If Google+ is to succeed, they need to stop with the invite-only nonsense. A social network is only as strong as its user-base, and Google+ remains questionable until it has enough people on it to make it worthwhile.
If there was any doubt as to how Facebook thinks of its users, this should drive home the fact that people are Facebook's product. It is only free if you don't value your information.
They are starting to rack up a nice stack a corpses made from discontinued Google services. Google Wave, Google Translation API, Google Health, and Google PowerMeter to name a few.
I would hate to get too invested in a Google service only to have it disappear on me. As far as I am concerned, Google Search and Gmail are their only sure bets.
I vaguely recall the early 1980s and the bad shape that gaming was in. Nintendo arguably ushered in a new golden era of gaming that saved the industry.
In the past few years I have been seeing the same games released year after year, micro-transactions leaking in to games, and now this unreplayable game.
The gaming industry is heading in a bad direction again.
I am saddened to see Firefox follow Chrome's every little move. If it weren't for a handful of great addons, there would be nearly no reason to use Firefox now that they are turning into Chrome-Too.
Firefox is not only going to remove "http://" from the address bar in Firefox 7, but they are also getting rid of trailing slashes:
Before Ubuntu I used FreeBSD. I love FreeBSD, but when my old home server finally died I decided to switch to Linux and use a distro that was more bleeding edge and friendlier on the desktop. My new home server doubles as a multi-purpose Linux workstation and overall I am happy with it.
It took me over a week and hack away at my Ubuntu box to do everything I want, and to try to figure out some of the weird back-end infrastructure. Again, most of my Linux/BSD experience for the past 10 years has been FreeBSD and CentOS/RHEL so my experience with Linux-on-the-desktop is somewhat limited.
The last time I earnestly tried Linux on the desktop was a Slackware box in the late '90s using Windowmaker as the window manager.
Honestly I don't use either Synaptic or the Software Center. I do it all on the command-line using apt-cache and apt-get.
So far I can work around all of Canonical's crazy decisions. I forced myself to quit using Gnome 2.32 (aka Ubuntu Classic) and use Xfce instead to prepare for 11.10. I have to say that I have gotten used to Xfce and really like it.
I really don't feel like migrating my home boxes from Ubuntu unless I absolutely have to do so. The day Ubuntu prevents me from working around their craziness is the day I finally jump ship.
IE and Chrome are closed-source and have much larger marketshares. I understand that Chromium is open-source, but I am sure there are closed-source bits in Chrome. The fact that Opera is closed-source should have little bearing on its install base. I doubt many Firefox users on Windows review the source code.
I acknowledged that Opera has, as you put it, a BSD-sized user base. Why is it still a BSD-sized user base? It is a solid browser, but something just seems... off about it. I would like to see Opera find and fix their weaknesses and put up a solid fight against Google and Microsoft. Along the way they can show Firefox that you don't have to be a Chrome-clone to succeed. If Firefox doesn't change course they may end up with a BSD-sized user base themselves.
What is holding Opera back from the mainstream? They have been around for eons and have innovated a lot of features (or at the very least implemented said features well before their competitors). Still, Opera seems to remain a niche web browser.
Granted, I don't use Opera myself and I can't quite put my finger on why I don't use it. The first time I tried many years ago I didn't like ad banner in the interface of the free version (I think they got rid of the paid version of Opera and the ad banners in free Opera around 2005).
We need a major browser that is independent of major corporations. Microsoft controls IE, Google controls Chrome. Opera is ran by a smaller outfit that doesn't seem likely to be hellbent on spying on you or trying to tightly integrate with certain proprietary technologies and services. Firefox is the open-source darling and should be independent, but it does seem to be copycatting the hell out of Chrome as of late.
Chrome is different. It automatically updates Chrome on startup if there is a new version. I don't believe there is a way to opt-out and stay with an older version. I generally use Firefox and not Chrome, so I am not as adept at Chrome and I could have missed an update toggle setting in Chrome.
I don't know how Chrome handles plugins with regards to compatibility when Chrome is updated.
I would not be surprised if their new release cycle causes their marketshare to start shrinking in a significant fashion.
I have been a long-time Firefox user (ever since it was Phoenix) and their current release philosophy is really turning me off. They just seem so misguided and detached from reality.
"Cloud" is just the latest buzzword for storing data at a network-accessible data repository or using network-accessible servers to handle some workload.
The only real benefit I can see from storing media in such a solution would be that all your devices anywhere can stream the media from the repository. You might have a FTP server, but you won't find a mobile app that plays songs directly from your FTP server in real-time.
With that being said, the only "cloud" I will use is one at my home network. A private cloud. If ISPs don't all go down the dark path of data caps I can see a bright future of hosting media centers/apps on your home network and stream media from your network when you are away from home.
Perhaps the arrest by the UK police earlier has put some fear in to them so they are now trying to act like they haven't hacked the UK census in a desparate attempt to fend off the police.
If ICANN allows people to obtain TLDs such as.comm,.ccom,.nett,.orrg, and so forth then we're in for a lot more scams and phishing attempts.
