> There are corners to be polished, for sure, but it's an excellent first version.
Generally speaking I agree, and that's having used it on a netbook and laptop since they threw it into UNR.
However, the multi-head support is a clusterfuck. I don't know if this is just a Unity thing or something in whatever parts of GNOME it's tied into, but unplugging and switching monitors is routinely a disaster, occasionally leading to having to drop into a console to clean out sessions and configs before I can login to a graphical session (even a failsafe). Then there's the part about having the application menu on an entirely different display from the application itself...
Poor multi-head support is particularly bad for an interface intended for smaller displays like laptops and netbooks... that's where people are most likely to dynamically switch things around.
True. On the other hand, every single "WTF proposition" that makes up the Internet was actually turned into a proven functional element which people actually use for stuff.
"Project Xanadu" has never left the lab in spite of many, many years of work. Doesn't mean it won't, ever, but the odds aren't good. It could be the next HTML/HTTP (which, for a brief time, didn't look like it had a chance against gopher). Personally, I think it'll probably be lucky to be the next Lotus Notes (i.e. win enough market share to the point that just about every IT shop has someone who despises it).
My last house was built in 1925, and covered in stucco. Newer stucco is usually some kind of latex goop and doesn't need much of a backing, but this old stucco was basically mortar and needed metal mesh to support it. In this case, it was a heavy diamond mesh like you find on outside stairs and whatnot. The guys who blew insulation into the walls from the outside just loved it...
That being said, I never saw a significant problem with either cellular phone or wifi signals.
> ergo if the new cousin is found to be substantially > larger, then T Rex was proportionally slower.... or this new cousin wasn't a sprinter and could get away with being bigger and heavier. It's not exactly unheard of some some oddball specimens of a species to develop different sizes and structures due to changes in hunting or food gathering strategies.
> you now have to patent it or possibly suffer > the consequences from a patent troll... or publish the details such that it becomes prior art.
One handy thing about first-to-file is that said patent troll can't make up an "invention date" prior to someone publishing the invention they're ripping off.
> I don't see how anyone can just make a recipe book without > having the recipes stand the test of a public trial (that is, served > in a real restaurant at the mercy of real critics).
Bullshit. It's a cookbook.
Critics get food just as wrong as they get music, movies, or just about any other subjective issue, and food critics are looking for entirely different things from what a cook following a recipe might care about. Poor table service, for example, is not a factor in a cookbook. Hard-to-follow recipes, on the other hand, are mostly irrelevant to the dining experience.
The only test that really matters is whether the people who buy the book like the food they make through following it and/or the techniques they learn from it.
Of course any system builder will tell you they'd "consider" ARM for Windows 8. They'd also "consider" building 9.6GHz 8088 systems running MS-DOS powered by the blood of virgins if that's where it looked like the market might go.
> If ISPs have a way of identifying these sorts of users to content providers like > Pandora, those content providers could provide a different tier of service, since > they wouldn't have licensing to deal with either.
Services like Pandora (who say they can't even afford to offer services to Canadians due to the cost) need to get paid, and why would anyone pay Pandora for something they're already paying to get from other sources? Why would anyone buy something from iTunes? Why... And do you think the music companies are going to give Pandora/Apple/Amazon/etc a break because Canadians already pay via other means? Like they currently give them a break because Canadians pay through the CD media levy?
It would seem to me that the scheme would act as a disincentive for anyone to build innovative services around music in Canada. Particularly if those services were built elsewhere (like the USA) and ported to Canada. We're already seeing things not work, and the approach to licensing isn't as dissimilar as it would be under a flat-rate ISP billing program.
The other part of the problem is trusting SOCAN to do a proper job of compensating artists. What kinds of metrics are they planning on using to divvy things up? How do they ensure fairness and accuracy?
> But unlike app store, the trademarked name doesn't describe the whole thing.
Presently, no. Back when "Windows" was just graphical shell sitting on top of MS-DOS, it wasn't entirely inaccurate to say it was just a window system, conceptually comparable to the X Window System.
