Touch screens work on the iPhone because users are going to be doing the same thing anyway if the buttons were physical. Using touch technology exclusively on large areas has been around for years and years, and it is proven to be tiresome (the whole 'gorilla arms' thing). Moving images of photos around on a coffee table? Possibly, but organising a photo collection on such a huge screen by stretching around to touch the things I want? No thanks, I'd prefer a mouse because it's less effort. Use touch-based input for things not possible with other technology, or when people would be doing the same kind of thing anyway (like pressing buttons on a 'phone's keypad or a computer's keyboard), not because it is "natural" (walking is natural, but the wheel is one of the best discoveries yet made). Microsoft's dug themselves quite a firmly entrenched computing world BTW, so getting any significant numbers of people away from generic x86 + Windows XP + VisualBasic + generic USB mouse will be difficult unless they come up with something more impressive than specifying expensive customisation of items via a fingerpainting-accurate interface.
In my opinion, if touchscreens were the only kind of pointing device people had thought of up until now then there would be a company like Microsoft doing exactly the same flashy (sorry, Silverlighty) demos as they are now, but replacing "new touch technology" with "new mouse technology" and replacing "natural" with "efficient".
Writer: "So Magic 8 Ball, the only purpose people can come up with for you is the comedy value of your predictions. This may mean that the best place for you is a dustbin, unless of course we do these predictions every year. Should we do Magic 8 Ball predictions every year?"
Magic 8 Ball: "Outlook Not So G - wait a second! You can count on it!"
At least you know you're running Linux. OSX is on the iPhone, and I bet you Apple will include those statistics in their own marketing (I'm not saying TFA is, I'm hypothesising about the immediate future), which in that case means that Linux/FOSS advocates can bring up all of those Linuxy handheld gadget things that have been around for years, not to mention all of those routers and servers and....
Many/. readers will agree with what you have said. However, many/. readers will also agree with Microsoft's assumption that their software is the cause of all the world's problems.
I find this story funny in itself, considering that I didn't actually know that SilverLight had even been brought out! I thought Microsoft's software was still in the "look what we're up to" demo stage, and that the Mono implementation was the only code people could get their hands on.
Ah well, I don't give a crap about SilverLight anyway.
Or, the RIAA, MPAA et al actually succeed in their worldwide legal battles, thus without mountains of music and films to consume, home users' data storage use plummets and the floppy disk becomes the dominant format once more. The world begins to use floppy-based Linux distributions (because Vista takes too many disk swaps to install) and thus everyone enjoys a renaissance of console-based system rescue distros, streaming everything they might want through a lynx port of Gnash. Gradually, as more and more features are packed in to the disks it is realised that a modern form of storage is indeed beneficial. Hence the Zip drive makes a Lazarus style comeback. Hey, it could happen!
"It really is a more tourist friendly attraction for those going to the Middle East anyway."
My mother went to Egypt recently and visited the pyramids. She says there were some rather... large... American tourists who had to wait outside since they wouldn't fit through the entrance. They were complaining that "the entrances should be made bigger". So yes, I agree with you that the Pyramids might not be the most tourist friendly attraction.
However, I'd prefer to marvel at the epic achievements of ancient engineers than raise my eyebrows at how much sand some JCBs are capable of dumping into the sea.
"Why not have the music player, upon detection of a track, check for a Microsoft digital signature in the WMA, and maybe behave differently in this situation? Might just save a few systems in the future from incorrect signatures. I can't see this change in logic being beneficial to song writers as they won't have a Microsoft signature, and if they can somehow change the music playing program to check for digital signatures against a different public key, you are already liberated."
Just an analogy to the whole DRM issue on music. My point is that trying to add a brand new, whizz bang, undefeatable layer of security never works. Those who it is targetting will figure out how to bypass it, every legitimate user is stuck jumping through hoops to do their legitimate activities. After a while such a monstrousity of a security cake is layered up higher and higher as the same model is tried again and again, a lot of the time with bugs further down the cake being used to break the upper layers.
