wi-Fi as we speak and buses may just as well - and they'll have a harder time convincing the powers that be that they're not serving the public. It will be nigh impossible to restrict access to people inside the bus, unless you feel like changing the passkey for the connection every you hop onto a bus.
Since I think the distinction between thieves and pirates can be a useful one in the debate on software piracy, I'd say we're dealing with a thief here - not a pirate.
"Why do Europeans have problems not generalizing about Americans?"
*lol* I don't really have to go and explain what's funny here, right?
Yours, A European.
Yes, because telling everyone you're closing down and then waiting a couple of days to see them move to alternatives before announcing your clever plan works - way better than just coming out with the news "sorry guys, the only way we can survive is by charging a fee"
That's nonsense of course. You're creating a false dichotomy: either you do what XMarks did or "suddenly becoming a paid service". There would have been plenty of ways to deal with it more graciously, if they had planned to switch to a paid model. But the fact of the matter seems to be that they didn't think there would be enough paying customers. In fact, they've asked their users about this in the past, I've been with them since early beginnings. I think they were simply surprised by the number of users that turned out to be willing to pay, faced with the alternative of the service just disappearing.
What is strange about all this is the fact that XMarks was unable to find a buyer or investor, if it now turns out XMarks can make a living out of selling this service. What did these investors see that XMarks doesn't? Will XMarks survive, or will they come to the same conclusion as the investors and decide it will never make a decent profit?
Let's see: can't have guns, pavement tiles from overpasses, stealing bikes and street signs as common occurrences.
I'm going to take a guess and say you're Dutch :)
(I still think the list is better without issues involving guns, but maybe that's just my Dutch tunnel-vision talking)
Have you considered that it may well be the other way around?
If Mozilla, Google, MS, Apple or whoever truly believe that those particular aspects of a browser are the most important, doesn't it make sense that they would optimize their browsers for those aspects? I think it makes sense that they would write tests for the exact same aspects that they have been optimizing their browsers for, -because- they believe these are the key aspects.
Lacking an objective measure, all you can do right now is decide with whom you agree the most and probably use their browser or another browser that ranks well on their test - if these benchmarks are a critical decision factor for you.
People new to using computers should use Windows.
People used to Windows should continue to use Windows on new computers.
So Dell is effectively saying everyone should use Windows, except if you somehow think of a strong reason not to, or are interested in "open source programming", as if this were impossible on Windows systems? (which invalidates that point, so we're back to "everyone should use Windows, except if they really don't want to")
This is so mind-numbingly dumb, it's offensive!
I'm Dutch as well and feel there's plenty of reasons for national pride. However, the "invention of the windmill" is not one of them. Sure enough, the Dutch applied the windmills very effectively to create lots of dry land where there was none before, but the invention of the windmill itself should most likely be credited to some inventors in the Islamic world. The application of windmills in Holland is preceded by instances in north France, Flanders and south England.
Perhaps someone should bring this to the attention of our popular politician Geert Wilders, who sadly -is- a product of Dutch society. One of the national symbols, an Islamic invention :).
.. isn't it about time they ponied up the dough to register MyVideoConverter? (check the third video, with the implanted lung, it's got a message overlay)
I tried that once, but reception was pretty poor.
I hardly think an open database is the solution. Having an open standard to access any databases with geodata is far more important. That way, developers wanting to combine geodata in their applications can pick whatever they need and either aggregate the information on the fly or draw any information that is available under the proper licenses into their own database for speedy access.
I'm sure someone around here will be able to point out what standards for this purpose are already around and could be used for such a scheme. If not, then that's the first problem that requires solving. Otherwise, these companies will just enter an endless debate about who owns what and why it should or shouldn't be them controlling such a database.
Amusing since statements like "Man > Nature" put "Man" outside "Nature" and thus are the root of many aspects of religion.
One can only assume celticryan is very smart and his post is an attempt at educating /. in the use of irony.
There's so many books out there that tell you how to write decent HTML+CSS that this seems superfluous, especially considering all its shortcomings. One glaring omission is the lack of attention for accessibility. Many web developers will do just fine writing a new page for some mom-and-pop shop or other small business but once you start writing for government or large business, lack of knowledge about stuff like WCAG can be crippling. It's mostly a matter of avoiding bad habits and learning some best practices and I feel any book on this topic should include it.
Both sides of this arguments have entered Ridiculousland a long time ago.
If we assume that these body scanners actually help in preventing terrorist attacks on airplanes, it's silly to exclude children. Pictures of naked kids are only a problem if there's a reasonable possibility that they will end up in the wrong hands. Also, I doubt these scans have any erotic effect on even the most desperate pedophile except for those with some freaky scanner fetish.
Surely you don't think x-rays of children in hospitals should be banned? Or pictures of naked kids for medical purposes in files of pediatricians?
But the other side of the argument is the one making that assumption, that these body scanners will do any good in preventing terrorism. Sure, they may help a bit to prevent all sorts of smuggling and they will prevent people from bringing most weaponry on board. But what's to stop me from implanting some C4, or putting a balloon of liquid explosive in my bladder? Does that mean we'll start x-raying everyone next? Fine, I'll have the bone marrow in my legs replaced with high explosive, don't need it where I'm going anyway, right?
Terrorists will always find a way to get explosives on planes if they feel they need to. The only thing we can do is remove their reasons for wanting to do so in the first place.
I suppose you can't blame the guy for trying to sucker some fools out of their money at no higher cost to him than the time required to setup that page.
But why anyone would give him any money, considering his own best effort (i.e. "write a game for the iPhone" - brilliant Get-Rich-Quick scheme there) is beyond me.
Frankly, his site gives me that tingle in the back of my mind that's either caffeine deprivation or that feeling I get when a page is run by some guy in Nigeria who happens to be of royalty and needs my money quick.
But we'd have to come to accept this as preservation instead of euthanasia.
Let's start thinking about accepting it when someone actually succeeds in thawing out and reanimating a corpsicle. Sofar, I've only heard of people being turned into eerily life-like ice busts of their former selves. I'll believe it when I see it, until then I think this discussion is about as useful as discussing close encounter of the third kind protocols.
An extremely amusing, tongue-in-cheek short movie about the problem you are talking about is the Norwegian "Cold and Dry".
If you have a chance to see it at some festival or perhaps find it somewhere on the net, I recommend it http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1223897/.
You've clearly no experience with the technology.
Monovision does not prevent you from watching movies in 3D. Your brain will do what it is always doing: processing the input from both eyes, giving preference to either and you will see what "normal" people would see if they closed either eye. You'll see the movie from a single vantage point, whereas people with normal depth perception will use dual vantage points to infer depth.
Frankly, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to watch a movie with the old red/green tech either though? Granted, you're likely to be more bothered by the hue of your dominant eye, but you should be able to follow the image just fine. You don't actually need both left -and- right to make sense of it.
Perhaps some movies split up the content, showing some of it to only one of the eyes, in which case it would explain your trouble, but you can rest assured that either eye in modern 3D gets enough information to get all of the movie in 2D. By the way: even people who are blind to one eye would still need to wear the glasses, since not wearing them will allow both eyes to see the image for both, blended together.