Well, slow Windows machines I fix for friends usually do have toolbars and other useless, memory-eating TSRs loaded at startup, but I've seen the same thing in my own machines, and I don't install that stuff, so I can't think of anything but the registry that would be to blame.
I found that short abstract interesting, but reading it I think I know one reason why science reporting sucks -- most reporters can't read at that level. Hell, most reporters would have trouble with the average Wikipedia post about any facet of science, let alone a PhD level paper.
Mine's not an iPhone or Droid, but I can still text, email, and get on the internet, and its battery is pretty small. Maybe Motorola has all the good engineers? Too bad the software on it sucks, though.
You're right, and I previewed it! I'd noticed in others' comments and thought they were being hasty, but after seeing this comment, I think there may be a new slashbug. The last sentence should read "Even if he is dumb as a post."
Although I agree that this is a pointless "innovation", I can see where you might do it in 120 lines of code, and you hinted at how yourself -- "120 lines of high level coding, from some crazy encapsulated api." I once wrote a program to reboot a DOS machine that took all of six bytes. Load a register with a value, call an interrupt. That was the entire program. All I needed to write it was Debug, didn't even need a compiler. Hell, I wrote a full featured word processor on a machine with only 16k of memory back then. So I'm pretty sure it's doable.
Operating systems with all the assorted application software are complex, and any number of things can go wrong.
Only if your OS is poorly designed and written. The problem with Windows slowing down is its registry, which grows over time and consumes more and more memory. Other OSes don't have that problem. Since moving to Linux, I've never had a machine slow down with time, whereas XP and 98 needed reinstalls every year or so. W7 is an improvement, I've had my notebook for a year and it's only slowing slightly. When it gets annoyingly slow I'll install kubuntu on it.
The ONLY reason it's not more wide spread is it doesn't come pre-installed. Mind you it's a lot easier to install than Windows also.
Well, that's a big reason but hardly the only reason. Other reasons are that nobody but us nerds have even heard about it, let alone have any clue how many features Windows lacks, how it's more tolerant of hardware faults, how it doesn't have a growing registry to slow it down, how it doesn't need AV, etc. If they have herd of it, they've heard the FUD, like you have to use the command line, how you have to be a genius to use it, how it has no software, how there are no drivers, and a hundred other Redmond-generated lies. Apple and MS have multi-million dollar ad campaigns, Linux doesn't.
As to installation, installing Windows isn't hard, it just takes a hell of a lot longer with a hell of a lot more steps.
Have you visited the firehose lately? If not, you have as much right to bitch about what gets posted as someone not registered to vote has about who got elected President. And if so, you don't have to click on the link if you're not interested.
Congrats on the +5, I'd have modded you offtopic. Posts like yours are what I fond distasteful about slashdot; if there are more than 100 comments I don't bother, because it's all bad jokes and people bitching about how they don't like the subject they're commenting in.
Bitching about slashbugs, "bad editing", what stories get posted, etc, are for your journal, not as an offtopic comment.
Exogenesis, the hypothesis that all life on Earth originally comes from somewhere else, is legitimate.
Well, the hypothesis that the Area 51 greys are our decendants from ten million years in the future who came back in time is legit, too, but it's even more unlikely.
First, we have never found evidence of any life at all anywhere but here. Second, the odds of one of these creature's eggs, spores, or whatever landing on a planet that already harbors life is pretty damned remote, considering how empty space is and how far apart everything is. Do you know how long it would take to get to Alpha Proxima at non-relativistic speeds? Voyager has been travelling 36 years and it's not even outside out own solar system yet; it would take millions of years for a free-floating object to get here from our closest star if it came straight at it.
Legitimate, but very highly unlikely to be correct.
The guy you quoted is wrong. Unfold a 30 pack beer box and it's a very small desk.; a desk is a little less than two meters wide and a little more than a meter the other way. And a can of Heinie is the same size and shape as a can of Bud; liquid containers here actually use metric measurements, although there's a conversiion printed on the label.
No matter how much I like my Linux Desktop, I don't want to be responsible for bringing non-tech-savvy people along. The rest of the family is fully capable of troubleshooting basic windows problems, more or less.
