Absolutely. I can't think why someone could possibly want to have battery level, connectivity level, and a clock all available at-a-glance in a consistent place, together with window management tools and a button to bring down a menu of commonly used applications; along with a programming interface that allows applications to hide it and take the full screen if they really need it. Incredibly stupid idea, isn't it. Quite ridiculous.
2005 called; they want their volatile flash memory back.
(And even before manufacturers started to use non-volatile flash memory, pretty much every PDA I've ever seen has always included a seperate backup battery in case the main one runs out (or, apart from anything else, to let you swap the main battery out without losing all your data)
(Also -- how many people who, if a PDA crashes whilst they're using it, then immediately stop using it and put it away without resetting it and turning it off?)
Ask those idiots at M$ why Vista only works with FAT/NTFS and ignores better, royalty free formats. Bullshit. There are many free ext* drivers available for Windows. A poster above mentioned ext2ifs, for example.
When you use MS word it takes forever to get anything like what you wanted (subscripts on superscripts, tower-type functions?) I don't normally use Word to typeset equations, but I've just opened it and tried it and both of the things you mention seem pretty trivial to do. ^ gives superscripts, _ gives subscripts; x^(a_b) gives the subscript b on the superscript a, exactly as you'd expect. I'm not sure what you mean by tower-type functions; if you just mean lots of superscripts on top of each other there don't seem to be any obvious problems doing that on Word -- I got 50 of them quite quickly by copying and pasting "x^(x^(".. a few times.
then when you change something elsewhere in the document or email it to a coauthor something breaks and the equations get changed [...] what appears on the screen is a bunch of hearts and spades instead of the right symbols As far as I can tell, Word treats equations as drawing objects; if you change stuff elsewhere in the documents, it should just move them; it shouldn't be able to change things in the equation. WRT emailing the doc to someone else, if you're not sure they have the math font you have it's pretty trivial to embed the font in the document. And of course, if you want things to appear exactly the same on their end as on yours, you'd save to pdf, same as with any other document format.
1. I SUUUUUUCK at math (but am pretty good at LOGIC [...] ) Contradiction. Maths is logic -- at least, real Maths is. I assume what you're saying you suck at is mental arithmentic, but trust me; I know lost of people who are incredibly good at Maths but suck at that. Hell, some of them take positive pride in sucking at mental arithmentic (ironically, mostly number theorists; go figure...).
Free software or not, any watermarking scheme is always going to change some data in the file somewhere, so can be detected by comparing two identical tracks bought by different people; e.g. by md5 checksums.
No self-respecting nerd/geek should miss this reference to the classic http://www.amazon.com/Fahrenheit-451-Ray-Bradbury/ dp/0345342968/ Maybe, but this is the 21st Century; no "self-respecting nerd/geek" would refer to "Fahrenheit 451"! -- Now, "Celsius 233", maybe.
The overwhelming arrogance of some people to believe that mere humans and our assorted activities have a major impact... You're right! For too long humanity has been making decisions on the basis of nothing more than "facts", "data", and "experimental evidence". No longer! We shall move over to a system of making decisions on how arrogant it is to believe things.
For example, atoms are the fundamental building blocks of matter; it is extraordinarily arrogant of humanity to think that we can split them. Simple logical thus shows that atom bombs are obviously myths, and it clearly follows that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not destroyed by them. As a "nuclear bomb sceptic", I have previously been assaulted by someone who claimed to be a family member of someone who was killed by a nuclear bomb! I was merely attempting to calmly and patiently explain how bombs were a liberal consipiracy propogated by the all-controlling American liberal media, but alas -- they did not want to listen to the Truth.
They even offered to take me over to Japan to show me the 'destruction' -- when I refused on the grounds that the voyage would take several months by steamship, they preposterously claimed that mankind could fly through the air? How arrogant is that, to think that mankind should have the ability to conquer the sky, which clearly belongs to God; and if He had meant us to fly, He would have given us wings!
Ah, the arrogance of Humanity to believe such things.
Evolution is not scientific as none of it has EVER been observed (other than changes in a particular kind of animal over time, which is adaptation, not evolution), it is a matter of faith. Oh dear...
