Most articles in the popular press are written by idiots [...]
That's perhaps a bit unfair. They are written by journalists, who have are often reasonably intelligent people who have spent many years studying journalism and practising their craft.
They're just often completely ignorant of things besides journalism, including, all too often, the subject matter that their journalism addresses.
ISTR that neurons are, pretty much, either firing or not firing, on or off, and that, consequently, a brain "processes" shades of gray in a way substantially similar to the way your typical digital computer "processes" real numbers.
CR's model which provides its independence also means it doesn't tend to have the chummy, early access relationship many other outlets have with manufacturers. Them actually doing really substantial tests also means that they tend to take longer than some other outlets.
OTOH, I've rarely been led astray by a CR review on anything, computer related or not, so I'm pretty happy with them despite their limitations.
Yeah, but its not a one-time thing, you have to maintain it. So those mystical monoliths would have to hang out and continue exerting their magical force to make it work.
There was no failure to understand here. The bill wasn't hastily thrown together in ignorance. The industry lobbyists who wrote the law spent a lot of time working on the details, and knew exactly what they were doing. Congress failure was in not caring much beyond what the lobbyists could do for them, not in not understanding the subject matter. (I'm not saying they actually understood, just that for their understanding to have any relevance they'd have to first care about the substance.)
"Hopefully" it will be open sourced enough to placate the OSS zealots, yet not so open sourced that Joe Six-Pack-o-Jolt can release his own Java interpreter that fuzzes the meaning of the source code, presenting interesting and unintended execution problems.
As gets pointed out each time this gets discussed, once the first genuinely open-source cleanroom Java implementation was released, that was already a possibility whatever Sun did, so the whole issue is largely moot.
The only company that could benefit from doing that (because they also have the market power to get people to use their incompatible implementation rather than one that works properly) has already chosen a different route to try to destroy Java, by releasing their own platform targetting the same market.
And, of course, there are clean-room open-source implementations of that competitors platform as well...
There is a reason that Yahoo! ranks #1 on lists of most popular websites.
Yeah, ISP co-branding. But Google is working on undermining that advantage, not by duplicating it, but by becoming an access provider in its own right.
Honestly, how many Yahoo nerds are there out there?
Probably quite a few (though less, perhaps, than Google has), for largely the same kind of reasons. Yahoo! has lots of toys, too (Yahoo! Widget Engine, for one.)
Don't exist, I think (at least, in many cases), to make money directly, at least in the short term; rather, they exist to reinforce the profitability of its primary products by increasing stickiness.
Well, if you stop using "X" as another way of writing either "Z", or "KZ", you could just use it for the "CH" sound, which has nothing to do with the sound that "C", in any of its uses, and "H" make separately.
I've never understood why people are willing to put up with such a crazy layout as modern 102/103/105 key keyboards anyway. Why doesn't anybody offer a keyboard that has a normal layout in terms of the main keys but with some sensible changes:
* Function keys are rarely used - you need them (I use Eclipse too!), but they can be de-emphasised.
I've gota Microsoft keyboard with F1..F12 as secondary functions accessed through an F-lock key, with standard windows shortcuts (Help, Undo, Redo, etc.) now the primary functions of those key. (I got it because it was a wireless ergonomic keyboard and it had the best feel of any I could find; I'm no particular MS fan, but I am a fan of reducing the pain in my fingers.)
* The numeric keypad is stupid. There should be space, tab and comma keys on it so that it might actually be useful for one-handed data entry!
For numeric data entry, the only thing it really needs is a tab. Space and comma aren't really needed. IF the "+" and enter keys were 1½ size instead of double-size, there'd be room for a single-size tab key (I'd actually prefer a single-size "+" with a big Tab and Enter, though.)
* Get rid of the stupid windows keys. Most people don't even know what they do anyway.
Most people might not, I do, and I use them. If you use two hands on the keyboard, they are let easier than reaching for the mouse for some things.
* Why are there no keys for multiplication, division symbol, bullet point, and a ton of other common symbols? It's like we're still being limited by baudot code or something.
Because it would take a metric assload of keys, and there aren't probably aren't enough people who want to use any particular set of additional characters directly to create a clear set of a reasonable number of additional symbols. And the people that really need an expanded set of characters have plenty of available tools to let them remap their existing keyboards to add them.
* PrtScn/SysRq, Scroll-lock, Pause/Break and Num-lock are virtually never touched. What is the point of num-lock now that there's an inverted T cursor cluster and related keys.