But after the machine is set up, what problems are going to crop up in Linux? Most Windows problems I fix for friends involve nothing more than uninstalling crap like toolbars and removing one of two or more AV programs that are fighting amongst themselves, and flaky hardware (Windows is NOT forgiving of flaky hardware; it will crash repeatedly while Linux churns happily along until the hardware fails completely).
Once in a while someone will have an old machine that has a registry too trashed to work with, if they don't have install disks I'll put kubuntu on them, and their problems disappear until a piece of hardware fails.
...the entire cast and crew *volunteered* on the project
Yes, the same as Star Wreck (which I whould have named "Start Wreck"). Still, it would have taken Hollywood fifty million to film. BTW, that's one of my favorite movies and I can't wait to see the Pratchett film, if it's as funny as Pratchett's books it will be even better than Star Wreck.
incredibly low budgets that mislead a lot of people to think that real filmmaking is easy and cheap, and anyone can do it.
Well, writing is easy and cheap, but few do it and fewer do it well. Same as music and film and painting; you need talent to produce something good.
Not really... If I don't need to carry around a USB charger for my phone and a laptop charger, that's great value for me.
If your phone won't stay charged for a whole day, that's a design flaw in the phone. My phone holds a charge for three or four days of moderate use, two or three with heavy use. I plug it in at night and don't have to worry about finding a charger.
Love of Windows??? I think you're on the wrong site, buddy. Any nerd who has used both MS products and almost anybody else's hates MS's apps and OSes.
Why in the hell would you love an OS that has nothing going for it except shiny? Windows is NOT a nerd OS; Windows is your grandma's OS and the jock down the street's OS. Nerd gamers put up with it because they have to. Nerds who aren't gamers almost universally hate it.
Sorry to break it to you, but if the only OS you're familiar with is Windows, you're probably not a nerd.
c'mon, i'm just trying to be part of the slashdot community. why give me a hard time?
You might try using your shift key so you look less like a hipster trying to be a nerd nerd if you want to fit in (I notice you don't mind the shift key to make a question mark... LAME!). This is a nerd site, not a hipster site. Get with the program, dude. Read a book once in a while.
And don't give me that e.e. cummings shit, he wrote poetry. His prose used caps and punctuation.
He might have been modded troll because he's too gopddamned lazy (or perhaps ignorant) to use his shift key. I can see the logic of modding someone who writes unreadable prose "troll", although "overrated" would be better.
Note to aliterates, illiterates, those who can't do homophones or know how to use an apostrophe: All your comments are overrated and I will mod them as such, and so will many other literates who chafe at reading uneducated tripe.
This used to be a place where educated, intelligent people come. Looking like a hipster or a jock IS a troll on a nerd site; we're nerds, not jocks and hipsters. For instance, if your honest opinion is that science is useless, you're automatically a troll here, just as an honest opinion that there is no God on a Christian site is a troll, Medicare should die on an AARP site is a troll, and an opinion that sports are stupid on a jock site is a troll.
So he and everybody else can take their hip "txtspk" and go somewhere else; they're not welcome. They are trolls. They need to go away and stop bothering those of us who read books once in a while.
I agree, its only value is the "coolness" factor (which only matters to those under 30). It won't be a real benefit unless it gets good enough that you can charge your phone without taking it out of your pocket. Plugging it in is no bigger a deal than laying it on a charging pad. If I could have a wireless charger that would charge it from across my living room, that would be great; I'd buy one. But to have to put it on a mat, using more electricity than if I plugged it in? No thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, slow Windows machines I fix for friends usually do have toolbars and other useless, memory-eating TSRs loaded at startup, but I've seen the same thing in my own machines, and I don't install that stuff, so I can't think of anything but the registry that would be to blame.
I found that short abstract interesting, but reading it I think I know one reason why science reporting sucks -- most reporters can't read at that level. Hell, most reporters would have trouble with the average Wikipedia post about any facet of science, let alone a PhD level paper.