I need rechargeable batteries because THAT digital camera only takes 8 shots on NORMAL AA batteries and then they're dead? Actually, that one may have a grain of truth. Alkaline's are terrible under a high-current load, and recharging the flash in flash photography qualifies as one. So alkalines often appear to have run out of battery after a very, very short time with flash photography. Of course, the camera's battery meter is just measuring the terminal voltage, not the actual capacity left in the battery, so the battery probably has lots of capacity; and if you leave it for a couple of minutes (whilst chemical reactions inside the battery do strange and magical things) the terminal voltage will creep back up to 1.5V, and you'll be able to use it again.
Rechargable batteries (typically NiMH) don't have this problem, and can supply loads of current without dropping their terminal voltage much; even though their actual capacity is usually less than alkalines.
(Another argument for rechargables -- after a while, buying alkalines for things starts to feel like buying bottled water rather than using the tap: "Why am I paying $2 in a shop for these every so often when I can get the same thing at home for a fraction of a penny?")
Yes, (chance_of_breaking) * (cost_of_replacement) [will be less than] (price_of_plan), but isn't that also true of car insurance, medical insurance, and every other kind of insurance? Yes. Exactly. It is. Which is why small-item insurance is a scam. You would think this would be obvious to people (that if the insurance company / shop is making money, they're going to be losing it), but it isn't.
Note: I said small-item insurance. Here, I'm defining small items as ones which would not financially inconvenience you if you were to have to replace them at short notice. So if you have several thousand pounds in an instant-access savings account, and will have for the forseeable future, there's absolutely no point in taking out insurance or 'protection plans' on a $500 item. On the other hand, if you're talking about, say, your house; unless ou have enough money stashed away that your house burning down would not be a complete catastrophe, it may well make sense to insure it.
But one thing that was interesting was one of my co-workers told me how Costco got away with it all the time. But you have to be 18 to qualify for Costco membership in the first place...
Of course not, that would be as stupid as drawing conclusions requiring the free availability of a non-free component. I'm not sure what you mean. I wouldn't really regard the default icon set as a 'component' in any case; and there are many free (in both senses) icon packs available for both Gnome and KDE, and Windows.
Ah, so the argument that "Windows is more user friendly than Linux" should really be that "Windows is just now as user friendly as Linux"? [...] thus far almost every example of why Ubuntu is worse than Windows has in reality proven either feature parity, or Ubuntu working better. The default icon set was merely the latest example given, not the sum of all examples given. Woah there. Keep the counterarguments to the "Windows is more user friendly than Linux" position for people who've actually expressed such an opinion here; my interjection was purely pointing out a factual error.
Why? because you guys are only comparing a 10 year old distribution of Linux to your Windows Vista. You guys need to get over yourselves. No one is compiling shit to make things work. This is only in your world. I do apologise: being part of the vast Microsoft-controlled cabal that has taken over Slashdot -- where everyone's thoughts and opinions are homogenised and dictated from above by Lord Ballmer (peace be upon him) -- and is responsible for all non-Linux-evangelist posts sometimes makes you forget that there is a world outside Microsoft. You're quite right; the opinions you quote are, of course, mine -- the one who posted them may not have username, but don't be fooled; he's just one of my vast army of sockpuppets; however, of cour%*£/&$-----[WARNING INDEPENDENT THOUGHT DETECTED]------ ???????????330-8211 38400 [CARRIER LOST]
Ah, so the argument that "Windows is more user friendly than Linux" should really be that "Windows is just now as user friendly as Linux"? Not unless you think it's reasonable to draw conclusions about the overall usability of something as complex as an operating system solely from the default icon pack...
Now here's a fun thing to try, open windows explorer and create 2 new files, name them test.mp3 and test.wmv, then looking at just the icons, could your grandma tell which was audio and which was video? Heck, could she even tell you if they were media files? You tell me (once you stop comparing a six year old OS to a one month old one, anyway).
Microsoft says open source violates 235^H6 patents "235^H6 patents"? Assuming that's in octadecimal, I make that approximately equal to... [does some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations]... 1.979*10^22830 patents.
Installing applications? I don't need a warning when I'm installing an application. I know that I'm installing an application.
[...]
