Slashdot Mirror
Windows Vista & IE7 Beta 1 Released
gdsotirov writes "Today on the IE blog the availability of two new beta tests - Windows Vista Beta 1 and Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 - was announced. These tests are mainly targeted to developers and IT professionals. Thus the betas are only available to MSDN subscribers. Tom's Hardware has details as well." From the article: "While the code also includes an early look at the new user-interface design, the majority of end-user features in Windows Vista will not be included until Beta 2. In addition to these fundamentals, Windows Vista Beta 1 also includes the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 built into the platform. The technical Beta of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP SP2 also is available today." Any early thoughts, MSDN subscribers?
Nothing to see here, please move along.
So they're trying this again are they?
HELO
MAIL FROM: aspammer@zombiesareus.biz
RCPT TO: billg@microsoft.com
DATA
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
I'm sure not..
Anyways, both these betas are already available everywhere.
The Vista Beta comes with a WPA bypasser.
IE7 beta requires online activation.
Just curious. I would not do anything illegal like making use of one.
"Any early thoughts, MSDN subscribers?"
Do those actually read Slashdot?
For the first time I agree with John C Dvorak.
pcmag
"Vista? As in "Hasta la Vista, baby?" That name might be appropriate as a symbolic goodbye since it might be the end of the line for Microsoft's dominance in the OS business."
"The new OS is getting zero buzz. Zero. now the name Vista, along with the new Microsoft Vista logo, has made it worse. Could anything be less exciting?"
"THE FUTURE OF DESKTOP COMPUTING: Apple. Vista will open the door to what I believe will be a radical change in the computing landscape. The trends are clear. Once the new Mac OS appears next year it will gravitate toward the existing x86 community much more rapidly than anticipated..."
"Right now, and as much as x86 users do not want to admit it, the Mac OS is already better than Windows in its modern look and feel as well as its functionality. I see too many smart people with Mac laptops nowadays."
"...it is always possible that Apple doesn't understand the power play position it's in and might actually believe that it's better off somehow keeping its OS in a small niche rather than the big market. If the world changed tomorrow to 85 percent Mac "OS x86" its laptop sales alone would triple overnight. Apple didn't put together what many consider the finest in-house industrial design teams in the world to fool around with piddly sales and more redesigns of the iPod."
"That said, how much more of Steve Jobs can we handle? Do we really want to hear him say "I told you so?" If it gets some excitement back into desktop computing, yes, we do. I think we can take it."
The privacy statement for Internet Explorer 7.0 beta lists a "phishing filter," which is said to be capable of warning users about the possibility that the Web site currently being visited is impersonating a trusted Web site. This feature is turned off by default
Why bother creating a feature like this and having it turned off by default. The people most likely to be taken in by a phishing scam seem to me to be the same people who won't know enough about a computer to turn this feature on to protect themselves. The more tech and internet savvy people could turn this off if it annoys them.
but in order for it to be used properly, the Web site's address and other information about the user's computer, are sent to Microsoft for automatic evaluation.
Then again it does scare me a little that MS would be taking a peek at my browsing habits. Hopefully it just asks a big database full of bad websites whether or not this one is good. I'd like to think that MS wouldn't be keeping tabs on my online activity. Makes me wonder if this is why that bought Gator... I mean Claria.
Finally I will be able to shut the mouth of my Mac OS 9.1 using neighbour !
A Slashdotter agreeing with John C. Dvorak, who is saying nice things about Apple?
Quick, can someone post a current weather report for Hell, please?
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
First of all, I'm not an MSDN subscriber, but I have done several betas.
The iso for workstation is about 2.5 GB. I had a couple of failed installs due to a faulty dvd-rom drive and am now almost finished installing it. It looks pretty good so far, from the installer anyways.
In other news Secunia has announced details of two new secuirty exploits going by the names "Vista" and "IE7".
Has anyone tried to run IE 7 with WINE on Linux?
Tabbed browsing is in IE7 standalone, and works nicely (is doing as we speak).