I think the charging mat will have similar problems when it ages. Nothing lasts forever.
rotating color wheel front on the projector similar to DLP projectors today
That was one tech they investigated when trying to invent the color TV back in the 1940s.
Mine's not an iPhone or Droid, but I can still text, email, and get on the internet, and its battery is pretty small. Maybe Motorola has all the good engineers? Too bad the software on it sucks, though.
it surprises me that my earlier comment was not immediately recognized as sarcasm.
You forgot the <Bazinga!> tag...
You're right, and I previewed it! I'd noticed in others' comments and thought they were being hasty, but after seeing this comment, I think there may be a new slashbug. The last sentence should read "Even if he is dumb as a post."
No good as a water filter - no matter how much you pour in it just vanishes
My god, someone invented Thiotimoline!!
Although I agree that this is a pointless "innovation", I can see where you might do it in 120 lines of code, and you hinted at how yourself -- "120 lines of high level coding, from some crazy encapsulated api." I once wrote a program to reboot a DOS machine that took all of six bytes. Load a register with a value, call an interrupt. That was the entire program. All I needed to write it was Debug, didn't even need a compiler. Hell, I wrote a full featured word processor on a machine with only 16k of memory back then. So I'm pretty sure it's doable.
Operating systems with all the assorted application software are complex, and any number of things can go wrong.
Only if your OS is poorly designed and written. The problem with Windows slowing down is its registry, which grows over time and consumes more and more memory. Other OSes don't have that problem. Since moving to Linux, I've never had a machine slow down with time, whereas XP and 98 needed reinstalls every year or so. W7 is an improvement, I've had my notebook for a year and it's only slowing slightly. When it gets annoyingly slow I'll install kubuntu on it.
The ONLY reason it's not more wide spread is it doesn't come pre-installed. Mind you it's a lot easier to install than Windows also.
Well, that's a big reason but hardly the only reason. Other reasons are that nobody but us nerds have even heard about it, let alone have any clue how many features Windows lacks, how it's more tolerant of hardware faults, how it doesn't have a growing registry to slow it down, how it doesn't need AV, etc. If they have herd of it, they've heard the FUD, like you have to use the command line, how you have to be a genius to use it, how it has no software, how there are no drivers, and a hundred other Redmond-generated lies. Apple and MS have multi-million dollar ad campaigns, Linux doesn't.
As to installation, installing Windows isn't hard, it just takes a hell of a lot longer with a hell of a lot more steps.
Have you visited the firehose lately? If not, you have as much right to bitch about what gets posted as someone not registered to vote has about who got elected President. And if so, you don't have to click on the link if you're not interested.
Congrats on the +5, I'd have modded you offtopic. Posts like yours are what I fond distasteful about slashdot; if there are more than 100 comments I don't bother, because it's all bad jokes and people bitching about how they don't like the subject they're commenting in.
Bitching about slashbugs, "bad editing", what stories get posted, etc, are for your journal, not as an offtopic comment.
Exogenesis, the hypothesis that all life on Earth originally comes from somewhere else, is legitimate.
Well, the hypothesis that the Area 51 greys are our decendants from ten million years in the future who came back in time is legit, too, but it's even more unlikely.
First, we have never found evidence of any life at all anywhere but here. Second, the odds of one of these creature's eggs, spores, or whatever landing on a planet that already harbors life is pretty damned remote, considering how empty space is and how far apart everything is. Do you know how long it would take to get to Alpha Proxima at non-relativistic speeds? Voyager has been travelling 36 years and it's not even outside out own solar system yet; it would take millions of years for a free-floating object to get here from our closest star if it came straight at it.
Legitimate, but very highly unlikely to be correct.
The guy you quoted is wrong. Unfold a 30 pack beer box and it's a very small desk.; a desk is a little less than two meters wide and a little more than a meter the other way. And a can of Heinie is the same size and shape as a can of Bud; liquid containers here actually use metric measurements, although there's a conversiion printed on the label.
Calling someone an idiot is flamebait. Even if is dumb as a post.
No matter how much I like my Linux Desktop, I don't want to be responsible for bringing non-tech-savvy people along. The rest of the family is fully capable of troubleshooting basic windows problems, more or less.