The better long-term strategy is to try and fix what is wrong with the current layers of the OS, but Microsoft's problem there is that it may affect program compatibility (which they REALLY don't want to mess with, since if the massive amount of Windows programs out there needed to be rewritten to run on a fixed OS then one of the biggest reasons to use Microsoft's technology over the competition is gone)
From a non-technical point of view, I know someone who found all sorts of vulnerabilities in Windows. He couldn't patch them. He hates Microsoft's business tactics. He wrote viruses to exploit those vulnerabilities (the viruses usually did something like DDOS various Microsoft websites, print out "Microsoft is crap, stop using Windows" once a month, etc.). It's not just the installbase or the security of the system to take into account, it's also a) users' opinions of the system/creators (many Windows users are forced to use it for certain applications, testing, etc. whereas most (desktop) Linux or OSX users specifically chose that system by preference) and b) show off (showing off some successful malware isn't that great, since getting credit for it would also mean getting punishment for it. Showing off a patch to fix the vulnerability, however, is certainly going to get someone their geekpoints, and it may be a lot harder to do than making malware too, so more geekpoints are gained, thus making it a more attractive opportunity).
I'm glad someone has developed a solution to that worrying problem that in 50 years, when I am still as virile and healthy as I am now thanks to the wonders of nano-engineering, and day to day chores are done by my army of robot helpers, and all information and entertainment has been downloaded directly into my memory enhancement unit and my 15.2AlottaFLOP quantum computer from Google has finished going through everything Folding@home, SETI@home and every other @home project can give it, that when the screensaver comes on I know that all of my clock cycles are being spent calculating the fancy realtime patterns, thus consoling me that the Earth$999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999.95 price tag was worth it.
That's not an easter egg, it is part of the simulation. As you can see, the object in question is clearly rheindeer-shaped, thus giving credibility to an earlier mentioned theory...
Wy the negative definitions? See, I would say I am an atheist, but I would define my atheism thusly:
"Why bother making up arbitrary reasons for things? Have fun, have plenty of sex, sleep lots, eat lots, discover things, create things, share things, help people and most of all live, since tomorrow will be even better. Plus, at the end of it all, you get to die and then won't give a crap anymore about anything, since you'll be dead."
Although I must admit that I try not to be arrogant in my atheism, since if I don't think I matter in the grand scheme of things (because there is no grand scheme of things) therefore I am free to do whatever I want. However, since other people seem to think that they must do certain things in their lives because of XYZ (get into Heaven, Nirvana, get a nice reincarnation, whatever) then I may as well help them, since to me doing so is no different than not doing so, but it does make a difference to them, thus I'll help out.
What I'm saying is, I don't think of life as shit.
PS: I do think Vista is shit though:)
What makes you think that web apps are the only ones capable of having document sharing? Adding that ability to regular OpenOffice would be really cool, and then this VNC method of accessing it would gain that ability too, would it not?
Personally I find OOo overkill for what I use so I generally use Abiword (if not Gedit:P), which has collaboration facilities (although I haven't used them yet) http://collaborate.abisource.com/ , thus adding such things to OOo isn't an insurmountable obstacle.
As for the story, sounds good for those times I'm at a cut-down browser-only machine (although I have figured out how to start up GNOME on my University's supposedly Firefox-only machines:P ) but I'd rather use it natively (either installed or from PortableApps) if I am able to. A nice bonus though, is that I won't have to find my way around a whole new UI when I go from one to the other.
Regardless of the license indeed. That's because this is NOT a copyright issue, it is a plagiarism issue. Passing someone else's work off as your own is illegal. The fact that it is licensed permissively with publicly accessible source code doesn't affect that, except that it makes changing the program easier (although ways exist to do it for binaries, or of course things could just get embedded in a new frontend and no credit given).
I hate to admit it but RMS's crusade against 'Intellectual Property' is right, as ever, since issues like this get confused due to the muddied waters (yes, permission COULD be given to do such a thing in a copyright notice, but it could also be given elsewhere).
