I think it comes from the fact that just about _everything_ uses compression now, by default. When was the last time you watched a video that was not compressed? I'll give you a hint... it's probably never. Image formats have used lossless compression forever, too - Windows 3.1 used Run length encoding on bitmaps, for example. Obviously, GIFs and PNGs are lossless compressed.
There's a difference when you're using RAR/zip though. Lossy compression is pretty sub-optimal if you're compressing anything that has to run.
What? Microsoft is preserving an alternative format
Is this a typo? I'm not sure, since persevering doesn't fit in the sentence. Microsoft is preserving nothing. The article is about Microsoft persevering with alternative standards.
Microsoft pushing formats is almost always a bad thing. The OOXML debacle is evidence of this - MS were pushing a shitty open format purely to compete with legitimate formats being proposed - they had no interest in it becoming a standard, they just wanted to protect Office, and sow confusion. They are bound to be against open formats in spheres like this - the Office dominant position is based upon it being the de facto standard, and other software having poor interoperability with it.
So unless you're being actively targeted by zero day virii (and these tend to be costly, so private person is highly unlikely to be a target), MSSE is probably the best option on the market.
I've run a home computer for about 20 years... I got hit by one virus running win2k back in 2005.
My policy is just to run a local (mostly hardware based) firewall, and not run anything stupid. It works.
I'm not sure why anyone uses antivirus software, especially consumers... it just annoys, and nothing else.
Judging how a company performs by how few projects it axes is laughable. Every company when growing heavily invests internally in everything. Every company when not growing heavily does not, and axes a lot of stuff.
Yes, and I'm paying my taxes to help you achieve that. That's what subsidies are.
I'm personally not anti-green, nor anti-home improvement. However, your solar power in a northerly cloudy country is in my opinion not a good way to spend my money. I'd be much happier funding a similar initiative in the Sahara, because then it'd be a hell of a lot more efficient.
Light bulbs are a very inefficient way to generate heat, compared to central heating. The amount of heat generated per watt, per gramme of CO2, per Pound it costs you is very poor.
There is basically no inefficient way to generate heat. It's just energy. One hundred 10 watt speakers are the same as ten 100 watt lightbulbs are the same as 1 kilowatt heater. The only way you lose energy is if it leaves your home. This is basic stuff.
Heating your home with gas, oil, wood or whatever may be more efficient in some cases, however (I've yet to see proper comparisons). Electricity is electricity is electricity though, and the amount you use is the amount you heat.
Except for maybe anywhere further north. Solar works fine here; it generates significant amounts of power year round for most of the population.
There are plenty of places further north of the UK better suited for solar. It generates a tiny fraction of the UK's energy needs and costs masses in infrastructure and other costs - if it wasn't massively subsidised, it would be completely nonviable.
I suppose you have not noticed all the new diesel and hybrid cars with high MPG ratings on the market, or the very high fuel prices we have.
We had a production car a quarter of a century ago that could do 1000 miles on 10 gallons. Most modern hybrids struggle to get half that, even with their battery help and all that entails.
Because sending email spam costs virtually nothing, I average about 1,000 email spams caught by my filters each day. (Most people don't know how many spams their provider filters out, so you may see 50 in your box, but 500 others were sent and rejected by the mail server.)
I've had the same email for almost 20 years, which I haven't changed, and have used for loads of sites. Local mailserver. I've also got another domain so that anything@xxxx.biz gets forwarded straight to my personal email.
I get about 10 emails a day on average. About 1/2 of them are spam. I have had more in the past, but never excessive*
*save for my botched php loop which actually managed to send me over 20,000 emails in 10 seconds or so.
As a European, I generally agree, especially in terms of household construction, and insulation. These are easy things to do, and pretty easy to regulate when you give planning permission.
However, TCO falls flat on the floor with loads of stuff like lightbulbs, because they fail to take into account the fact basically _no_ energy is wasted when the house is being heated. All the energy goes to heat. All the energy heats your house. The _only_ time an energy inefficient light source is wasting energy is when you are not heating the house. For most of the UK population, that's about 1/4 of the time.
Solar panels are an absolute joke in the UK, they're a middle class government subsidised tax break, and no more. Seriously - the one place you don't want a solar panel is in the UK, it's got about the lowest sunshine hours in the world. I'm actually talking from one of the driest places in England - just over 12 inches of rainfall annually (honestly) - but we still get a lot of cloud.
European cars have led the world in being energy inefficient over the last 20 years or so. We left our 100mpg production cars behind a long time ago.
Are things really cheaper in the US? Broadband & mobile plans seem more. Petrol's cheaper, because it's taxed a hell of a lot less. Apart from that, I don't really know... all I know is that cheese is expensive in Australia. On that note, I depart.
