Comment Re:so what? (Score 2) 78
People should watch Dark Star. "How do I know you are not false data?" "Doesn't matter, the concept is valid no matter where it originated from".
Comment Re:Left vs right hand (Score 1) 156
Anecdote only from me of course.but for what it's worth...I'm left-handed. Subconsciously I consider left = "towards what I know" and right = "going further out". This applies to walking, driving...all of it.
I know it's not actually true of course, but if faced with an unfamiliar t-junction while driving or perhaps I'm just out on a walk to get some distance in, that's how I think of it.
I know it's not actually true of course, but if faced with an unfamiliar t-junction while driving or perhaps I'm just out on a walk to get some distance in, that's how I think of it.
Comment Re: Maybe it's something to do with self-defense? (Score 1) 156
It's testable, I agree. However as a left-handed person where my dominant side is the left...I always go left if I can.
Interestingly, though admittedly this is purely my anecdote so take this as such, this translates to driving too. Unknown place, just driving for fun, reach a t-junction and have to choose? To me left = "towards where you know" and right = "going further out". Even if that's not actually the case, that's just how my mind sees it at first glance. Wonder if that's also looked at, and also if it's affected by location (I'm in the UK, so would drive on the left).
Interestingly, though admittedly this is purely my anecdote so take this as such, this translates to driving too. Unknown place, just driving for fun, reach a t-junction and have to choose? To me left = "towards where you know" and right = "going further out". Even if that's not actually the case, that's just how my mind sees it at first glance. Wonder if that's also looked at, and also if it's affected by location (I'm in the UK, so would drive on the left).
Comment Re:Valleygirl accent (Score 1) 40
...and then the reveal that you can't have it unless you have an M3 chip or later, plus 12Gb of RAM. So that's all the new Neo owners out then isn't it - that's a serious miss.
Comment Re:Life Expectancy Study. (Score 1) 115
That's actually not as far away from ours (UK) as I expected. I just did a rough calculation and I make it $8.43 here (converting £1.66 per litre into gallons and USD).
My EV I charge overnight and draw 22kWh per night given my commute, for 7p per kWh. My range is 90 miles, so a spot of converting tells me I pay $2.06 for 90 miles of range.
Seems ok to me.
My EV I charge overnight and draw 22kWh per night given my commute, for 7p per kWh. My range is 90 miles, so a spot of converting tells me I pay $2.06 for 90 miles of range.
Seems ok to me.
Comment Synths too (Score 4, Interesting) 115
I bought a Roland S-1 Tweak Synth this week. Absolutely lovely bit of kit, one of the best things Roland have done for a while. It's relevance to this conversation though is that it has a built-in, non-user replaceable battery and is charged by USB C.
I've kept my Roland synth from 1989, and there are people with synths much older than that. While never massively user-serviceable as a genre, this is the first time I can think of that there's a definite life span on these things. Just like a phone, eventually this battery is going to wear out and have severely reduced capacity. I have to imagine that, as with vintage synths or older phones, someone will probably start a service for replacing the battery but wouldn't it be nice if they didn't have to and the design had been thought of in advance?
I've kept my Roland synth from 1989, and there are people with synths much older than that. While never massively user-serviceable as a genre, this is the first time I can think of that there's a definite life span on these things. Just like a phone, eventually this battery is going to wear out and have severely reduced capacity. I have to imagine that, as with vintage synths or older phones, someone will probably start a service for replacing the battery but wouldn't it be nice if they didn't have to and the design had been thought of in advance?
Comment Re:Dang They dont get it do they (Score 1) 116
Yep, was more thinking of the "people using wired don't care about the DAC" part than the actual machines we're talking about.
Comment Re:Dang They dont get it do they (Score 2) 116
Quite the opposite. A strong use-case for a jack is low-latency audio, and tht's the kind of thing used by people who use their machines for audio and music production. I'm a heavy user of Logic, and would absolutely not let wireless headphones anywhere near it.
For "people who don't care the DAC sucks", there's wireless. For people who do care about the DAC but only for listening to music or conversation etc., then wireless also exists. For those who care about both quality and latency, and that's really only for specific use cases these days, then wired is the way.
