Most rapists, in particular, seek to exert power and control over their victim. The best way to assure success is to target the most vulnerable, because rapists are cowardly and are afraid of failing to obtain that control and power (often they lack power and control in other aspects of their life and are loathe to face that failure when they don't have to).
Rapes are virtually unheard of in public places--they happen at night or in secluded places--the chance of an innocent bystander being caught in crossfire is basically nil in those cases.
You watch too much TV. Most rapists rape you in your own home, in your own bed. Or in otherwise familiar surroundings. They usually know you, and are often related to you.
Rapists don't tend to be gun enthusiasts
Because they don't meet the profile of people who like to exert power and control? I would expect them to be at least as gun-enthusiastic as the general public, if not more so.
If a potential victim were to pull a gun in the vast majority of cases they would flee, not fire back
I'd love to see the study on that.
And given that most rapists are familiar figures, I doubt most potential victims are going to be
the studies cited about an increase in violent rapes and assults in Australia is not really surprising at all knowing this
I see that as some fraction of lethal gun violence simply translating to less-lethal violence. Not as some sort of general 'rise in violence' as a result of the guns being removed.
The most visible, but most rare as well, victims of gun violence are those of the emotionally disturbed, generally suicidal deviants.
I agree with this and everything you said afterwards.
Not a causal relationship, but if its legal, allowing you to legally carry a gun, then its legal for them to carry them too, and that increases the odds they will carry.
Legal to carry is completely orthogonal to plenty of practice, because you don't practice with it while you're wandering around town.
Its difficult to get plenty of practice with banned equipment.
Further, odds are good he's already a felon, and is already barred from carry, if not ownership.
I'd hardly count on only being raped by previously convicted serial rapists.
If he has a gun, and I have no gun, then he's definitely got the edge.
You missed my point. The "edge" I was referring to was in a shootout, if one of you don't have a gun, there is no shootout. As the scenario being evaluated is not one of attempted / pre-meditated murder, there is unlikely to be a shootout unless you pull a gun out and start one.
I concede readily that in a murder scenario, having any gun at all would be a major benefit. But that's not the scenario.
Meanwhile, preventing or reducing attacks is everyone's responsibility, and we are collectively falling down on the job.
Ah well then we should be solving our poverty and education problems, fixing our safety nets, funding rehabilitation centers, getting involved with the community.
More guns isn't going to make society any better, just more lethal.
Besides, the 2nd amendment was written to prevent the government from oppressing its citizens. It wasn't to enable citizens to shoot at felons.
It increases the odds he's also carrying a gun. It increases the odds he's had plenty of practice with it, since its legal for him to carry it around.
It increases the odds of a shootout. It increases the odds you get shot. (Maybe he's a better shot than you. Maybe he approaches you with it drawn while yours is still holstered. Not much of an edge for you.
It increases the odds an innocent bystander gets short. It increases the odds of an accidental discharge. It increases the odds someone irresponsible ends up with a gun in their hands. It increases the odds someone irresponsible ends up with -your- gun in their hands.
I'm Not saying I wouldn't want to have a gun in my hands if I were attacked, but its wrong to oversimplify it so that is the only scenario we look at.
Lets just clear something up right now, gun bans have NEVER worked and will NEVER work because of one simple flaw in the logic. you see criminals? DON'T FOLLOW LAWS which is why they are called criminals, fucking duh!
Same logic dictates that all regulation is ineffective because the people who would ignore them... would ignore them. And yet regulation is demonstrably effective in many many cases. We have bans on drinking and driving, and it's made a difference. Drunk drivers still drive drunk, but that's hardly a rationale for repealing the law.
A ban on guns would be similarly effective because the "criminals with the guns" could be arrested and dealt with when they are caught with a banned gun. The police don't have to wait until you rob a liquor store and start shooting at people. They can arrest you walking into the liquor store with your banned gun before you've done anything else. A witness can call it in, it can be caught at various checkpoints at airports etc. People could be arrested dealing the banned guns, transporting them, etc.
To pretend otherwise is just willful blindness to reality.
Whether a given gun ban is appropriate in the united states especially given the unique constitutional provision there is a separate and legitimate debate, but pretending a ban on guns can't have any positive effect is counter productive to any real conversation.
And to address the the article itself, I don't think regulating 3D printers makes any sense at all. We are a generation away from them being as ubiquitous as microwaves and laser printers. Future kindergarteners will be printing their parents mothers day projects instead of baking clay.
Not everyone needs to live on what they are paid, high minimum wages ignore this fact.
And advocates of no minimum wage ignores the fact that MILLIONS of people ARE living on those jobs in the real actual world.
Again a fiscal, not social, issue.
Depends which government provided social service one looks at. Medicare, Unemployment, Welfare... these are fiscal issues yes, but also social issues.
Gay marriage is a pretty pure social issue though, and Tea Party folks aren't lining up to support it, so your argument that tea partiers are socially liberal comes through pretty thin.
Private groups have proven they can do a far better job of providing social services than the government.
No, they haven't. That's a very controversial claim you've just made. That you can state it as if it was a settled fact is just silly.
Corruption is the base of that more than anything else.
