I suspect Google still sets the standard for what's Android. Until Samsung's app store or Amazon's app store is as big as and different from Google's, they don't have their own version of Android quite yet.
Yeah, Samsung and Amazon can customize or fork to their heart's delight. But they may lose compatibility to Google's app store and maybe 3rd party stores, and that'd be a huge hit to their offerings.
Android is more than an OS. Like iOS, it's an ecosystem. And that ecosystem requires apps. It's not unlike gaming systems. To survive, each platform had to have its own exclusive game--its own killer app. The same applies to phone OSes.
I tried doing that, but I found that the average avian just don't like being put into a slingshot and launched at pigs. The pigs also didn't seem to like it either.
In the virtual world, things should be perfect. Computer science is a mathematical science. Mathematics is perfect.
Computer science loses its perfection when the virtual world meets the real world. Those electrical signals travelling between my keyboard and my box can be intercepted. The radiation from my monitor can be captured and analyzed.
And don't forget the most imperfect physical system of all: the user.
Windows RT was a dismal failure, and Windows 8 will be equally disastrous. It fails on the touch front and on the mouse and keyboard front. Having tried it extensively, allow me to name the ways:
Touch: 1) The Metro home screen is the only touch-friendly aspect of it. However, it is filled with useless Microsoft apps that can't function without an internet connection and are tied to largely inferior Microsoft internet services. 2) It has the usual miserable Windows software keyboard and handwriting recognition, with fairly limited support. 3) Outside of Metro, the remainder is the usual touch-unfriendly Windows interface meant for a mouse and keyboard, where fat fingers will simply fail. This is what gets me the most. If the thing is a touchscreen, then it should be configured out of the box to be touch-friendly. Instead, it is configured as un-touch-friendly as possible. And worse, while you can say switch Explorer to use large icons on a grid instead of the list or details view, many screens simply don't have a touch-friendly interface. 4) The edge swiping is annoying and easy to do accidentally, The left edge "screen list" is useful, but only to bring up Metro apps. 5) Having to go to Metro just to access the swipe that will bring up a button to get to the list of programs is painfully clunky. The bottom swipe should be active on the desktop screen, and it should be the list of applications, not an extra button. 6) The right swipe should have been able to access the entire control panel, but instead, it's largely useless.
On the mouse and keyboard front:
1) The Metro UI and swiping is as horrible as expected. Some things have Metro and old Windows equivalents, but most do not. It's incredibly annoying to switch between mouse and keyboard, and touch, and that's pretty much what's necessary to use Metro. 2) And I don't think I need to mention that you can't even get to your software list without going through Metro, which is already a three step affair even by touch. 3) It doesn't come with the cover, which is another $150.
Oh, and did I mention that you have to "activate" Windows before you can use some of its functionality? It's hardware made by Microsoft but there's somehow still a chance copy of Windows on it can be a bootleg. Activation is automatic with an internet connection, fortunately, but it's ridiculous that it's even necessary.
I expect Windows 8 to be slightly better than RT, in that it can run traditional apps. And there are third-party programs to minimize the damage Metro causes for those who want to do useful work with it. But that's about as good as it'll get. It's still a touch disaster, and a fairly useless "entertainment" device (RT comes with Office, but no games preinstalled).
Microsoft needs to shape up if they want to even have a shot at the tablet market. They possess a split personality disorder both on the UI front and on the developer front that they very much need to ditch. If they can't seem to figure out what kind of machine it is (or develop a separate "personality" for each purpose), nobody else will be able to. And people will avoid it.
For starters, they're going to have to revamp the entire look-and-feel of their tablet Windows to be touch-centric. It'll be easy to go from touch back to mouse and keyboard, because the mouse is just a very, very fine finger. But they need to commit to it, instead of leaving half of the screens in the old Windows UI and the other (useless) half touch-friendly.
And they'll have to include the keyboard out of the box. The software keyboard is a stinking manure pile. Nobody's going to buy a Surface/Pro without an external keyboard. Nobody's going to touch Windows RT/8 without a real keyboard.
Portable work devices are rarely perpetually-connected, while entertainment devices are usually connected. Including Office with RT to make it a useful work device was genius, but not including any games was equally boneheaded stupid.
Only if they can fix the split personality disorder in the rumored Windows 8.1, could it be a useable OS. Otherwise, it'll just be another disaster.