I was talking to my ex, who is very talented with loads of instruments and currently studying a music course, and I was saying that instead of deleting her recordings after projects, experiments, rehearsals, etc. are over that she could upload them somewhere under a permissive type of license like CC Attribution (I prefer the public domain, but got to start somewhere). She said that she wouldn't, she'd only use a restrictive no-copying-allowed kind of license because she didn't want people passing off her work as their own, and I still haven't convinced her that such a thing is actually plagiarism and doesn't depend on the license, plus that CC-BY requires attribution in any derivitaves and is just as enforcable as any 'traditional' (ie. corporate) license. Ah well, I'll keep trying:)
And you can rest assured that your electricity bill will be worth it for looking at your shiny plasma-drawn analogue clock.
As for me, I'm going to use my memory to run some PROGRAMS, since it is no longer being taken up by what is effectively a button to let me launch and switch between programs (a desktop environment).
Interestingly it was Nvidia driver problems that made me switch TO Linux. Windows never really appealed to me, so I tried it for a short time but then installed Linux (dual booting with Windows for games). When the Nvidia driver on Windows XP was giving me BSODs when trying to do anything 3D (even Doom!) it was the kcick up the backside I needed to format the thing and grow my Linux partitions.
(It was also the kick up the backside I needed to stop wasting my life on anger-inducing computer games.
Microsoft would be extremely disadvantaged. So much so that their crushing dominance of office software might actually be dented a little! If all of the other ISVs out there trying to make their mark in the office could have their individual voices heard as much as Microsoft does in the press then comments about being disadvantaged would be thrown out of the window (ODF is open and documented, and plugins for Microsoft's software exist. Try saying the same about Microsoft's closed formats, which are putting every alternative out there to a disadvantage). Thing is, nobody would really pay attention to such a mass of vendors, because people would think "Well, I use Microsoft", which is exactly the point of levelling the playing field.
The "this is/isn't about Microsoft" talk is pretty much redundant. This is not targetting Microsoft, it is targetting those firms which essentially hold data to perpetual ransom even after being payed again and again. Microsoft, in it's protestations, has essentially admitted that its business relies on such extortion.
Slashdot Mirror
Touch screens work on the iPhone because users are going to be doing the same thing anyway if the buttons were physical. Using touch technology exclusively on large areas has been around for years and years, and it is proven to be tiresome (the whole 'gorilla arms' thing). Moving images of photos around on a coffee table? Possibly, but organising a photo collection on such a huge screen by stretching around to touch the things I want? No thanks, I'd prefer a mouse because it's less effort. Use touch-based input for things not possible with other technology, or when people would be doing the same kind of thing anyway (like pressing buttons on a 'phone's keypad or a computer's keyboard), not because it is "natural" (walking is natural, but the wheel is one of the best discoveries yet made). Microsoft's dug themselves quite a firmly entrenched computing world BTW, so getting any significant numbers of people away from generic x86 + Windows XP + VisualBasic + generic USB mouse will be difficult unless they come up with something more impressive than specifying expensive customisation of items via a fingerpainting-accurate interface. In my opinion, if touchscreens were the only kind of pointing device people had thought of up until now then there would be a company like Microsoft doing exactly the same flashy (sorry, Silverlighty) demos as they are now, but replacing "new touch technology" with "new mouse technology" and replacing "natural" with "efficient".
Writer: "So Magic 8 Ball, the only purpose people can come up with for you is the comedy value of your predictions. This may mean that the best place for you is a dustbin, unless of course we do these predictions every year. Should we do Magic 8 Ball predictions every year?"
Magic 8 Ball: "Outlook Not So G - wait a second! You can count on it!"
That's no airship, it's Thunderbird 2!
At least you know you're running Linux. OSX is on the iPhone, and I bet you Apple will include those statistics in their own marketing (I'm not saying TFA is, I'm hypothesising about the immediate future), which in that case means that Linux/FOSS advocates can bring up all of those Linuxy handheld gadget things that have been around for years, not to mention all of those routers and servers and....
Many /. readers will agree with what you have said. However, many /. readers will also agree with Microsoft's assumption that their software is the cause of all the world's problems.
