RT's inability to run x86 apps is a huge drawback. That alone makes it compete with Android and the iOS on Google and Apple's terms. In an established market, where there already are two dominant players, any competitor would have to offer significant improvements over the existing products to even be able to play ball, much less succeed (in this day and age where patents are granted to anybody who files, actual success is a crapshoot). I was pretty surprised to hear companies had even signed on to Windows RT. There may have been a market for HP's Windows RT offering. I honestly doubt it. I think HP was working on a Windows RT product only because it was present, not because there was any potential for sales. And I suspect many of the other vendors thought and will react the same way.
On the other hand, being able to run legacy and new x86 apps is a huge selling point for an x86 tablet (with a proper touch interface no less). Notice that the announcement doesn't mention canning any products based on the x86 version of Windows 8. That's because so long as enterprises are stuck on x86, there will always be a market for x86 laptops, even ultra-thin laptops disguised as tablets. HP knows this. They'd be blind to not see that the market potential for x86 Windows tablets is even today much higher than any potential for Windows RT tablets.
I think this may be good for Microsoft with respect to Windows RT. Too many form factors has always been Android's bane. If Windows RT needs only to support one piece of hardware or even only the standard configuration Surface set, the software will probably work better. Of course, whether Windows RT can actually compete with Android and the iOS is up for debate (and I honestly don't really see any compelling reason why it would). But it stands a better chance if Surface was the only piece of hardware it needs to run on and support.
I suspect based on the ridiculous license pricing and their release of their own hardware that Microsoft is intentionally moving itself into position to be the only hardware provider for Windows RT. If they do successfully break into the ARM tablet market with it, they'd have their cake and eat it too. I don't know whether this will work out in the long run, and I think they think the same way too, because it seems they're hedging their bets with the x86 version of Surface. But they stand to gain a lot more than they'll lose.
But Microsoft's goal may not be not to break into the tablet market so much as it is to maintain their dominant position in the enterprise market with a tablet offering. By having an answer to Android and iOS tablets, companies have an option that integrates well with their existing infrastructure. So perhaps in this regard, they will succeed.
To be honest, that debt stuff started way before 9/11. you can blame Reagan for his failed economic theories, and Clinton (and the Senators and Representatives in office at the time) for repealing 60 years of finance law based on the hard lessons learned from the Great Depression that kept the banks properly in check.
But yeah. The country's going bankrupt. Hell, it already is bankrupt. It's just that because the defacto currency of trade is U.S. dollars, most of the world's going bankrupt along with us.
And irony of ironies, getting yourself thrown in prison for refusing to pay for health care (or aforementioned fine/tax) provides you with a government-paid health care plan.
Government-paid housing and meal plan too. As said in that short story about the two homeless bums trying to get into jail so they have free meals and a warm place to stay.
Prison is extremely costly to society. Most people don't realize this because they want to see people others go to jail and stay there. Keeping people out of prison by helping them would lower our collective tax burdens significantly. But all people want to do is lock up whomever they don't like. Or in this case, lock themselves up so they don't have to deal with living in a society of other individuals.
You know what the Democrats should do? They should vocally oppose any decent piece of legislation the Republicans come up with. Make it as hard as possible to pass. Put tons of ryders, amendments, etc. favoring the Democrats.
Then pass it grudgingly, after a long, drawn-out fight. It would make the Republicans very happy that they got their victory, and it would make the Democrats look like they're really good at getting things done by getting all those extra ryders and such attached.
The problem with WORA is that the interpreter has to both be present and consistent across all environments. It worked for Java, because Sun wrote all of the initial JVMs, and every such JVM conforms to the same spec. Even then, Java was for the desktop/server. Sun had to change to a new spec for mobile, which they recognized was a completely different playing field. The scope of WORA that Facebook wanted to apply wouldn't have worked even they were using Java.
Something as massive and as fractured as HTML5 where everybody "supporting" it has actually only implemented a portion of the standard and not the full thing, it's virtually impossible to get right. Not only this, but there needs to be a layer that changes elements based on device capability and type. This layer does not exist in the standard. Thus, WORA cannot and does not work for HTML5.
And to be honest, it may never work.