It grew, admittedly. But I wouldn't argue they should have renamed it anymore than I'd suggest iTunes is no longer the correct name for device synchronization software.
> "SONY was today at my home"? That's not how raids work.
"Operation Sundevil" ring a bell?
Depending on how they spun the story to police, a "raid" could range from anything to a civil subpoena to a SWAT-style assault with Sony "experts" tagging along to "assist" with evidence identification. Maybe Sony decided they wanted something a bit rougher than what they inflicted on George Hotz and made up some kind of uberhacker story?
> This attack could have been EASILY avoided > using 1 simple system: PGP digital signing.
The Canadian government is in the process of rolling out a digital signature system... unfortunately, it's Entrust rather than an open solution like PGP, and it looks like it's going to be cumbersome enough that it won't get used in situations it's not absolutely necessary for.
Because it's not based on open standards it can't be used for external communications which makes it rather infeasible to block all unencrypted attachments. Which would be a bad idea, anyways, given the small fraction of "protected" information on unclassified networks (i.e. ones which communicate with the outside world).
> One of the best environments I ever worked security for allowed > for senior managers to take personal responsibility for these > kinds of decisions.
Yeah, I once had a dream like that too, except the senior managers were also unicorns who shit candy.
> I am not an expert at legalese, but reading that paragraph tell me that > there does exist some sort of "fork now!" option. Whether that will be > good enough is another question.
If Qt is available under LGPL and GPL, then "fork now" is always an option. The only question is whether someone might to push for abandonment to get a different license, or to get control of the "Qt" trademark, or something like that.
For KDE's needs, LGPL and GPL should be good enough.
Please, no. Think of the poor Microsoft marketing department who must find a less appealing name than anything else out there. The last thing we need to see is a multi-billion dollar ad campaign for the "Microsoft Herpes Phone".
> What we ultimately need is a country-wide backbone that is operated > as a non-profit and allows anyone to sub-let it!
If this country had a backbone, these asshole corporations would have been broken up ages ago. Content providers and access providers need to be separated, and anything less than that will be abused.
This decision might get overturned, but the telecom providers had a taste of total victory... they aren't going to let this go that easily.
This all seems like a lot of work to protect people too stupid to not upload pictures to the Internet that they think might cause them problems later...
>> And then there's messing with a touch screen at 100 km/h... no.
>...if you're going to buy an MP3 player for your car, it > shouldn't have a touch screen.
Well, no. But if I'm going to buy an MP3 player just for my car, I'm going to put the time in to rip out the stock radio.
That's just a pain in the ass, and I don't listen to music or drive as much as I used to enough to be bothered. At one point I cared enough to install an early unit in my truck and even track down the necessary CD-R Audio blanks to burn (back in 1998, when consumer electronics still cared enough about the media companies to require CD-R Audio).
> But, hell, even normal CDs are better than the radio.
Amen.
It's just that it's been like ten years since I've bought a normal CD...
> Can they not afford one of those FM broadcasting MP3 players?
My experience thus far is that in-car FM broadcasting kinda sucks, and the UI experience of an MP3 player really sucks.
I don't exactly live in an urban area and I still have to dick with the channel every 30 minutes of driving. And some vehicles seem to generate too much RF noise in the cab. Larger engines, in particular. My Dodge Ram is/was some kind of white noise generator, but everything except my Elantra generates some noise.
And then there's messing with a touch screen at 100 km/h... no.
My primary commuting vehicle has a functional MP3-CD player. 10 hours of much will do fine...
Slashdot Mirror
> There are corners to be polished, for sure, but it's an excellent first version.
Generally speaking I agree, and that's having used it on a netbook and laptop since they threw it into UNR.
However, the multi-head support is a clusterfuck. I don't know if this is just a Unity thing or something in whatever parts of GNOME it's tied into, but unplugging and switching monitors is routinely a disaster, occasionally leading to having to drop into a console to clean out sessions and configs before I can login to a graphical session (even a failsafe). Then there's the part about having the application menu on an entirely different display from the application itself...