Slashdot groupthinkers [...] overwhelmingly supported charging a fee to send emails to cut down on mass spam when that idea was being thrown around a few years back.
Mods? Why is this insightful?
Seriously... I don't know the conversation the AC is talking about (if it exists), but if any place were against charging a fee to send emails, it would be Slashdot. Who modded this shit up?
I don't understand this mindset at all. I'm far from a hero, but if I end up with nothing to lose, then my instinct would be to fight the people who are putting me in jail with all I have, even if just to spite them.
I see what you've done there - you've equated maturity with not swearing.
You've made a good argument, stunningly well. However, since I swore, and am immature, and have a limited vocabulary, and have no imagination, could you explain in simple steps where I went wrong?
Personally I generally listen to what people say, rather than how they say it. It's a kind of substance over style mindset, I guess.
I guess I should have left "people" with my replacements. My point was that claiming swearing is necessarily unimaginative is false - you can spruce up just about any sentence with a decent word or two.
People who cite lack of vocabulary are often the most limited.
That's not insightful. That's fucking stupid. I regularly go through my entire work day without swearing. Swearing is for cock juggling thundercunts with no imagination or shitty command of the language.
FTFY
I'll leave it up to you to decide whether I have no imagination or poor command of the language.
Anyone who thinks less of me because I buy a gadget they don't like is kindly invited to blow the nearest chimp.
I personally think less of you because you use proprietary software. I admire people who avoid closed source software. Sorry, they're fighting the fight.
If you can't see the problem with yourself funding closed systems, you are part of the problem.
I'm part of the problem, too, because I like games. At least I know I am.
The problem is that those jails serves a function. When you enforce very strict rules how somethings behave or look that it is decreases the learnability factor and that users will perceive it as easier to use. Even the "elegance" (look at the aesthetic usability effects) has a role.
No, the jails do not serve a function. Standards serve a function. The entire x86 revolution was based upon standards, not jails. It was based upon anyone being able to replicate the standards.
You can argue that those "jails" aren't needed but unfortunately a lot of developers (and FOSS developers are even worse) couldn't design a good usable interface when somebody doesn't hold hands. Give them too much freedom and you will get things like The Gimp.
Have you ever used gimp? It's not called "The Gimp", by the way. What exactly do you hate about the interface now?
It's a catch 22. It is the same reason why I see a big difference in quality between what is available on my android smartphone (where you can do much more what you want) and on the iPad. I'm not convinced that it is because iOS developers are so much more talented.
It's not a catch 22. You're perfectly happy with Apple vetting applications. Some people, like me, prefer to decide for myself.
The OP is not necessarily just cynical. Your opinion seems to be you should always try to help, whatever the outcome. In many cases trying to help your neighbour to improve can be harmful, in one way or another. Failure to recognise shortcomings in your own skills, and trying to help someone who knows what they're doing makes the "helpful" person the problem.
I'm not saying this is the situation here, but people always trying to help when they've no idea what is going on is beyond irritating.
This is a company that has made hundreds of millions of dollars by preying on children and teenagers selling them products and services that have little value and are grossly over-priced.
And you are objecting to the company stopping doing this for what reason? Do you want the company to continue with these practices?
The trouble with asking a question about eugenics is this statement : If your parents had access to the technology to filter out the gene you are looking to filter out, and decided to, you would not be alive today.
Most people stop and think about it at that point.
Dents and scratches cause rust, which in modern cars undermines the structural integrity of the car after a while. Polishing them off does not help entirely, and is a hassle anyway. Unless you replace your car every few years, this is a major issue.
I own a Honda Integra Type R DC2 I bought second hand for £2500. It's nearly 15 years old. I'm relatively proud of it, I think it's a great car, and I do not want small dents and scratches. I don't believe everything the marketing department told me, or I'd have a newer Integra.
I do leave it outside quite a lot - that does not give people the right to dent or scratch it.
It is more than pretty crazy - it's totally insane.
We've got a system of mandatory car insurance in the UK - but there are laws about perverting the course of justice that hit much much bigger penalties.
If you have an accident with another car or person, you're legally required to report it to the police - no one does, though, in minor incidents. People just swap insurance details, or offer to pay directly for damage if in the wrong (I've done this in the past to avoid screwing up no claims bonus, even if the accident was 50/50) and let the companies work it out. You can contest it later. The police do not want to be involved with minor shunts.
Getting the police involved is generally bad for you, the insurance companies, and the police. Obviously, sometimes it is necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it comes from the fact that just about _everything_ uses compression now, by default. When was the last time you watched a video that was not compressed? I'll give you a hint... it's probably never. Image formats have used lossless compression forever, too - Windows 3.1 used Run length encoding on bitmaps, for example. Obviously, GIFs and PNGs are lossless compressed.
