In all fairness, Bill Gates used to brag how Microsoft never sued anyone (before the TomTom fiasco). They use FUD, but they didn't follow through on threats. I'm curious if the TomTom suit was an isolated incident, or the future direction of Microsoft.
One of the major failings of the United States is that money can trump justice in civil suits. Simply bankrupting another company in a lawsuit can guarantee you victory, which is why TomTom rolled over, rather than fight a battle they likely could have won in court.
Microsoft actually said after Vista's release that emulation/virtualization was likely the future for Windows, as they planned to seriously break APIs moving forward. They said instead of a full virtual-PC, they'd be able to do low-level emulation or virtualization per application. Since 7 was so rushed, we didn't get to see this fully realized. Instead 7 ships with Virtual PC. But I think something like Wine on Windows to intercept old Windows API calls will literally be a part of the next (post-7) OS from Microsoft.
The overall direction of the company is evil. They have done plenty of evil things. Balmer is still a patent troll. But Microsoft is a giant company win tons of divisions. And many of their employees are real, decent human beings. Not all Microsoft divisions agree with patent trolling, FUD, extinguishing open standards, etc. In fact I talked to a Microsoft employee who once said you have to realize this is a company that doesn't have the management or foresight to have the Exchange team directly tied to the Outlook team, because Exchange is a separate server product, where as Outlook is merely part of the Office team.
I think a lot of people fail to notice that Microsoft is LESS EVIL than they were before. No doubt, guys like Sam Ramji played a part in that. For that, I am grateful.
Kudos to you, sir.
That being said, does his non-compete kick into effect since Ray Ozzie said Microsoft's future 100% lies with cloud computing, and Ramji is going to a competing cloud computing company? And do you want to run a start-up trying to compete with a multi-billion dollar behemoth that likes to crush competition?
Thanks. Now I imagine this might be more useful in BSD, except I'm not sure BSD can incorporate code under an Apache license. Perhaps someone can enlighten me there.
Honestly, I'm more interested in whether or not this can benefit Linux, but I'm assuming it would take a major rewrite to fit the Linux kernel.
Plenty of cell phone handsets were designed around running java hardware, and part of the BluRay hardware spec was making sure players had the processors and memory to run java.
No, the swine flu, just like the normal flu, is a threat to sick kids with poor health care, and the elderly. Normal, healthy adults will feel like crap, and get over it just like a normal flu.
The media loves to blow these things up. SARS was going to kill us all. The avian flu was going to kill us all. Killer bees were going to kill us all.
Sadly, I work for a newspaper that ran a headline that Nebraska had its first swine flu death. What it hid much later in the story was that the case was a Mexican child who was already near death was transported to a Nebraska hospital, and then he died within a day of arriving. Most "American" swine flu deaths are stories like these.
But unfortunately I am still addicted to the power and control of highly configurable software.
You should give a good KDE distro a look then. Gnome is designed to remove choice and options, where as KDE is designed to give you more configuration options.
Most people I know who run Ubuntu do so because it was their first distro. I assume most people who cut their teeth on Gentoo would move onto Sabayon, Arch, etc.
I'll save my "Ubuntu is entirely too overrated" spiel for another day.
I'm a member of my local Linux User's Group. I think this is a smart move. Microsoft suffered from negative word-of-mouth advertising with Vista. Some say it was undeserved. I still loathe Vista.
7 is a better version of Vista. I preordered it. Am I happy that most of the UI regressions in Vista still haven't been addressed? No. But as a gamer, I'm keeping Windows around a little longer. People come to me for computer advice all the time anyway. If I can knock out a couple upgrades at the same time, I save myself some time, and nab a copy of Ultimate for my trouble.
I still think Linux (openSUSE + KDE 4) is the way to go for most home user who just want to play media, surf the web, and manage photos. But for those who want to stick with Windows, I'm comfortable recommending 7, even though I couldn't and wouldn't recommend Vista.
