Exactly. I can barely believe we allow systems like this to exist, much less to be the systems that govern our society. Also, I'm not in favor of promoting marijuana use, but legalising its use is a very different thing, so I don't care too much, and think it might be slightly better than criminalising it.
The one good thing I can see in this is that the guy chose this route, rather than:
1.Rip off you friends 2. Make massive piles of cash (that would be profit!) 3. Do drugs, living above the legislation by virtue of having a pile of cash
That's why it's better to have open platforms like the Nokia n900
Open is good. These days though, the only thing I like about my n900 is that it's running nitdroid almost perfectly, and I won't have to wait much longer to have a decent, supported OS on it.
OK, let's take your analogy to its logical conclusion. If I open my door, make a speech in my living room, and let you CHOOSE come in to hear some speech, that's one thing. However, if I open that same door, make that same speech in the same place, knowing full well that someone is going to come into my home since I opened the door, record that speech, then go broadcast it all over town, that's quite another. Your choice to hear it is gone. Instead, I have made a choice to make it available via a public distribution system. Who actually does the distribution is largely irrelevant -- just an implementation detail. Arguing that it's not public makes as much sense as arguing that a file copied to your computer for reading is not being downloaded, because the browser doesn't have to save it to a physical file.
why does it still feel like it is aimed at code-heads?
It's not aimed at code-heads. It's aimed at Linux users, whose systems have proper installers that handle this for you. This is largely just because it's Linux users that create it.
I agree with the need for CMYK though, and I'd particularly like HDR support. BETTER 24-bit support seems to be needed, but I don't know enough about GEGL yet to comment on that, except that I haven't found any details that even verify that 24-bit is in use, much less how it's in use or how I can manipulate it.
Are there any laws governing what you can legally name your organization?
Yes, quite a few. In the UK, terms like Royal aren't allowed (except by royal appointment, I suppose). Probably in all countries, the official prefixes/suffixes for Limited companies (Ltd, PLC, Inc, etc.) aren't allowed if your company doesn't fit that description.
in that there's no extra noise unless you go there.
Search engines go there automatically if you mention it. If you mention it on a forum, people might well click it just to see what it is, and have their time wasted due to miscommunication (or insufficient communication) of what the site is about, which is a form of noise. If you (try to) explain what it is more on another site before people go to it, and it's not useful then you've made even more noise.
If you aren't publishing something, it stays on your own system, not on the web. The web IS publishing.
eventually sold it on ebay for ~$30 because it wouldn't run anything newer than IE5 or Safari 2, both of which failed to render the web properly.
Which demonstrates the real issue quite nicely: it's not about OS's or apps anymore. Desktops are seen as overly thick web clients with a word processor.
The whole Internet is about exchanging ideas, globally, quickly. Why do I need the restrictive environment of Twitter to do this?
I'm loathe to say we need Twitter, specifically. But very widely broadcast short messages like this ARE the future; make no mistake. It's the next in the progression, from hand signals and grunting, to speech, to writing on stone, to writing on paper, to runners dispatching that hand-written copy, to the printing press and pony express, to a strong postal service by rail, then by van, to photocopies and airmail, to fax, to email, to Forums, and to smaller IMs and SMS's.
Since the dawn of communication, it seems we've been working towards more interconnected consciousnesses -- a hive mind, if you will. Twitter, especially with tools like tweetdeck, is actually quite a useful step in this evolution, albeit with high signal-to-noise and other flaws. The SNR is partly controlled by trust circles though; if you only follow people who post things you're interested in, it becomes a self-organising hierarchy of global, almost real-time information distribution.
Well sure, if you can't be bothered researching for yourself. Broadcast message services like twitter are about exchanging ideas, globally, quickly. Putting a paper together proving a point with evidence is for links in twitter, or for separate work after you've GOT the idea.
I mean, really, do you ask your friends for authentication every time they tell you something? Ask for irrefutable evidence of veracity every time they mention something they think they heard on TV last year? You don't NEED this kind of evidence to have a conversation and learn new things.
The useful information was exported and placed on traditional and independent news sites/blogs.
No, but there is a trust network there, like on many other social networks. When you tweet something, it's reasonable to expect that only people who've taken an interest in you are following it. Yes, that could be anyone -- a close friend, a friend of a close friend who was introduced to you via retweets or something like that... however, it is unlikely to be someone at doubleclick.net, or someone at the FBI.
Yes, these unwelcome groups may decide to simple scrape twitter feeds, and I'm OK with that; their own actions would make them unpopular eventually anyway. That's not the issue. The issue is that twitter may be assisting them to work against twitter users, for money.
Every type of paid ad they've allowed gets marked as "promoted"
We'll see how long that lasts, as soon as advertisers complain about their click-through rate vs. expenditure, or when twitter clients gain an "Ignore promotions" button.
For over ten years now, whenever GIMP is compared to Photoshop somewhere on the net, invariably someone comes out of the woodwork claiming that GIMP lacks "certain professional features"
Layer groups, for one. Shapes for another. Variable text anti-aliasing for another. A sane MDI interface that lets find images and draw at the edge of the image without a lot of silly window resizing etc. for another.
Really, this was a question before Photoshop CS. Gimp has LARGELY caught up to OLD photoshops, but if you've looked at Photoshop recently, it's leaped ahead by miles. I know the unstable version of Gimp has a few of these features, but they're not stable yet afaik, and have been so long coming that it's difficult to see how your argument about not seeing the difference for ten years is well considered.
