Not sure what is the bigger horror - Mr 12 who wants iPad, or another Mr 12 who wants to run Debian on it.
Just ran into the latter type. I kid you not.
1143 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Feb 2013
"Sometimes standardization is what you need"
Exactly. Sometimes.
Standards are a compromise. Attempt to define a set of most essential features/qualities and freeze this set for a considerable time. No doubt that this is a good thing to do. But there will be a time when selected set is inadequate for some new applications. This will bring about a good deal of tensions - some folks are content with the old set, some are not, there are multiple conflicting proposals on the future, etc. And, of course, everyone has some valid arguments to support their case. These are the crossroads where fates are decided, even if not clearly visible at the time.
"It's not a "dictatorship", it's just a clever idea to ensure compatibility."
There, on the crossroads, lurks the danger of the dictatorship. When one of the interested parties is too powerful, it may hijack the previously agreed standard, and do away with it. Either making changes unacceptable to others, or extending the freeze period indefinitely.
That's where right to fork becomes not just necessary, but absolutely crucial.
As for connection to the freedom of speech - yes, it is a lax one, but remember that oppressive regimes usually suppress any alternate views, and with it, any ways of doing things differently. Freedom of speech is a possibility to say "officially unapproved" things. Freedom of action is a possibility to do those things, and see for yourself, if any good comes out of it. Of course most of the new ideas turn out to be stupid, and their implementations laughable, but without the possibility to experiment (and make mistakes) we don't get major breakthroughs either.
And here we come to that "reinventing the wheel" argument. What would we do, hypothetically of course, when a major wheelmaker decides to discontinue the familiar round wheels and replace them with neon-coloured square jobs? Do we have the skill to start casting our own, or have we thoroughly forgotten that?
I'd conclude that keeping some skills sharp is a necessary thing, even if it seems folly to someone else.
"Linux is still crippled by too many distros, desktop managers,..."
Yeah, like teh internet, and teh world, which are crippled by too many people with too many opinions.
Freedom to fork is a fundamental right. Maybe not for all people, but definitely for some. Right on par with the freedom of speech. Yes, both are sometimes annoying, but I would not have it any other way. There has been too much oppression in the past, too much dark ages to remember. Never again.
"There are textbooks on this. Many of them written as far back as the late '60s"
Upvote for a discussion-provoking comment. However, it is quite wrong, or even worse, right in a wrong way.
Yes, some UI principles from 60's are back, garnered with a LSD-inspired colour palette. Many productivity enhancements made in the boring decades are suppressed. Instead of multiple windows working discreetly in the background, we have an awful race for the foreground - multiple apps are trying to jump up and grab the whole desktop. In direct violation of the lesser known 11th commandment - thou shalt not steal keyboard focus!
But to spin this as a good thing...
Yes, well, it could be good for some users. Just leave some choice about it.
Synergy? That's so 2010.
Lack of the old buzzwords is quite important - that's how real managers detect any possible wannabes trying to join the club.
In this particular case, they are codewords, and anybody caught with an old codebook is a potential threat to the Most Holy National Security. Beware.
"Considering how little AC's add to the quality of the debate in these forums it'd be no great loss to block the lot "
Strongly disagree. There are some truly good and insightful AC comments, which probably would not have seen daylight in other conditions. Difficult to search for good examples right now, on a bloody touchscreen, but if it is important, I'll find some.
Not to mention a culture of writing anonymous pamphlets, which may be long forgotten by now, but did strongly influence principles set forth in First Amendment. Heh. In modern parlance, founding fathers did not mind anonymous trolling, because they did it themselves.
Anyhow. It is a question of signal-to-noise ratio, and how much noise is someone able to tolerate. I'd say that 1:500 would be a very decent ratio, especially considering that noise is quite easy to filter out. There is really no need to kill the good signal.
Ah. You saw me lambasting Firefox, and helpfully offered IE?
Too bad, IE 11 is still not a browser, it's trying to be a bloody platform (or a lifestyle, judging by the current article). It also comes with unacceptable prerequisites, hooks, lines and sinkers. Well, maybe acceptable to someone, but certainly not to this old geezer, who cannot even accept some later trends in FF development. Should really check what the IceWeasel / IceCat guys are up to.
As for security & quality, this just in
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/11/ie_0day_menace/
Remains to be seen if IE 11 has better magic beans in it.
And why would one need mascots? Especially for a browser?
It is a harsh thing to say, but both FF and IE are trying to do everything except web browsing. FF used to be good...alas, those days are gone. Playing around with cute mascots instead of quality programming.
It's not that bad - programming tasks may still be appealing to kids. It really depends.
Some good examples: Forth computer in Minecraft, Colobot, Mindstorms. Sufficiently easy, starting to yield sense of achievement right away, and yet allow to get a hang of algorithmic thinking. After that, it's quite likely that next Christmas wish is going to be an Arduino or Raspberry.
But yes, abundance of ready-made things has taken its toll. If there's an app for everything, why bother?
"Find me another optical drive that can read bluray, but can't read DVD/CD
The software to play them is hardly expensive/complex..."
Most DVD drives (if not all) have two lasers inside - red for DVD and infrared for CD. Optical paths are merged via complex set of mirrors and lenses. So it's not just software. Dropping CD optics would make it a bit simpler and cheaper.
Haven't bothered to dissect BD drive, but I seriously doubt that BD could do all formats with just one blue laser.
"I stopped buying HP optical drives because they did not support DVD-ram, and kept disconnecting in Linux."
Come on. DVD-RAM is a proprietary format of Panasonic. Other OD makers have licensed it for some drive models, but nowadays they do not seem to bother anymore.
(correction) It was proprietary, now opened up a bit.
And HP has bugger all to do with it. They just buy drives from the big three.
"Most storage vendors store configuration in the form of metadata on the underlying disk drives"
Don't know about Storwize, but I'd say most storage boxes have a way to nuke metadata from the shell. And not particularly secret. Like any administrative access - plenty of ways to aim for the foot.
It's always a good idea to keep management network separated from the public ones.
"The trouble with searching the ribbon for a feature that you once could find in a second, is that you know at some point in the next week you'll be doing it again"
What, no love for the ageless classic - hide and seek? Considering yourself a grown-up, are you?
But seriously, there seem to be 2 major reasons behind that:
- not enough screen estate for the icons, which was "solved" by moving icons around and keeping most recently used icons visible;
- general attention-whoring, attempts to keep user looking at the product as much as possible. In the name of Most Holy Experience, of course. And in stark contrast with older approaches, where a tool had to perform its task quickly, efficiently and transparently. Well, most software companies seem to wriggle as hell to get away from the old toolmaker image. Services and entertainment is the fashion.
And therein lies the conflict. Geeks need good tools, not to be "entertained" by the tools.
You have probably hit a bigger trend there.
Those automated data munchers have become really good - at finding the most offensive and incompatible material for that particular user - and proudly presenting it as a 'recommended' choice.
Sort of a reverse AI (isn't it what Intel's IA actually stands for?).
Or a variant of Infinite Improbability Drive.
"Hollywood films where cars catch fire and blow up with apparent ease. "
Nah, those are special cars just for Hollywood. Carrying a belt of ignition pistons and a metric fuckton of fuel. Sometimes solvent, judging by the colour of the flames.
But ordinary cars also catch fire. It is a fair percentage of accidents. Over 100 000 per year in US, and that is excluding Pintos, which have merrily burned away years ago.