Conservative? Try anocratic. Every president since FDR has been a little more powerful. Every government since Eisenhower has been influenced by more corporate and special interest money. At this point, there are a rich and powerful few at the very top pulling on the strings of the government.
The Obama administration's deeds are only the tip of the evils that plague the current system. The two party system, the police state, media consolidation and conglomeration, suburbanization, social effemination (not roe v wade or women's rights, but political correctness and the idea that there are no losers and no winners), these are all contributing to the decline of the system. Making the population more ignorant, making them more interested in entertainment and less in the more important matters of governance, making them more dependent on the grace of the powerful and less self-sufficient, these are where to place blame. Obama's deeds and actions are merely a reflection of the social decadence plaguing the entire country.
I do wonder if things haven't actually gotten worse, only that we know more about it than before. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the latter was true. After all, Obama's drone strikes are probably nothing compared to what the CIA did in South America during the Cold War. And the FBI now is no worse than Hoover's FBI. But like all others, I seek progress, and the recent transgressions by the government both Federal and local are anything but that.
Just because he supports stuff that you agree with doesn't mean he isn't batshit crazy.
Imagine getting rid of the FDA. All those horror stories from China of melamine in milk and methanol in alcoholic beverages will be a reality here. Or what of the EPA, who keeps your groundwater from being contaminated and your cities from looking like Beijing. What of the FCC keeping your wi-fi from being jammed by a local TV or radio station. Or the SEC (though they failed mightily), preventing executives from dumping all of their stock right before they release bad news.
It would be a nightmare without these regulatory agencies.
The liberterian agenda sounds good only when applied to the individual. Corporations require heavy and strict policing. The ideology fails in that regard.
The 43.7 million is probably in short-term costs, i.e. the cost of switching over to Linux (retraining, deployment, etc.). The 10 million is probably the cost in long-term savings, i.e. the cost of Microsoft licenses and hardware upgrades after ~4-5 years.
What HP's study probably take into account is that the deployment of new boxes would've had to happen anyway, irrespective of whether it was new Windows boxes or new Linux boxes.
I cannot see a computer system made today(guarunteed to be 64 bit), being in use in 25 years.
You are very, very short-sighted then.
Just on airplanes, there are plenty of 25-35 year-old airplanes in service, both in civilian and military avation. A lot of low-budget airlines will buy used planes from the major airlines. Some of the major airlines will use older planes for lesser-travelled, short distance routes.
Same goes with the military. There are planes from the 60s and 70s that are still operational. The F-15 and F-16 are still in operation, if not in the states, then in other countries. The B1 is still in use. The C-130 is from the 50s!
I won't even go into other mostly-public systems that make up our power and transportation infrastructure. Those are from the 70s or older, and it will be far more than another 25 years before they retire.
One is about an individual standing up against another individual (or the refusal to do so). The other is about an individual standing up against the government. It's about fairness. When an individual stands up against another individual, they are on even ground. This is not so with the government. One individual cannot stand up to the government with any hope of winning. Even with a good lawyer, there is no chance. The government has strings everywhere, and it will pull all of them as needed to ensure that it gets its way (note that the string can be pulled two ways).
Or to put it another way, being bullied by a fellow student does not result in a life sentence (whether it's in jail or outside). Being bullied by the government does. And any individual can be bullied by the government, from some poor college student to a CEO of a large corporation.
The prosecutors have the ability to and do exercise discretion when charging individuals. It's just that they exercise discretion when it comes to themselves, their friends and families, and exercise no discretion (i.e. throw the book at) when it comes to people they want to use to further their own careers.
Don't make it appear like the prosecutors don't have a choice. Everybody has a choice. And decent, humane individuals will choose good, ethical, and moral in any clear-cut situation. Unfortunately, there aren't so many decent, humane individuals, and these prosecutors in question are demonstrably not among them.
It's because very few people want to serve on a jury, much less a grand jury, and of those who do, most of them watch too much TV and read too little.
This system begins and ends with "The People." If "The People" are a bunch of raving lunatics or drooling idiots, the core of the system has rotted out and the system is no longer functional.
Maybe it's time to revisit this. Sure, 25,000 signatures are a lot, but it's a very small, insignificant number compared to 100,000 or even 1 million signatures. At some point, the threshold would almost make the administration take the petition seriously.
If certain petitions were signed by millions of Americans, I'm almost certain there will be a better response. It's like the Do Not Call list. It may or may not be within the FCC's powers when it was implemented, but if 200 million Americans signed up for it, it sure as hell will be.