Re:Tab syncing: first thing I'll disable
on
Google I/O Day Two
·
· Score: 1
Would be nice if it were optional per tab. I can open an article at work, read a bit of it there and finish reading it at home.
I thought they learned this lesson once with Office. Everybody only uses 20% of the functionality that an Office app (Word, Excel, etc.) offers. But everybody uses a different 20%.
There's a 3rd option: Make insurance premiums unaffordable. Then suddenly, everybody goes bankrupt from health care costs, and the government ends up paying for the care. The government itself then goes bankrupt, and there's no health care for anybody except for the wealthy.
Of course, the public option would've been the best. But this is at least a step in the right direction.
So who's job is it to look out for the best interests of the country?
Ours. The citizen's job. We elect people to look out for us. If we elect unqualified people, or people who aren't interested in looking out for our best interests, it's our own damn fault.
Is that one of those mystery jobs that Americans just don't want to do?
Judging from historical election turnout rates, the answer is yes.
The right wing objects because it's Obama's legislation. They oppose it because they oppose Obama, and want to see him fail. I think we all know the reason why they want to see Obama fail. (Hint: It has nothing to do with him being a Democrat.)
It's not even the "right" as in the conservatives. It's those particular people in power who use the insecurities and fears of the conservatives as their power base. They don't like different people attaining power. That puts their own position of power in jeaprody.
Which is why the government option would've been ideal. But then you have the same companies screaming that the government is stealing their bread and butter.
It's probably written on the bill as a tax. Or in this case, you get a tax break if you do 'X' (so obviously, if you don't do 'X', you pay more taxes). The spirit of the law is one thing, the letter of the law is another.
Fortunately, if it's just a GUI rewrite, and the new user interface was just an alternative to the norm or a fancy wrapper over the old interface, there wouldn't be any such issues.
he's a guy with a deep sense of personal morals and an appreciation for intellectual pursuits - even if his work doesn't often promote such things
On the contrary. Family guy satires the lack of morals and intelligence. Not only that, but there are numerous gems spread across the show that hint at these qualities.
If you think Family Guy is only about some dumb family doing dumb shit (but with a brilliant baby and a smart dog), then you're not watching it correctly. The jokes may often appear to be off-color, but the humor isn't in the joke itself, but in the making of the joke.
I'd suggest you give it another shot, starting with some of the better episodes. Don't remember which ones off the top of my head, but I'm sure Google can solve that problem. Just beware of spoilers.
Ok, but how do you sell a used copy of this textbook?
Textbooks run $100-200 a pop. If you think that's going down because of the digitization alone, you've got something else coming for you (the publishers and professors make $$$ off textbook sales, they're never lowering the prices). If you want an example, look at the e-books Amazon sells. They're sometimes priced higher than the print edition.
Textbooks are a huge part of a college student's budget. Being able to resell it, even if only to recoup 50%, is often a godsend. In some cases, it is the difference between being able to afford next semester's tuition (and books, because they'd buy used as well) and not. This is especially true of students mostly on financial aid and scholarships.
If it causes fewer kids to be able to afford college (even indirectly), I'd say it's a net loss. But of course, this is all not relevant to Gate's point, that tablets are not content-creating devices and thus cannot help students even in content creation (typing a paper, doing a presentation, etc.).
The second part of his comment is probably almost as erroneous as the people he's deriding in the first part of his comment.
There are some things that you can do better with a computer than with pencil and paper. Computer programming, for starters. Visualization of complex equations. But that's about it.
Pencil and paper is where it's at. A full computer with keyboard is necessary when it comes to computer-related material. Tablets are mostly useless (In the sense that pencil and paper would be better and more economical. You sure as hell can make a tablet work for education, eventually. The key is to make it better than pencil and paper, which is unlikely.).
Slashdot Mirror
everybody is telling me that caffeine gives me cancer
Only the State of California knows that.
Steampunk? And from where will that steam get its energy?
Or math, the queen of all sciences (ducks from flames)
Wrong. Math is math. Science may apply math. But it is no more math than statistics is.
Math does deal in absolute certainties. However, it is an abstraction. At best, it can only be used to approximate reality.
shot-gun fragment analysis
It was once a zombie?