Corruption is how it got past the regulations. Regulations that many libertarians argue shouldn't exist in the first place. Eliminating the corruption won't solve the problem if you eliminate it by eliminating the regulations too.
It seems we are far less naive than you.
I sometimes wish libertarians could have the world they wish for. As long as I don't have to live in it. They could use the wake up call.
The biggest problem with the Chromebook is it's got a tiny 12" screen. At that size, I'd rather just use a tablet. For doing any actual work, a 15" screen is pretty much the minimum.
I'm not convinced its the screen. The 13" Macbook Pro and other high end windows ultra portables are perfectly good laptops. Sure they costs 4-5x times as much... and that hints at the real issue... its not screen size its just that the chromebook is not just small but small and crappy.
Netflix should consider a bit torrent model. Serving pieces of movies from viewers who are already watching would reduce the strain on central servers.
Given that for the most part netflix's objective is for the "central servers" to be situated in your local ISPs data center, netflix has already done one better.
For someone that is makeing the above claim, you sure do have an in-depth knowledge about these programs you might only get buy actually watching/following them.
I think the irony here is that seems that most people who watch and follow the programs don't know most of that stuff.
I came here to say that too. That's just plain ridiculous. No average normal consumer checks what Stallman's opinion on something was and then decides not to buy something.
But its not entirely implausible that users are deciding against Chromebooks for some of the same reasons as Stallman. I mean, I wouldn't buy a chromebook for many of reasons Stallman railed on them, but until I looked it up today in response to this article I didn't actually know that he'd gone on the record about chromebooks at all.
Well, admittedly, I don't care about the reality shows.
"admittedly" you don't care? I'd not just admit it, I'd proudly proclaim that they are worthless trash and a complete waste of time that just leaves you dumber for watching them.:)
But since there are laws about how you have to handle contests and the like...
If they were legitimate contests they might actually be more watchable. But if you read the fine print...
Half the time there's stuff that often amounts to the equivalent of "The producers reserve the right to override viewer votes whenever they want, because they're more interested in finding conflict and drama than talent."
Reality shows are a farce.
Half the time there's stuff about scenes being "re-enacted" based on something actually happened.
Participant release forms often include terms to consent to having personal, embarrassing, information disclosed. That information may be factual or fictionalized.... ie; if the producers want to give you an embarrassing and untrue "backstory" about you, they can and will.
There was a recent incident where an Obama speech pre-empted a few reality shows so there was a disclaimer that "although the show was not broadcast in its entirety in some markets, it has not affected the result."
Yeah. That's credible. A whole state missed 20 minutes of the show; but that didn't affect anything.
I presume that's because voters don't really matter anyway and we just pull numbers out of our ass anyway.
Aside from the fact that you assume anyone that is a proponent of the 2nd Amendment is too incompetent to evaluate and safely utilize this technology,
No. He said "gun nut" that's a much smaller subset than "anyone that is a proponent of the 2nd Amendment".
Its like the NRA. They are proponents of the 2nd amendment, but their leadership isn't merely gun nuts, they are just plain nuts. (Seriously, the coverage their convention got literally blew my mind. Their guest speaker list was a who's who of political dingbats. Sarah Palin, Glen Beck...
The gun enthusiasts I know would be embarrassed to be at an event where they were speaking. And for good reason... Palin was off in lala land talking about Big Gulps and Tobacco... subjects near and dear to any 2nd Amendment issue, right? And Glen Beck engaged in his usual apoplectics over the world coming to an end... Barack Obama and the doom of all mankind...it all just brought him to tears... again.
Because increased background checks would be the doom of all mankind?
They might be Ineffective, they might be unnecessary... I don't know. But rational people could have a conversation about it. These people aren't rational.
If I wanted to scan screens worth of colored squares to find things, I'd put everything on the desktop as an icon. I don't because there is no hierarchical structure to it.
Have you used windows 8? Do you have any idea what you are talking about? These are screenshots of the Start Screen All Apps view:
The "hierarchical structure" has been flattened a bit, but its all there, organized just as it has always been organized. You've got your top level stuff, your start menu folders, its all still there.
Those metrics captured habits of only those users who, for one reason or another, failed to disable reporting of those metrics.
As far as I know, I don't think sending MS those metrics are something that are on by default. I've certainly never disabled sending them myself, but I doubt I was sending them in the first place. So I'm honestly not sure where they got them.
Whether they partnered with some big enterprises? or did it in house with their own users? (Although I can't beleive they'd only be using internal data.)
Its an interesting question, where they got the data. I don't think your assumption that it only captured people to clueless to opt out though.... and that drags us into a completely different discussion, about "what is good?"
Fair enough:) But the start menu is a hierarchical menu system from Windows 95 that's just had things bolted onto it since then. It was overwrought and it definitely needed a rethink.
Think about it, who are the people you hate the most, they are the ones that you loved and have hurt you.
The the only people I've hated were bullies. I didn't ever love them.
In particular sense indifference can be thought of as the opposite of both.
Yes, and the opposite of heavy isn't light its medium, and the opposite of light isn't dark its twilight. The opposite of fast isn't slow its moderate. The opposite of smart isn't dumb its its average.
Give me a break.
I.e. strong emotion vs weak emotion.
