Comment Re:Good Riddance (Score 1) 210
Last time I checked, they are the same: filled with bloatware.
Could they at least try to fill them all with the same bloatware?
Last time I checked, they are the same: filled with bloatware.
Could they at least try to fill them all with the same bloatware?
I help students with their computers at work, and I'm shocked at the amount of bloatware I see on the Windows laptops they bring me.
Microsoft needs to crack down on its OEM contracts and help give people an experience closer to what you get with OS X. Every Windows laptop should act the same when you turn it on for the first time.
Oh, I know it was the writers and especially Roddenberry's dedication to a utopian future that put Star Trek on such scientific footing, but Spock was consistently the public face of it - and Nimoy was pivotal in charting the development of Spock throughout the series. He so quickly became the breakout star of the series, and it's hard to picture another actor portraying Spock effectively (other than Mark Lenard, who would have made a suitable sub for Nimoy if he'd left the series as he threatened.)
The writers were definitely the start of Star Trek's scientific agenda, but Nimoy's portrayal of Spock is what made it "click" for the public.
Seriously - Leonard Nimoy's Mr. Spock probably inspired more people to enter science, engineering, and intellectualism in general than any other figure in pop culture. He turned anti-intellectualism on its ear by making being a "nerd" not just cool, but even sexy.
Look at any major technology or research company making the world a better place, and I guarantee it was built by people who grew up aspiring to be more like Spock.
Well, there was a lot of wrong keystrokes in just the right order leading up to this, but it did end in the erroneous pressing of "enter" - without which the prior keystrokes of DELETE * FROM EVIDENCE wouldn't have mattered.
But it was definitely the single, final, erroneous keystroke that is to blame and therefore definitely an accident.
I think it's more common among liberals (which makes me ashamed to call myself a liberal at times) but libertarians have a big problem with vaccines too for different reasons - and Silicon Valley is the kind of place to which libertarians are naturally drawn.
Since it's California and it's filled with both populations, you just have a double-whammy.
Silicon Valley is unexpectedly bad for vaccines - it's the perfect mix of anti-science liberals and anti-government libertarians. One group thinks vaccines are poison, the other thinks they're a conspiracy.
In best Slashdot style, I did some research *after* posting this, and found out that they're sticking with Trident, so at least that bit of competition will be kept.
Isn't Microsoft announcing a new web browser intended to replace Internet Explorer today? Maybe it'll be open source. Maybe it'll even be based on Webkit.
I don't know how much licensed code is in IE that Microsoft would have to untangle the rights to before open-sourcing it, and given the fact that we've mostly figured out how to work around IE's problems at this point, I'm not sure if it'd be worth the effort to do so.
It'd probably be best to just retire IE, let developers continue struggling through the known-workarounds they've been using until its market-share vanishes, and look forward instead of back. The time spent trying to figure out IE's source could be better spent developing/using a better platform.
Regardless, I think every web browser should be open source, since they work on (theoretically) open standards, run cross platform, and are the defacto presentation layer for an increasing number of applications. Developers need to be able to understand the internals of the browser to assure the best quality of their own work. Really hoping that's what happens with whatever MS announces today with Spartan. (I just don't think IE is worth the effort to open source at this point)
I dunno, we're not a really large town, and we have an industrial electronics distributor who also sells to the public out of their warehouse. It's quite possible we're just lucky - we have a fair number of local manufacturers who they work with, so I imagine that's what keeps them in the area.
Us geeks despise the idea of a walled garden source for software installs, but at least it nominally protects users against this kind of stuff.
Yes - things sneak through from time to time, but it's still orders of magnitude safer than Joe User hoping to find a program online to perform the same task that won't bring his web browsers grinding to a halt with fifteen toolbars.
The process goes something like this:
"Help. My computer is slow."
"You need to clean up the malware."
"Okay, I did a Google for malware cleaner. That only made it worse."
"Oh, you have to install Malwarebytes. That software's a fake."
"Okay, I don't know how I was supposed to know it was fake, but now I've installed Malwarebytes. Things got worse."
"That's because the first search result in Google is actually an ad for somebody else distributing Malwarebytes with its own malware. You have to go to this page instead."
"Okay, I don't know I was supposed to know that too, but now I've installed it. Why is it still not working?"
"Because the malware on your computer redirects attempts to remove the malware on your computer."
"Fuck this. I'm buying a tablet."
(one month later)
"How do I delete all this crap on my tablet?"
"You can't unless you root it. Here's a guide that a five year old child could follow, with only a 10% chance of bricking your unit."
"Then fetch me a fucking five year old child because I'm paralyzed by learned helplessness by this point."
I think we forget how overwhelming and stacked against the user the entire process is.
How many modern systems can anybody imagine still working and apparently doing what we need them to 40 years from now?
The real irony is that the article he's so upset about painted him as an emotionally unstable and clueless twit with a propensity for going on tirades and rants.
Presuming that this proof reached via impressively tortured logic does have merit: Does it mean that it is also impossible to build a purely evil robot that would always kill maliciously?
"History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions." -- Ted Koppel