Also includes some kind of "phishing site checker", RSS support (picks them out from page and can display from a single button), pop-up blocking, easy history deletion.
Seems pretty stable and not too memory hungry... so far
Protected Mode. Available in the Windows Vista beta 2 release and beyond, Internet Explorer Protected Mode will provide new levels of security and data protection for Windows users. Designed to defend against "elevation of privilege" attacks, Internet Explorer Protected Mode provides the safety of a robust Internet browsing experience while helping prevent hackers from taking over the browser and executing code through the use of administrator rights. In this mode, Internet Explorer 7 is completely unable modify user or system files and settings. All communications occur via a broker process that mediates between the Internet Explorer browser and the operating system. The broker process is only initiated when the user clicks on the Internet Explorer menus and screens. The highly restrictive broker process prohibits workarounds from bypassing the Protected Mode. Any scripted actions or automatic processes will be prevented from downloading data or affecting the system. Specifically, Component Object Model objects will only be self-aware and have no reference information by which to identify and attack other applications or the operating system. Internet Explorer Protected Mode helps protect users from malicious downloads by restricting the ability to write to any local machine zone resources other than temporary Internet files. Attempting to write to the Windows Registry or other locations will require the broker process to provide the necessary elevated permissions.
http://static.thepiratebay.org/downloadtorrent/336 2112.torrent/Microsoft.Windows.Vista.Codename.Long horn.Beta.1.32Bit.DVD.READ..3362112.TPB.torrent
Here.
"...the majority of end-user features in Windows Vista will not be included until Beta 2"
So in other words, beta 1 is just XP with RSS? They already yanked everything else out of the system as is. The reason they call it Vista is because that's all that's left of the OS; a view.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
- Glass and new Window animation. The Windows Vista desktop experience will deliver a new visual identity -- translucent glass with more animation. Because it is visually intuitive, the glass helps users focus on the task at hand, whether reading a document, viewing a Web page or editing a photo.
Apparently the best way to develop a "visually intuitive" user interface is glass and more animation!
MSDN subscription starts at $99 a year... I didn't realize $99 was lots of money, but you know, whatever man.
evil adrian
>>Windows Vista Beta 1 also includes the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 built into the platform
Wouldn't this fly in the face of the US DOJ ruling that they had to separate it from the OS?
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Paul Thurrott has a fairly comprehensive (and probably quite rose-tinted) review of the Vista beta over at his SuperSite for Windows.
It goes through the vast majority of new features, although doesn't go into a great deal of depth at this early stage. Seems there are no great surprises here - Vista is still very much watered down from initial promises - but apparently things are at least moving along noticably now.
-----------
www.markwheeler.net
www.markwheeler.net
Heh, with the exception of "Dynamic security protection", that just reads like Firefox's feature list. Tabbed browsing, 'inline' search from address bar, support for RSS feeds, transparent PNG support... revolutionary!
If I feel brave enough (and our webmasters think they can survive a potential Slashdotting ;-) ) I'll put up some blog entries about my experiences over the next few days.
Thus the betas are only available to MSDN subscribers.
And to anyone with a P2P client, probably...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Brief overview and comments here.
When will it be available on Freshmeat.net?
I am NOT putting my signature in this stupid little box! How do I know you won't steal my identity???
Just because someone charges a lot for something doesn't mean that they are price-gouging.
Just because you can't afford it doesn't mean you are entitled to a copy of it.
evil adrian
Here's the current weather in Hell.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Thank you Windows Vista!
Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying "text editor."
I definitely recommend reading through ALL of this: Review
It clarified a lot I didn't know about Vista, and it's *gasp* even a critical review, but still not one written by an anti-Microsoft zealot, but trying to keep a pretty open mind about it.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
According to my research here it works a treat.
Yay!
I've Found a heap of great screenshots over at news!
==
+5 predictable.
I'm going to call on you to back up your statement with facts:
Please explain how Microsoft charging for an MSDN subscription is an example of price-gouging, and if they are in fact charging too much money, what is a more appropriate price?
evil adrian
BSOD creates the "lasting emotional connection with users" referred to a couple of posts North of here... Anger, Frustration, Hate - all are emotions...
