Good thing we have Apple offering vastly superior products at lower prices to knock out Microsoft's monopoly!
Seriously though, a near-monopoly in capitalism is supposed to be countered by competitors that find an opening when the monopolizer takes too much advantage of their monopoly. I.e. if Microsoft starts charging exorbitant rates for poor-quality products (as many would argue), then all it takes is another company (such as Apple) offering competing products at a competitive price.
Apple's still serving too small of a niche to dominate Microsoft like everybody says they will. Apple's products cost too much more and, when you get down to it, do not offer enough benefits to justify the cost.
To get started writing programs on Windows, you need a copy of Visual Basic.NET Express Edition. No programming skills required.
Is that a problematic imbalance?
This might be a joke, but it's very very probable that pirated Windows comes with all kinds of "bonus" software, like backdoors, viruses, rootkits, etc. It's just another way for the software pirates to get a little extra income, because other people will pirate their pirated copies (thus spreading their viruses even further.)
Google's homepage is relatively clean. However, their online apps aren't. Analytics is crammed full of Flash graphs. Gmail manages to duct-tape together lots and lots of little Ajax things, like the built-in chat, sound effects, etc. Google Docs seems to be even slower, with Google essentially making their own GUI toolkit (Yes, on a website).
WYSIWYG programs aren't necessarily bad. So it's hard to edit and there's a bunch of redundant code, but generally pages from WYSIWYG programs are pretty mundane. The new movement towards online apps-as-services will probably be the newest source of bloat on the Internet. I don't know if you would classify it as junk.
Then how would we differentiate between megabytes and mebibytes? I hope you know your metric prefixes, because mega- is always a million, never some binary-derived number (unless you're Microsoft?).
We need some way to know whether we are talking about. Ambiguity is never preferable.
I don't claim any prior knowledge of roommates.com at all, but...
1. Were these fields optional? I wouldn't expect something like orientation to be a required question. The judge says it is, but I want to hear from somebody who's used the site.
2. Are all people who look at applications considered landlords, or only some of them?
I think it would be reasonable for the intro paragraph to be simple, much like the comparisons that are given in the blog. I figure, people who want a simple explanation aren't going to read much anyways, so they can just read the first paragraph and leave. Then, people who want more detailed information can hit Page Down.
What are the consequences on the environment of buying a crap-ton of laptops, and giving them out in poorer countries?
They don't have infrastructure to deal with electronic waste. These things are probably going to end up in landfills, no?
It's bad enough with all the electronics we have, but we have more money to throw at the problem. Honestly, when I first heard of this project, I thought of the sheer amount of materials that would be used.
I could have sworn I saw a prototype picture in PC Mag of something like this a few years ago. It was a tablet/laptop type deal, with a screen that could physically split in half.
Linux is like sending a herd of Roombas into the Louvre and hoping that statistically, most of the floor is covered.
They need somebody to run the whole thing and say stuff like,
"USB drivers, get your act together. Now!"
"We're using Qt. GNOME, shut up."
"This is what you're gonna use for HTML rendering. Tough luck."
"You guys have five days to make a decent UI before I firebomb your house."
See, I don't need to rely on outside proxies to get around my old school's filter. I used their own proxy. I'm not kidding. Their own proxy would bypass the normal filtering proxy, allowing for unrestricted access.
I made a pretty sweet map of my school.
Some clipping issues, poor light map, but otherwise perfectly playable.
If the school wants to haul me in for it, they'll have to listen to me rant about how bad the GtkRadiant interface is.
My $700 (XPMCE) laptop does better than that. Just another reason to stay with XP, I guess.
I can work so efficiently in Windows that most everything is like second nature; I would probably spend all my time in OS X's terminal anyways - I'm not a fan of OS X's interface. My laptop runs very smoothly, rarely hangs, and I haven't rebooted for a week (just hibernating). Google Desktop does most of what I want in Vista (sidebar, quick search). I almost never have problems with network shares, although I use rsync to back stuff up anyways.
My free Vista upgrade CD is sitting in the my stack of CDs collecting dust.
Dean Kamen (who also brought us the Segway) was showing this off in Atlanta. Currently, it's like a remote. One guy wears a sensory "exo-arm" whose movements are copied by the robotic arm. It's kind of laggy and there's no sensory feedback, but allows for some pretty precise and complex movements.
What they haven't done yet is allow a person who is missing an arm to actually control it. That's the hard part. Dean just did the mechanics of it.
How is Google's pinyin IME better than the tons of other pinyin IMEs out there? I tried it, and apart from having a search button, it doesn't seem to be a whole lot better than the Microsoft Pinyin IME that comes with Windows.
How does Google plan to set themselves apart from the rest of the competition and, even better, how does this fit into the "big picture"? Will the mass of adopters suddenly begin using Google search because it's built into their IME?
Slashdot Mirror
Good thing we have Apple offering vastly superior products at lower prices to knock out Microsoft's monopoly! Seriously though, a near-monopoly in capitalism is supposed to be countered by competitors that find an opening when the monopolizer takes too much advantage of their monopoly. I.e. if Microsoft starts charging exorbitant rates for poor-quality products (as many would argue), then all it takes is another company (such as Apple) offering competing products at a competitive price. Apple's still serving too small of a niche to dominate Microsoft like everybody says they will. Apple's products cost too much more and, when you get down to it, do not offer enough benefits to justify the cost.