Poor multi-head support is particularly bad for an interface intended for smaller displays like laptops and netbooks... that's where people are most likely to dynamically switch things around.
True. On the other hand, every single "WTF proposition" that makes up the Internet was actually turned into a proven functional element which people actually use for stuff.
"Project Xanadu" has never left the lab in spite of many, many years of work. Doesn't mean it won't, ever, but the odds aren't good. It could be the next HTML/HTTP (which, for a brief time, didn't look like it had a chance against gopher). Personally, I think it'll probably be lucky to be the next Lotus Notes (i.e. win enough market share to the point that just about every IT shop has someone who despises it).
My last house was built in 1925, and covered in stucco. Newer stucco is usually some kind of latex goop and doesn't need much of a backing, but this old stucco was basically mortar and needed metal mesh to support it. In this case, it was a heavy diamond mesh like you find on outside stairs and whatnot. The guys who blew insulation into the walls from the outside just loved it...
That being said, I never saw a significant problem with either cellular phone or wifi signals.
> ergo if the new cousin is found to be substantially ... or this new cousin wasn't a sprinter and could get away with being bigger and heavier. It's not exactly unheard of some some oddball specimens of a species to develop different sizes and structures due to changes in hunting or food gathering strategies.
> larger, then T Rex was proportionally slower.
> I'm pretty sure Scorched Earth wasn't the original, either
Not by a long shot.
I remember playing Artillery on the Apple II, and it wasn't a new concept even then.
> you now have to patent it or possibly suffer ... or publish the details such that it becomes prior art.
> the consequences from a patent troll
One handy thing about first-to-file is that said patent troll can't make up an "invention date" prior to someone publishing the invention they're ripping off.
> I don't see how anyone can just make a recipe book without
> having the recipes stand the test of a public trial (that is, served
> in a real restaurant at the mercy of real critics).
Bullshit. It's a cookbook.
Critics get food just as wrong as they get music, movies, or just about any other subjective issue, and food critics are looking for entirely different things from what a cook following a recipe might care about. Poor table service, for example, is not a factor in a cookbook. Hard-to-follow recipes, on the other hand, are mostly irrelevant to the dining experience.
The only test that really matters is whether the people who buy the book like the food they make through following it and/or the techniques they learn from it.
> Is there a website I can pre-order on?
No, but if you send me your credit card information I'll see if I can get you on the beta list...
Stupid question.
Of course any system builder will tell you they'd "consider" ARM for Windows 8. They'd also "consider" building 9.6GHz 8088 systems running MS-DOS powered by the blood of virgins if that's where it looked like the market might go.
> If ISPs have a way of identifying these sorts of users to content providers like
> Pandora, those content providers could provide a different tier of service, since
> they wouldn't have licensing to deal with either.
Services like Pandora (who say they can't even afford to offer services to Canadians due to the cost) need to get paid, and why would anyone pay Pandora for something they're already paying to get from other sources? Why would anyone buy something from iTunes? Why... And do you think the music companies are going to give Pandora/Apple/Amazon/etc a break because Canadians already pay via other means? Like they currently give them a break because Canadians pay through the CD media levy?
It would seem to me that the scheme would act as a disincentive for anyone to build innovative services around music in Canada. Particularly if those services were built elsewhere (like the USA) and ported to Canada. We're already seeing things not work, and the approach to licensing isn't as dissimilar as it would be under a flat-rate ISP billing program.
The other part of the problem is trusting SOCAN to do a proper job of compensating artists. What kinds of metrics are they planning on using to divvy things up? How do they ensure fairness and accuracy?
> But unlike app store, the trademarked name doesn't describe the whole thing.
Presently, no. Back when "Windows" was just graphical shell sitting on top of MS-DOS, it wasn't entirely inaccurate to say it was just a window system, conceptually comparable to the X Window System.
It grew, admittedly. But I wouldn't argue they should have renamed it anymore than I'd suggest iTunes is no longer the correct name for device synchronization software.
> "SONY was today at my home"? That's not how raids work.