In New Hampshire, a protester with a gun was holding a sign that said "It's time to water the tree of liberty."
You're suggesting that someone should be arrested for quoting something like that? Some proponent of civil liberties you are.
He said nothing of the sort. I have no idea what you pulled that out of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jifjRVLVjzA That is an unedited clip of his speech from C-SPAN. And memo to Obama, he is being a massive hypocrite there. He was part of the majority in Congress who created the mess the past few years. People kept telling Congress to do something about shady mortgage practices, and they refused to intervene. They went nuts with deficit spending, corporate bailouts, etc. He didn't vote to go to war, but most of the holdover members of Congress did. Obama is telling the other side to shut up, that they don't have a right to speak up. I take offense at that sentiment.
He didn't back Pelosi: he publicly disagreed [abcnews.com] with her.
I saw a direct video clip again where he initially agreed with her. The White House press secretary later issued a statement disagreeing with her. That my friends, is spin-doctoring. But if you're new to politics, perhaps you're not familair with it.
Pelosi routinely tells her critics to shut-up. When people chanted "drill baby drill" at the DNC, she threatened to drill into their heads. Honestly, I can't believe we can't find someone with a shred of common sense and decency to be Speaker. She is an absolute idiot.
And criticizing Democrats doesn't make you less liberal. It means you're paying attention. I criticize Republicans as well. I just rarely have to speak up about it as much, because most of the circles I seem to spend time in are very pro-Democrat and very anti-Republican. I speak up more on anti-Democrat issues, because I don't see others doing the same. Both sides are screwing this country. Blindly following party lines is screwing this country.
People are slinging lies around like mad, and hardly anyone is actually paying attention to the issues.
Everyone was all up in arms that Bush was hiding illegal behavior with the missing White House emails. Obama in Congress demanded the emails be recovered and released publicly. The moment Obama got in the White House, he told the media to stop asking about the missing emails.
Obama promised transparency in government and failed to deliver.
Obama promised to end the wire-tap program, but voted to continue it, and grant retroactive immunivity for telcos. (Doubly unconstitutional!)
Obama promised to involve the public in government, and lied about that.
Obama promised to close Gitmo, and may be rolling over on that.
Obama promised to end torture, and according to Secretary Gates, Obama is fine with torture in Afghanistan.
Obama is giving away money like mad, mortgaging the future of my daughter. (In all fairness Bush, McCain and every Republican out there was in support of this as well. This isn't a partisan issue. Everyone in Congress wants to throw away money right now).
He is talking about more government control over private industries. That is removing civil liberties. So he suggests people shouldn't have the right to speak out with their opinions, we shouldn't know what government is doing, we have no right to privacy, he has been soft on torture, and he wants to remove choice from the private sector. Where are the civil liberties?
Did he defend civil liberties when he shot down FOIA requests citing national security, when the FOIA requests were actually about copyright issues? What about his support and appointing of RIAA lawyers?
Obama appointees who had to resign, the list so far:
* Bill Richardson: grand jury investigation for influence peddling
* Tom Daschle: tax evasion
If you insist on a 100% "Free" system with no closed-source software, then you're unlikely to purchase a proprietary closed-source game, even if it is likely get open sourced 10 years later.
Not to mention making text-messaging free directly takes away something AT&T currently bills me for.
In all fairness, it should be noted that for years Qwest offered a unified phone service to an extent. You told people to call you on your home phone number, and if you didn't answer, it would auto-roll over to your Qwest cell phone. In theory, you should only end up with voice mails on your cell phone number. But Qwest doesn't even offer their own cell phone service anymore, so who knows if they still offer the roll-over.
Exactly my thoughts. On a tablet I understand touch. By I can't imagine really wanting to replace my keyboard and mouse with a touchscreen on my desktop.
However, what I would be interested in experimenting with is multiple pointer devices to emulate some of the multi-touch gestures. I think it would encapture the best parts of the interface, and yet make them more precise. I have yet to find a good precise touch screen system.