Lots of people I know use PrtScn a lot; I'm sure some people use hte rest. Personally, I find the "NumLock off" navigation keys a lot easier to use than the T cursor cluster and separate Insert/Home/PgUp/PgDown for navigation if I have to do a lot of it in, say, a large wordprocessing document. Maybe because many of my early years on a computer were with the old 84-key PC keyboard, but I doubt I'm the only one.
* Alt Gr - don't even get me started...
??
* What the hell is that back-tick key doing up in the top left anyway? And why does it look so odd paired with a normal quote?
I dunno, but TeX would be no fun without it.
* As for putting control back where it belongs (I think this one depends on what you first used), the best argument I've heard for not putting it where caps-lock is now is that it belomes very easy to in one stroke hit CTRL-A (often 'Select All') with the following keystroke replacing your entire document with that character. I know Linux doesn't have this problem so much, but since most of the world is using Windows at the moment, it is a consideration.
The funny thing with "Control" and where it "belongs" is that it was probably only ever where CapsLock is on newer computer keyboards (and on typewriter keyboards old and new) because teletypes, using only a single case of letters (shifting for some symbols) had a shift but no "Caps Lock" key, and so put the "control" key where Caps Lock was on a typewriter to keep everything else the same as typewriter, and early computer keyboards used the layout (and shared the limitations) of teletype keyboards.
Town? What town? A big part of the social networking phenomenon is probably that there are no more real towns/physical places to go and socialize. Have you been to America lately?
Yeah, they tore down all the bars, nightclubs, shopping malls, libraries, arcades, parks, etc., etc., etc. in America. All gone. Every last one.
Social networking sites are now close to eclipsing traffic to the giants -- Google and Yahoo
Well, sure, that's sounds impressive, until you RTFA and see that the support for that is that visitors to the top 10 "social networking" sites combined (including Google offering Blogger.com) are approaching the US traffic of Google or Yahoo! individually.
Of course, by the definition they use ("For this particular analysis we wanted to include sites where people create personal profiles with the opportunity to receive/initiate direct interaction and/or knowledge with peers.") both Google and Yahoo! really should have been included as social networking sites, as both provide that defining functionality. And if they did that, then, wow, the top ten social networking sites combined would have way more US traffic than Google or Yahoo! taken individually.
I think maybe they switched them to be more like traditional mechanical typewriters.
They definitely switched them to be more like typewriters (though electric more than "mechanical"); which made sense—computers were being more used by non-technical people who also used typewriters and having the layouts as similar as possible was a good thing for most business users. Apparently, the difference in layouts particularly the location of the Caps Lock key was a frequent gripe of pre-PS/2 IBM customers.
Of course, now that computers have almost completely displaced typewriters, there's a lot less reason to be bound by what typewriter users are used to. OTOH, most computer users are now used to the existing dominant layout and there's not a big incentive to switch for most users.
And, for those who like the old Control location, there's always the Happy Hacking Keyboard.
Microsoft will also support the activation of Windows XP throughout its life and will likely provide an update that turns activation off at the end of the product's lifecycle so users would no longer be required to activate the product.
"Likely".
Sure. Saying that it is likely now serves Microsoft's marketing purposes.
When the end of the product's supported "life" comes, OTOH, actually releasing the no-activation patch will not been in Microsoft's marketing interests. And its not like they ever committed to it...
Now, if we could only get these two wacky kids together...
Well, Eliza's a bit old for OpenCyc, but AIML (a generalized language for Eliza-stye chatbots, so in a way Eliza's descendant) has been set up with OpenCyc already with Project CyN.
Since when are banks required to protect themselves against people who have keyloggers on their computers?
Its not a requirement, but it is a competitive advantage. The combination of convenience and security is a key selling feature for banking services.
And as other people have pointed out, its actually quite possible to frustrate a keylogger by a method similar to what HSBC uses, only adding in permutations.
Of course, if they had a way of reading your screen and associating the results with a keylogger, its a bit harder to frustrate.
There is an individual who was the last person to take custody of the vehicles. That person committed multiple counts of
grand theft auto.
Almost certainly, he did not, under the law.
You take in a vehicle with the understanding that you will return it. You don't have a mechanics lien or anything like that. You simply keep the vehicle locked in a building to which you have the key. That's theft.
Perhaps it is; OTOH, if you don't have the "key" anymore, at least not one which would let the car out, but someone else does, and claims the key is their property, and you are engaged in a dispute with them over access to the key, then, while you may be liable civilly damages to the owner of the car resulting from their loss of the use of the car during the dispute (depending on other factors), you are almost certainly not guilty of any theft crime, lacking the requisite intent.
