There are no "beneficial" changes. There are only changes, in the form of mutations. The ones that do not produce viable offspring die. The ones that do continue to survive.
To question whether this change is beneficial is like asking whether water is good or evil.
What this is illustrating is the rate of change, which is fairly high. A high rate of change can be beneficial in the long run, but extremely damaging in the short run. And it is both damaging for the species concerned, as well as for the rest of the ecology which is dependent on the health of all its species.
If you extrapolate it to more advanced and sophisticated species, ultimately those with vertebrae, it's a frightening picture. Insects can handle quite a bit of mutation, as well as are built to resist radiation. Not to mention the species will survive by sheer reproductive numbers alone. More advanced lifeforms like birds and mammals cannot handle the radiation, cannot handle almost all but the smallest of mutations. Worse, birth rates decrease as complexity increases. A 99.9% chance of stillborn for an insect that lays hundreds of eggs is nothing. A mere nine in ten chance of stillborn for more advanced animals would irrepairably damage the species' survivability.
Not to mention that species survivability is a much lower threshold than maintaining civilization. So if you want to put a Good-Bad qualifier on these findings, it's Bad. Very Bad.
The limitations to human-facing computers is now the human interface. At this point, both input and output are in need of a significant technological leap. Only then will computing devices finish the miniaturization and unification that's the logical conclusion to the past century of technological progress. Until then, we'll continue to produce small devices that are portable but can't do much, and large devices that can do everything but are not portable at all.
The idea of a dock is merely a stopgap measure, to remedy both input and output.
I believe this is the solution you're looking for. The SSD is only used as a cache, which means that only the files that are read a lot get copied over to the SSD, and are read from the SSD automatically. Ideally, this means that the number of writes is minimal (if the files stored are the ones you constantly use, then they should only be written to the disk the first time and read from it subsequently). A database would never be in your cache, unless it's primarily used for retrieving data (reporting), rather than storing data (transactional).
You get the speed up of SSDs. You get the reliability of platters. You don't need to pay top dollar (unless the programs you normally execute take several GBs worth of space each). Your SSD won't fail due to excessive writes nearly as quickly. At least, that's the ideal. The implementation may not work exactly this way.
Sure, no karma, no 4- or 5-digit prestige, but all it takes is for a couple of biased mods to get them the soapbox they need to do their shilling.
Good thing there are usually shills for the other side with mod points. Heck, I sometimes wonder if Slashdot's moderation system works as well as it does because the shills end up cancelling each other out, leaving only the impartial(er) comments and moderations.
There is war. And then there's nation building. We're not fighting two wars. We're building two nations. And while it happened after WWII, when we rebuilt Germany and Japan, don't forget that the infrastructure was in place already, and the region was stable. Neither of this is true of Iraq and Afghanistan.
For the frontend, Firefox has plugins for this sort of variance. In fact, a lot of plugins already are being used to address fatal flaws in their default UI. Mozilla developers themselves should have been releasing different UIs through the plugins system, instead of trying a new one with each new version. Stability is desirability. Nobody wants to live in a country where regime changes happen every 6 weeks. Nobody wants a browser whose functionality and interface massively (and often illogically) changes every 6 weeks.
As for a multitude of frontend/backend combinations, see this about having too many choices. It's not always such a good thing. Firefox should have one vision, and be one core product. If you want a different vision and want to use a different product, it should be a different product (maybe based on the same engine). As it is now, there's a lot of ideas floating around, but no vision.
8) Integrated search/address bar...... I know most/.ers hate this, but truthfully I've gotten very very used to it and as a result, I get pissed when I use a mobile browser and forget to use the correct input field to conduct a web search. You're telling the browser to go somewhere. Why do you need multiple always-on inputs to do that? Do you really need the extra input field just so you can specify which underlying destination identification process gets used to handle your request? No. The computer's smarter than that, and simpler UI is better here. This is why so many people type URLs into the Google homepage search field. They don't know why they would use the multiple input fields they're being presented with. Give them 1 field that's smart enough to do both use cases and you make it an easier experience.
I happen to not conduct all of my searches through Google. I have two dozen mycroft search plugins. I use about 6 of them (including Google, Wikipedia, etc.) constantly, another 10 of them occasionally (IMDB, Amazon, etc.), and the rest are for when I want to look up some esoteric bit of trivia that Google does not handle well (Peeron, for example). Now, tell me again how does an integrated search and address interface help me? I still need to switch search engines, except when I want to type in an address, I have to switch again to indicate I'm typing in an address (otherwise, I wouldn't be able to do a DNS whois or lookup from my search bar).
