sigmaml

I have been using Mac for 14 years. There was exactly one HP printer that worked with Mac straight off the box. For every other printer, whether at office or home, I had to perform some additional manual steps to print using my Mac.

So, looking at the various comments, experiences do seem to vary widely.

Just to contrast, I never had a problem with WiFi on my Macs, while one of my colleagues had incessant problems with one of theirs!

Not the GP, but here is a scenario that I am interested in understanding from the perspective of types.

A calculation that involves 21 parameters (in a particular insurance industry underwriting) yields a number. A threshold is read from the database. This threshold could change every month.

Suppose that the current value of the threshold is 0.78. The calculation above can yield an `x` with the following cases: (i) x <= 0.78, (ii) x > 0.78.

We have hundreds of test cases for the combinations of the 21 parameters, leading to hundreds of values for `x`. It is a bug for `x` to be > 0.78 when it should be the other way.

Is there a way this can be encoded in types? That would be very interesting.

Thanks.

I understand.

1. Does any other provider have better spam filtering than GMail, though? Curious.

2. You can configure inbox to show all the messages in Primary. Then, the tabs don't appear.

3. I don't see any ads. Probably because I pay for storage?

It is anecdata, but in my reasonably large group of acquaintances and fellow professionals (hundreds), I haven't heard this complaint in ages!

In any case, if you are having spam delivered to your inbox in GMail, it is very easy to train it to detect spam. Mark as many such as you can, and report them as spam. GMail learns very quickly.

Opened the coroutines draft just now. I like the humour in the note at the bottom of Page 1!

Could this be a part of the move to Fuchsia?

Firstly, it is quite difficult to manage so many usernames and passwords, for non-tech-savvy people such as my parents.

Secondly, don't you think that actually maintaining it is very difficult? One inadvertant click could expose one of those accounts to another with a different service provider, etc. Arguably, it can work should you define a different browser profile for each of those accounts!? Nonetheless, it is neither easy nor smooth, in my opinion.

I have been a KDE user for a little short of two decades now. I am very happy to see this, and wish the KDE team the very best!

I reported - in reasonable detail - a similar case study, in Jan 2014: http://oneofmanyworlds.blogspot.in/2014/01/another-go-at-go-....

It was similar in that the combinations of types quickly led to a ballooning of concrete types that had to be implemented. And, not having those concrete types led to an unacceptably high number of type assertions!

Generics would have solved the problem succinctly, while preserving programmer intent.

I concur.

Currently, I am working on projects that use both Amazon and Google clouds.

In my experience, AWS requires more planning and administration to handle the full workflow: uploading data; organisation in S3; partitioning data sets; compute loads (EMR-bound vs. Redshift-bound vs. Spark (SQL) bound); establishing and monitoring quotas; cost attribution to different internal profit centres; etc.

GCP is - in a few small ways - less fussy to deal with.

Also, GCP console - itself not very great - is much easier to use and operate than AWS console.

Of course, YMMV!

Yes, they cannot hold a tablet for more than a minute, or so. They also need a normal physical keyboard to be able to type without too many mistakes.

Moreover, my father did not like the iPad because it was difficult for him to navigate between multiple browser tabs, particularly with one or more of them having Docs sessions!

The incidents you describe are examples of what Alan Kay means when he says that 'outlook' is more important than 'IQ'.

Over the years, Eliot Miranda has been quietly working on some very impressive improvements to Cog. Very heartening to see the progress!

Big thank you to Eliot!

But, limiting debates to the observable, testable (falsifiable) and repeatable subset has helped us improve our understanding of the nature of physical reality.

Wouldn't you agree?

Crystal has both classes and structs. Instances of classes are passed by reference, while those of structs are passed by value.

To my eyes, they don't at all look "totally normal". That is the wear and tear you would develop after several months (or even years) of normal use.

In this case, the phone does look as if it had either a hard fall, or a hard hit against something.

From the image at the top of the article, to me at least, it does look as if the phone had a hard fall or a hard strike against something. The upper edge of the phone looks quite chequered.

To those citing Apple's profit: it is certainly an important metric.

Nonetheless, there is also another angle to consider: how much a technology enables, by being affordable and accessible.

I live in India. In large parts of this country, smartphone uptake would simply not have happened but for Android's ecosystem.

> we have some work in flight to keep the old kernel the default if you have proprietary drivers installed and they aren't updated to match

That is reasonable, and should reduce the number of such problems.

> Have you looked at the font changes in F24? What do you think?

Certainly better than earlier versions!

> I recommend the Impatience extension

I shall try that; thanks for the pointer.