Well, see there's the problem. According to your line of reasoning, strong and weak emotions aren't opposites at all. So love and indifference aren't opposites at all.
You see because by this line of reasoning the opposite of something in any way remarkable of characteristic is something that is wholly unremarkable. Thus strong is of remarkable strength, while weak is a remarkable lack of strength... and the opposite of both would be some unremarkable middle range of strength.
Love is a remarkably strong feeling, indifference is the equally remarkable complete and utter lack of any feeling at all.
So the opposite of love must be thinking they are "kind of nice".
And that's stupid.:)
On a side point I think it is best to let hate go, it tends to hurt you much more than the person you hate, you end up using your emotional energy on someone that should not be important at all.
Or you could let it fester and drive your actions. There's no limit to what you can do with the power of hate. And its pretty productive really, as long as you don't let it get the better of you... then next thing you know you've killed a bunch of younglings and wearing a robot suit.
But then people do really stupid things for love too.
And total indifference? That sounds downright sociopathic.
I guess just let go around thinking everyone around you is "kind of nice" and all will be "kind of ok".
But does it matter what the GUI designer *thought* the menu would be used for? The primary function of an object is what most people use it for.
And microsofts feedback, and measurement metrics all showed a clear trend AWAY from using the start menu in favor of pinned apps, and search.
They definitely made a mistakes with taking it out completely, but its not like they didn't know how it was being used (or no longer used).
Of course it's just an example; however as you search in Win7 you see more and more matching entries. If you have ten status reports saved on the disk and indexed, you already at that point can select the one that has the right numbers in it - because you can visually compare...
And I already said I think there should be a limited search gadget on the taskbar that doesn't go full screen.
You also have the search results/filters in Windows Explorer for the type of scenario you are talking about.
In many cases there is a perfectly good substitute solution in Windows 8 that does the job better than the windows 7 start menu... people often just don't know about it (which is a legitimate problem), but that doesn't make win8 defective in its own right.
The correct solution for this problem is in pinning the necessary icons to the desktop [...] The desktop option works in Win8, but to use it you need to see the desktop.
Well, no actually you actually don't. You could right click on the taskbar, and select Toolbars, and select "Desktop". And you now have a cascading popup hierarchical menu of everything on your desktop. You've been able to do that since Vista, maybe even XP... I don't recall... I think it did actually. Hell... maybe even win98 had it.
Perhaps Windows 8 just needed to have it turned on by default.
You can also create your own toolbars, menus set up exactly the way you want with applications, documents, internet address links... make a custom toolbar cascade for each workflow you use.
You talk about ClassicShell, and how power users want the old Windows 7 start menu... but what you can do with toolbars is superior in every way. You were so eager to -fix- what you perceived as broken that you didn't spend any time seeing what the operating system actually gave you.
Windows 8 isn't perfect, I'll be the first to agree. I want a limited OSX like spotlight or the windows 7 start menu search box as a taskbar gadget to launch things like cmd, gpedit, mstsc, etc... i don't like it flipping to the start screen for that, and Win-R doesn't do any sort of autocomplete/search and I don't know how to "run as administrator" from win-R. And the new features are not as discoverable as they should be. And I categorically dislike hot-corners on the desktop. And several of the "defaults" are just plain wrong. Launching pictures or video from the desktop should open the desktop applications by default, for example.
But a lot of the Win8 complaints and the rush to ClassicShell type apps or the "I went back to Windows 7" from people who claim to be power users is almost comical... the features are there, in some cases better options are there, and in some cases those options have been for years... but these powerusers minds are closed and they just want to cling to the old-way whether it was any good or not.
Charms bar, don't make me laugh. That'll be the fugly bar that appears from the side when you position your cursor in the corner. Very intuitive. Not a charm.
No, I agree its not at all intuitive. That's why I suggested they add a button to make it more discoverable.
The only real problem with the charms bar on the desktop is that the hotcorner interface to bring it up doesn't make sense. The bar itself is fine.
In Win 7 desktops, I can generally type what I want to find and it will show up on the list. In Win 8, despite having more real estate they are more stingy with it. Search for 'update' and you get 'No apps match your search'.
But do you really want every email you ever wrote with the word update returned? Every PDF file that mentions the word? Every source code file?
One of the things I don't like about Windows 7 search is that if I type the first few letters of notepad... It finds notepad, notepad++, StickyNotes,... but if I hit see more results, it also finds 28,000 email messages in outlook, and 16,000 documents (word, excel, c source code, pretty much every pdf on my computer... everything) and its all mashed together in one search results. Almost Nobody finds it generally useful to have programs, email, documents all returned together. Microsoft got lots of feed back on that. That's why the start screen doesn't do it.
But I agree, some fine tuning of how it works could be required. Apps and control panels maybe should be returned together rather than separate.
I don't know its name. I can't remember. I'm not even sure this program exists. I'll know it when I see/find it. All situations where this method totally fails to be any use.
That's what the start screen is for. Scroll through it to your hearts content. If you don't know something exists, don't know its name, and will know it when you see it... you'd think a full screen to visually scan through makes a lot more sense than having to look at everything installed on your computer via a small non-resizable popup window in the corner of your screen.