"Operation Sundevil" ring a bell?
Depending on how they spun the story to police, a "raid" could range from anything to a civil subpoena to a SWAT-style assault with Sony "experts" tagging along to "assist" with evidence identification. Maybe Sony decided they wanted something a bit rougher than what they inflicted on George Hotz and made up some kind of uberhacker story?
> This attack could have been EASILY avoided
> using 1 simple system: PGP digital signing.
The Canadian government is in the process of rolling out a digital signature system... unfortunately, it's Entrust rather than an open solution like PGP, and it looks like it's going to be cumbersome enough that it won't get used in situations it's not absolutely necessary for.
Because it's not based on open standards it can't be used for external communications which makes it rather infeasible to block all unencrypted attachments. Which would be a bad idea, anyways, given the small fraction of "protected" information on unclassified networks (i.e. ones which communicate with the outside world).
> One of the best environments I ever worked security for allowed
> for senior managers to take personal responsibility for these
> kinds of decisions.
Yeah, I once had a dream like that too, except the senior managers were also unicorns who shit candy.
> I am not an expert at legalese, but reading that paragraph tell me that
> there does exist some sort of "fork now!" option. Whether that will be
> good enough is another question.
If Qt is available under LGPL and GPL, then "fork now" is always an option. The only question is whether someone might to push for abandonment to get a different license, or to get control of the "Qt" trademark, or something like that.
For KDE's needs, LGPL and GPL should be good enough.
> What's next? Stain? Chunk? Smear? Dingleberry?
Please, no. Think of the poor Microsoft marketing department who must find a less appealing name than anything else out there. The last thing we need to see is a multi-billion dollar ad campaign for the "Microsoft Herpes Phone".
> What we ultimately need is a country-wide backbone that is operated
> as a non-profit and allows anyone to sub-let it!
If this country had a backbone, these asshole corporations would have been broken up ages ago. Content providers and access providers need to be separated, and anything less than that will be abused.
This decision might get overturned, but the telecom providers had a taste of total victory... they aren't going to let this go that easily.
Better, although from a North American perspective you've almost given him the cachet of an exotic import.
Whoooaaaahhhh... This is Slashdot. You need to do that over, this time using car analogies.
You may, however, keep the "Room temperature superconductor breast implants" in your analogy. Those are going to be a firm 11 in any scale schema.
> rhaps my username has more characters than you expected?
Nope, I'm seeing the same problem.
> Install Stylish and add the following to a new user style
Ah, thank you. I don't particularly care about the look of non-moving elements, but it slows scrolling down something like 10x.
> Bologna invented universities before sausages.
I always had a sneaking suspicion that sausage making somehow evolved from university administration...
This all seems like a lot of work to protect people too stupid to not upload pictures to the Internet that they think might cause them problems later...
>> And then there's messing with a touch screen at 100 km/h... no.
> ...if you're going to buy an MP3 player for your car, it
> shouldn't have a touch screen.
Well, no. But if I'm going to buy an MP3 player just for my car, I'm going to put the time in to rip out the stock radio.
That's just a pain in the ass, and I don't listen to music or drive as much as I used to enough to be bothered. At one point I cared enough to install an early unit in my truck and even track down the necessary CD-R Audio blanks to burn (back in 1998, when consumer electronics still cared enough about the media companies to require CD-R Audio).
> But, hell, even normal CDs are better than the radio.
Amen.
It's just that it's been like ten years since I've bought a normal CD...
> Can they not afford one of those FM broadcasting MP3 players?
My experience thus far is that in-car FM broadcasting kinda sucks, and the UI experience of an MP3 player really sucks.
I don't exactly live in an urban area and I still have to dick with the channel every 30 minutes of driving. And some vehicles seem to generate too much RF noise in the cab. Larger engines, in particular. My Dodge Ram is/was some kind of white noise generator, but everything except my Elantra generates some noise.
And then there's messing with a touch screen at 100 km/h... no.
My primary commuting vehicle has a functional MP3-CD player. 10 hours of much will do fine...