I wonder how well the vanity domains will work in the wild, though. They only work as well as software supports them. In theory it shouldn't be too much of a problem, but in reality I would not be surprised if a lot of software chokes on them.
I am getting tired of hearing about Anonymous and LulzSec.
While I do want a more transparent government, I am also to the point I want these script kiddies hoisted on their own petards before they do enough damage to cause more draconian laws and measures to be enacted by a knee-jerk (or carefully scheming, depending on your tinfoil hat) government.
When you buy a book you own it and can re-read it as many times as you want. You can let your friends and family borrow it to read, or can even give it to someone else as a gift.
I hate to see books follow down the path that is being pushed for other media where you don't actually own a copy of the media but you simply rent or license it.
If a paper book ends up on some ban list it doesn't get revoked. Who needs the firemen from Fahrenheit 451 when you can simple push a button and automatically remove a copy of an e-book off of all digital reader devices.
Good question. I work with several EMR vendors and they all side with CCD instead of CCR. Truth be told, there will never be the one true format. My company will have to support CCD, CCR, HL7v2, and lord knows how many proprietary formats for the foreseeable future.
What we do is just store every piece of medical information as discrete, granular data and when pulling from the data storage we assemble it into a self-designed proprietary intermediate format and from there it is sent to a target-specific exporter engine that formats the data as the target (aka EMR or PM software) expects.
In other words, we minimized the impact of the document format by doing all the heavy lifting in our own internal format that contains all the data and codifications itself and each actual format is just a little post-processing engine to arrange it as expected.
If you live in small and medium-sized communities, local news is often filled with fluff and oddball stories.
Weather reporting is the big draw for local TV news, and sites like weather.com usually tell you what you want to know when you want to know it. Local TV news put the weather segment at the end of their broadcasts and tease you about it throughout their show ("will it be warm and sunny this weekend? stay tuned to find out!")
I hate that I cannot edit comments. I'm not saying that the developers of LOIC are involved with Anonymous, but your suggestion was to take down the tools. Granted, you could argue that the tools in of themselves aren't illegal. I could see a tool like LOIC being used for DDoS and security testing of your own network.
The fact that one of them ran an IRC server involved in coordination of attacks out of his home I'd say at least one of the three arrested isn't very bright and I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of them goes to jail.
Slashdot Mirror
If Google+ is to succeed, they need to stop with the invite-only nonsense. A social network is only as strong as its user-base, and Google+ remains questionable until it has enough people on it to make it worthwhile.
If there was any doubt as to how Facebook thinks of its users, this should drive home the fact that people are Facebook's product. It is only free if you don't value your information.
They are starting to rack up a nice stack a corpses made from discontinued Google services. Google Wave, Google Translation API, Google Health, and Google PowerMeter to name a few.
I would hate to get too invested in a Google service only to have it disappear on me. As far as I am concerned, Google Search and Gmail are their only sure bets.
I vaguely recall the early 1980s and the bad shape that gaming was in. Nintendo arguably ushered in a new golden era of gaming that saved the industry.
In the past few years I have been seeing the same games released year after year, micro-transactions leaking in to games, and now this unreplayable game.
The gaming industry is heading in a bad direction again.
I am saddened to see Firefox follow Chrome's every little move. If it weren't for a handful of great addons, there would be nearly no reason to use Firefox now that they are turning into Chrome-Too.
Firefox is not only going to remove "http://" from the address bar in Firefox 7, but they are also getting rid of trailing slashes:
http://browserfame.com/41/firefox-hide-http-address-bar
I do admit that I use Update Manager to quickly keep my installed packages up-to-date. That is the only GUI tool I use.
Does Canonical have plans to get rid of the Update Manager too?
Before Ubuntu I used FreeBSD. I love FreeBSD, but when my old home server finally died I decided to switch to Linux and use a distro that was more bleeding edge and friendlier on the desktop. My new home server doubles as a multi-purpose Linux workstation and overall I am happy with it.
It took me over a week and hack away at my Ubuntu box to do everything I want, and to try to figure out some of the weird back-end infrastructure. Again, most of my Linux/BSD experience for the past 10 years has been FreeBSD and CentOS/RHEL so my experience with Linux-on-the-desktop is somewhat limited.
The last time I earnestly tried Linux on the desktop was a Slackware box in the late '90s using Windowmaker as the window manager.
Perhaps Mark Shuttleworth has ADHD
Honestly I don't use either Synaptic or the Software Center. I do it all on the command-line using apt-cache and apt-get.
So far I can work around all of Canonical's crazy decisions. I forced myself to quit using Gnome 2.32 (aka Ubuntu Classic) and use Xfce instead to prepare for 11.10. I have to say that I have gotten used to Xfce and really like it.
I really don't feel like migrating my home boxes from Ubuntu unless I absolutely have to do so. The day Ubuntu prevents me from working around their craziness is the day I finally jump ship.
IE and Chrome are closed-source and have much larger marketshares. I understand that Chromium is open-source, but I am sure there are closed-source bits in Chrome. The fact that Opera is closed-source should have little bearing on its install base. I doubt many Firefox users on Windows review the source code.