You are like the 10th person to chime in and say "I need the start menu -> all programs in case I don't know what something is called and have to search for it by visually scanning everything installed on my computer for it."
Clearly this isn't something that you use ALL the time, or you'd know what it was called. Clearly having to scan pages of names and icons is the least desireable way to find something and you'd only do it if you had no other choice. I get the use case and I understand that sometimes you have to do this.
But I can't figure out why you want to do it in a small non-resizable window in the corner of your screen. Just use the start screen. Its all there. And its MUCH easier to scan through.
You can't search if you don't know what you're specifically looking for. But when you see it..."Ah! There it is!"
Right. And the start screen is categorically better for doing just that. Pull it up, and page through it.
If you have to resort to looking for something by scanning through a list of everything installed on your computer, a full screen interface makes a lot more sense than having to scroll around in a little non-resizable window in the corner of your screen.
The start screen is to the start menu for "visual scan and find" what a moving van is to a hand cart for "moving all your furniture across town".
The start screen is that much better than the start menu if you have to visually scan everything installed on your computer and you don't know what its called.
That doesn't sound like an obselete thing to me, because you suggest that the described features do make sense.
Obsolete in the sense that a) Few users use it anymore.
b) It doesn't scale well; it is difficult to use the heirarchical menu on a computer with a lot of software on it. I have a pretty clean computer, and the top level All programs is over 2 pages, with god knows how much stuff in it. I've seen start menus of people who install lots of crud that is upwards of 10+ pages.
c) The start screen has the same functionality, and is larger and more user friendly making the start menu redundant.
It just sounds like there are multiple ways to do these things.
The heirarchical browse component of the start menu was replaced with the start SCREEN. If you have to resort to navigating the start menu, the start creen makes it more usable, and the start menu is redundant.
To a uber-geek - perhaps. But not to a common man.
No, you missed my point. The features the common man used the start menu for weren't the primary function of the start menu.
Start button replacements are, reportedly, the most popular download for Win8. Otherwise Win8 is not discoverable.
Precisely this. And its what I meant when i said various things were non-obvious. For the most part, Windows 8 has the necessary functions in reasonable places, but not only are they radically different from what they were before but they were also not discoverable. This is a major failing of Windows 8... this is why i specifically suggested returning a 'start menu' button taskbar gadget with links to the charms bar, start screen etc... to help with discovery and to ease the transition.
That and the limited search functionality I mentioned.
Unless you are searching for something that you see in another window. Do you want to memorize "StatusReport-836421-FromBill_Rev3a.docx" ? It's a valid runnable object.
Well, if you know the exact file name, the limited search i suggested adding back more than have you covered. Otherwise, copy&paste are how normal people do things especially things like "StatusReport-836421-FromBill_Rev3a.docx"
A nonobvious thing is also nonexistent. It doesn't matter how well it works if non-geeks cannot find it.
Agreed. And this was already addressed. A link to the charms bar in the 'start menu'.
It does? News to me. Which one? How would I know that, outside of reading Slashdot?
Yes. Win-C. You wouldn't, which is why i suggest a link to the charms bar in the start menu. We are absolutely on the same page about the discoverability problem with Windows 8.... said by someone who sees nothing wrong with UNIX commands that pipe data through thirteen programs:-) Most people do not memorize names of the software - especially if they just use it, not write it.
The main software should be taskbar pinned, desktop icons, in the most used list, etc. The obscure rarely used stuff... well that's just it. Power users will use search if they can remember the name, but if you can't remember what its called then you are currently reduced to scrolling through the list in all programs... right?
But this is the obscure rarely used stuff that you can't remember the name of so
a) its not happening 200 times a day so switching to the start screen for it isn't a big deal . b) if your going to be manually scrolling through a giant list of everything installed on your computer to find something you don't know the name of, its better on a big full screen then a small non-resizeable window.
Why don't I make a custom menu where I'd keep all the necessary tools that I need, and call it something like "Start" ?
Or pin them to the taskbar. Or create desktop icons. This is what most common users were already doing and why MS thought we wouldn't miss the menu so much.
There is absolutely value in an a simple customizeable taskbar gadget to pin a list of common (but not always running stuff). And Windows should have bundled one, but its power users toy, or at least a midlevel toy... the least sophisticated tier of users were using desktop shortcuts.
I disable all that stuff. It makes no sense to me. I may use one set of applications on one day, and another set on another day. What recent activity has to do with the need for a specific workflow?
But a LOT of people do. They run the same apps from day to day and the document they are most interested in today is likely the one they were working on last night. So while it may not make sense to you, it is useful to a lot of people. When I open visual studio odds are good the project i want to open is in the last-10-recent list. Ditto for a word document. Ditto for Excel. Ditto even steam games.
I disable automatic pinning, and instead pin there what I want pin
Slashdot Mirror
Most rapists, in particular, seek to exert power and control over their victim. The best way to assure success is to target the most vulnerable, because rapists are cowardly and are afraid of failing to obtain that control and power (often they lack power and control in other aspects of their life and are loathe to face that failure when they don't have to).
Rapes are virtually unheard of in public places--they happen at night or in secluded places--the chance of an innocent bystander being caught in crossfire is basically nil in those cases.