There's a difference when you're using RAR/zip though. Lossy compression is pretty sub-optimal if you're compressing anything that has to run.
What? Microsoft is preserving an alternative format
Is this a typo? I'm not sure, since persevering doesn't fit in the sentence. Microsoft is preserving nothing. The article is about Microsoft persevering with alternative standards.
Microsoft pushing formats is almost always a bad thing. The OOXML debacle is evidence of this - MS were pushing a shitty open format purely to compete with legitimate formats being proposed - they had no interest in it becoming a standard, they just wanted to protect Office, and sow confusion. They are bound to be against open formats in spheres like this - the Office dominant position is based upon it being the de facto standard, and other software having poor interoperability with it.
So unless you're being actively targeted by zero day virii (and these tend to be costly, so private person is highly unlikely to be a target), MSSE is probably the best option on the market.
I've run a home computer for about 20 years... I got hit by one virus running win2k back in 2005.
My policy is just to run a local (mostly hardware based) firewall, and not run anything stupid. It works.
I'm not sure why anyone uses antivirus software, especially consumers... it just annoys, and nothing else.
Judging how a company performs by how few projects it axes is laughable. Every company when growing heavily invests internally in everything. Every company when not growing heavily does not, and axes a lot of stuff.
This is simple stuff.
Yes, and I'm paying my taxes to help you achieve that. That's what subsidies are.
I'm personally not anti-green, nor anti-home improvement. However, your solar power in a northerly cloudy country is in my opinion not a good way to spend my money. I'd be much happier funding a similar initiative in the Sahara, because then it'd be a hell of a lot more efficient.
ps. I'm only just south of you - Woodbridge.
Light bulbs are a very inefficient way to generate heat, compared to central heating. The amount of heat generated per watt, per gramme of CO2, per Pound it costs you is very poor.
There is basically no inefficient way to generate heat. It's just energy. One hundred 10 watt speakers are the same as ten 100 watt lightbulbs are the same as 1 kilowatt heater. The only way you lose energy is if it leaves your home. This is basic stuff.
Heating your home with gas, oil, wood or whatever may be more efficient in some cases, however (I've yet to see proper comparisons). Electricity is electricity is electricity though, and the amount you use is the amount you heat.
Except for maybe anywhere further north. Solar works fine here; it generates significant amounts of power year round for most of the population.
There are plenty of places further north of the UK better suited for solar. It generates a tiny fraction of the UK's energy needs and costs masses in infrastructure and other costs - if it wasn't massively subsidised, it would be completely nonviable.
I suppose you have not noticed all the new diesel and hybrid cars with high MPG ratings on the market, or the very high fuel prices we have.
We had a production car a quarter of a century ago that could do 1000 miles on 10 gallons. Most modern hybrids struggle to get half that, even with their battery help and all that entails.
Because sending email spam costs virtually nothing, I average about 1,000 email spams caught by my filters each day. (Most people don't know how many spams their provider filters out, so you may see 50 in your box, but 500 others were sent and rejected by the mail server.)
I've had the same email for almost 20 years, which I haven't changed, and have used for loads of sites. Local mailserver. I've also got another domain so that anything@xxxx.biz gets forwarded straight to my personal email.
I get about 10 emails a day on average. About 1/2 of them are spam. I have had more in the past, but never excessive*
*save for my botched php loop which actually managed to send me over 20,000 emails in 10 seconds or so.
Good luck trying to collect any of that money.
That or block 99% of the ISPs that aren't going to pay. If you want someone else to control your email more, that's your prerogative. I don't.
As a European, I generally agree, especially in terms of household construction, and insulation. These are easy things to do, and pretty easy to regulate when you give planning permission.
However, TCO falls flat on the floor with loads of stuff like lightbulbs, because they fail to take into account the fact basically _no_ energy is wasted when the house is being heated. All the energy goes to heat. All the energy heats your house. The _only_ time an energy inefficient light source is wasting energy is when you are not heating the house. For most of the UK population, that's about 1/4 of the time.
Solar panels are an absolute joke in the UK, they're a middle class government subsidised tax break, and no more. Seriously - the one place you don't want a solar panel is in the UK, it's got about the lowest sunshine hours in the world. I'm actually talking from one of the driest places in England - just over 12 inches of rainfall annually (honestly) - but we still get a lot of cloud.
European cars have led the world in being energy inefficient over the last 20 years or so. We left our 100mpg production cars behind a long time ago.
Are things really cheaper in the US? Broadband & mobile plans seem more. Petrol's cheaper, because it's taxed a hell of a lot less. Apart from that, I don't really know... all I know is that cheese is expensive in Australia. On that note, I depart.
Slashdot groupthinkers [...] overwhelmingly supported charging a fee to send emails to cut down on mass spam when that idea was being thrown around a few years back.
Mods? Why is this insightful?