Except they do have competition, come on this is slashdot, you can't just conviently ignore apple and the 50 or so popular linux distros.
Either mac osx and linux are viable desktop os's or they aren't but you can't pretend they are half the time and then pretend ms has no competition the rest of the time.
So rather than implement a sandbox in the browser, they run the whole browser in a sandbox. This means that hostile scripts and ActiveX components can still be used to attack other systems, compromise the user's personal information on other web sites, steal passwords and credit card numbers, and take part in zombie networks.
On a lighter note, I'm not sure that having self-aware COM objects is a good idea. Apart from this being a dubious application of strong AI technology, won't this make shutting down your computer equivalent to murder?
Can anyone provide a SS of IE7 viewing the acid2 test?
6. Feeding generations of inept developers. check. [re: C#, anything .net, VB, ...] ... I wonder why anything .net feeds generations of inept developers and python or perl or java or any other language don't.
Oh let's return to the good old days where programmers had two big keys with 0 and 1 written on them and programmed opcodes like playing bongos..
I'm writing this post in IE7.
To tell the truth, the only "improvement" I've noticed is the tabs, but tabs have been available as extensions for quite some time.
I was hoping for some CSS improvements. When I first installed it, I immediately went to a few of the more difficult CSS sites, to see if they'd render correctly. Nope - no such luck. See http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/ for example.
The toolbar has been moved around. In my copy of it, at least, the URL bar is just below the titlebar, then there are the tabs, then another bar with text buttons on the left, and some icons on the right for home, favourites, history, rss, and print.
A search bar has been integrated into the same bar as the URL entry box. I expected it to use MSN by default, but it's set to Google. Or maybe that's just on mine?
As a web developer, I was hoping for better CSS support and better debugging tools.
According to their documentation, they've addressed at least two CSS bugs. I haven't seen any improvements at all yet. I will be using Dean Edwards' script for some time yet, it seems...
On the JavaScript end, there does not seem to have been any work done on the debug tools there at all - still the old crappy "error on line X" (of what file? a bit more detail please?).
The RSS doesn't seem as good as Firefox's.
In Firefox, an icon appears on the bottom of the page you're on. You click the icon, then add the feed with another click. Immediately, you have Live Feeds, where you can open your bookmarks, scroll to the feed you want, and a list of the article headlines is immediately available.
In IE7, however, an icon highlights on the top of the page. You click the icon, which opens up the RSS and renders it (nyeh - whatever). Then you click add to favourites. Then you click to confirm that. Now, when you want to view the feeds, you open your favourites from the text toolbar, scroll down and click on the feed.
The main difference is that in IE7, you must click each feed that you want to view, whereas in Firefox, you get a preview of the new items.
Overall, I am not impressed in the slightest. Nothing innovative at all, and their CSS is still nowhere near as good as Firefox, Opera, KDE or Safari's (I know the latter two are basically the same engine...).
It's not $99 for the subscription level you're talking about but $199. $99 is just the UPGRADE price. Also, that level of subscription doesn't get you access to any OS products.
The cheapest version that does that is $700.
$700 per year is nothing to sneeze at. Even a corporation would not take such a subscription lightly.
From Paul's article: Because Microsoft built a search box into the Start menu, you can no longer use keyboard shortcuts to navigate around. To launch the Control Panel in XP, for example, you simply hit the Windows key and then the "C" key and, voila, the Control Panel opens. In Windows Vista, however, when you hit the "C" key, the system assumes you're searching for an application (Figure). Sigh.
For me, the user interface of Windows peaked with Windows 3.11 and NT 3.51. In these systems, virtually every control in every program could be easily navigated to using only the keyboard, with consistent shortcuts everywhere. This was a significantly better environment than Apple has managed to provide even now, and probably the best feature of the Windows UI. In 95/NT4 the Start Menu and Task Bar required new shortcuts. Then companies started shipping keyboards with extra keys (making the spacebar shorter and a harder target to hit, and not really solving the problem for people who have to work on multiple computers with a variety of keyboards). Newer versions of Office applications removed the ability to keyboard-navigate through toolbars (with or without he new keyboards). What's next?