You watch too much TV. Most rapists rape you in your own home, in your own bed. Or in otherwise familiar surroundings. They usually know you, and are often related to you.
Rapists don't tend to be gun enthusiasts
Because they don't meet the profile of people who like to exert power and control? I would expect them to be at least as gun-enthusiastic as the general public, if not more so.
If a potential victim were to pull a gun in the vast majority of cases they would flee, not fire back
I'd love to see the study on that.
And given that most rapists are familiar figures, I doubt most potential victims are going to be
the studies cited about an increase in violent rapes and assults in Australia is not really surprising at all knowing this
I see that as some fraction of lethal gun violence simply translating to less-lethal violence. Not as some sort of general 'rise in violence' as a result of the guns being removed.
The most visible, but most rare as well, victims of gun violence are those of the emotionally disturbed, generally suicidal deviants.
I agree with this and everything you said afterwards.
My being armed doesn't do that.
Not a causal relationship, but if its legal, allowing you to legally carry a gun, then its legal for them to carry them too, and that increases the odds they will carry.
Legal to carry is completely orthogonal to plenty of practice, because you don't practice with it while you're wandering around town.
Its difficult to get plenty of practice with banned equipment.
Further, odds are good he's already a felon, and is already barred from carry, if not ownership.
I'd hardly count on only being raped by previously convicted serial rapists.
If he has a gun, and I have no gun, then he's definitely got the edge.
You missed my point. The "edge" I was referring to was in a shootout, if one of you don't have a gun, there is no shootout. As the scenario being evaluated is not one of attempted / pre-meditated murder, there is unlikely to be a shootout unless you pull a gun out and start one.
I concede readily that in a murder scenario, having any gun at all would be a major benefit. But that's not the scenario.
Meanwhile, preventing or reducing attacks is everyone's responsibility, and we are collectively falling down on the job.
Ah well then we should be solving our poverty and education problems, fixing our safety nets, funding rehabilitation centers, getting involved with the community.
More guns isn't going to make society any better, just more lethal.
Besides, the 2nd amendment was written to prevent the government from oppressing its citizens. It wasn't to enable citizens to shoot at felons.
Its not dying. But its no longer cool.
I'd prefer my would-be rapist be dead
Sure we all would.
which is much more likely if I'm armed.
It increases the odds of a lot of things.
It increases the odds he's also carrying a gun. It increases the odds he's had plenty of practice with it, since its legal for him to carry it around.
It increases the odds of a shootout. It increases the odds you get shot. (Maybe he's a better shot than you. Maybe he approaches you with it drawn while yours is still holstered. Not much of an edge for you.
It increases the odds an innocent bystander gets short. It increases the odds of an accidental discharge. It increases the odds someone irresponsible ends up with a gun in their hands. It increases the odds someone irresponsible ends up with -your- gun in their hands.
I'm Not saying I wouldn't want to have a gun in my hands if I were attacked, but its wrong to oversimplify it so that is the only scenario we look at.
Lets just clear something up right now, gun bans have NEVER worked and will NEVER work because of one simple flaw in the logic. you see criminals? DON'T FOLLOW LAWS which is why they are called criminals, fucking duh!
Same logic dictates that all regulation is ineffective because the people who would ignore them... would ignore them. And yet regulation is demonstrably effective in many many cases. We have bans on drinking and driving, and it's made a difference. Drunk drivers still drive drunk, but that's hardly a rationale for repealing the law.
A ban on guns would be similarly effective because the "criminals with the guns" could be arrested and dealt with when they are caught with a banned gun. The police don't have to wait until you rob a liquor store and start shooting at people. They can arrest you walking into the liquor store with your banned gun before you've done anything else. A witness can call it in, it can be caught at various checkpoints at airports etc. People could be arrested dealing the banned guns, transporting them, etc.
To pretend otherwise is just willful blindness to reality.
Whether a given gun ban is appropriate in the united states especially given the unique constitutional provision there is a separate and legitimate debate, but pretending a ban on guns can't have any positive effect is counter productive to any real conversation.
And to address the the article itself, I don't think regulating 3D printers makes any sense at all. We are a generation away from them being as ubiquitous as microwaves and laser printers. Future kindergarteners will be printing their parents mothers day projects instead of baking clay.
That's a fiscal, not social, issue.
Actually its both.
Not everyone needs to live on what they are paid, high minimum wages ignore this fact.
And advocates of no minimum wage ignores the fact that MILLIONS of people ARE living on those jobs in the real actual world.
Again a fiscal, not social, issue.
Depends which government provided social service one looks at. Medicare, Unemployment, Welfare... these are fiscal issues yes, but also social issues.
Gay marriage is a pretty pure social issue though, and Tea Party folks aren't lining up to support it, so your argument that tea partiers are socially liberal comes through pretty thin.
Private groups have proven they can do a far better job of providing social services than the government.
No, they haven't. That's a very controversial claim you've just made. That you can state it as if it was a settled fact is just silly.
Corruption is the base of that more than anything else.
Corruption is how it got past the regulations. Regulations that many libertarians argue shouldn't exist in the first place. Eliminating the corruption won't solve the problem if you eliminate it by eliminating the regulations too.