At the moment, there isn't enough of a user base to reach a million responses within the allotted timeframe. But as more and more people get wind of this, there will be. It's important to keep submitting nonsensical but popular petitions, but it's also important to continue submitting serious ones as well.
This is how things roll on Slashdot. It's up to us to ignore the article completely and start a massive flamewar on a related but hotly contested topic like evolution or global warming or [insert big tech company here].
Make violent video games harder to get and play, and it's just going to increase the amount of violence in the real world.
There are always a few kids "inspired" by violent games, but for the majority of the people who play these things, it's an outlet for some pent-up aggression that they'd otherwise have trouble releasing.
A lot of these mass shootings are done by people who want control, but feel that it is slipping away from them. Video games, and violent video games in particular, give them this control, if only temporarily.
a foreigner, living in some country where everyone speaks backwards, wears funny clothes and eats smelly food. Also, the music! Don't get me started.
That's what happens when you don't have strong copyright controls. Especially the part about eating smelly food. Only with strong copyright controls will your food be completely bland and odorless.
You can thank Google for the data collection paradigm
I dislike replying to myself, but I do have to issue a correction and an apology. I meant to type Facebook instead of Google, but I was thinking about Google at the time, who pioneered it. But Facebook really is the one who took it over the top and made it popular, so they get the credit for being evil.
It seems that companies have zero ability to hire engineers that can make a real product that is not dripping in "lock in" or "data mining".
Ability? Where does ability come into the equation? Every company wants your data. They want to collect it, to sell it, and they want to keep it for themselves away from your prying hands.
You can thank Google for the data collection paradigm, and Apple for the vendor lock-in one.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not just "Nuclear Bunker", or "Former Nuclear Bunker"
Because it's supposed to be secret?
Oops, we accidentally fired a live missile during a naval training exercise, and it just so happened to hit the Antiguan presidential compound.
I suspect Google still sets the standard for what's Android. Until Samsung's app store or Amazon's app store is as big as and different from Google's, they don't have their own version of Android quite yet.
Yeah, Samsung and Amazon can customize or fork to their heart's delight. But they may lose compatibility to Google's app store and maybe 3rd party stores, and that'd be a huge hit to their offerings.
Android is more than an OS. Like iOS, it's an ecosystem. And that ecosystem requires apps. It's not unlike gaming systems. To survive, each platform had to have its own exclusive game--its own killer app. The same applies to phone OSes.
I tried doing that, but I found that the average avian just don't like being put into a slingshot and launched at pigs. The pigs also didn't seem to like it either.
That assumes you're putting in 100% on a normal basis. If you're like the rest of us, the real number is probably closer to 0% than 100%.
Two things:
1) They don't need to break into your home. They just need to wait for you to open your door, and rush in with gun or knife in hand.
2) Most security systems are designed to keep bored teenagers out of trouble, or to capture the offender after the fact.
In the virtual world, things should be perfect. Computer science is a mathematical science. Mathematics is perfect.
Computer science loses its perfection when the virtual world meets the real world. Those electrical signals travelling between my keyboard and my box can be intercepted. The radiation from my monitor can be captured and analyzed.
And don't forget the most imperfect physical system of all: the user.
This article says 1 billion years, but we will run out of atmospheric carbon dioxide long before that.
The solution? Start pumping it into the atmosphere now.
No, it's not expensive. It's just plain useless.
Windows RT was a dismal failure, and Windows 8 will be equally disastrous. It fails on the touch front and on the mouse and keyboard front. Having tried it extensively, allow me to name the ways:
Touch:
1) The Metro home screen is the only touch-friendly aspect of it. However, it is filled with useless Microsoft apps that can't function without an internet connection and are tied to largely inferior Microsoft internet services.
2) It has the usual miserable Windows software keyboard and handwriting recognition, with fairly limited support.
3) Outside of Metro, the remainder is the usual touch-unfriendly Windows interface meant for a mouse and keyboard, where fat fingers will simply fail. This is what gets me the most. If the thing is a touchscreen, then it should be configured out of the box to be touch-friendly. Instead, it is configured as un-touch-friendly as possible. And worse, while you can say switch Explorer to use large icons on a grid instead of the list or details view, many screens simply don't have a touch-friendly interface.
4) The edge swiping is annoying and easy to do accidentally, The left edge "screen list" is useful, but only to bring up Metro apps.