Oh let's return to the good old days where programmers had two big keys with 0 and 1 written on them and programmed opcodes like playing bongos..
Brilliant! With a simple gamecube-usb adaptor, there is a new use for Nintendo's Donkey Konga bongos: banging out code. You can clap to get a space (or a newline, EOF, or whatever).
BroccoliGod
... I'm glad I moved to mac. I liked Windows 2000, liked XP for a bit, and went back to 2k. I started looking at the mac platform when Mac OS X first came out, and switched when I bought my Mac Mini. I'm never going back, I see the future of both platforms, and I can't say I see much that I like in the Windows world. Everything looks cubersome, bloated, and ugly. Everyone I know that runs windows is always complaining about slowness, etc, and it's all from viruses/malware. I'm excited to see what this does to the Windows world, if anything. Everyone in the PC market is looking for a good deal at Walmart. I'd like to see Microsoft taken off the throne, and replaced with apple.
Sig: I stole this sig.
I'm sure all the linux devotees will have something to say about your 'no competition' comment.
I have no sig yet I must scream.
Aren't all folders virtual? Wouldn't a non-virtual folder be a physical folder, like one made out of plastic? Microsoft needs to think about their names...
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
People really aren't lying/exaggerating when they say that they "love" their iPods or their TiVos or that they "hate" their Gateway or Windows or whatever.
Don Norman's book, Emotional Design , has good information about this.
Do not speak unless you can improve on the silence.
Isn't this just a fancy way to say playlist? I fail to see the usefullness of adding yet another layer of confusion to getting to a users files. Not to mention, this ought to make user migration a joy for enterprise users.
--WooooHoooo--
Eh?
That would work if the developer/writer/creative person knocked it up in precisely zero seconds. Otherwise how can it have no value, since somebody took some of their time to "create" it?
I think the value of information/services/software surely has to be relative to the amount of effort you would have to undertake to reproduce it yourself.
If you can't do it/find it/work it out and want it badly enough, then pay for it. Seems fair to me.
By your argument, if you want a decorator to paint your house you'll expect him (or her) to come round, paint your walls and just bill you for the paint! If you find a decorator who'll do that, can I get his number...
Thousands upon thousands of hours of work go into the production of information and software for MSDN subscribers. Do you think that all of the content and software on MSDN just *magically appeared* one day, and Microsoft just decided to put a gate around it and charge a ton of money?
Get a clue!
Your logic is severely, SEVERELY flawed.
evil adrian
The price gouging claim comes from the idea that anything that is not a tangible object should cost nothing, since the costs of reproducing what is basically an abstract representation of information is nearly zero.
I can understand an idea being free. As in I thought of this doesn't it sound cool. Now let me spend 5000 hours of my time implementing my idea and just because the efforts of my work happen to be a piece of software it should be free also?
Think of it this way, if you took your car into the shop to get it fixed and the mechanic flipped a switch in a hidden compartment and then charged you $500 to fix it
Software is more like it taking the mechanic many hours to find and flip the switch the first time. Now hopefully he can duplicate his same effort in less time the next time. Being a bright mechanic he charges you less than it actually costs assuming he'll be able to charge the next person for the same action and take less time doing it.
Now if you want to argue that a piece of software should eventually become free after a company recoups it's development costs and some profit I could understand. Saying that software is intangible and it should be free from the start isn't keeping in mind the costs of creating it to begin with.
GUI. Graphical User Interface. It's an art and a science all it's own. In the past, I did GUI programming for 4 years. It's an entire world when done right, with things like GUI standards, best practices, things called "deferred-create" and other cute names for ways to organize things on the screen.
I am shocked that a company like Microsoft can actually fuck up every GUI best practice rule out there.