It seems we are far less naive than you.
I sometimes wish libertarians could have the world they wish for. As long as I don't have to live in it. They could use the wake up call.
Here at the Church of the FSM, we do posthumorous baptisms!
In Ragu sauce?
The biggest problem with the Chromebook is it's got a tiny 12" screen. At that size, I'd rather just use a tablet. For doing any actual work, a 15" screen is pretty much the minimum.
I'm not convinced its the screen. The 13" Macbook Pro and other high end windows ultra portables are perfectly good laptops. Sure they costs 4-5x times as much... and that hints at the real issue... its not screen size its just that the chromebook is not just small but small and crappy.
Netflix should consider a bit torrent model. Serving pieces of movies from viewers who are already watching would reduce the strain on central servers.
Given that for the most part netflix's objective is for the "central servers" to be situated in your local ISPs data center, netflix has already done one better.
For someone that is makeing the above claim, you sure do have an in-depth knowledge about these programs you might only get buy actually watching/following them.
I think the irony here is that seems that most people who watch and follow the programs don't know most of that stuff.
I came here to say that too. That's just plain ridiculous. No average normal consumer checks what Stallman's opinion on something was and then decides not to buy something.
But its not entirely implausible that users are deciding against Chromebooks for some of the same reasons as Stallman. I mean, I wouldn't buy a chromebook for many of reasons Stallman railed on them, but until I looked it up today in response to this article I didn't actually know that he'd gone on the record about chromebooks at all.
Well, admittedly, I don't care about the reality shows.
"admittedly" you don't care? I'd not just admit it, I'd proudly proclaim that they are worthless trash and a complete waste of time that just leaves you dumber for watching them. :)
But since there are laws about how you have to handle contests and the like...
If they were legitimate contests they might actually be more watchable. But if you read the fine print...
Half the time there's stuff that often amounts to the equivalent of "The producers reserve the right to override viewer votes whenever they want, because they're more interested in finding conflict and drama than talent."
Reality shows are a farce.
Half the time there's stuff about scenes being "re-enacted" based on something actually happened.
Participant release forms often include terms to consent to having personal, embarrassing, information disclosed. That information may be factual or fictionalized. ... ie; if the producers want to give you an embarrassing and untrue "backstory" about you, they can and will.
There was a recent incident where an Obama speech pre-empted a few reality shows so there was a disclaimer that "although the show was not broadcast in its entirety in some markets, it has not affected the result."
Yeah. That's credible. A whole state missed 20 minutes of the show; but that didn't affect anything.
I presume that's because voters don't really matter anyway and we just pull numbers out of our ass anyway.
Aside from the fact that you assume anyone that is a proponent of the 2nd Amendment is too incompetent to evaluate and safely utilize this technology,
No. He said "gun nut" that's a much smaller subset than "anyone that is a proponent of the 2nd Amendment".
Its like the NRA. They are proponents of the 2nd amendment, but their leadership isn't merely gun nuts, they are just plain nuts. (Seriously, the coverage their convention got literally blew my mind. Their guest speaker list was a who's who of political dingbats. Sarah Palin, Glen Beck...
The gun enthusiasts I know would be embarrassed to be at an event where they were speaking. And for good reason... Palin was off in lala land talking about Big Gulps and Tobacco... subjects near and dear to any 2nd Amendment issue, right? And Glen Beck engaged in his usual apoplectics over the world coming to an end... Barack Obama and the doom of all mankind...it all just brought him to tears... again.
Because increased background checks would be the doom of all mankind?
They might be Ineffective, they might be unnecessary... I don't know. But rational people could have a conversation about it. These people aren't rational.
If I wanted to scan screens worth of colored squares to find things, I'd put everything on the desktop as an icon. I don't because there is no hierarchical structure to it.
Have you used windows 8? Do you have any idea what you are talking about? These are screenshots of the Start Screen All Apps view:
http://omnitechsupportripoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/windows-8-start-screen_01150911.jpg
http://trekker.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/02-windows8_start_screen-all_apps.png
http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/windows-8-all-apps.jpg
The "hierarchical structure" has been flattened a bit, but its all there, organized just as it has always been organized. You've got your top level stuff, your start menu folders, its all still there.
Thanks for that. I was aware of most of those, but not the actual windows one.
But i dont think you are kind of nice...
*I* don't like you either. You just watch yourself. We're wanted men. I have the death sentence on twelve systems. :p
Those metrics captured habits of only those users who, for one reason or another, failed to disable reporting of those metrics.
As far as I know, I don't think sending MS those metrics are something that are on by default. I've certainly never disabled sending them myself, but I doubt I was sending them in the first place. So I'm honestly not sure where they got them.
Whether they partnered with some big enterprises? or did it in house with their own users? (Although I can't beleive they'd only be using internal data.)
Its an interesting question, where they got the data. I don't think your assumption that it only captured people to clueless to opt out though. ... and that drags us into a completely different discussion, about "what is good?"
Fair enough :) But the start menu is a hierarchical menu system from Windows 95 that's just had things bolted onto it since then. It was overwrought and it definitely needed a rethink.
Think about it, who are the people you hate the most, they are the ones that you loved and have hurt you.