As for people typing URLs into the search bar, well, that problem exists between keyboard and chair. Granted, there are security considerations. When I am asked to go to a site I do not know, I check with Google to see that the site is legitimate. But typing in URLs into Google is a user issue. And if it's a technology issue, then it exists at the DNS level (DNS does not accurately represent what people want), because DNS was the technological solution to this problem. It certainly does not exist at the browser level, and certainly should not half-assedly be corrected for there.
To put it simply, computers are not smart. They cannot read your mind, or interpret your behavior without your intervention. If you know anything about computational complexity, you'd know that it's a pipe dream. It's achievable on a small scale, possibly, but it takes a lot of processing power to make an entire application context-aware. Which is why everything's in the "cloud" now (Google, for starters, but Siri is a good recent example). But that's an entirely different discussion, and has naught to do with browsers and the functionality of a browser's UI.
HBO isn't going to piss off all of the cable companies by going behind them and distributing their shows a la carte. They do that and they lose a very strong negotiating position. Come contract negotiation time, the cable companies will demand a bigger cut of the subscription, or will even refuse carry HBO outright, or some such. Not to mention there are probably stipulations on the existing contracts about these things, e.g. content can only be delivered to HBO subscribers or some such. Either way, they won't move a finger until overall cable subscriptions fall enough that they have the upper hand when negotiating with the cable companies (if you don't carry my channel, you'll bleed even more customers).
Besides, they're making too much money on subscriptions and subsequent DVD sales to really care. Note that while Time Warner Cable lost customers, they made it back up with higher-priced subscriptions, which means more people are paying for these premium channels. They're not going to walk away from that, especially as this trend means they're going to get the upper hand in negotiations.
Believe it or not, HBO is actually in a good position to switch to alternative distribution methods with their Go thing. It's a matter of making the switch when the time is right. Though, they may miss the boat entirely by waiting too long, or not being agile enough. Some YouTube channel producer could take over the market while they're waiting, similar to what happened to Blockbuster.
But this is generally why big companies fall. They don't want to move to the new technology irrespective of demand or growth opportunities because it jeopardises their existing cash flow. And even if they do switch, it will ultimately only replace their income, not make them more money, which is what companies want. Enter some small company that fulfills the demand and completely eats their lunch. By the time they get around to responding, it's too late, and somebody else has already taken over the market and the piece of the pie they manage to salvage is tiny.
That's part of the polish. Driver availability and stability all contributes to the OS experience. Yes, it's not trivial to write your own if it isn't provided by the manufacturer.
But the very act of having to go search online is just as annoying whether for a driver or for a piece of software that does what you want done.
Depends on the person. Some people take negative feedback hard, and become discouraged. Some people take it well, and become driven to do better.
Same with positive feedback, actually. Some people take it poorly and become overconfident. Some see it only as an affirmation of their progress.
The only difference is, the person giving feedback would feel worse for giving negative feedback and having the person take it badly, than giving positive feedback with the negative reaction. This kind of feedback is ultimately not about the person receiving it, it's about the person giving it. It's about feeling good for that person, rather than doing good.
Agreed. The difference between "supported" and "not supported" more or less amounts to whether a support drone logs a ticket or not when you call in. Especially where Ellison (who is only slightly less evil than the RIAA and MPAA) is involved, there's no "spirit," only "word" of the law.
Obviously, Oracle will honor their contract with HP. If the contract can be honored by poor-performing 60-year old guys trained in supporting S/370s somehow managed to squeak by and not be forcibly retired (not that all 60-year old guys supporting IBM mainframes are poor performers), then so be it. And if those guys throw their hands up in the air after a few hours on site, because in reality they have no idea what they're doing, as long as the contract does not stipulate a time limit before fixing each problem, then that's fine too.
Good luck, HP. Dealing with Oracle is a step down from dealing with the devil. At least the devil actually gives you what you asked for (while all the numerous ancillary things somehow end up going horribly wrong).
It's funny how George Lucas pretty much did in the Special Editions to the fans (and future fans) what Vader did to Lando in ESB. Well, not exactly funny, but ironic maybe?
This is only true if you're writing an app that delivers a function. If you're writing a game, or some other user entertainment app, you're never really in danger of this.
So if you're writing an app that integrates Twitter and FB and other social networking sites or some such, you might end up among the disgruntled. If you're writing a game, or you're the company running the social networking site, then you're probably ok.
Though at some point in time, people are going to start heading for the exits when they realize their app selection is inferior to say, Android's app selection. Which is why Apple's fighting tooth and nail trying to keep Android phones from being sold.
