“Computer science is not as old as physics; it lags by a couple of hundred years. However, this does not mean that there is significantly less on the computer scientist’s plate than on the physicist’s: younger it may be, but it has had a far more intense upbringing! — Richard Feynman, physicist (1918 - 1988)”—http://www.linfo.org/q_computer.html
I am not sure what the author meant by ‘Post-PC’. Tablets and smartphones alike are still PC’s. So I would say that we are still in a PC-era of sorts.
Though they may not have the same “focus of function” that PC’s have had in the past, they are in-fact still acting as a Personal Computing device.
I will assume that he is speaking about the changing of the interface, though I don’t think that is such a change since we have had touch interfaces, in one way or another, for some time. Changing of the interface to something that feels more natural — more fluid — is the way things have been going for some time, natural progression.
It is not crucial, as it once was, to interact with a machine from a command line (though it is much more efficient); when you add intuitive search to the GUI, highly efficient typing becomes even less important.
So I think this period we are going through would be better described as ‘post-keyboard’.
Though this may not be a great thing for education and understanding of computing, it does attempt to flatten the learning curve a bit. The perquisites for entry have been reduced to a few hundred dollars and the ability to read simple text. So this may entice many, that before cringed in fear at the thought of confusing symbols and pages full of indecipherable text, to make the leap.
Though the production of these devices are pushing things forward, the business practices of most if not all the companies that produce them are still holding us back. The patents and anti-trust suits, as mentioned in the cited article, have been clogging the courts and stagnating development since their inception.
It is the freedom to share that has pushed science and technology to where it is today, but it is patent and anti-trust torts that might cause ‘built-in obsolescence’ to take the place of inovation in coming years.
The way I understand it, the mandate would have forced religious institutions to pay for health insurance that would cover contraception. I would suppose that religious institutions were arguing that while they would be willing to cover health insurance, they did not want the insurance to include…
Women are marginalized because we think they are. We are constantly amazed by accomplishments that are viewed as everyday when performed by their male counterparts.
This is no different then being utterly amazed when a black person is well spoken — that thought makes the assumption, simply by existing, that blacks are inherently poorly educated. By insinuating that it is a strange occurrence for women to be “in the action” you are implying that they are not inherently fit to do so. That is not consistent with the facts.
Joan of Arc lived nearly six hundred years ago, yet we are still questioning whether women are capable of greatness, and as of recently, capable of making their own health care decisions. Cleopatra was a teenager running the known world — but yet there are those that question whether or not a female could run an industrialized country. This is an antiquated thought process, and should be discouraged.
I am going to try LXDE today, can’t imagine that it is any faster than xfce4, fluxbox, or especially wm on the same box, but you never know. I love trying new stuff, but that is a rare quality. Most people I speak to are still asking me: “… what was wrong with XP..? — why are they still making more…? — why not just fix the old one…?”
While this is silly from a thinking persons perspective, this is really what we are fighting against in the consumer markets. People do not understand software, technology or computers — i would repeat that but I hate duplicating effort.
Alan brilliantly explains why software is at fault and software engineers need to understand and fix this problem rather than relying on input from the consumer. I would like to see more people using free software but inorder for that to happen we need to focus effort on designing what exists to work better for the lamen.
This is in no way a review or an opinion on the roll of LXDE in the open source world. It may be a great environment, furthering this concept (we’ll see.); or perhaps give us a great base to optimize from.
Open Source, it seems to me, would work a bit better if people got behind projects to fix existing problems, making them the best that they could be before forking off in another direction. This practice causes issues with standards, and unneeded confusion of the non-technical end user. We really don’t have a system doing particularly well with beginning to intermediate users — although Ubuntu was doing quite well for a while the new UI doesn’t seem to be doing very well with the current user base.
Although I think this is the right move for advancement, I think it is the wrong way to go for adoption. Although fragmentation of GNU/Linux has done good things it has a major down fall in that it confuses mere mortals.
How many people do you know that can build a linux distro from the ground up? Not many — unless you live in a “linux_bubble” (living in the bubble… — ™ +Leo Laporte.)
Though many of us can set our systems up properly, with the GUI really only installed to serve as a catalyst to “commercial_web” navigation, there are few that can handle such logic. They don’t understand why the CLI is so powerful and they never will. For them we need to have constants in place long enough for them to be comfortable switching from the proprietary brands, while still progressing the software functionality in a direction that takes more weight off the user. This may require competent users to have to fiddle a bit more before they can start working on a new system, or perhaps you would just build your own ‘distro’, but most of us are doing that already. The only “default” configuration files on my machine are the ones that I am to lazy to produce my own version of (i’ll set up ‘conky’ eventually — using ‘top’ seems more sensible — and keeps silliness out of my box. ’ just say no to __eye_candy__’).
GNU/Linux surpassed those longhorn folks long ago in the areas of reliability and functionality — things that matter to thinking people, but not in the commercial market — obviously. It is fairly easy for a knowledgeable user to make changes to a FOSS system — this is not the case for beginning users, “…they don’t know that they don’t know.. “, they are like little kids, you must spend EXTRA time explaining all the things you would never think you needed to explain to begin with. (i.e. — ” well why didn’t you just “google” it? … )
Nontheists from throughout the nation will gather at Washington, D.C.’s National Mall on March 24 to celebrate the Reason Rally. Speakers at the eventinclude Richard Dawkins, Dr. PZ Myers, Adam Savage,…
One of those killed was reportedly Zulkifli bin Hir (aka Marwan) had a $5 million bounty on his head from the U.S. State Department. Not all of the identities of those killed were released.
The airstrike prompted angry reactions from some in the Philippines weary of U.S. breach of their sovereignty. One Philippine representative, Luz Ilagan, called for repealing the U.S. Visiting Forces Agreement and an end to U.S. military intervention in national affairs.
Ilagan also called for a probe into what she referred to as the “extensive and intensive intrusion of the U.S. military in Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) operations”. She added, “If these reports are true, then U.S. troops are participating in and conducting operations beyond what is allowed in the Visiting Forces Agreement and directly transgressing our sovereignty. More importantly, their participation in these operations is a potential magnet for the Philippines’ participation in a brewing U.S.-instigated regional conflict.”
Ilagan is right to be concerned, but in recent years U.S. support and military involvement to the Philippines has been misused by the Filipino government against its own citizens.. Numerous embassy cables released by WikiLeaks acknowledge extrajudicial killings, abductions, and false arrests perpetrated by the U.S.-trained and funded security forces.