The the only people I've hated were bullies. I didn't ever love them.
In particular sense indifference can be thought of as the opposite of both.
Yes, and the opposite of heavy isn't light its medium, and the opposite of light isn't dark its twilight. The opposite of fast isn't slow its moderate. The opposite of smart isn't dumb its its average.
Give me a break.
I.e. strong emotion vs weak emotion.
Well, see there's the problem. According to your line of reasoning, strong and weak emotions aren't opposites at all. So love and indifference aren't opposites at all.
You see because by this line of reasoning the opposite of something in any way remarkable of characteristic is something that is wholly unremarkable. Thus strong is of remarkable strength, while weak is a remarkable lack of strength... and the opposite of both would be some unremarkable middle range of strength.
Love is a remarkably strong feeling, indifference is the equally remarkable complete and utter lack of any feeling at all.
So the opposite of love must be thinking they are "kind of nice".
And that's stupid. :)
On a side point I think it is best to let hate go, it tends to hurt you much more than the person you hate, you end up using your emotional energy on someone that should not be important at all.
Or you could let it fester and drive your actions. There's no limit to what you can do with the power of hate. And its pretty productive really, as long as you don't let it get the better of you... then next thing you know you've killed a bunch of younglings and wearing a robot suit.
But then people do really stupid things for love too.
And total indifference? That sounds downright sociopathic.
I guess just let go around thinking everyone around you is "kind of nice" and all will be "kind of ok".
But does it matter what the GUI designer *thought* the menu would be used for? The primary function of an object is what most people use it for.
And microsofts feedback, and measurement metrics all showed a clear trend AWAY from using the start menu in favor of pinned apps, and search.
They definitely made a mistakes with taking it out completely, but its not like they didn't know how it was being used (or no longer used).
Of course it's just an example; however as you search in Win7 you see more and more matching entries. If you have ten status reports saved on the disk and indexed, you already at that point can select the one that has the right numbers in it - because you can visually compare...
And I already said I think there should be a limited search gadget on the taskbar that doesn't go full screen.
You also have the search results/filters in Windows Explorer for the type of scenario you are talking about.
In many cases there is a perfectly good substitute solution in Windows 8 that does the job better than the windows 7 start menu... people often just don't know about it (which is a legitimate problem), but that doesn't make win8 defective in its own right.
The correct solution for this problem is in pinning the necessary icons to the desktop [...] The desktop option works in Win8, but to use it you need to see the desktop.
Well, no actually you actually don't. You could right click on the taskbar, and select Toolbars, and select "Desktop". And you now have a cascading popup hierarchical menu of everything on your desktop. You've been able to do that since Vista, maybe even XP... I don't recall... I think it did actually. Hell... maybe even win98 had it.
Perhaps Windows 8 just needed to have it turned on by default.
You can also create your own toolbars, menus set up exactly the way you want with applications, documents, internet address links... make a custom toolbar cascade for each workflow you use.
You talk about ClassicShell, and how power users want the old Windows 7 start menu... but what you can do with toolbars is superior in every way. You were so eager to -fix- what you perceived as broken that you didn't spend any time seeing what the operating system actually gave you.
Windows 8 isn't perfect, I'll be the first to agree. I want a limited OSX like spotlight or the windows 7 start menu search box as a taskbar gadget to launch things like cmd, gpedit, mstsc, etc... i don't like it flipping to the start screen for that, and Win-R doesn't do any sort of autocomplete/search and I don't know how to "run as administrator" from win-R. And the new features are not as discoverable as they should be. And I categorically dislike hot-corners on the desktop. And several of the "defaults" are just plain wrong. Launching pictures or video from the desktop should open the desktop applications by default, for example.
But a lot of the Win8 complaints and the rush to ClassicShell type apps or the "I went back to Windows 7" from people who claim to be power users is almost comical... the features are there, in some cases better options are there, and in some cases those options have been for years... but these powerusers minds are closed and they just want to cling to the old-way whether it was any good or not.
Charms bar, don't make me laugh. That'll be the fugly bar that appears from the side when you position your cursor in the corner. Very intuitive. Not a charm.
No, I agree its not at all intuitive. That's why I suggested they add a button to make it more discoverable.
The only real problem with the charms bar on the desktop is that the hotcorner interface to bring it up doesn't make sense. The bar itself is fine.
In Win 7 desktops, I can generally type what I want to find and it will show up on the list. In Win 8, despite having more real estate they are more stingy with it. Search for 'update' and you get 'No apps match your search'.
But do you really want every email you ever wrote with the word update returned? Every PDF file that mentions the word? Every source code file?
One of the things I don't like about Windows 7 search is that if I type the first few letters of notepad... It finds notepad, notepad++, StickyNotes, ... but if I hit see more results, it also finds 28,000 email messages in outlook, and 16,000 documents (word, excel, c source code, pretty much every pdf on my computer ... everything) and its all mashed together in one search results. Almost Nobody finds it generally useful to have programs, email, documents all returned together. Microsoft got lots of feed back on that. That's why the start screen doesn't do it.
But I agree, some fine tuning of how it works could be required.
Apps and control panels maybe should be returned together rather than separate.