5) Having to go to Metro just to access the swipe that will bring up a button to get to the list of programs is painfully clunky. The bottom swipe should be active on the desktop screen, and it should be the list of applications, not an extra button.
6) The right swipe should have been able to access the entire control panel, but instead, it's largely useless.
On the mouse and keyboard front:
1) The Metro UI and swiping is as horrible as expected. Some things have Metro and old Windows equivalents, but most do not. It's incredibly annoying to switch between mouse and keyboard, and touch, and that's pretty much what's necessary to use Metro.
2) And I don't think I need to mention that you can't even get to your software list without going through Metro, which is already a three step affair even by touch.
3) It doesn't come with the cover, which is another $150.
Oh, and did I mention that you have to "activate" Windows before you can use some of its functionality? It's hardware made by Microsoft but there's somehow still a chance copy of Windows on it can be a bootleg. Activation is automatic with an internet connection, fortunately, but it's ridiculous that it's even necessary.
I expect Windows 8 to be slightly better than RT, in that it can run traditional apps. And there are third-party programs to minimize the damage Metro causes for those who want to do useful work with it. But that's about as good as it'll get. It's still a touch disaster, and a fairly useless "entertainment" device (RT comes with Office, but no games preinstalled).
Microsoft needs to shape up if they want to even have a shot at the tablet market. They possess a split personality disorder both on the UI front and on the developer front that they very much need to ditch. If they can't seem to figure out what kind of machine it is (or develop a separate "personality" for each purpose), nobody else will be able to. And people will avoid it.
For starters, they're going to have to revamp the entire look-and-feel of their tablet Windows to be touch-centric. It'll be easy to go from touch back to mouse and keyboard, because the mouse is just a very, very fine finger. But they need to commit to it, instead of leaving half of the screens in the old Windows UI and the other (useless) half touch-friendly.
And they'll have to include the keyboard out of the box. The software keyboard is a stinking manure pile. Nobody's going to buy a Surface/Pro without an external keyboard. Nobody's going to touch Windows RT/8 without a real keyboard.
Portable work devices are rarely perpetually-connected, while entertainment devices are usually connected. Including Office with RT to make it a useful work device was genius, but not including any games was equally boneheaded stupid.
Only if they can fix the split personality disorder in the rumored Windows 8.1, could it be a useable OS. Otherwise, it'll just be another disaster.
Conservative? Try anocratic. Every president since FDR has been a little more powerful. Every government since Eisenhower has been influenced by more corporate and special interest money. At this point, there are a rich and powerful few at the very top pulling on the strings of the government.
The Obama administration's deeds are only the tip of the evils that plague the current system. The two party system, the police state, media consolidation and conglomeration, suburbanization, social effemination (not roe v wade or women's rights, but political correctness and the idea that there are no losers and no winners), these are all contributing to the decline of the system. Making the population more ignorant, making them more interested in entertainment and less in the more important matters of governance, making them more dependent on the grace of the powerful and less self-sufficient, these are where to place blame. Obama's deeds and actions are merely a reflection of the social decadence plaguing the entire country.
I do wonder if things haven't actually gotten worse, only that we know more about it than before. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the latter was true. After all, Obama's drone strikes are probably nothing compared to what the CIA did in South America during the Cold War. And the FBI now is no worse than Hoover's FBI. But like all others, I seek progress, and the recent transgressions by the government both Federal and local are anything but that.
Just because he supports stuff that you agree with doesn't mean he isn't batshit crazy.
Imagine getting rid of the FDA. All those horror stories from China of melamine in milk and methanol in alcoholic beverages will be a reality here. Or what of the EPA, who keeps your groundwater from being contaminated and your cities from looking like Beijing. What of the FCC keeping your wi-fi from being jammed by a local TV or radio station. Or the SEC (though they failed mightily), preventing executives from dumping all of their stock right before they release bad news.
It would be a nightmare without these regulatory agencies.
The liberterian agenda sounds good only when applied to the individual. Corporations require heavy and strict policing. The ideology fails in that regard.
Sponsored study by interested third party shows results that favor sponsor
FTFY.
HP/Compaq is hardly a neutral third party.
It's half empty according to Microsoft.
The 43.7 million is probably in short-term costs, i.e. the cost of switching over to Linux (retraining, deployment, etc.). The 10 million is probably the cost in long-term savings, i.e. the cost of Microsoft licenses and hardware upgrades after ~4-5 years.
