So much this.

It's such a small change but it totally screws up a flow we've had forever and which made perfect sense. Read title, read summary, read number of comments, click to read said comments. Now it's, read title, read summary, look to upper right to see number of comments, then move mouse back to title to read them (I'm sure I'm not the only one who moves the mouse along as I read).

And yeah, the weird floating videobytes thing.. that's gotta go.

Indeed.

Creepy as it is, the "oh by the way" stuff google does is often relevant. I actually kinda like how when I get an email about a shipment from UPS, google picks up on the tracking number in the email and provides a quick link to the tracking page.

And the maps are a no-brainer, because yeah, a lot of times when I google for a place, I'm gonna wanna know where it's located.

I think it has a lot of potential in certain home/small business level niches.

I'm into simulation games (car, air, submarine, whatever), which is a prime example of something where VR could really add to the experience.

I also see a lot of potential in data visualization. There are big companies already doing this with expensive gear, but I think this will trickle down to the small business scale. Being able to surround yourself with a visual representation of data is very powerful for certain kind of analysis.

The question is whether there is enough to keep it going after the hype dies, and that I'm not so sure about.

Even if they support Linux, you still need people producing content for it that also supports Linux. I have a DK1, and while I did manage to get it going on my gentoo install, there was (and honestly still is) very little to actually play with. I ended up just installing Windows on a second drive.

Definitely not surprised about Linux. I bought a dk1 and ended up installing Windows on a second drive to play with it. Linux support is in huge quotation marks. Once you manage to get it working smoothly, you then have a barren wasteland as far as things to actually do with it.

Indeed. I think it's a phase a lot of programmers go through.

Mine never made it out of Bochs. I had an insanely basic command line, but it didn't handle scrolling... once you got to the end the screen cleared and it started back up at the top.

I don't have the code, but you don't have to search too hard on the net to find hundreds of little hobby operating systems people have written.

Well, daily standup (or end of day.. ) I actually do like, as long as they are _actually_ short.. it's more the "stuff that just came up" type stuff I'm talking about.

To be honest, I find a pending meeting to be a bit distracting, and kind of find it annoying when people do exactly that. You've already interrupted me to tell me about the meeting (even if electronically), and now I'm going to be distracted thinking about it until it happens. May as well just ask your question now and get it over with the way I see it.

Different things for different folks I guess.

Amazed that neither the GPL nor the legal uncertainties surrounding BSD at the time (hey, remember those days!) were really focused on, but meh. I think like everything else that became wildly popular in spite of plenty of seemingly equivalent or better alternatives, it just came down to dumb luck and momentum.

Somehow Linux got the ball rolling, people gathered around it, it gained steam, and here we are.

And I'll add, if it's your idea to create an anonymous but secure connection using PKI to send your biometric identity, that's no better than a password. Infact, it's worse than a password, because (as was the original point), all it takes is your super secret biometric identity to be compromised once, at which point your screwed.

Yes, but how do you validate that the public key I send you is actually my public key? You have to already have it or it has to be stores somewhere that the other party trusts, bringing us right back to our original problem.

PKI lets two parties communicate securely without having ever spoken, and it lets one party validate that something was actually sent by another party _if they have the other parties public key and can trust it_.

Biometrics doesn't add anything useful to this equation that I see. Sure you can use some biometric information as a private key and generate a public key, but what does that give you over using some random number to generate a public key. It still comes down to the party at the other end having that public key and being reasonably sure it's yours.

Sure, but how do they apply to confirming an identity and not a capability.

Maybe I'm too thick to get it, but I can't see how say, a bank, can validate that you are who you say you are without at least knowing _something_ about you that you can than verify through whatever means.

Right, but there has to be a public key involved at some point.

As with DRM, if the thing that decides if you are valid can be in your hands (so to speak), you may as well assume it will be compromised.

There's no way I can think of to pass on a piece of information describing yourself to another party without that party having to know that information already to validate it, and if they do, it can be stolen and replayed.

I can kinda see the appeal of an implanted device, but yeah, there's no reason such a system couldn't be a fob you carry around with you (or somewhat unfortunately more likely, baked into your phone).