For "people who don't care the DAC sucks", there's wireless. For people who do care about the DAC but only for listening to music or conversation etc., then wireless also exists. For those who care about both quality and latency, and that's really only for specific use cases these days, then wired is the way.
Blue Origin Rocket Exploded Thursday Night During Hot-Fire Test (cbsnews.com) 73
Spaceflight Now shared their video of the explosion, which the Orlando Sentinel describes as showing Blue Origin's rocket "become engulfed in flames. The fireball expands out and covers the entire launch pad as the fuselage of the rocket can be seen crumbling into the flames."
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said on X.com "It's too early to know the root cause but we're already working to find it. Very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It's worth it." (SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted "Sorry to see this, I hope you recover quickly.")
It's unclear how this will impact future launches. "The rocket was destroyed," reports CBS News, "and as the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the erector-gantry used to move the New Glenn from its hangar to the pad and to raise it from horizontal to vertical. Likewise, one of two tall lightning towers was no longer visible." It was the first such on-pad explosion at the Cape since a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up on nearby pad 40 on Sept. 1, 2016... Blue Origin only has one New Glenn pad, the one that was damaged in the Thursday test. The New Glenn, which has launched three times, is a heavy lift rocket designed to compete head-to-head with SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. During New Glenn's most recent flight in April, an upper stage malfunction prevented a commercial internet satellite from reaching its planned orbit...
The New Glenn destroyed Thursday was to send 48 Leo internet satellites owned by Amazon into space [which were not on board for the hot-fire test]
Blue Origin posted on X.com that "Debris from our recent hotfire anomaly may wash ashore in the coming days/weeks. If you encounter any debris, do not touch or approach it for your safety."
"Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult..." NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman posted on X.com. "âWe will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader symbolset for sharing the news.
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said on X.com "It's too early to know the root cause but we're already working to find it. Very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It's worth it." (SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted "Sorry to see this, I hope you recover quickly.")
It's unclear how this will impact future launches. "The rocket was destroyed," reports CBS News, "and as the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the erector-gantry used to move the New Glenn from its hangar to the pad and to raise it from horizontal to vertical. Likewise, one of two tall lightning towers was no longer visible." It was the first such on-pad explosion at the Cape since a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up on nearby pad 40 on Sept. 1, 2016... Blue Origin only has one New Glenn pad, the one that was damaged in the Thursday test. The New Glenn, which has launched three times, is a heavy lift rocket designed to compete head-to-head with SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. During New Glenn's most recent flight in April, an upper stage malfunction prevented a commercial internet satellite from reaching its planned orbit...
The New Glenn destroyed Thursday was to send 48 Leo internet satellites owned by Amazon into space [which were not on board for the hot-fire test]
Blue Origin posted on X.com that "Debris from our recent hotfire anomaly may wash ashore in the coming days/weeks. If you encounter any debris, do not touch or approach it for your safety."
"Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult..." NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman posted on X.com. "âWe will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader symbolset for sharing the news.
Comment Re:Why stop there? (Score 1) 98
Agreed - I'm also a light user of KDE and exactly the same as I said about the Mac applies to KDE. The Mac improved a lot, although it's still more flexible to use 3rd party stuff. I'm not aware of any extra window management available in KDE although as stated I'm only a light user of it really (my gaming box is a Bazzite install with KDE).
Comment Remember AltaVista (Score 4, Interesting) 79
People switched to Google because it had a nice clean white page with a single search box, while AltaVista was going the 90s fad portal route. Clean interface and simplicity was thee key,
There's lots of talk about how Google's search algos were better than AltaVista but honestly, at first, they weren't. They were close and they improved, but the loading speed and simplicity advantage that Google had over AltaVista is what bought them time to improve. Remember too that one reason AltaVista was better was that people optimised to be found by it, and not for Google. As time went on, more people learned what Page Rank was (long since gone) and started to optimise for that instead, thus speeding up the switch.
Lesson: Don't go complex. Don't go shoving extra stuff at people that they haven't asked for. Give them the simplest thing possible, and they will use it.
There's lots of talk about how Google's search algos were better than AltaVista but honestly, at first, they weren't. They were close and they improved, but the loading speed and simplicity advantage that Google had over AltaVista is what bought them time to improve. Remember too that one reason AltaVista was better was that people optimised to be found by it, and not for Google. As time went on, more people learned what Page Rank was (long since gone) and started to optimise for that instead, thus speeding up the switch.