I know that Aaron Seigo has mentioned repeatedly that he has been trying to account for touch-screen users when designing the plasma shell for KDE 4. However, I haven't used KDE 4 on a touch device. So I don't really know.
It isn't a cell phone, but Google Wave has an instate translate as you type feature that is pretty spiffy. Two people can have a conversation while speaking in two different languages.
It is probably possible to include a speech-to-text robot in Wave, so that you could speak into a phone/device for this.
The first few books were so happenstance that I honestly wonder if Douglas Adams had any idea of what was going to happen next. He said when writing the radio show, he had no major thought towards the direction of the show. I think in books 4 and 5, he did seem to have more plot in mind. The books move with more of a purpose. It is entirely possible that people prefered the madcap style of the first 3.
Orson Scott Card said he battled with this when he finished the Ender's Game quartet. People wanted more sequels. He killed the main character, but others felt he still left a door open. Orson Scott Card said in future series he would have to make sure the door was firmly closed shut when he ended something so that people knew it was over.
The weird thing is that Adams himself said he spent the early part of his life trying to be John Cleese, until he realized that John Cleese was John Cleese, and that Adams should try being himself.
Someone literally stole my copy of Salmon of Doubt from a coffee shop before I could finish reading it. I am a little curious. This new book, is it a continuation of what he started there, or something completely else?
I'm also not sure the series needs continuation. The plot was never good. Adams never wanted more than three books. He spoke a length about being pressured into the fourth and fifth books. The fifth ended so definiteively that is REALLY hard to imagine further sequels. Honestly, the best parts of the books were the HHG entries and random asides.
Slashdot Mirror
In all fairness, Bill Gates used to brag how Microsoft never sued anyone (before the TomTom fiasco). They use FUD, but they didn't follow through on threats. I'm curious if the TomTom suit was an isolated incident, or the future direction of Microsoft.
One of the major failings of the United States is that money can trump justice in civil suits. Simply bankrupting another company in a lawsuit can guarantee you victory, which is why TomTom rolled over, rather than fight a battle they likely could have won in court.
Microsoft actually said after Vista's release that emulation/virtualization was likely the future for Windows, as they planned to seriously break APIs moving forward. They said instead of a full virtual-PC, they'd be able to do low-level emulation or virtualization per application. Since 7 was so rushed, we didn't get to see this fully realized. Instead 7 ships with Virtual PC. But I think something like Wine on Windows to intercept old Windows API calls will literally be a part of the next (post-7) OS from Microsoft.
The overall direction of the company is evil. They have done plenty of evil things. Balmer is still a patent troll. But Microsoft is a giant company win tons of divisions. And many of their employees are real, decent human beings. Not all Microsoft divisions agree with patent trolling, FUD, extinguishing open standards, etc. In fact I talked to a Microsoft employee who once said you have to realize this is a company that doesn't have the management or foresight to have the Exchange team directly tied to the Outlook team, because Exchange is a separate server product, where as Outlook is merely part of the Office team.
I think a lot of people fail to notice that Microsoft is LESS EVIL than they were before. No doubt, guys like Sam Ramji played a part in that. For that, I am grateful.
Kudos to you, sir.
That being said, does his non-compete kick into effect since Ray Ozzie said Microsoft's future 100% lies with cloud computing, and Ramji is going to a competing cloud computing company? And do you want to run a start-up trying to compete with a multi-billion dollar behemoth that likes to crush competition?
Thanks. Now I imagine this might be more useful in BSD, except I'm not sure BSD can incorporate code under an Apache license. Perhaps someone can enlighten me there.
Honestly, I'm more interested in whether or not this can benefit Linux, but I'm assuming it would take a major rewrite to fit the Linux kernel.
Plenty of cell phone handsets were designed around running java hardware, and part of the BluRay hardware spec was making sure players had the processors and memory to run java.
No, the swine flu, just like the normal flu, is a threat to sick kids with poor health care, and the elderly. Normal, healthy adults will feel like crap, and get over it just like a normal flu.