IMO they spent a ton of time trying to rip of OS X and Aqua, but then change it enough so it has a look and feel as if it had Win XP roots. But it's a total mess. Scroll bars do not look like scroll bars, and are extremely faded. THERE IS DEAD SPACE EVERYWHERE!!! Six inch by one inch desk space areas just to show a word or two off text. Some buttons look like buttons, others look like internet links that are underlined, others only have an underline when you roll-over! I could go on and on, but I am seriously shocked. I know it's beta, but the UI will not change much, you are pretty much looking at the final product from a UI standpoint.
This is bad enough to make me leave the last Windows machine I have, and deal with windows just within a virtual environment on OS X. I "HAVE" to leave now, it's that bad a GUI. Shameful.
After much research, I found a way to have perfect CRM and financials for the small businesses out there that need to leave but can't because of those two reasons, those two kind of apps that DO run well on Windows.
Look at Salesforce.com, it works great in Safari (HTML and JavaScript, nothing else) and it misses nothing. And look at QuickBooks PRO for Mac OS X. You can only get Pro, not Premium for the Mac, but the few differences there will not be missed by most other than advanced accountants. And go with Apples Pages and Keynote or go with Open Office for the office work. Even MS Office for Mac if you need to, it's actually ok. That Salesforce.com + QuickBooks for Mac is what will help me live without Windows.
Bill G deserves a bitch smack for pushing such a counter-productive OS onto the world for the next several years. he will be wasting many decades worth of man hours for doing so. Criminal.
It looks like they finally built a good, intuitive UI.n g
http://www.brastensager.com/images/WindowsVista.p
Alright, let's run that test;
Automator can do those jobs faster with four mouse clicks, which is much faster than I could ground up a piece of script and test it to make sure it doesn't walk all over my files.
So meanwhile you can type to your heart's content. I'll click a few buttons and be done.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
1/ lots of developers and software add value to the M$ platform.
2/ good things like msdn attract devlopers to ms platform along with Vstudio++.net.whocares.
3/ they have lready paid for the priveldge of developing for MS product. licence fees for the OS and IDE [the ide at least adds value to their investment.]
ergo its a little cheeky for MS to charge money for the privelege of being part of their dev community. but oh wait they're the only game in town. so you shuld be grateful they are hepling you develop for their popular OS with all teh potential cutomers using it. despite their braindead platform bad buggy API.
also: alot of the collated info comes from MSDN subscribers. a not so open collaboration. big reports etc. tips and tricks, etc.
so yeah we are the lucky ones.
no no no. MS has it all backwards. the devs are gold:
"DEVLEOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!"
familiar?
after all who uses MS PAINT or notepad or ms movie editor or wmplayer to play their dvds ot of the box? answer: no-one.
so they need apps. devleopers. a stcok fresh install xp box is worthless. doenst do anything.
oh wiat its got IE6.
wooohoo!
MS have subverted the entire concepts of IT.,
anything they say. do or wnat you to do. thuink of the opposite and it makes sense. emperor has no clothes and night is actually day. just take off the blindfold.
now apple who gets no love from me probably are worse as you prbably get less from them for the same sort of dev subscription.
Automator comes with OS X. No addons, no download and install. All it does is replace shell scripting (in this case, AppleScripting) with a click and drag and drop interface. Which, is a lot faster than writing all of those /\/?/!@'sed'awk'lol' into a command prompt, and crossing your fingers. ;).
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
So a guy calls up a mechanic, because his car is acting all funny, running like crap, belching blue smoke, the works.
The mechanic looks at the car for a few seconds, rummages around in his tool box, pulls out a nut and a washer, crawls under the car with a wrench, and comes out a minute later without the nut and washer.
Then he leans in and starts the car, which runs perfectly.
Then he goes into his office and returns with a bill for 500 dollars. The customer goes nuts, screams rants yells, "You just put on ONE nut! And you're going to charge me 500 dollars for ONE NUT?"
The mechanic shrugs, goes back into his office, and returns with a new bill.
It reads:
Nut: 50 cents.