To get started writing programs on Windows, you need a copy of Visual Basic.NET Express Edition. No programming skills required. Is that a problematic imbalance?
Thank god for the saints over at The Pirate Bay committing millions of thankless acts every day!
Mother Theresa, eat your heart out.
Atlanta Blue Skye LLC: "Your honor, we respectfully await your verdict." Judge: "After reviewing the evidence involved, I rule this case EL-OH-EL."
This might be a joke, but it's very very probable that pirated Windows comes with all kinds of "bonus" software, like backdoors, viruses, rootkits, etc. It's just another way for the software pirates to get a little extra income, because other people will pirate their pirated copies (thus spreading their viruses even further.)
Google's homepage is relatively clean. However, their online apps aren't. Analytics is crammed full of Flash graphs. Gmail manages to duct-tape together lots and lots of little Ajax things, like the built-in chat, sound effects, etc. Google Docs seems to be even slower, with Google essentially making their own GUI toolkit (Yes, on a website).
WYSIWYG programs aren't necessarily bad. So it's hard to edit and there's a bunch of redundant code, but generally pages from WYSIWYG programs are pretty mundane. The new movement towards online apps-as-services will probably be the newest source of bloat on the Internet. I don't know if you would classify it as junk.
Then how would we differentiate between megabytes and mebibytes? I hope you know your metric prefixes, because mega- is always a million, never some binary-derived number (unless you're Microsoft?). We need some way to know whether we are talking about. Ambiguity is never preferable.
I don't claim any prior knowledge of roommates.com at all, but... 1. Were these fields optional? I wouldn't expect something like orientation to be a required question. The judge says it is, but I want to hear from somebody who's used the site. 2. Are all people who look at applications considered landlords, or only some of them?
Yes! My plan to get rich is still good!
I find it disappointing that I haven't received all of the image types exhibited. All my spammers are boring and go with the random noise method.
It's a little late to be jumping on the spread-the-AACS-key bandwagon, isn't it?
I think it would be reasonable for the intro paragraph to be simple, much like the comparisons that are given in the blog. I figure, people who want a simple explanation aren't going to read much anyways, so they can just read the first paragraph and leave. Then, people who want more detailed information can hit Page Down.
/seriously, how did no one else catch that? That's excluding the tons of comments about that, right?What are the consequences on the environment of buying a crap-ton of laptops, and giving them out in poorer countries? They don't have infrastructure to deal with electronic waste. These things are probably going to end up in landfills, no? It's bad enough with all the electronics we have, but we have more money to throw at the problem. Honestly, when I first heard of this project, I thought of the sheer amount of materials that would be used.
I could have sworn I saw a prototype picture in PC Mag of something like this a few years ago. It was a tablet/laptop type deal, with a screen that could physically split in half.
Can anybody tell me what I'm thinking of?
Linux is like sending a herd of Roombas into the Louvre and hoping that statistically, most of the floor is covered. They need somebody to run the whole thing and say stuff like, "USB drivers, get your act together. Now!" "We're using Qt. GNOME, shut up." "This is what you're gonna use for HTML rendering. Tough luck." "You guys have five days to make a decent UI before I firebomb your house."
See, I don't need to rely on outside proxies to get around my old school's filter. I used their own proxy. I'm not kidding. Their own proxy would bypass the normal filtering proxy, allowing for unrestricted access.
I made a pretty sweet map of my school. Some clipping issues, poor light map, but otherwise perfectly playable. If the school wants to haul me in for it, they'll have to listen to me rant about how bad the GtkRadiant interface is.
If the restore failed, wouldn't you be stuck with a bad backup and wiped original?
My $700 (XPMCE) laptop does better than that. Just another reason to stay with XP, I guess.
I can work so efficiently in Windows that most everything is like second nature; I would probably spend all my time in OS X's terminal anyways - I'm not a fan of OS X's interface. My laptop runs very smoothly, rarely hangs, and I haven't rebooted for a week (just hibernating). Google Desktop does most of what I want in Vista (sidebar, quick search). I almost never have problems with network shares, although I use rsync to back stuff up anyways.
My free Vista upgrade CD is sitting in the my stack of CDs collecting dust.
Dean Kamen (who also brought us the Segway) was showing this off in Atlanta. Currently, it's like a remote. One guy wears a sensory "exo-arm" whose movements are copied by the robotic arm. It's kind of laggy and there's no sensory feedback, but allows for some pretty precise and complex movements.
What they haven't done yet is allow a person who is missing an arm to actually control it. That's the hard part. Dean just did the mechanics of it.
How is Google's pinyin IME better than the tons of other pinyin IMEs out there? I tried it, and apart from having a search button, it doesn't seem to be a whole lot better than the Microsoft Pinyin IME that comes with Windows.
How does Google plan to set themselves apart from the rest of the competition and, even better, how does this fit into the "big picture"? Will the mass of adopters suddenly begin using Google search because it's built into their IME?
How big of a bomb can this data-center withstand? Is it buried underground? In a bunker? Tucked into a mountain somewhere?
This is great! Now teachers can do even less work while the magic screen on the wall teaches the kids!
I had Bill Nye the Science Guy as a science teacher once. There was also some other guy there, but I think his job was to manage the VCR.