The media loves to blow these things up. SARS was going to kill us all. The avian flu was going to kill us all. Killer bees were going to kill us all.
Sadly, I work for a newspaper that ran a headline that Nebraska had its first swine flu death. What it hid much later in the story was that the case was a Mexican child who was already near death was transported to a Nebraska hospital, and then he died within a day of arriving. Most "American" swine flu deaths are stories like these.
But unfortunately I am still addicted to the power and control of highly configurable software.
You should give a good KDE distro a look then. Gnome is designed to remove choice and options, where as KDE is designed to give you more configuration options.
Most people I know who run Ubuntu do so because it was their first distro. I assume most people who cut their teeth on Gentoo would move onto Sabayon, Arch, etc.
I'll save my "Ubuntu is entirely too overrated" spiel for another day.
I'm a member of my local Linux User's Group. I think this is a smart move. Microsoft suffered from negative word-of-mouth advertising with Vista. Some say it was undeserved. I still loathe Vista.
7 is a better version of Vista. I preordered it. Am I happy that most of the UI regressions in Vista still haven't been addressed? No. But as a gamer, I'm keeping Windows around a little longer. People come to me for computer advice all the time anyway. If I can knock out a couple upgrades at the same time, I save myself some time, and nab a copy of Ultimate for my trouble.
I still think Linux (openSUSE + KDE 4) is the way to go for most home user who just want to play media, surf the web, and manage photos. But for those who want to stick with Windows, I'm comfortable recommending 7, even though I couldn't and wouldn't recommend Vista.
I actually applied to host in Nebraska. Do I lose Slashdot posting rights for a week?
In New Hampshire, a protester with a gun was holding a sign that said "It's time to water the tree of liberty."
You're suggesting that someone should be arrested for quoting something like that? Some proponent of civil liberties you are.
He said nothing of the sort. I have no idea what you pulled that out of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jifjRVLVjzA
That is an unedited clip of his speech from C-SPAN. And memo to Obama, he is being a massive hypocrite there. He was part of the majority in Congress who created the mess the past few years. People kept telling Congress to do something about shady mortgage practices, and they refused to intervene. They went nuts with deficit spending, corporate bailouts, etc. He didn't vote to go to war, but most of the holdover members of Congress did. Obama is telling the other side to shut up, that they don't have a right to speak up. I take offense at that sentiment.
He didn't back Pelosi: he publicly disagreed [abcnews.com] with her.
I saw a direct video clip again where he initially agreed with her. The White House press secretary later issued a statement disagreeing with her. That my friends, is spin-doctoring. But if you're new to politics, perhaps you're not familair with it.
Pelosi routinely tells her critics to shut-up. When people chanted "drill baby drill" at the DNC, she threatened to drill into their heads. Honestly, I can't believe we can't find someone with a shred of common sense and decency to be Speaker. She is an absolute idiot.
And criticizing Democrats doesn't make you less liberal. It means you're paying attention. I criticize Republicans as well. I just rarely have to speak up about it as much, because most of the circles I seem to spend time in are very pro-Democrat and very anti-Republican. I speak up more on anti-Democrat issues, because I don't see others doing the same. Both sides are screwing this country. Blindly following party lines is screwing this country.
People are slinging lies around like mad, and hardly anyone is actually paying attention to the issues.
Everyone was all up in arms that Bush was hiding illegal behavior with the missing White House emails. Obama in Congress demanded the emails be recovered and released publicly. The moment Obama got in the White House, he told the media to stop asking about the missing emails.
Obama promised transparency in government and failed to deliver.
Obama promised to end the wire-tap program, but voted to continue it, and grant retroactive immunivity for telcos. (Doubly unconstitutional!)
Obama promised to involve the public in government, and lied about that.
Obama promised to close Gitmo, and may be rolling over on that.
Obama promised to end torture, and according to Secretary Gates, Obama is fine with torture in Afghanistan.