They had 3 MeeGo phones on the roadmap by 2014, with one already one the way. This was written in June 2011, referring to events that transpired Jan 2011. Between Jan 2011 and 2014, I'll be willing to bet that Apple won't have released more than 3 models of phones (including the 4S, which was more of a dot refresh rather than a completely new model).
It sounds like they had trouble with the iPhone's one-generation-one-phone strategy. They were too stuck in their old ways of releasing several different models of high-end, mid-range, and low-end "smartphones" to capture the entire market. What they probably should've done was offered one high-end, one mid-range, and one low-end phone. That's 3 phones. And they could've rolled it out slowly, so that the high-end came first, the mid-range one generation later, and the low-end replacing all the existing Symbian phones out there after one more refresh.
Instead, they squandered all of the in-house talent they spent years acquiring and developing. They wrote off all of their recent major business acquistions. They went from an industry leader and standards setter to the lackey of the biggest back-stabbing software company there ever was. And the worst part is, they did so knowingly and intentionally, because they felt they couldn't compete with Apple and Google.
Well, duh they couldn't compete with Apple and Google, and quite frankly, I don't think switching to Microsoft did anything but make them less competitive. They were late to the game two years ago with MeeGo, and all this time spent transitioning made them even later to the game. I especially like how the article quotes the Art of War at the end, as if that somehow vindicates Elop's actions. I like it because Elop's excuse for turning to Microsoft was that he didn't--couldn't--believe in Nokia's existing software engineering talent in the first place. What a crock of bull.
I wonder if this means Microsoft is going to bring out a lightweight version of Windows Phone.
It's hard to imagine Nokia ditching the market of normal cellphones. There's still a huge market there for them, even if those phones are not as sexy and headline-grabbing.
Slashdot Mirror
There are no "beneficial" changes. There are only changes, in the form of mutations. The ones that do not produce viable offspring die. The ones that do continue to survive.
To question whether this change is beneficial is like asking whether water is good or evil.
What this is illustrating is the rate of change, which is fairly high. A high rate of change can be beneficial in the long run, but extremely damaging in the short run. And it is both damaging for the species concerned, as well as for the rest of the ecology which is dependent on the health of all its species.
If you extrapolate it to more advanced and sophisticated species, ultimately those with vertebrae, it's a frightening picture. Insects can handle quite a bit of mutation, as well as are built to resist radiation. Not to mention the species will survive by sheer reproductive numbers alone. More advanced lifeforms like birds and mammals cannot handle the radiation, cannot handle almost all but the smallest of mutations. Worse, birth rates decrease as complexity increases. A 99.9% chance of stillborn for an insect that lays hundreds of eggs is nothing. A mere nine in ten chance of stillborn for more advanced animals would irrepairably damage the species' survivability.
Not to mention that species survivability is a much lower threshold than maintaining civilization. So if you want to put a Good-Bad qualifier on these findings, it's Bad. Very Bad.
The limitations to human-facing computers is now the human interface. At this point, both input and output are in need of a significant technological leap. Only then will computing devices finish the miniaturization and unification that's the logical conclusion to the past century of technological progress. Until then, we'll continue to produce small devices that are portable but can't do much, and large devices that can do everything but are not portable at all.
The idea of a dock is merely a stopgap measure, to remedy both input and output.
On the contrary. Apple didn't do as well this past quarter than expected. They attributed it to anticipation for the iPhone 5.
I believe this is the solution you're looking for. The SSD is only used as a cache, which means that only the files that are read a lot get copied over to the SSD, and are read from the SSD automatically. Ideally, this means that the number of writes is minimal (if the files stored are the ones you constantly use, then they should only be written to the disk the first time and read from it subsequently). A database would never be in your cache, unless it's primarily used for retrieving data (reporting), rather than storing data (transactional).
You get the speed up of SSDs. You get the reliability of platters. You don't need to pay top dollar (unless the programs you normally execute take several GBs worth of space each). Your SSD won't fail due to excessive writes nearly as quickly. At least, that's the ideal. The implementation may not work exactly this way.
Except it's easy to just go and make new ones.
Sure, no karma, no 4- or 5-digit prestige, but all it takes is for a couple of biased mods to get them the soapbox they need to do their shilling.
Good thing there are usually shills for the other side with mod points. Heck, I sometimes wonder if Slashdot's moderation system works as well as it does because the shills end up cancelling each other out, leaving only the impartial(er) comments and moderations.
User: Uh, abort! abort! abort!
Nina: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
FTFY
There is war. And then there's nation building. We're not fighting two wars. We're building two nations. And while it happened after WWII, when we rebuilt Germany and Japan, don't forget that the infrastructure was in place already, and the region was stable. Neither of this is true of Iraq and Afghanistan.