Oh, and by the way, have you ever heard of a malicious device driver? How you never heard of a malicious program? Apparently not. Which is strange, because trust me, there are LOTS of them around in the Windows world. Yes, you know when you're installing an application -- that's the whole point! The prompt is asking you "Have you just double clicked on the installer of a program you wish to install, or have I just popped up seemingly for no reason whilst you were browsing dodgy websites?" If the former, then you click 'allow'; if the latter, you click 'cancel' and go to windowsupdate to download the patch for whatever zero-day Internet Explorer exploit your pr0n website was using to try and install stuff on your computer.
Oh, and regarding malicious device drivers -- Creative's sound card drivers spring to mind:-)... Seriously, they certainly do exist; and if installed some types have free reign to run in kernel mode. I most certainly do want my Operating System to warn me before giving a bunch of code that sort of leeway with my system!
Apparently, Vista's networking stack has been rewritten from scratch -- which does make you wonder how much of the reason for that was technical, and how much was MS wanting to be seen to get rid of all the BSD/*nix code in Windows in preparation for their patent offensive...
I've never seen this exposed to the UI though, so I've no idea how you'd go about doing it IIRC, in Windows XP, View -> Folder options -> untick "Use simple file sharing (recommended)" will let you see and edit an object's permissions though its properties dialogue.
In Vista's this is now enabled by default, which I suppose is inevitable since MS are making permissions so much more visible with UAC and such; but I do wonder how many people will go randomly clicking around to see what it does, click through the UAC dialogue, and end up doing something like removing permission to access the C: drive for everyone but their pet dog...
Re:But will they be cheaper?
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Dell Linux Details
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't know what the numbers are, but I would bet there is at least 1,000 installs for every eventual purchase of an app I think you're overestimating the average user and underestimating the psycology used.
Grandma buys a Dell computer. Grandma uses it happily for three months. After three months, Norton pops up a window with an Alarming Yellow Exclamation Mark telling her that her antivirus protection "Will Expire in 5 Day(s)" and that unless she pays $20, her computer Will Be Vulnerable To Newly Discovered Viruses And Other Security Threats! Now, Grandma's read about computer viruses in the papers. She's never heard of AVG, Avast, or ClamAV.
So Grandma presses the button and pays $20. From her perspective, what else could she do?
No, I don't have any figures either, but I suspect that percentage subscription renewals from preloaded apps are a hell of a lot larger than you think.
Now I understand that with a few more hours research I could've probably found workarounds Or you could just, you know, switch it off. 10 seconds at most.
I don't believe these pop-ups really add security as they give you no meaningful option other than to say "OK." ...No options other than OK -- apart from 'Cancel', you mean? I'm not sure what other choices there could be, either you elevate the process or you don't...?
The logical conclusion of your argument should be that 'kilo' applied to computers would mean 2^3, 'mega' 2^6, 'giga' 2^9 etc. -- i.e. with the same index as their S.I. meanings, but base 2 rather than base 10. Which would indeed make a certain amount of sense. But they don't -- the computer industry uses 'kilo' to mean 2^10, 'mega' 2^20 etc., an index only chosen because 2^10x happens to come out quite close to 10^3x. i.e. the binary-based prefixes were matched with indices purely on the basis of the number's similarity to the standard, decimal usage. Thus is the use of the base 2 prefixes still rooted in to the decimal S.I. system, merely taking advantage of the 10^3 ~ 2^10 coincidence to adopted the same prefix for a different but similar number.
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Absolutely. I can't think why someone could possibly want to have battery level, connectivity level, and a clock all available at-a-glance in a consistent place, together with window management tools and a button to bring down a menu of commonly used applications; along with a programming interface that allows applications to hide it and take the full screen if they really need it. Incredibly stupid idea, isn't it. Quite ridiculous.
2005 called; they want their volatile flash memory back.
(And even before manufacturers started to use non-volatile flash memory, pretty much every PDA I've ever seen has always included a seperate backup battery in case the main one runs out (or, apart from anything else, to let you swap the main battery out without losing all your data)
(Also -- how many people who, if a PDA crashes whilst they're using it, then immediately stop using it and put it away without resetting it and turning it off?)
Free software or not, any watermarking scheme is always going to change some data in the file somewhere, so can be detected by comparing two identical tracks bought by different people; e.g. by md5 checksums.
Or, better still, "Kelvin 506".
"T_Planck 3.57*10^-30"?