Knowing where to put the nut: 499.50
Total: 500.00
There are many things that you can't hold in your hand that have intrinsic value, moron.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
If IE used another engine, then we could finally stop writing multiple CSS hacks and fretting over lack of PNG support to make up for Trident's next-to-worthless implementation of both.
Yeah, right.
A tecnnical overview for a web browser in ".doc" format. Oh, Microsoft, will ye never change? http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyId=718E9B3A-64FE-4A4C-9DDF-57AF0472EAD2&displa ylang=en
Well... that was a whole lot of fuss about nothing. I truly don't know what I expected from Microsoft.
..system wide RSS integration and a whole-bunch-of-features-stolen-from-OSX branded with a Microsoft logo to make sure we all know it's high grade proprietary worthless crap that was actually and surprisingly developed by intelligent human beings and not just cobbled together by monkeys who arranged the shredded strands of 500 billion pages of printed source-code by sneezing at them.
Improved CSS support? Yeah. Right.
This is IE6 with tabs and a "phishing filter". Nothing new here. The RSS reader is abysmal, not even comparing to that of Safari 2.0.. not to mention I couldn't find a visible button to access the feeds on a website and had to dig in the tools menu for it.
CSS support has some minor improvements, but nothing groundbreaking. IE7 fails the Acid2 test miserably, which is tough luck because we're probably not going to see IE8 for 5 years now.
Microsoft have the future of SVG and CSS3 in the palms of their hands and they are content to toss it aside so they can implement a couple of silly superficial features to keep the monkey-brained masses happy and try to pass us developers off with "immproved CSS support" and a PNG transparent support which is nice, but frankly I'm having none of it. Microsoft have officially torn the final straw from my clutches and chewed it into a pulp before my very eyes.
As for Windows Vista.. whoopety-fucking-doo
And to think... how long has IE7 been in the works before it took them to come out with this shitty beta? In 10 minutes they could have handed the Mozilla group seven figures to use Gecko in their commercial crap-pile which would have made everyone happy. But nooooo, they can't even do the sensible thing.
Money grubbing idiots.
Gadgetoid.com - Gadgets & Games Journalism
So the mechanic is charging 26970 dollars an hour because of his knowledge of cars? Just because you can make an analogy to a car mechanic doesn't mean that analogy makes any sense. And I doubt such a mechanic would ever get a repeat customer.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken
It is simply my position that knowlege has, or rather, ought to have, no monetary value since it takes nearly zero effort to reproduce.
Forgetting about the huge costs of education, be that University fees, exam fees or even just books or Internet access, is not the time spent learning worth anything? If I spent 5 years of my life learning how to fix your problem, is that nearly zero effort? I think you are getting confused with the copyright infridgement isn't stealing diatribe!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
In all fairness, the first time that you try to go to a page different from the default, it opens up a security window that explains the filter, and offers to turn it on. So even though it is off by default, the first time using the browser it will offer to turn it on for you.
For example, if VB was so great when they first started peddling it why are they now onto C#?
The i386 was pretty fuckin great in its day, wonder why they bothered moving on from there?
The price gouging claim comes from the idea that anything that is not a tangible object should cost nothing.
We better get rid of the FSCKing stock market too, then. Not a lot of TANGIBLE stuff gets traded there. Maybe all the STOCKs should be free too.
You'd expect the price of the service to be proportional to how much work it takes to render the service.
Uh, hundreds of programmers * several years == a lot of work. When you buy software, you are paying just a small part of the total cost of producing the software. THE COST OF PRODUCING THE SOFTWARE IS MUCH GREATER THAN THE COST OF COPYING THE CD. YOU ARE PAYING PART OF THE AMORTIZED COST OF THE ENTIRE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS.
Stop making pathetic excuses for your behavior. If you're going to steal, say, "I'm stealing." If not, then don't, but don't try to delude yourself and especially the rest of us into thinking that you have some kind of moral justification for what you are doing.
Assertions like yours just make me ill.