I find this story funny in itself, considering that I didn't actually know that SilverLight had even been brought out! I thought Microsoft's software was still in the "look what we're up to" demo stage, and that the Mono implementation was the only code people could get their hands on.
Ah well, I don't give a crap about SilverLight anyway.
Just hope that the splash you just heard was a result of your bowel movements...
Or, the RIAA, MPAA et al actually succeed in their worldwide legal battles, thus without mountains of music and films to consume, home users' data storage use plummets and the floppy disk becomes the dominant format once more. The world begins to use floppy-based Linux distributions (because Vista takes too many disk swaps to install) and thus everyone enjoys a renaissance of console-based system rescue distros, streaming everything they might want through a lynx port of Gnash. Gradually, as more and more features are packed in to the disks it is realised that a modern form of storage is indeed beneficial. Hence the Zip drive makes a Lazarus style comeback. Hey, it could happen!
To most people software is free, and it only comes from one company.
People have done suprising things with the square root of -1, doesn't make it any more real :)
Who's going to provide it?
Well let me see, I wonder if IBM would publish a report (advertise) research only being worked on by their rivals?
Watch this space........
My mother went to Egypt recently and visited the pyramids. She says there were some rather... large... American tourists who had to wait outside since they wouldn't fit through the entrance. They were complaining that "the entrances should be made bigger". So yes, I agree with you that the Pyramids might not be the most tourist friendly attraction.
However, I'd prefer to marvel at the epic achievements of ancient engineers than raise my eyebrows at how much sand some JCBs are capable of dumping into the sea.
Just an analogy to the whole DRM issue on music. My point is that trying to add a brand new, whizz bang, undefeatable layer of security never works. Those who it is targetting will figure out how to bypass it, every legitimate user is stuck jumping through hoops to do their legitimate activities. After a while such a monstrousity of a security cake is layered up higher and higher as the same model is tried again and again, a lot of the time with bugs further down the cake being used to break the upper layers. The better long-term strategy is to try and fix what is wrong with the current layers of the OS, but Microsoft's problem there is that it may affect program compatibility (which they REALLY don't want to mess with, since if the massive amount of Windows programs out there needed to be rewritten to run on a fixed OS then one of the biggest reasons to use Microsoft's technology over the competition is gone)
From a non-technical point of view, I know someone who found all sorts of vulnerabilities in Windows. He couldn't patch them. He hates Microsoft's business tactics. He wrote viruses to exploit those vulnerabilities (the viruses usually did something like DDOS various Microsoft websites, print out "Microsoft is crap, stop using Windows" once a month, etc.). It's not just the installbase or the security of the system to take into account, it's also a) users' opinions of the system/creators (many Windows users are forced to use it for certain applications, testing, etc. whereas most (desktop) Linux or OSX users specifically chose that system by preference) and b) show off (showing off some successful malware isn't that great, since getting credit for it would also mean getting punishment for it. Showing off a patch to fix the vulnerability, however, is certainly going to get someone their geekpoints, and it may be a lot harder to do than making malware too, so more geekpoints are gained, thus making it a more attractive opportunity).
I'm glad someone has developed a solution to that worrying problem that in 50 years, when I am still as virile and healthy as I am now thanks to the wonders of nano-engineering, and day to day chores are done by my army of robot helpers, and all information and entertainment has been downloaded directly into my memory enhancement unit and my 15.2AlottaFLOP quantum computer from Google has finished going through everything Folding@home, SETI@home and every other @home project can give it, that when the screensaver comes on I know that all of my clock cycles are being spent calculating the fancy realtime patterns, thus consoling me that the Earth$999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999.95 price tag was worth it.
That's not an easter egg, it is part of the simulation. As you can see, the object in question is clearly rheindeer-shaped, thus giving credibility to an earlier mentioned theory...