For example, atoms are the fundamental building blocks of matter; it is extraordinarily arrogant of humanity to think that we can split them. Simple logical thus shows that atom bombs are obviously myths, and it clearly follows that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not destroyed by them. As a "nuclear bomb sceptic", I have previously been assaulted by someone who claimed to be a family member of someone who was killed by a nuclear bomb! I was merely attempting to calmly and patiently explain how bombs were a liberal consipiracy propogated by the all-controlling American liberal media, but alas -- they did not want to listen to the Truth.
They even offered to take me over to Japan to show me the 'destruction' -- when I refused on the grounds that the voyage would take several months by steamship, they preposterously claimed that mankind could fly through the air? How arrogant is that, to think that mankind should have the ability to conquer the sky, which clearly belongs to God; and if He had meant us to fly, He would have given us wings!
Ah, the arrogance of Humanity to believe such things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_evolutio
Rechargable batteries (typically NiMH) don't have this problem, and can supply loads of current without dropping their terminal voltage much; even though their actual capacity is usually less than alkalines.
(Another argument for rechargables -- after a while, buying alkalines for things starts to feel like buying bottled water rather than using the tap: "Why am I paying $2 in a shop for these every so often when I can get the same thing at home for a fraction of a penny?")
Note: I said small-item insurance. Here, I'm defining small items as ones which would not financially inconvenience you if you were to have to replace them at short notice. So if you have several thousand pounds in an instant-access savings account, and will have for the forseeable future, there's absolutely no point in taking out insurance or 'protection plans' on a $500 item. On the other hand, if you're talking about, say, your house; unless ou have enough money stashed away that your house burning down would not be a complete catastrophe, it may well make sense to insure it.
Damn, that's a lot of patents.
[...]
Oh, and by the way, have you ever heard of a malicious device driver? How you never heard of a malicious program? Apparently not. Which is strange, because trust me, there are LOTS of them around in the Windows world. Yes, you know when you're installing an application -- that's the whole point! The prompt is asking you "Have you just double clicked on the installer of a program you wish to install, or have I just popped up seemingly for no reason whilst you were browsing dodgy websites?" If the former, then you click 'allow'; if the latter, you click 'cancel' and go to windowsupdate to download the patch for whatever zero-day Internet Explorer exploit your pr0n website was using to try and install stuff on your computer.
Oh, and regarding malicious device drivers -- Creative's sound card drivers spring to mind
Apparently, Vista's networking stack has been rewritten from scratch -- which does make you wonder how much of the reason for that was technical, and how much was MS wanting to be seen to get rid of all the BSD/*nix code in Windows in preparation for their patent offensive...
In Vista's this is now enabled by default, which I suppose is inevitable since MS are making permissions so much more visible with UAC and such; but I do wonder how many people will go randomly clicking around to see what it does, click through the UAC dialogue, and end up doing something like removing permission to access the C: drive for everyone but their pet dog...
Grandma buys a Dell computer. Grandma uses it happily for three months. After three months, Norton pops up a window with an Alarming Yellow Exclamation Mark telling her that her antivirus protection "Will Expire in 5 Day(s)" and that unless she pays $20, her computer Will Be Vulnerable To Newly Discovered Viruses And Other Security Threats! Now, Grandma's read about computer viruses in the papers. She's never heard of AVG, Avast, or ClamAV.
So Grandma presses the button and pays $20. From her perspective, what else could she do?
No, I don't have any figures either, but I suspect that percentage subscription renewals from preloaded apps are a hell of a lot larger than you think.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=235143&cid=191 81341
Exactly. Which is why there exists a different (non-S.I.) set of binary prefixes, based on base 2 rather than base 10.
The logical conclusion of your argument should be that 'kilo' applied to computers would mean 2^3, 'mega' 2^6, 'giga' 2^9 etc. -- i.e. with the same index as their S.I. meanings, but base 2 rather than base 10. Which would indeed make a certain amount of sense. But they don't -- the computer industry uses 'kilo' to mean 2^10, 'mega' 2^20 etc., an index only chosen because 2^10x happens to come out quite close to 10^3x. i.e. the binary-based prefixes were matched with indices purely on the basis of the number's similarity to the standard, decimal usage. Thus is the use of the base 2 prefixes still rooted in to the decimal S.I. system, merely taking advantage of the 10^3 ~ 2^10 coincidence to adopted the same prefix for a different but similar number.