They claim that all but "a fraction of a percent" of those 60 million people who've been denied access to Microsoft updates and downloads are guilty, guilty, guilty. Right.
Right. Remember, 3/2—or 119,990,000/2—is, after all, a fraction.
Just call the police and your insurance company, and report it stolen. You know the location of the property, and the identity of the thief. They can sit in jail, or they can return your property.
Cities can't sit in jail, even if you could convince a public prosecutor to file criminal charges against them, even if what they did met the legal requirements that, done by someone else, it would be a crime.
How is it not theft?
Theft covers a number of crimes, the elements of none of which, that I can see, are fully satisfied here.
Others have pointed out that a big point of this is likely to attract buyers for their IDE group which is up for sale. As I recall, the "released" version of Mono is an open source, cross-platform.NET 1.1 (+some later features) implementation that Novell has invested heavily in; a set of commercial development tools that target.NET 1.1 might be particularly interesting to Novell.
I'm sure this product is great, but what is going to attract developers to these IDEs, especially the C# IDE when Microsoft is already giving away Visual Studio Express for free.
Well, Borland's giving their own "Explorer" versions for free, too; I suspect some people will experiment with both free IDE's, and, when given a choice, chose to pay for the more advanced version of whichever suits them better.
There are some interesting features on the feature lists that may be competitive advantages compared to Microsoft's offerings.
And the city has committed theft by saying "no, you can't have your car back" when it's not their property to decide.
No, if you voluntarily give someone physical control of your property and they take it with an agreement to return it and the intent to return it, and they then become unable to return it, its not generally theft under criminal law.
If my car were in there I'd be filing a complaint with the police as well as filing a lawsuit demanding a rather steep rental fee.
And, while you might get some reasonable compensation through the civil lawsuit (though almost certainly not your "rather steep rental fee", your complaint with the police would likely go nowhere.
...are necessarily true in software you get under an open source license. A buyer could easily put out an RFP requiring that the software be provided under an open source license, and specifying any terms they wanted regarding liability, support, standards compliance, etc. The only thing OS certainly gives you is the right to use the software, the right to modify it (which would, under any reasonable terms, likely invalidate the vendor's liability, etc.), and the ability, if you can find someone other than the original vendor willing to take their place supporting it (costly and difficult as that would probably be for a custom app like this), the option to switch support vendors in the future without losing the right to use the software.
Slashdot Mirror
ISTR that neurons are, pretty much, either firing or not firing, on or off, and that, consequently, a brain "processes" shades of gray in a way substantially similar to the way your typical digital computer "processes" real numbers.
CR's model which provides its independence also means it doesn't tend to have the chummy, early access relationship many other outlets have with manufacturers. Them actually doing really substantial tests also means that they tend to take longer than some other outlets. OTOH, I've rarely been led astray by a CR review on anything, computer related or not, so I'm pretty happy with them despite their limitations.
Yeah, but its not a one-time thing, you have to maintain it. So those mystical monoliths would have to hang out and continue exerting their magical force to make it work.
There was no failure to understand here. The bill wasn't hastily thrown together in ignorance. The industry lobbyists who wrote the law spent a lot of time working on the details, and knew exactly what they were doing. Congress failure was in not caring much beyond what the lobbyists could do for them, not in not understanding the subject matter. (I'm not saying they actually understood, just that for their understanding to have any relevance they'd have to first care about the substance.)
As gets pointed out each time this gets discussed, once the first genuinely open-source cleanroom Java implementation was released, that was already a possibility whatever Sun did, so the whole issue is largely moot.
The only company that could benefit from doing that (because they also have the market power to get people to use their incompatible implementation rather than one that works properly) has already chosen a different route to try to destroy Java, by releasing their own platform targetting the same market.
And, of course, there are clean-room open-source implementations of that competitors platform as well...
Don't exist, I think (at least, in many cases), to make money directly, at least in the short term; rather, they exist to reinforce the profitability of its primary products by increasing stickiness.
Well, if you stop using "X" as another way of writing either "Z", or "KZ", you could just use it for the "CH" sound, which has nothing to do with the sound that "C", in any of its uses, and "H" make separately.
I've gota Microsoft keyboard with F1..F12 as secondary functions accessed through an F-lock key, with standard windows shortcuts (Help, Undo, Redo, etc.) now the primary functions of those key. (I got it because it was a wireless ergonomic keyboard and it had the best feel of any I could find; I'm no particular MS fan, but I am a fan of reducing the pain in my fingers.)