What HP's study probably take into account is that the deployment of new boxes would've had to happen anyway, irrespective of whether it was new Windows boxes or new Linux boxes.
I cannot see a computer system made today(guarunteed to be 64 bit), being in use in 25 years.
You are very, very short-sighted then.
Just on airplanes, there are plenty of 25-35 year-old airplanes in service, both in civilian and military avation. A lot of low-budget airlines will buy used planes from the major airlines. Some of the major airlines will use older planes for lesser-travelled, short distance routes.
Same goes with the military. There are planes from the 60s and 70s that are still operational. The F-15 and F-16 are still in operation, if not in the states, then in other countries. The B1 is still in use. The C-130 is from the 50s!
I won't even go into other mostly-public systems that make up our power and transportation infrastructure. Those are from the 70s or older, and it will be far more than another 25 years before they retire.
They're not opposing opinions.
One is about an individual standing up against another individual (or the refusal to do so). The other is about an individual standing up against the government. It's about fairness. When an individual stands up against another individual, they are on even ground. This is not so with the government. One individual cannot stand up to the government with any hope of winning. Even with a good lawyer, there is no chance. The government has strings everywhere, and it will pull all of them as needed to ensure that it gets its way (note that the string can be pulled two ways).
Or to put it another way, being bullied by a fellow student does not result in a life sentence (whether it's in jail or outside). Being bullied by the government does. And any individual can be bullied by the government, from some poor college student to a CEO of a large corporation.
The prosecutors have the ability to and do exercise discretion when charging individuals. It's just that they exercise discretion when it comes to themselves, their friends and families, and exercise no discretion (i.e. throw the book at) when it comes to people they want to use to further their own careers.
Don't make it appear like the prosecutors don't have a choice. Everybody has a choice. And decent, humane individuals will choose good, ethical, and moral in any clear-cut situation. Unfortunately, there aren't so many decent, humane individuals, and these prosecutors in question are demonstrably not among them.
It's because very few people want to serve on a jury, much less a grand jury, and of those who do, most of them watch too much TV and read too little.
This system begins and ends with "The People." If "The People" are a bunch of raving lunatics or drooling idiots, the core of the system has rotted out and the system is no longer functional.
Maybe it's time to revisit this. Sure, 25,000 signatures are a lot, but it's a very small, insignificant number compared to 100,000 or even 1 million signatures. At some point, the threshold would almost make the administration take the petition seriously.
If certain petitions were signed by millions of Americans, I'm almost certain there will be a better response. It's like the Do Not Call list. It may or may not be within the FCC's powers when it was implemented, but if 200 million Americans signed up for it, it sure as hell will be.
At the moment, there isn't enough of a user base to reach a million responses within the allotted timeframe. But as more and more people get wind of this, there will be. It's important to keep submitting nonsensical but popular petitions, but it's also important to continue submitting serious ones as well.
This is how things roll on Slashdot. It's up to us to ignore the article completely and start a massive flamewar on a related but hotly contested topic like evolution or global warming or [insert big tech company here].
FTFY.
Make violent video games harder to get and play, and it's just going to increase the amount of violence in the real world.
There are always a few kids "inspired" by violent games, but for the majority of the people who play these things, it's an outlet for some pent-up aggression that they'd otherwise have trouble releasing.
A lot of these mass shootings are done by people who want control, but feel that it is slipping away from them. Video games, and violent video games in particular, give them this control, if only temporarily.
Common sense does not dictate corporations' actions here. It's all about who you can intimidate and what you can get away with.
a foreigner, living in some country where everyone speaks backwards, wears funny clothes and eats smelly food. Also, the music! Don't get me started.
That's what happens when you don't have strong copyright controls. Especially the part about eating smelly food. Only with strong copyright controls will your food be completely bland and odorless.
You can thank Google for the data collection paradigm
I dislike replying to myself, but I do have to issue a correction and an apology. I meant to type Facebook instead of Google, but I was thinking about Google at the time, who pioneered it. But Facebook really is the one who took it over the top and made it popular, so they get the credit for being evil.
It seems that companies have zero ability to hire engineers that can make a real product that is not dripping in "lock in" or "data mining".
Ability? Where does ability come into the equation? Every company wants your data. They want to collect it, to sell it, and they want to keep it for themselves away from your prying hands.
You can thank Google for the data collection paradigm, and Apple for the vendor lock-in one.