But after the machine is set up, what problems are going to crop up in Linux? Most Windows problems I fix for friends involve nothing more than uninstalling crap like toolbars and removing one of two or more AV programs that are fighting amongst themselves, and flaky hardware (Windows is NOT forgiving of flaky hardware; it will crash repeatedly while Linux churns happily along until the hardware fails completely).
Once in a while someone will have an old machine that has a registry too trashed to work with, if they don't have install disks I'll put kubuntu on them, and their problems disappear until a piece of hardware fails.
...the entire cast and crew *volunteered* on the project
Yes, the same as Star Wreck (which I whould have named "Start Wreck"). Still, it would have taken Hollywood fifty million to film. BTW, that's one of my favorite movies and I can't wait to see the Pratchett film, if it's as funny as Pratchett's books it will be even better than Star Wreck.
incredibly low budgets that mislead a lot of people to think that real filmmaking is easy and cheap, and anyone can do it.
Well, writing is easy and cheap, but few do it and fewer do it well. Same as music and film and painting; you need talent to produce something good.
"Arms" meant weapons, and still does. "Armed and dangerous."
Wireless charging means that accessories can be made that work with any device.
USB
Plugging in cables is WAY more of a hassle than just sliding the phone into slot, or setting it on a pad
If you have Parkinson's or DTs maybe.
The connectors also have a tendency to break.
?? I've never seen a broken connector, and I got my first cell phone about 15 years ago. I guess some companies produce some really cheap crap.
Not really... If I don't need to carry around a USB charger for my phone and a laptop charger, that's great value for me.
If your phone won't stay charged for a whole day, that's a design flaw in the phone. My phone holds a charge for three or four days of moderate use, two or three with heavy use. I plug it in at night and don't have to worry about finding a charger.
If nothing else, that's a whole host of web-crawling to link people to IP's, accounts.
IPs have accounts????
Love of Windows??? I think you're on the wrong site, buddy. Any nerd who has used both MS products and almost anybody else's hates MS's apps and OSes.
Why in the hell would you love an OS that has nothing going for it except shiny? Windows is NOT a nerd OS; Windows is your grandma's OS and the jock down the street's OS. Nerd gamers put up with it because they have to. Nerds who aren't gamers almost universally hate it.
Sorry to break it to you, but if the only OS you're familiar with is Windows, you're probably not a nerd.
c'mon, i'm just trying to be part of the slashdot community. why give me a hard time?
You might try using your shift key so you look less like a hipster trying to be a nerd nerd if you want to fit in (I notice you don't mind the shift key to make a question mark... LAME!). This is a nerd site, not a hipster site. Get with the program, dude. Read a book once in a while.
And don't give me that e.e. cummings shit, he wrote poetry. His prose used caps and punctuation.
He might have been modded troll because he's too gopddamned lazy (or perhaps ignorant) to use his shift key. I can see the logic of modding someone who writes unreadable prose "troll", although "overrated" would be better.
Note to aliterates, illiterates, those who can't do homophones or know how to use an apostrophe: All your comments are overrated and I will mod them as such, and so will many other literates who chafe at reading uneducated tripe.
This used to be a place where educated, intelligent people come. Looking like a hipster or a jock IS a troll on a nerd site; we're nerds, not jocks and hipsters. For instance, if your honest opinion is that science is useless, you're automatically a troll here, just as an honest opinion that there is no God on a Christian site is a troll, Medicare should die on an AARP site is a troll, and an opinion that sports are stupid on a jock site is a troll.
So he and everybody else can take their hip "txtspk" and go somewhere else; they're not welcome. They are trolls. They need to go away and stop bothering those of us who read books once in a while.
I agree, its only value is the "coolness" factor (which only matters to those under 30). It won't be a real benefit unless it gets good enough that you can charge your phone without taking it out of your pocket. Plugging it in is no bigger a deal than laying it on a charging pad. If I could have a wireless charger that would charge it from across my living room, that would be great; I'd buy one. But to have to put it on a mat, using more electricity than if I plugged it in? No thanks.