Seriously... I don't know the conversation the AC is talking about (if it exists), but if any place were against charging a fee to send emails, it would be Slashdot. Who modded this shit up?
I don't understand this mindset at all. I'm far from a hero, but if I end up with nothing to lose, then my instinct would be to fight the people who are putting me in jail with all I have, even if just to spite them.
I see what you've done there - you've equated maturity with not swearing.
You've made a good argument, stunningly well. However, since I swore, and am immature, and have a limited vocabulary, and have no imagination, could you explain in simple steps where I went wrong?
Personally I generally listen to what people say, rather than how they say it. It's a kind of substance over style mindset, I guess.
I guess I should have left "people" with my replacements. My point was that claiming swearing is necessarily unimaginative is false - you can spruce up just about any sentence with a decent word or two.
People who cite lack of vocabulary are often the most limited.
That's not insightful. That's fucking stupid. I regularly go through my entire work day without swearing. Swearing is for cock juggling thundercunts with no imagination or shitty command of the language.
FTFY
I'll leave it up to you to decide whether I have no imagination or poor command of the language.
No, it has to do with the fact you and your kids have bought into the Apple closed system. Good luck with that.
Best of a bad world - buy something with at least open standards, that you can use as you like. Don't worry about the company.
Anyone who thinks less of me because I buy a gadget they don't like is kindly invited to blow the nearest chimp.
I personally think less of you because you use proprietary software. I admire people who avoid closed source software. Sorry, they're fighting the fight.
If you can't see the problem with yourself funding closed systems, you are part of the problem.
I'm part of the problem, too, because I like games. At least I know I am.
The problem is that those jails serves a function. When you enforce very strict rules how somethings behave or look that it is decreases the learnability factor and that users will perceive it as easier to use. Even the "elegance" (look at the aesthetic usability effects) has a role.
No, the jails do not serve a function. Standards serve a function. The entire x86 revolution was based upon standards, not jails. It was based upon anyone being able to replicate the standards.
You can argue that those "jails" aren't needed but unfortunately a lot of developers (and FOSS developers are even worse) couldn't design a good usable interface when somebody doesn't hold hands. Give them too much freedom and you will get things like The Gimp.
Have you ever used gimp? It's not called "The Gimp", by the way. What exactly do you hate about the interface now?
It's a catch 22. It is the same reason why I see a big difference in quality between what is available on my android smartphone (where you can do much more what you want) and on the iPad. I'm not convinced that it is because iOS developers are so much more talented.
It's not a catch 22. You're perfectly happy with Apple vetting applications. Some people, like me, prefer to decide for myself.
The Citroen AX 1.4 diesel could get 100mpg, a car that is now over 1/4 a century old. One was driven from Dover to Barcelona on 10 gallons of Diesel.
The OP is not necessarily just cynical. Your opinion seems to be you should always try to help, whatever the outcome. In many cases trying to help your neighbour to improve can be harmful, in one way or another. Failure to recognise shortcomings in your own skills, and trying to help someone who knows what they're doing makes the "helpful" person the problem.
I'm not saying this is the situation here, but people always trying to help when they've no idea what is going on is beyond irritating.
This is a company that has made hundreds of millions of dollars by preying on children and teenagers selling them products and services that have little value and are grossly over-priced.
And you are objecting to the company stopping doing this for what reason? Do you want the company to continue with these practices?
The trouble with asking a question about eugenics is this statement : If your parents had access to the technology to filter out the gene you are looking to filter out, and decided to, you would not be alive today.
Most people stop and think about it at that point.
I agree. The 16 year old girl who has sex with her 15 year old boyfriend should be sterilized, and part of her brain should be destroyed.
Dents and scratches cause rust, which in modern cars undermines the structural integrity of the car after a while. Polishing them off does not help entirely, and is a hassle anyway. Unless you replace your car every few years, this is a major issue.
I own a Honda Integra Type R DC2 I bought second hand for £2500. It's nearly 15 years old. I'm relatively proud of it, I think it's a great car, and I do not want small dents and scratches. I don't believe everything the marketing department told me, or I'd have a newer Integra.
I do leave it outside quite a lot - that does not give people the right to dent or scratch it.
It is more than pretty crazy - it's totally insane.
We've got a system of mandatory car insurance in the UK - but there are laws about perverting the course of justice that hit much much bigger penalties.
If you have an accident with another car or person, you're legally required to report it to the police - no one does, though, in minor incidents. People just swap insurance details, or offer to pay directly for damage if in the wrong (I've done this in the past to avoid screwing up no claims bonus, even if the accident was 50/50) and let the companies work it out. You can contest it later. The police do not want to be involved with minor shunts.
Getting the police involved is generally bad for you, the insurance companies, and the police. Obviously, sometimes it is necessary.