Thanks, again, for the active conversation!

Thanks for responding! My concerns are (almost) all in the context of use in laptops.

1. LTS: In my experience, the issue that has caused most trouble is kernel version changes within a Fedora version. Why? Because drivers break. The laptop works fine just before the update. After the update, I get a blank screen. This has happened with different hardware, at least a dozen times in the last six years. CLI tweaking was needed every single time, to restore X or revert to a previous version. At other times, wi-fi no longer works after an update. At yet other times, random wake ups happen from sleep.

Maintaining the same kernel version (and associated stack) throughout a given Fedora release, in my humble opinion, can do wonders.

2. Font rendering: Yes, I realise that you have some patent issues. Please do the maximum that is legally possible. Fedora's font rendering hurts eyes after a few hours of work.

3. KDE: Desktop discussions can be subjective, of course! KDE's menu accelerators and accessibility help in minimising the need for trackpad/mouse use. In my laptop, KDE's responsiveness is uniform and smooth; GNOME experiences random freezes (Cinnamon has the same problem; so, I suspect it is GTK-specific). Also, on all of my laptops (HP, Dell), battery lasts noticeably longer under KDE.

4. Drivers: Yes, this is an Achilles' heel. Convenient installers for proprietary drivers go a long way in making the experience more pleasurable. Particularly, when we need to install, configure and support multiple laptops (including those of family).

Thanks, again, for soliciting feedback! I look forward to improvements on multiple fronts!

Nice that you solicit this feedback. Thanks! Here is my personal list.

Very, very important:

* LTS - this cannot be overstated

* Ubuntu-level font rendering

* Laptop driver situation improvement - graphics, wi-fi, power management

Important:

* First-class, deep support for KDE

Highly desirable:

* Easy installers for Broadcom wi-fi, nVidia cards, etc.

> there really isn't any reader on android as nice as GoodReader

Any particular lacunae in Adobe's Reader?

Several companies that I consult for use Google Apps. All of their iOS users use GMail, Calendar, Drive and Hangouts at the least.

This subject of "inclusiveness" is getting out of hand, evidently. We should probably look into using "no exclusiveness" as a principle, than this hairy construct of "inclusiveness".

This is exactly how we are using a raw `receive` in one of our production systems -- multiple asynchronous, but serial within, processes.

Thanks for sharing this. It gives me more confidence in what we have done!

Do you have a definition of culture? The argument for, or against, preserving it depends heavily on that definition.

I am from India. Millennia of foreign trade and coexistence with other religions yet preserved a cultural identity within most subgroups of Hinduism. This cultural identity relates to seasonal festivals, religious festivals, ceremonies related to events of life (such as birth of a child and marriage), etc.

During the last three decades, or so, we have been experiencing a new wave of globalisation. It has resulted in a growing trend of identity and relationships getting determined solely based on economic factors. This relentless drive for financial growth has largely relegated the cultural legacy to the fringes.

One of the most visible social consequences is that of alienation. Common gatherings and celebrations are rare except in the cases of two or three high-profile festivals. Neighbours do not know one another; they do not talk to one another except for a mechanical "Hello"; they do not have a few moments for one another's needs.

Culturally, these people have - if at all - erred on the side of being "nosy", not alien. But, that is the new reality.

Similarly, those parts of culture that relate to the softer or the subtler aspects of Nature are dying a rapid death. Examples include the harvest festival (makara sankranti) and celebrating Sun (ratha saptami). A natural consequence of this is that people are losing touch with Nature, an appreciation for it, and spend most of their time indoors. There is little to no physical exercise outdoors.

It can be argued that gyms and other exercise regimen should be followed, etc. However, I see more value in having a culture that seamlessly integrates them into everyday life.

Finally, I am at a loss to understand how exactly this relates to racism. Any such connotations have to be tacked on; they are not intrinsic to culture.

I agree with most of what you have said. In fact, in my talks in various places, I propose similar changes. I give concrete examples that make sense to them locally. Less number of children, no air conditioning, and less number of clothes are included my set of examples. A few of the others that I talk about are excessive home furniture and furnishings, frequent and expensive vacations, and exorbitantly-priced housing.

Reception varies widely. Overall, I have seen that rural and semi-urban population is more receptive than the urban. Most urban population has a consumerism-driven notion of "standard of life" that can not coexist with any practice of economy that disagrees with it.

Thanks for sharing!

My experience is aligned with yours, too. That is why I specified that time-to-market must have been the predominant factor.

The scope of Tika is different and wide. For the PDF subset, Tika uses PDFBox to parse and extract data from the document.