Linked by Kostis Kapelonis on Mon 29th Nov 2004 18:55 UTC
The IT sector today is a complete mess. The end-users rarely understand this, but most insiders reach a point when they realize that things should be different. The problems are numerous but they all reduce to a basic principle. IT and consumer electronics companies are interested more about money than helping people solve their problems. Of course companies need to make a profit and nobody denies that. They should however make money by helping people and not by creating more problems for them. 
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/20/13 6:17 UTC, submitted by MOS6510
"In the first episode of Microsoft's new film series 'On the Whiteboard', Editor Pamela Woon chats with two-time Oscar winner Randy Thom about the (often underestimated) importance of sound in human-technology interactions. Thom, the lead sound designer at Skywalker Ranch who worked on films such as The Incredibles, Castaway and Forrest Gump, says that people rarely consider the significance of those signature sounds that come from their trusty devices, whether it be a cell phone, a computer or a tablet."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 23:02 UTC, submitted by M.Onty
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/19/13 22:28 UTC
"A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.More News »
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So I teached him plain HTML with a simple text editor in 15 minutes. And that was easy for him to understand because now *he* was in control, not the fscking machine!
I think systems should be more transparent about their inner workings, allowing users to understand.
Agreed! I would never have been able to use computers so effortlessly if I had started with Windows instead of Acorn Electron and DOS. God help people born in to the world of Windows. I like to start from the bottom, going up. It's like programming: the best programmers know assembly, and can use it when necessary (not very often).
OSes do suck, you're right, but not because they don't provide enough abstraction. That's not the OS's job (see exokernels, etc. for what OSes should really be doing). It's the job of software developers in userspace to abstract away the computer, and indeed the trend has been in that direction.
Yes. An OS that wouldn't suck would be nothing more than a transparent layer to compose address spaces, muliplex execution contexts and provide shared hardware access (interrupt handlers, I/O ports and address ranges, etc.) It would be tiny and verifiable. I think whatever goes on top is a harder problem, but it should be changeable. Linux is kind of like this but provides too many abstractions (files, processes, device 'files').