It's also worthwhile to note he said "partial genomes." You can't make little Brana kids from it.
RT's inability to run x86 apps is a huge drawback. That alone makes it compete with Android and the iOS on Google and Apple's terms. In an established market, where there already are two dominant players, any competitor would have to offer significant improvements over the existing products to even be able to play ball, much less succeed (in this day and age where patents are granted to anybody who files, actual success is a crapshoot). I was pretty surprised to hear companies had even signed on to Windows RT. There may have been a market for HP's Windows RT offering. I honestly doubt it. I think HP was working on a Windows RT product only because it was present, not because there was any potential for sales. And I suspect many of the other vendors thought and will react the same way.
On the other hand, being able to run legacy and new x86 apps is a huge selling point for an x86 tablet (with a proper touch interface no less). Notice that the announcement doesn't mention canning any products based on the x86 version of Windows 8. That's because so long as enterprises are stuck on x86, there will always be a market for x86 laptops, even ultra-thin laptops disguised as tablets. HP knows this. They'd be blind to not see that the market potential for x86 Windows tablets is even today much higher than any potential for Windows RT tablets.
I think this may be good for Microsoft with respect to Windows RT. Too many form factors has always been Android's bane. If Windows RT needs only to support one piece of hardware or even only the standard configuration Surface set, the software will probably work better. Of course, whether Windows RT can actually compete with Android and the iOS is up for debate (and I honestly don't really see any compelling reason why it would). But it stands a better chance if Surface was the only piece of hardware it needs to run on and support.
I suspect based on the ridiculous license pricing and their release of their own hardware that Microsoft is intentionally moving itself into position to be the only hardware provider for Windows RT. If they do successfully break into the ARM tablet market with it, they'd have their cake and eat it too. I don't know whether this will work out in the long run, and I think they think the same way too, because it seems they're hedging their bets with the x86 version of Surface. But they stand to gain a lot more than they'll lose.
But Microsoft's goal may not be not to break into the tablet market so much as it is to maintain their dominant position in the enterprise market with a tablet offering. By having an answer to Android and iOS tablets, companies have an option that integrates well with their existing infrastructure. So perhaps in this regard, they will succeed.
To be honest, that debt stuff started way before 9/11. you can blame Reagan for his failed economic theories, and Clinton (and the Senators and Representatives in office at the time) for repealing 60 years of finance law based on the hard lessons learned from the Great Depression that kept the banks properly in check.
But yeah. The country's going bankrupt. Hell, it already is bankrupt. It's just that because the defacto currency of trade is U.S. dollars, most of the world's going bankrupt along with us.
And irony of ironies, getting yourself thrown in prison for refusing to pay for health care (or aforementioned fine/tax) provides you with a government-paid health care plan.
Government-paid housing and meal plan too. As said in that short story about the two homeless bums trying to get into jail so they have free meals and a warm place to stay.
Prison is extremely costly to society. Most people don't realize this because they want to see people others go to jail and stay there. Keeping people out of prison by helping them would lower our collective tax burdens significantly. But all people want to do is lock up whomever they don't like. Or in this case, lock themselves up so they don't have to deal with living in a society of other individuals.
You know what the Democrats should do? They should vocally oppose any decent piece of legislation the Republicans come up with. Make it as hard as possible to pass. Put tons of ryders, amendments, etc. favoring the Democrats.
Then pass it grudgingly, after a long, drawn-out fight. It would make the Republicans very happy that they got their victory, and it would make the Democrats look like they're really good at getting things done by getting all those extra ryders and such attached.
It'll arrive this year on December 21st.
The problem with WORA is that the interpreter has to both be present and consistent across all environments. It worked for Java, because Sun wrote all of the initial JVMs, and every such JVM conforms to the same spec. Even then, Java was for the desktop/server. Sun had to change to a new spec for mobile, which they recognized was a completely different playing field. The scope of WORA that Facebook wanted to apply wouldn't have worked even they were using Java.
Something as massive and as fractured as HTML5 where everybody "supporting" it has actually only implemented a portion of the standard and not the full thing, it's virtually impossible to get right. Not only this, but there needs to be a layer that changes elements based on device capability and type. This layer does not exist in the standard. Thus, WORA cannot and does not work for HTML5.