So, now that I've explained that concept, here's the question: How is Twitter going to sell follower info when it's easy enough to create free API requests
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, seriously.
Exactly. I can barely believe we allow systems like this to exist, much less to be the systems that govern our society. Also, I'm not in favor of promoting marijuana use, but legalising its use is a very different thing, so I don't care too much, and think it might be slightly better than criminalising it.
The one good thing I can see in this is that the guy chose this route, rather than:
Open is good. These days though, the only thing I like about my n900 is that it's running nitdroid almost perfectly, and I won't have to wait much longer to have a decent, supported OS on it.
It's not Visual Basic's fault, they just had too much data. 640K ought to be enough for anyone.
OK, let's take your analogy to its logical conclusion. If I open my door, make a speech in my living room, and let you CHOOSE come in to hear some speech, that's one thing. However, if I open that same door, make that same speech in the same place, knowing full well that someone is going to come into my home since I opened the door, record that speech, then go broadcast it all over town, that's quite another. Your choice to hear it is gone. Instead, I have made a choice to make it available via a public distribution system. Who actually does the distribution is largely irrelevant -- just an implementation detail. Arguing that it's not public makes as much sense as arguing that a file copied to your computer for reading is not being downloaded, because the browser doesn't have to save it to a physical file.
As long as they don't start appearing over capital cities.
Bill? Is that you?
It's not aimed at code-heads. It's aimed at Linux users, whose systems have proper installers that handle this for you. This is largely just because it's Linux users that create it.
Your other points, I agree with :)
I agree with the need for CMYK though, and I'd particularly like HDR support. BETTER 24-bit support seems to be needed, but I don't know enough about GEGL yet to comment on that, except that I haven't found any details that even verify that 24-bit is in use, much less how it's in use or how I can manipulate it.
I think Return to Tweeg is the more appropriate cultural reference here.
Yes, quite a few. In the UK, terms like Royal aren't allowed (except by royal appointment, I suppose). Probably in all countries, the official prefixes/suffixes for Limited companies (Ltd, PLC, Inc, etc.) aren't allowed if your company doesn't fit that description.
Search engines go there automatically if you mention it. If you mention it on a forum, people might well click it just to see what it is, and have their time wasted due to miscommunication (or insufficient communication) of what the site is about, which is a form of noise. If you (try to) explain what it is more on another site before people go to it, and it's not useful then you've made even more noise.
If you aren't publishing something, it stays on your own system, not on the web. The web IS publishing.
Which demonstrates the real issue quite nicely: it's not about OS's or apps anymore. Desktops are seen as overly thick web clients with a word processor.
No, sorry, there is, even if the technical term is slightly different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust
http://www.rubin.ch/pgp/weboftrust.en.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend-to-friend
I don't believe them.
Hosting it yourself, but publishing it globally.
I'm loathe to say we need Twitter, specifically. But very widely broadcast short messages like this ARE the future; make no mistake. It's the next in the progression, from hand signals and grunting, to speech, to writing on stone, to writing on paper, to runners dispatching that hand-written copy, to the printing press and pony express, to a strong postal service by rail, then by van, to photocopies and airmail, to fax, to email, to Forums, and to smaller IMs and SMS's.
Since the dawn of communication, it seems we've been working towards more interconnected consciousnesses -- a hive mind, if you will. Twitter, especially with tools like tweetdeck, is actually quite a useful step in this evolution, albeit with high signal-to-noise and other flaws. The SNR is partly controlled by trust circles though; if you only follow people who post things you're interested in, it becomes a self-organising hierarchy of global, almost real-time information distribution.
Well sure, if you can't be bothered researching for yourself. Broadcast message services like twitter are about exchanging ideas, globally, quickly. Putting a paper together proving a point with evidence is for links in twitter, or for separate work after you've GOT the idea.
I mean, really, do you ask your friends for authentication every time they tell you something? Ask for irrefutable evidence of veracity every time they mention something they think they heard on TV last year? You don't NEED this kind of evidence to have a conversation and learn new things.
Which is kind of the point.
No, but there is a trust network there, like on many other social networks. When you tweet something, it's reasonable to expect that only people who've taken an interest in you are following it. Yes, that could be anyone -- a close friend, a friend of a close friend who was introduced to you via retweets or something like that... however, it is unlikely to be someone at doubleclick.net, or someone at the FBI.
Yes, these unwelcome groups may decide to simple scrape twitter feeds, and I'm OK with that; their own actions would make them unpopular eventually anyway. That's not the issue. The issue is that twitter may be assisting them to work against twitter users, for money.
s/canon/cannon/
a) Sharing duplicates is not theft of the original
b) There are no canons on ships involved.
We'll see how long that lasts, as soon as advertisers complain about their click-through rate vs. expenditure, or when twitter clients gain an "Ignore promotions" button.
Layer groups, for one. Shapes for another. Variable text anti-aliasing for another. A sane MDI interface that lets find images and draw at the edge of the image without a lot of silly window resizing etc. for another.
Really, this was a question before Photoshop CS. Gimp has LARGELY caught up to OLD photoshops, but if you've looked at Photoshop recently, it's leaped ahead by miles. I know the unstable version of Gimp has a few of these features, but they're not stable yet afaik, and have been so long coming that it's difficult to see how your argument about not seeing the difference for ten years is well considered.
Well, for one thing, Twitter have send their entire stream of tweets to third parties. Presumably they require a good bribe for that scale of privacy violation.
You're welcome.
Just don't go using your where-will-the-stars-be-long-after-I'm-dead predictor more than once a day ;)