I don't know its name. I can't remember. I'm not even sure this program exists. I'll know it when I see/find it. All situations where this method totally fails to be any use.
That's what the start screen is for. Scroll through it to your hearts content. If you don't know something exists, don't know its name, and will know it when you see it... you'd think a full screen to visually scan through makes a lot more sense than having to look at everything installed on your computer via a small non-resizable popup window in the corner of your screen.
You are like the 10th person to chime in and say "I need the start menu -> all programs in case I don't know what something is called and have to search for it by visually scanning everything installed on my computer for it."
Clearly this isn't something that you use ALL the time, or you'd know what it was called. Clearly having to scan pages of names and icons is the least desireable way to find something and you'd only do it if you had no other choice. I get the use case and I understand that sometimes you have to do this.
But I can't figure out why you want to do it in a small non-resizable window in the corner of your screen. Just use the start screen. Its all there. And its MUCH easier to scan through.
You can't search if you don't know what you're specifically looking for. But when you see it..."Ah! There it is!"
Right. And the start screen is categorically better for doing just that. Pull it up, and page through it.
If you have to resort to looking for something by scanning through a list of everything installed on your computer, a full screen interface makes a lot more sense than having to scroll around in a little non-resizable window in the corner of your screen.
The start screen is to the start menu for "visual scan and find" what a moving van is to a hand cart for "moving all your furniture across town".
The start screen is that much better than the start menu if you have to visually scan everything installed on your computer and you don't know what its called.
That doesn't sound like an obselete thing to me, because you suggest that the described features do make sense.
Obsolete in the sense that
a) Few users use it anymore.
b) It doesn't scale well; it is difficult to use the heirarchical menu on a computer with a lot of software on it. I have a pretty clean computer, and the top level All programs is over 2 pages, with god knows how much stuff in it. I've seen start menus of people who install lots of crud that is upwards of 10+ pages.
c) The start screen has the same functionality, and is larger and more user friendly making the start menu redundant.
It just sounds like there are multiple ways to do these things.
The heirarchical browse component of the start menu was replaced with the start SCREEN. If you have to resort to navigating the start menu, the start creen makes it more usable, and the start menu is redundant.
Redundant and rarely used = obsolete
To a uber-geek - perhaps. But not to a common man.
No, you missed my point. The features the common man used the start menu for weren't the primary function of the start menu.
Start button replacements are, reportedly, the most popular download for Win8. Otherwise Win8 is not discoverable.
Precisely this. And its what I meant when i said various things were non-obvious. For the most part, Windows 8 has the necessary functions in reasonable places, but not only are they radically different from what they were before but they were also not discoverable. This is a major failing of Windows 8... this is why i specifically suggested returning a 'start menu' button taskbar gadget with links to the charms bar, start screen etc... to help with discovery and to ease the transition.
That and the limited search functionality I mentioned.
Unless you are searching for something that you see in another window. Do you want to memorize "StatusReport-836421-FromBill_Rev3a.docx" ? It's a valid runnable object.
Well, if you know the exact file name, the limited search i suggested adding back more than have you covered. Otherwise, copy&paste are how normal people do things especially things like "StatusReport-836421-FromBill_Rev3a.docx"
A nonobvious thing is also nonexistent. It doesn't matter how well it works if non-geeks cannot find it.
Agreed. And this was already addressed. A link to the charms bar in the 'start menu'.
It does? News to me. Which one? How would I know that, outside of reading Slashdot?
Yes. Win-C. You wouldn't, which is why i suggest a link to the charms bar in the start menu. We are absolutely on the same page about the discoverability problem with Windows 8. ... said by someone who sees nothing wrong with UNIX commands that pipe data through thirteen programs :-) Most people do not memorize names of the software - especially if they just use it, not write it.
The main software should be taskbar pinned, desktop icons, in the most used list, etc. The obscure rarely used stuff... well that's just it. Power users will use search if they can remember the name, but if you can't remember what its called then you are currently reduced to scrolling through the list in all programs... right?
But this is the obscure rarely used stuff that you can't remember the name of so
a) its not happening 200 times a day so switching to the start screen for it isn't a big deal
.
b) if your going to be manually scrolling through a giant list of everything installed on your computer to find something you don't know the name of, its better on a big full screen then a small non-resizeable window.
Why don't I make a custom menu where I'd keep all the necessary tools that I need, and call it something like "Start" ?
Or pin them to the taskbar. Or create desktop icons. This is what most common users were already doing and why MS thought we wouldn't miss the menu so much.
There is absolutely value in an a simple customizeable taskbar gadget to pin a list of common (but not always running stuff). And Windows should have bundled one, but its power users toy, or at least a midlevel toy... the least sophisticated tier of users were using desktop shortcuts.
I disable all that stuff. It makes no sense to me. I may use one set of applications on one day, and another set on another day. What recent activity has to do with the need for a specific workflow?
But a LOT of people do. They run the same apps from day to day and the document they are most interested in today is likely the one they were working on last night. So while it may not make sense to you, it is useful to a lot of people. When I open visual studio odds are good the project i want to open is in the last-10-recent list. Ditto for a word document. Ditto for Excel. Ditto even steam games.
I disable automatic pinning, and instead pin there what I want pin