And to be honest, it may never work.
Would be nice if it were optional per tab. I can open an article at work, read a bit of it there and finish reading it at home.
I thought they learned this lesson once with Office. Everybody only uses 20% of the functionality that an Office app (Word, Excel, etc.) offers. But everybody uses a different 20%.
There's a 3rd option: Make insurance premiums unaffordable. Then suddenly, everybody goes bankrupt from health care costs, and the government ends up paying for the care. The government itself then goes bankrupt, and there's no health care for anybody except for the wealthy.
Of course, the public option would've been the best. But this is at least a step in the right direction.
So who's job is it to look out for the best interests of the country?
Ours. The citizen's job. We elect people to look out for us. If we elect unqualified people, or people who aren't interested in looking out for our best interests, it's our own damn fault.
Is that one of those mystery jobs that Americans just don't want to do?
Judging from historical election turnout rates, the answer is yes.
The right wing objects because it's Obama's legislation. They oppose it because they oppose Obama, and want to see him fail. I think we all know the reason why they want to see Obama fail. (Hint: It has nothing to do with him being a Democrat.)
It's not even the "right" as in the conservatives. It's those particular people in power who use the insecurities and fears of the conservatives as their power base. They don't like different people attaining power. That puts their own position of power in jeaprody.
Which is why the government option would've been ideal. But then you have the same companies screaming that the government is stealing their bread and butter.
It's probably written on the bill as a tax. Or in this case, you get a tax break if you do 'X' (so obviously, if you don't do 'X', you pay more taxes). The spirit of the law is one thing, the letter of the law is another.
No, because the drinking age is a state law, not a federal one. All states have adopted the 21 minimum because of some Federal road money though.
Fortunately, if it's just a GUI rewrite, and the new user interface was just an alternative to the norm or a fancy wrapper over the old interface, there wouldn't be any such issues.
Oh wait.
he's a guy with a deep sense of personal morals and an appreciation for intellectual pursuits - even if his work doesn't often promote such things
On the contrary. Family guy satires the lack of morals and intelligence. Not only that, but there are numerous gems spread across the show that hint at these qualities.
If you think Family Guy is only about some dumb family doing dumb shit (but with a brilliant baby and a smart dog), then you're not watching it correctly. The jokes may often appear to be off-color, but the humor isn't in the joke itself, but in the making of the joke.
I'd suggest you give it another shot, starting with some of the better episodes. Don't remember which ones off the top of my head, but I'm sure Google can solve that problem. Just beware of spoilers.
That's how things are supposed to work. Reality is not the same.
For starters, let's stop calling it "intellectual property." Because thought is the property of no individual.
Let's call it copyrights (the right to make copies), patents (limited monopolies), and trademarks (brand identifiers).
Ok, but how do you sell a used copy of this textbook?
Textbooks run $100-200 a pop. If you think that's going down because of the digitization alone, you've got something else coming for you (the publishers and professors make $$$ off textbook sales, they're never lowering the prices). If you want an example, look at the e-books Amazon sells. They're sometimes priced higher than the print edition.
Textbooks are a huge part of a college student's budget. Being able to resell it, even if only to recoup 50%, is often a godsend. In some cases, it is the difference between being able to afford next semester's tuition (and books, because they'd buy used as well) and not. This is especially true of students mostly on financial aid and scholarships.
If it causes fewer kids to be able to afford college (even indirectly), I'd say it's a net loss. But of course, this is all not relevant to Gate's point, that tablets are not content-creating devices and thus cannot help students even in content creation (typing a paper, doing a presentation, etc.).
The second part of his comment is probably almost as erroneous as the people he's deriding in the first part of his comment.
There are some things that you can do better with a computer than with pencil and paper. Computer programming, for starters. Visualization of complex equations. But that's about it.
Pencil and paper is where it's at. A full computer with keyboard is necessary when it comes to computer-related material. Tablets are mostly useless (In the sense that pencil and paper would be better and more economical. You sure as hell can make a tablet work for education, eventually. The key is to make it better than pencil and paper, which is unlikely.).