Ah yes, the +1 funny on the comment that indicates that a man whose wife does the driving isn't a real man...
Glad to see how much we've matured around here.
I believe that Saudi Arabia might be accepting immigration applications. You'd fit right in.
It's just from breathing Google's hot air for too long. Don't worry, I've quit.
It's one thing to hire talented worked away from a company and have them design new things.
It's another to get your grips on one worker, and essentially use him as a mole to take away a whole team and/or any proprietary stuff they've been working on (which is what seems to be alleged here).
If the latter is allowed, then if any smaller company is working on a breakthrough idea can be easily broken and their tech taken by a larger company with buckets full of cash to steal their staff and secrets.
I guess you haven't tried to actually use a Google product from the inside. Fundamentally broken, obvious and repeatable bugs have gone unfixed for years, but as they tell us: "they're working on it." (cough[Shopping]cough)
If it's in a Google car, they'll claim it isn't evil, while being really underhanded (cough[IP rights]cough), but it won't work right (cough[Shopping]cough), and just as you you commit a significant amount of resources to it, they'll either discontinue it (cough[cough]cough) or sideline it. Or never, ever add the features that would make it something actually reasonable (cough[Gmail]cough) Or simply blow out the decent features (cough[Maps]cough) Or never bother to bring it to a level of performance that is even moderately reasonable (cough[Google+]cough)
Unless it never becomes popular. In that case, it might hang around forever. But still under-performing / broken / evil, etc.
No, I'm not bitter. I love when a company wastes my time as if it's worth nothing. Finally I realized that trying to work with Google was making my time worth nothing. So in a way, they had the right idea from the start.
The only car analogy I can come up with is the insufficiently Humvees the government gave our soldiers to drive over IEDs in.
Not a tech dinosaur.
A tech prokaryote-like organism from the Archean.
"But where's my choice of "watch it with the software I want to use"? Right, it's gone, because of the DRM."
There are plenty of situations where there's not much choice and it has little to do with DRM. In this case, you have *MORE* choice than before (and you're STILL bitching about it, I might add).
Your choice before was: Watch Netflix on a non-Linux OS (including: Windows, Mac, later Android/iDevices). Due to this change, you now have the ADDITIONAL choice to watch it on Linux, which is something a lot of us have been wanting for quite some time. You ALSO have the choice to do things EXACTLY as before, by NOT USING the f**king plugin.
So no choice is gone, because frankly it was never there. You now have additional choices. You also have the choice to go out and buy the bloody DVD and watch it that way. If you want to bitch about DRM then have a look at Blu-Ray which we still can't watch properly on Linux.
This sort of crap is why Linux users look bad, because even when we get something there's always somebody who has to piss and moan about it, and you make us all look like a bunch of whiners. It's their service, and unlike a physical owned medium they do have rights to determine how that service is access. Don't like it, don't use it. But stop using "choice" as a reason to bitch about it when you're actually being given additional options you NEVER HAD before.
Even a new instance of Firefox is laggy and slow on my 8-core, 3 GHz, OS X machine. Browsing Amazon has become an extreme exercise in patience.
Starting it fresh with about 6 GB of RAM free, Firefox continuously and greedily consumes memory until I have to quit it to make it give back the gigabytes it has swallowed like an overweight, crazed hot-dog eating contest professional.
One positive thing I will say about Firefox is that even with those major warts continuously unaddressed, it still performs better than Safari. And Firefox is*much* better at dealing with the whole "outdated flash" issue. It asks me instead of smacking me in the face with "you can't do that", so I'm inspired to raise digit #3 to Firefox far less often than I am with Safari.
Sigh.
I could really give the south end of a northbound rat for Netflix on a browser. I have a capable dedicated system which is much more pleasant to watch Netflix-y things on. But I sure do wish FF could just browse places like Amazon without killing off my resources. After all, it's a browser. It seems to me, naive and unduly optimistic fool that I am, that it should be able to do such things. Well.
When will application and OS vendors ever understand that it truly is their obligation to make what they release actually work properly before they slather on more features or proceed to a new version?
I know. Never. *Sigh*
I'd demand you FF enthusiasts to get off my virtual lawn now, but FireFox has grown so large and unwieldy, I can't even tell if you're out there any longer. Hello? Hello? Oh, hey, no RAM left. Again. [gets virtual shotgun out]
"It's a sad day for Mozilla, the w3c, the web as a whole, and open culture"
Yes, it's a sad day when a vendor offers a CHOICE for a plugin which adds much-requested functionality to their product. Heaven fucking forbid.
There are two reasons I generally still even both to keep windows around, one is Netflix (which become a non-issue when Chrome started to work for it on 'nix), and the other is various games (also starting to change with Steam pushing Linux/GL).