Wy the negative definitions? See, I would say I am an atheist, but I would define my atheism thusly: "Why bother making up arbitrary reasons for things? Have fun, have plenty of sex, sleep lots, eat lots, discover things, create things, share things, help people and most of all live, since tomorrow will be even better. Plus, at the end of it all, you get to die and then won't give a crap anymore about anything, since you'll be dead." Although I must admit that I try not to be arrogant in my atheism, since if I don't think I matter in the grand scheme of things (because there is no grand scheme of things) therefore I am free to do whatever I want. However, since other people seem to think that they must do certain things in their lives because of XYZ (get into Heaven, Nirvana, get a nice reincarnation, whatever) then I may as well help them, since to me doing so is no different than not doing so, but it does make a difference to them, thus I'll help out. What I'm saying is, I don't think of life as shit. PS: I do think Vista is shit though :)
What makes you think that web apps are the only ones capable of having document sharing? Adding that ability to regular OpenOffice would be really cool, and then this VNC method of accessing it would gain that ability too, would it not? Personally I find OOo overkill for what I use so I generally use Abiword (if not Gedit :P), which has collaboration facilities (although I haven't used them yet) http://collaborate.abisource.com/ , thus adding such things to OOo isn't an insurmountable obstacle.
As for the story, sounds good for those times I'm at a cut-down browser-only machine (although I have figured out how to start up GNOME on my University's supposedly Firefox-only machines :P ) but I'd rather use it natively (either installed or from PortableApps) if I am able to. A nice bonus though, is that I won't have to find my way around a whole new UI when I go from one to the other.
Regardless of the license indeed. That's because this is NOT a copyright issue, it is a plagiarism issue. Passing someone else's work off as your own is illegal. The fact that it is licensed permissively with publicly accessible source code doesn't affect that, except that it makes changing the program easier (although ways exist to do it for binaries, or of course things could just get embedded in a new frontend and no credit given). I hate to admit it but RMS's crusade against 'Intellectual Property' is right, as ever, since issues like this get confused due to the muddied waters (yes, permission COULD be given to do such a thing in a copyright notice, but it could also be given elsewhere). I was talking to my ex, who is very talented with loads of instruments and currently studying a music course, and I was saying that instead of deleting her recordings after projects, experiments, rehearsals, etc. are over that she could upload them somewhere under a permissive type of license like CC Attribution (I prefer the public domain, but got to start somewhere). She said that she wouldn't, she'd only use a restrictive no-copying-allowed kind of license because she didn't want people passing off her work as their own, and I still haven't convinced her that such a thing is actually plagiarism and doesn't depend on the license, plus that CC-BY requires attribution in any derivitaves and is just as enforcable as any 'traditional' (ie. corporate) license. Ah well, I'll keep trying :)
And you can rest assured that your electricity bill will be worth it for looking at your shiny plasma-drawn analogue clock. As for me, I'm going to use my memory to run some PROGRAMS, since it is no longer being taken up by what is effectively a button to let me launch and switch between programs (a desktop environment).
Interestingly it was Nvidia driver problems that made me switch TO Linux. Windows never really appealed to me, so I tried it for a short time but then installed Linux (dual booting with Windows for games). When the Nvidia driver on Windows XP was giving me BSODs when trying to do anything 3D (even Doom!) it was the kcick up the backside I needed to format the thing and grow my Linux partitions. (It was also the kick up the backside I needed to stop wasting my life on anger-inducing computer games.
I think that there are 2 words to counter any such argument. I'll give you a clue, the second one is "Hawking"
Had to...
Microsoft would be extremely disadvantaged. So much so that their crushing dominance of office software might actually be dented a little! If all of the other ISVs out there trying to make their mark in the office could have their individual voices heard as much as Microsoft does in the press then comments about being disadvantaged would be thrown out of the window (ODF is open and documented, and plugins for Microsoft's software exist. Try saying the same about Microsoft's closed formats, which are putting every alternative out there to a disadvantage). Thing is, nobody would really pay attention to such a mass of vendors, because people would think "Well, I use Microsoft", which is exactly the point of levelling the playing field. The "this is/isn't about Microsoft" talk is pretty much redundant. This is not targetting Microsoft, it is targetting those firms which essentially hold data to perpetual ransom even after being payed again and again. Microsoft, in it's protestations, has essentially admitted that its business relies on such extortion.