They only have and need one backend.
For the frontend, Firefox has plugins for this sort of variance. In fact, a lot of plugins already are being used to address fatal flaws in their default UI. Mozilla developers themselves should have been releasing different UIs through the plugins system, instead of trying a new one with each new version. Stability is desirability. Nobody wants to live in a country where regime changes happen every 6 weeks. Nobody wants a browser whose functionality and interface massively (and often illogically) changes every 6 weeks.
As for a multitude of frontend/backend combinations, see this about having too many choices. It's not always such a good thing. Firefox should have one vision, and be one core product. If you want a different vision and want to use a different product, it should be a different product (maybe based on the same engine). As it is now, there's a lot of ideas floating around, but no vision.
8) Integrated search/address bar...... I know most /.ers hate this, but truthfully I've gotten very very used to it and as a result, I get pissed when I use a mobile browser and forget to use the correct input field to conduct a web search. You're telling the browser to go somewhere. Why do you need multiple always-on inputs to do that? Do you really need the extra input field just so you can specify which underlying destination identification process gets used to handle your request? No. The computer's smarter than that, and simpler UI is better here. This is why so many people type URLs into the Google homepage search field. They don't know why they would use the multiple input fields they're being presented with. Give them 1 field that's smart enough to do both use cases and you make it an easier experience.
I happen to not conduct all of my searches through Google. I have two dozen mycroft search plugins. I use about 6 of them (including Google, Wikipedia, etc.) constantly, another 10 of them occasionally (IMDB, Amazon, etc.), and the rest are for when I want to look up some esoteric bit of trivia that Google does not handle well (Peeron, for example). Now, tell me again how does an integrated search and address interface help me? I still need to switch search engines, except when I want to type in an address, I have to switch again to indicate I'm typing in an address (otherwise, I wouldn't be able to do a DNS whois or lookup from my search bar).
As for people typing URLs into the search bar, well, that problem exists between keyboard and chair. Granted, there are security considerations. When I am asked to go to a site I do not know, I check with Google to see that the site is legitimate. But typing in URLs into Google is a user issue. And if it's a technology issue, then it exists at the DNS level (DNS does not accurately represent what people want), because DNS was the technological solution to this problem. It certainly does not exist at the browser level, and certainly should not half-assedly be corrected for there.
To put it simply, computers are not smart. They cannot read your mind, or interpret your behavior without your intervention. If you know anything about computational complexity, you'd know that it's a pipe dream. It's achievable on a small scale, possibly, but it takes a lot of processing power to make an entire application context-aware. Which is why everything's in the "cloud" now (Google, for starters, but Siri is a good recent example). But that's an entirely different discussion, and has naught to do with browsers and the functionality of a browser's UI.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.
HBO isn't going to piss off all of the cable companies by going behind them and distributing their shows a la carte. They do that and they lose a very strong negotiating position. Come contract negotiation time, the cable companies will demand a bigger cut of the subscription, or will even refuse carry HBO outright, or some such. Not to mention there are probably stipulations on the existing contracts about these things, e.g. content can only be delivered to HBO subscribers or some such. Either way, they won't move a finger until overall cable subscriptions fall enough that they have the upper hand when negotiating with the cable companies (if you don't carry my channel, you'll bleed even more customers).
Besides, they're making too much money on subscriptions and subsequent DVD sales to really care. Note that while Time Warner Cable lost customers, they made it back up with higher-priced subscriptions, which means more people are paying for these premium channels. They're not going to walk away from that, especially as this trend means they're going to get the upper hand in negotiations.
Believe it or not, HBO is actually in a good position to switch to alternative distribution methods with their Go thing. It's a matter of making the switch when the time is right. Though, they may miss the boat entirely by waiting too long, or not being agile enough. Some YouTube channel producer could take over the market while they're waiting, similar to what happened to Blockbuster.
But this is generally why big companies fall. They don't want to move to the new technology irrespective of demand or growth opportunities because it jeopardises their existing cash flow. And even if they do switch, it will ultimately only replace their income, not make them more money, which is what companies want. Enter some small company that fulfills the demand and completely eats their lunch. By the time they get around to responding, it's too late, and somebody else has already taken over the market and the piece of the pie they manage to salvage is tiny.
That's part of the polish. Driver availability and stability all contributes to the OS experience. Yes, it's not trivial to write your own if it isn't provided by the manufacturer.
But the very act of having to go search online is just as annoying whether for a driver or for a piece of software that does what you want done.
It's all a part of the polish.