Don't want it, don't use it. There are reasons to be open, but frankly I can see some valid reasons for not being thus. Sometimes FOSS zealots sound very similar to the "well, I've got nothing to hide" types when it comes to discussing surveillance.
Indeed, there are a number of people who post on Facebook about cop deaths, and then that "there were no riots after this guy was killed."
Well, duh. There's generally not any riots when a convenience store clerk is killed (in similar manner, I might add). Why? Who are you going to riot against? Is a cop being shot more terrible than the night-shift guy at 7-11?
Being a cop is not just a guy with a bad, blue uniform, and a job. They're a representative of government authority, with more power than the average citizen. When they start popping off citizens, they're display a form of OPPRESSION. People aren't rioting because Bob X died, they're rioting because a representative of government authority whose job is to PROTECT citizens is instead OPPRESSING and KILLING them.
I really don't see how, in an age of universally available internet pron, anyone's going to get excited enough by a picture of some tits to care.
Perhaps some time studying the works of US legislators will be of use to you, then. According to them, it's quite obvious, and You Must Be Protected From This. Also, consider that the above cases are real people doing real things. Not actors in pixel-addled MPEGs. You can actually interact with them. Much more pleasantly, too.
Having said that, I think you might want to look a little closer at the last paragraph of my post.
My question: Is this trend a progression to the ultimate conclusion where the browser becomes the operating system and our physical hardware becomes little more than a web appliance?
No. And the "trend" referred to here is 99.999999% junkware. Slow junkware. Junkware that typically invades privacy and/or bombards with ads. You can't compete with my image editor. You can't compete with my word processor. You can't even compete with my text editor. You can't compete with my SDR software. You can't compete with my database. You can't compete with my media center. You can't compete with my fish tank controller. You can't guarantee that you, your ISP, my ISP, the connection(s) between them, the name servers, the competition for bandwidth at any one (or more points) will work to my satisfaction. Or at all. You can't even promise the app will BE there (cough, Google, cough) when I need it. Or that it will work properly in my chosen browser. And you're almost *certain* to screw it up so badly that it does all manner of things with rollovers, popping up garbage ads and menus without an instantiating click or drag or keypress from me.
And the other
Seriously, even the *speculation* is ridiculous.
Being attracted to conditions similar to your parents, perhaps?
"here is one that mainly affects men do let's try and deal with it"
What's the gender-split on this? I've heard a few more cases of men living-like-pigs surround by pizza and big gulps but there are still lots of women who sink unhealthy amounts of time into WoW (also farmville) etc
So in other words, I expect neither Xena the warrior princess, nor a supermodel, but can expect decent hygiene and fitness/bodily-upkeep.
Decent intelligence, and an interest in further learning.
Good employability, with a good job and willingness to help foot the bills.
Some interest in games, electronics, etc would be a plus, but otherwise just a willingness to put up with my odd hobbies.
Now... good luck finding it. Yes, there are those that fit said profile, but the reality is that most women are just as shallow as the guys, just in different ways. For some reason, it's been found to be more socially acceptable... and expectations of men have gone up (just look at the body-types of male actors).
There's a huge backlash against female body-image, but frankly few people want a partner with a body like a dumpling and acne, and that applies to both genders. At the same time, somebody with an average build and decent attitude - who cleans up nicely - will do fine in most cases. Yeah, the guys with 6-packs and the women shaped like a bottle with double-D's get noticed, and they're probably going to be more visible in movies and pr0n, but that's all fantasy stuff.
The ones that are pushing the generally unrealistic body image? Well other than magazines/hollywood it's actually NOT the opposite sex. WOMEN are more likely to get catty and demean other women who don't manicure bi-weekly, dress in $100 clothes, and/or spend an hour putting on makeup. Similarly, MEN are more likely to harass other men for being too big, too small, or otherwise not spending 3 hours a day hitting the gym.
Seriously. Yes, women will notice a "hot" guy. Guys will notice a "hot" girl. But for 90% of us that's not what makes a perfect match, it's just something that attracts the eye might like any other form of window-dressing.
My wife is pretty good looking. Neither of us will be on a magazine but we both try to take care of ourselves. She doesn't make as much as me - though she has a high "level" of paper education it's not a great field - but she does have drive to improve. She has zero interest in games/electronics, but for the most part she leaves me my time so long as I do the same for her and we still have time together as well as keeping the house in order. She still notices hot guys (Chris Hemsworth seems to be a favorite), and I still notice hot girls, but we both recognise that it's just eye-candy.
Looking back historically though for both genders, I'd say that the rule runs both ways. Women tend to get treated like toys, and men tend to get treated like walking wallets. If you can, avoid those types of relationships but frankly it's still pretty common and rather painful to go through.
Yeah, it's just comparably better than the other place, where the thermostat is set to 200f.
Actually, it sounds like a lot of the choices we're given these days, be it employment or political party...
"Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love." -- Albert Einstein