I acknowledged that Opera has, as you put it, a BSD-sized user base. Why is it still a BSD-sized user base? It is a solid browser, but something just seems ... off about it. I would like to see Opera find and fix their weaknesses and put up a solid fight against Google and Microsoft. Along the way they can show Firefox that you don't have to be a Chrome-clone to succeed. If Firefox doesn't change course they may end up with a BSD-sized user base themselves.
What is holding Opera back from the mainstream? They have been around for eons and have innovated a lot of features (or at the very least implemented said features well before their competitors). Still, Opera seems to remain a niche web browser.
Granted, I don't use Opera myself and I can't quite put my finger on why I don't use it. The first time I tried many years ago I didn't like ad banner in the interface of the free version (I think they got rid of the paid version of Opera and the ad banners in free Opera around 2005).
We need a major browser that is independent of major corporations. Microsoft controls IE, Google controls Chrome. Opera is ran by a smaller outfit that doesn't seem likely to be hellbent on spying on you or trying to tightly integrate with certain proprietary technologies and services. Firefox is the open-source darling and should be independent, but it does seem to be copycatting the hell out of Chrome as of late.
Chrome is different. It automatically updates Chrome on startup if there is a new version. I don't believe there is a way to opt-out and stay with an older version. I generally use Firefox and not Chrome, so I am not as adept at Chrome and I could have missed an update toggle setting in Chrome.
I don't know how Chrome handles plugins with regards to compatibility when Chrome is updated.
I would not be surprised if their new release cycle causes their marketshare to start shrinking in a significant fashion.
I have been a long-time Firefox user (ever since it was Phoenix) and their current release philosophy is really turning me off. They just seem so misguided and detached from reality.
"Cloud" is just the latest buzzword for storing data at a network-accessible data repository or using network-accessible servers to handle some workload.
The only real benefit I can see from storing media in such a solution would be that all your devices anywhere can stream the media from the repository. You might have a FTP server, but you won't find a mobile app that plays songs directly from your FTP server in real-time.
With that being said, the only "cloud" I will use is one at my home network. A private cloud. If ISPs don't all go down the dark path of data caps I can see a bright future of hosting media centers/apps on your home network and stream media from your network when you are away from home.
They changed their numbering scheme.
Firefox 5 is basically just Firefox 4.1
I believe they plan to have Firefox 6 out by the end of the year as well. Three "major" versions per year.
Perhaps the arrest by the UK police earlier has put some fear in to them so they are now trying to act like they haven't hacked the UK census in a desparate attempt to fend off the police.
If ICANN allows people to obtain TLDs such as .comm, .ccom, .nett, .orrg, and so forth then we're in for a lot more scams and phishing attempts.
I wonder how well the vanity domains will work in the wild, though. They only work as well as software supports them. In theory it shouldn't be too much of a problem, but in reality I would not be surprised if a lot of software chokes on them.
I guess Larry Ellison is needing some extra money to start building his next yacht.
I am getting tired of hearing about Anonymous and LulzSec.
While I do want a more transparent government, I am also to the point I want these script kiddies hoisted on their own petards before they do enough damage to cause more draconian laws and measures to be enacted by a knee-jerk (or carefully scheming, depending on your tinfoil hat) government.
When you buy a book you own it and can re-read it as many times as you want. You can let your friends and family borrow it to read, or can even give it to someone else as a gift.
I hate to see books follow down the path that is being pushed for other media where you don't actually own a copy of the media but you simply rent or license it.
If a paper book ends up on some ban list it doesn't get revoked. Who needs the firemen from Fahrenheit 451 when you can simple push a button and automatically remove a copy of an e-book off of all digital reader devices.
Good question. I work with several EMR vendors and they all side with CCD instead of CCR. Truth be told, there will never be the one true format. My company will have to support CCD, CCR, HL7v2, and lord knows how many proprietary formats for the foreseeable future.
What we do is just store every piece of medical information as discrete, granular data and when pulling from the data storage we assemble it into a self-designed proprietary intermediate format and from there it is sent to a target-specific exporter engine that formats the data as the target (aka EMR or PM software) expects.
In other words, we minimized the impact of the document format by doing all the heavy lifting in our own internal format that contains all the data and codifications itself and each actual format is just a little post-processing engine to arrange it as expected.
If you live in small and medium-sized communities, local news is often filled with fluff and oddball stories.
Weather reporting is the big draw for local TV news, and sites like weather.com usually tell you what you want to know when you want to know it. Local TV news put the weather segment at the end of their broadcasts and tease you about it throughout their show ("will it be warm and sunny this weekend? stay tuned to find out!")
All my porn is contained in TrueCrypt volumes.
I hate that I cannot edit comments. I'm not saying that the developers of LOIC are involved with Anonymous, but your suggestion was to take down the tools. Granted, you could argue that the tools in of themselves aren't illegal. I could see a tool like LOIC being used for DDoS and security testing of your own network.
The fact that one of them ran an IRC server involved in coordination of attacks out of his home I'd say at least one of the three arrested isn't very bright and I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of them goes to jail.