Lesson: Don't go complex. Don't go shoving extra stuff at people that they haven't asked for. Give them the simplest thing possible, and they will use it.
Comment Re:Discover new applications? Hell no (Score 1) 98
How do you know they exist in the first place? Start menu is a copy of the Apple menu as enhanced by an ancient shareware utility called "Hierarchical Menus". That add-on does exactly what the start menu does, allowing shortcuts to be grouped in folders etc. and for nesting of folders. It predates the Start menu by a few years.
One of the points was to be able to organise by category. I might not know what the thing-to-set-up-a-disk-partition is called, but it's probably in a menu hierarchy called "Utilities" and I can go look. It's discoverable, and it should be there.
Pinned things? Probably a set of defaults that are easily removable would be my preferred answer (which is what they do), but I could also settle for none until you put it there. But I very much disagree that nothing at all should be in the Start menu except your own choices.
One of the points was to be able to organise by category. I might not know what the thing-to-set-up-a-disk-partition is called, but it's probably in a menu hierarchy called "Utilities" and I can go look. It's discoverable, and it should be there.
Pinned things? Probably a set of defaults that are easily removable would be my preferred answer (which is what they do), but I could also settle for none until you put it there. But I very much disagree that nothing at all should be in the Start menu except your own choices.
Comment Re:Why stop there? (Score 1) 98
I mean - the Apple's "Microsoft - Start Your Photocopiers!" definitely applied to the start of the Win 7 era. It was pretty much a straight lift of Aqua, ironically (given this post's subject) with more flexibility on positioningthe task bar vs the Dock. Certainly Windows didn't introduce pinning apps.
By the end of it though, I thought that Win7 had better actually window management than the Mac did, and even with the split view stuff etc. that's been introduced since I still feel that in order to get the same flexibility of window management that I get in Windows I need to install 3rd party stuff on the Mac.
Admittedly I haven't sat down and done a feature-to-feature comparison for a while there, but yep: will definitely give MS the edge of the ability to re-arrange your windows on the screen.
By the end of it though, I thought that Win7 had better actually window management than the Mac did, and even with the split view stuff etc. that's been introduced since I still feel that in order to get the same flexibility of window management that I get in Windows I need to install 3rd party stuff on the Mac.
Admittedly I haven't sat down and done a feature-to-feature comparison for a while there, but yep: will definitely give MS the edge of the ability to re-arrange your windows on the screen.
Comment Re:Most requested feature...that you removed (Score 1) 98
Yeah, but I heard exactly the same thing about Windows 7 (although admittedly never about 8). If you're using Windows, you will eventually move for something. Whether it's hardware, or some new app you want...can't predict it. Just that looking at the pattern over many years, you will.
I have an install of it. I don't use it, I'm Mac for my main platform and Linux for my gaming. But I still have a Windows partition, and it's Windows 11 too, mostly to handle odd manufacturer firmware update programs for external hardware. Even I moved to 11, and eventually people will do need to do so if they want to stay on the Windows platform. In my case, even if they don't want to stay on that platform in fact.
I have an install of it. I don't use it, I'm Mac for my main platform and Linux for my gaming. But I still have a Windows partition, and it's Windows 11 too, mostly to handle odd manufacturer firmware update programs for external hardware. Even I moved to 11, and eventually people will do need to do so if they want to stay on the Windows platform. In my case, even if they don't want to stay on that platform in fact.
Comment RTFA: Not Office per se, Cloud licensing of Office (Score 2) 58
This isn't about Office. This is about Office 365 and Azure, and how a license is bundled when you use Azure but unbundled if you wanted to use 365 and, for example, AWS.
It's a shame because I wish they would, but the gov.uk link explicitly talks about "CMA’s cloud market investigation – Microsoft’s use of software licensing reducing competition in cloud".
This won't be what people are hoping for here - actual Office. This is purely about licensing costs with regards to cloud deployments.
It's a shame because I wish they would, but the gov.uk link explicitly talks about "CMA’s cloud market investigation – Microsoft’s use of software licensing reducing competition in cloud".
This won't be what people are hoping for here - actual Office. This is purely about licensing costs with regards to cloud deployments.
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