Yeah, like the iPhone. Them fancy retina touchscreens are made by Samsung.
Or, get the iPhone and cut out the screen and throw it away in disgust. That works too. It can still make phone calls.
Oh wait.
Has he got any loose change in his pockets?
That's because most optimizations happen at a higher level than the kernel and drivers. This is true for programming in general.
It doesn't take long to adapt the kernel and driver pieces to remove the bottlenecks--not if the original code was structured correctly anyway.
Depends on the person. Some people take negative feedback hard, and become discouraged. Some people take it well, and become driven to do better.
Same with positive feedback, actually. Some people take it poorly and become overconfident. Some see it only as an affirmation of their progress.
The only difference is, the person giving feedback would feel worse for giving negative feedback and having the person take it badly, than giving positive feedback with the negative reaction. This kind of feedback is ultimately not about the person receiving it, it's about the person giving it. It's about feeling good for that person, rather than doing good.
Agreed. The difference between "supported" and "not supported" more or less amounts to whether a support drone logs a ticket or not when you call in. Especially where Ellison (who is only slightly less evil than the RIAA and MPAA) is involved, there's no "spirit," only "word" of the law.
Obviously, Oracle will honor their contract with HP. If the contract can be honored by poor-performing 60-year old guys trained in supporting S/370s somehow managed to squeak by and not be forcibly retired (not that all 60-year old guys supporting IBM mainframes are poor performers), then so be it. And if those guys throw their hands up in the air after a few hours on site, because in reality they have no idea what they're doing, as long as the contract does not stipulate a time limit before fixing each problem, then that's fine too.
Good luck, HP. Dealing with Oracle is a step down from dealing with the devil. At least the devil actually gives you what you asked for (while all the numerous ancillary things somehow end up going horribly wrong).
These "geniuses" also wear this blue polo that's reminscient of, well, the other major OS company that uses blue as it's primary marketing color.
I wonder if the editing was done on a Windows box...
Ketchup is not tomato-based.
It's actually corn starch-based with red dye.
The Hobbit: The Search For Smaug.
not unless we manage to cause a runaway greenhouse effect like Venus
Even then, life will go on. It may not be very complex life (then again, who knows?), but something will survive.
It's funny how George Lucas pretty much did in the Special Editions to the fans (and future fans) what Vader did to Lando in ESB. Well, not exactly funny, but ironic maybe?
This is only true if you're writing an app that delivers a function. If you're writing a game, or some other user entertainment app, you're never really in danger of this.
So if you're writing an app that integrates Twitter and FB and other social networking sites or some such, you might end up among the disgruntled. If you're writing a game, or you're the company running the social networking site, then you're probably ok.
Though at some point in time, people are going to start heading for the exits when they realize their app selection is inferior to say, Android's app selection. Which is why Apple's fighting tooth and nail trying to keep Android phones from being sold.
It happens occasionally.
Source for your quote.
They had 3 MeeGo phones on the roadmap by 2014, with one already one the way. This was written in June 2011, referring to events that transpired Jan 2011. Between Jan 2011 and 2014, I'll be willing to bet that Apple won't have released more than 3 models of phones (including the 4S, which was more of a dot refresh rather than a completely new model).
It sounds like they had trouble with the iPhone's one-generation-one-phone strategy. They were too stuck in their old ways of releasing several different models of high-end, mid-range, and low-end "smartphones" to capture the entire market. What they probably should've done was offered one high-end, one mid-range, and one low-end phone. That's 3 phones. And they could've rolled it out slowly, so that the high-end came first, the mid-range one generation later, and the low-end replacing all the existing Symbian phones out there after one more refresh.
Instead, they squandered all of the in-house talent they spent years acquiring and developing. They wrote off all of their recent major business acquistions. They went from an industry leader and standards setter to the lackey of the biggest back-stabbing software company there ever was. And the worst part is, they did so knowingly and intentionally, because they felt they couldn't compete with Apple and Google.
Well, duh they couldn't compete with Apple and Google, and quite frankly, I don't think switching to Microsoft did anything but make them less competitive. They were late to the game two years ago with MeeGo, and all this time spent transitioning made them even later to the game. I especially like how the article quotes the Art of War at the end, as if that somehow vindicates Elop's actions. I like it because Elop's excuse for turning to Microsoft was that he didn't--couldn't--believe in Nokia's existing software engineering talent in the first place. What a crock of bull.
I wonder if this means Microsoft is going to bring out a lightweight version of Windows Phone.
It's hard to imagine Nokia ditching the market of normal cellphones. There's still a huge market there for them, even if those phones are not as sexy and headline-grabbing.