Obama is giving away money like mad, mortgaging the future of my daughter. (In all fairness Bush, McCain and every Republican out there was in support of this as well. This isn't a partisan issue. Everyone in Congress wants to throw away money right now).
He is talking about more government control over private industries. That is removing civil liberties. So he suggests people shouldn't have the right to speak out with their opinions, we shouldn't know what government is doing, we have no right to privacy, he has been soft on torture, and he wants to remove choice from the private sector. Where are the civil liberties?
Did he defend civil liberties when he shot down FOIA requests citing national security, when the FOIA requests were actually about copyright issues? What about his support and appointing of RIAA lawyers?
Obama appointees who had to resign, the list so far:
* Bill Richardson: grand jury investigation for influence peddling
* Tom Daschle: tax evasion
If you insist on a 100% "Free" system with no closed-source software, then you're unlikely to purchase a proprietary closed-source game, even if it is likely get open sourced 10 years later.
2 billion plus people actually.
Real hackers use butterflies.
http://xkcd.com/378/
Not to mention making text-messaging free directly takes away something AT&T currently bills me for.
In all fairness, it should be noted that for years Qwest offered a unified phone service to an extent. You told people to call you on your home phone number, and if you didn't answer, it would auto-roll over to your Qwest cell phone. In theory, you should only end up with voice mails on your cell phone number. But Qwest doesn't even offer their own cell phone service anymore, so who knows if they still offer the roll-over.
D-Link DIR-655
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=530
The latest firmware update basically had an ad in it trying to sell me on a service, but other than that, I really love the router.
The only thing that would make the router better is if it were one of the WRT routers I could drop Linux on.
Exactly my thoughts. On a tablet I understand touch. By I can't imagine really wanting to replace my keyboard and mouse with a touchscreen on my desktop.
However, what I would be interested in experimenting with is multiple pointer devices to emulate some of the multi-touch gestures. I think it would encapture the best parts of the interface, and yet make them more precise. I have yet to find a good precise touch screen system.
I know that Aaron Seigo has mentioned repeatedly that he has been trying to account for touch-screen users when designing the plasma shell for KDE 4. However, I haven't used KDE 4 on a touch device. So I don't really know.
I'm a huge Ender's Game fan (hence the handle of EnderAndrew) and I didn't finish the Shadow series.
Have you read Ender in Exile?
It isn't a cell phone, but Google Wave has an instate translate as you type feature that is pretty spiffy. Two people can have a conversation while speaking in two different languages.
It is probably possible to include a speech-to-text robot in Wave, so that you could speak into a phone/device for this.
"I am having terrible difficulty with my lifestyle."
The first few books were so happenstance that I honestly wonder if Douglas Adams had any idea of what was going to happen next. He said when writing the radio show, he had no major thought towards the direction of the show. I think in books 4 and 5, he did seem to have more plot in mind. The books move with more of a purpose. It is entirely possible that people prefered the madcap style of the first 3.
Orson Scott Card said he battled with this when he finished the Ender's Game quartet. People wanted more sequels. He killed the main character, but others felt he still left a door open. Orson Scott Card said in future series he would have to make sure the door was firmly closed shut when he ended something so that people knew it was over.
The weird thing is that Adams himself said he spent the early part of his life trying to be John Cleese, until he realized that John Cleese was John Cleese, and that Adams should try being himself.
Someone literally stole my copy of Salmon of Doubt from a coffee shop before I could finish reading it. I am a little curious. This new book, is it a continuation of what he started there, or something completely else?
I'm also not sure the series needs continuation. The plot was never good. Adams never wanted more than three books. He spoke a length about being pressured into the fourth and fifth books. The fifth ended so definiteively that is REALLY hard to imagine further sequels. Honestly, the best parts of the books were the HHG entries and random asides.
iPhones are a different beast than smartphones. We use Motorolla Q phones here at work, and they're terrible.
Smartphones are a niche market, and while iPhone adoption still isn't huge, I think it represents the future of mass adoption.