For numeric data entry, the only thing it really needs is a tab. Space and comma aren't really needed. IF the "+" and enter keys were 1½ size instead of double-size, there'd be room for a single-size tab key (I'd actually prefer a single-size "+" with a big Tab and Enter, though.)
Most people might not, I do, and I use them. If you use two hands on the keyboard, they are let easier than reaching for the mouse for some things.
Because it would take a metric assload of keys, and there aren't probably aren't enough people who want to use any particular set of additional characters directly to create a clear set of a reasonable number of additional symbols. And the people that really need an expanded set of characters have plenty of available tools to let them remap their existing keyboards to add them.
Lots of people I know use PrtScn a lot; I'm sure some people use hte rest. Personally, I find the "NumLock off" navigation keys a lot easier to use than the T cursor cluster and separate Insert/Home/PgUp/PgDown for navigation if I have to do a lot of it in, say, a large wordprocessing document. Maybe because many of my early years on a computer were with the old 84-key PC keyboard, but I doubt I'm the only one.
??
I dunno, but TeX would be no fun without it.
The funny thing with "Control" and where it "belongs" is that it was probably only ever where CapsLock is on newer computer keyboards (and on typewriter keyboards old and new) because teletypes, using only a single case of letters (shifting for some symbols) had a shift but no "Caps Lock" key, and so put the "control" key where Caps Lock was on a typewriter to keep everything else the same as typewriter, and early computer keyboards used the layout (and shared the limitations) of teletype keyboards.
Yeah, they tore down all the bars, nightclubs, shopping malls, libraries, arcades, parks, etc., etc., etc. in America. All gone. Every last one.
Well, sure, that's sounds impressive, until you RTFA and see that the support for that is that visitors to the top 10 "social networking" sites combined (including Google offering Blogger.com) are approaching the US traffic of Google or Yahoo! individually.
Of course, by the definition they use ("For this particular analysis we wanted to include sites where people create personal profiles with the opportunity to receive/initiate direct interaction and/or knowledge with peers.") both Google and Yahoo! really should have been included as social networking sites, as both provide that defining functionality. And if they did that, then, wow, the top ten social networking sites combined would have way more US traffic than Google or Yahoo! taken individually.
They definitely switched them to be more like typewriters (though electric more than "mechanical"); which made sense—computers were being more used by non-technical people who also used typewriters and having the layouts as similar as possible was a good thing for most business users. Apparently, the difference in layouts particularly the location of the Caps Lock key was a frequent gripe of pre-PS/2 IBM customers.
Of course, now that computers have almost completely displaced typewriters, there's a lot less reason to be bound by what typewriter users are used to. OTOH, most computer users are now used to the existing dominant layout and there's not a big incentive to switch for most users.
And, for those who like the old Control location, there's always the Happy Hacking Keyboard.
Almost certainly, he did not, under the law.
Perhaps it is; OTOH, if you don't have the "key" anymore, at least not one which would let the car out, but someone else does, and claims the key is their property, and you are engaged in a dispute with them over access to the key, then, while you may be liable civilly damages to the owner of the car resulting from their loss of the use of the car during the dispute (depending on other factors), you are almost certainly not guilty of any theft crime, lacking the requisite intent.
Right. Remember, 3/2—or 119,990,000/2—is, after all, a fraction.
Just not a proper fraction.
Others have pointed out that a big point of this is likely to attract buyers for their IDE group which is up for sale. As I recall, the "released" version of Mono is an open source, cross-platform .NET 1.1 (+some later features) implementation that Novell has invested heavily in; a set of commercial development tools that target .NET 1.1 might be particularly interesting to Novell.
Well, Borland's giving their own "Explorer" versions for free, too; I suspect some people will experiment with both free IDE's, and, when given a choice, chose to pay for the more advanced version of whichever suits them better.
There are some interesting features on the feature lists that may be competitive advantages compared to Microsoft's offerings.
...are necessarily true in software you get under an open source license. A buyer could easily put out an RFP requiring that the software be provided under an open source license, and specifying any terms they wanted regarding liability, support, standards compliance, etc. The only thing OS certainly gives you is the right to use the software, the right to modify it (which would, under any reasonable terms, likely invalidate the vendor's liability, etc.), and the ability, if you can find someone other than the original vendor willing to take their place supporting it (costly and difficult as that would probably be for a custom app like this), the option to switch support vendors in the future without losing the right to use the software.