I seem to recall hearing this story before, except that "a guy" was actually General Electric, and the "mechanic" was Charles Steinmetz, and it was a thousand dollars.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
As explained in another part of this thread, I deserve to be paid for my labor, but not for the idea of the program.
;-).
;-)!
OK, then what is your "labor"? Your labor, would be using your fingers to tap some plastic keys right? What do you expect to get paid for that???? You can EASILY train a monkey to do that or even cheaper just fill a room with keyboards and let loose a bunch of chickens, or whatever. They are VERY cheap will tap the keys as they walk around and you can even eat them if you get hungry (try doing that with a human employee and see what happens
Nobody is going to pay you squat for your "labor" of pressing some keys on a keyboard. However, they WILL pay you well if you happen to have the information to allow you to know the proper combination of keys in the proper order (chickens are notorious for not looking for things like buffer overflows
If you work in IT (or a doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant, etc, etc, etc) you don't deserve squat for your "labor", but your knowledge (information) can be quite valuable.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
It is simply my position that knowlege has, or rather, ought to have, no monetary value since it takes nearly zero effort to reproduce.
I can only conclude that you have almost zero education, because I seem to remember that my degree took significantly more effort than "nearly zero" to obtain.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Knowing where to put the nut: $0
Knowledge is power. They teach this even in first grade. In my school, they taught it in kindergarten.
Your comments show why you are not a mechanic. Its actually a simple idea. If the mechanic "price gouges" you on your car, you simply do it back when he walks in to get his computer fixed.
I feel appalled at how much I get paid for doing things that seem simple, like changing a registry key, and etc. That kind of work *doesn't even involve changing a nut and washer*, but do I think I should be compensated for it? Certainly!
$500 is a bit excessive for knowledge and labor, but if a mechanic charged me a hundred for fixing one thing with a simple nut and explained what to watch out for in the future so it didn't happen again, I'd gladly hand it over to him and thank him for not dragging out the work over the next two days.
I threw together some quick tests for a few of my most hated IE issues to see if there has been anything fixed.
t ml
t ml
All are still just as broken as in IE6. It looks like VERY little effort has been put into the rendering engine so far. Absolutely pathetic.
http://www.lysergic.org.nz/testcss/divhover.html
http://www.lysergic.org.nz/testcss/selectheight.h
http://www.lysergic.org.nz/testcss/selectzindex.h
I can't believe that they could screw up interface so much. IE7 breaks Microsofts own GUI guidelines.
They apparently wanted to make it simple (only 2 buttons, like a browser for monkeys), but by making all toolbars upside down they've made it look more confusing and chaotic than Netscape 8.
That's so dumb.
Lets turn it around. Say the mechanic doesn't know where to put the nut, and it takes him 20 hours to figure that out, which isn't unreasonable if experience and knowledge count for nothing.
Hell, the mechanic is probably a former fry cook who thought, "What the hell, I'll be a mechanic from now on" and the guy who owns the auto shop also thought that was a good idea, because, like you, he doesn't value knowledge or experience.
So, in that case, at 50.00 an hour, which seems to be the figure you're using, that mechanic would give a bill for 1000.00.
Down the street, the first mechanic, the skilled one, would be billing people a dollar to fix problems the guy up the street is charging a thousand dollars to fix. He would have to fix one...thousand...cars...to make the same as the unskilled mechanic made fixing one car.
Take an example shamelessly cribbed from a book I'm sure a lot of people here have read...
Take the raw materials for an apple pie. Flour eggs, apples, butter, sugar, etc. These things are intrinsically valuable. No one would disagree with that.
Now a skilled chef could take those ingredients, and, in a short time, produce a superiour pie.
A less skilled chef could take those ingredients, and, in a longer time, produce an acceptable pie.
An unskilled chef, could take those ingredients, and, in a still longer time, make an inedible mess.
By your standards, the last chef would be the one that produced the most valuable product, because he put the most immediate work into it, followed by the second chef, with the skilled chef coming in last.
The problem is clear; the value of the object produced is not dependent on the amount of work put into producing it. The unskilled chef produced something of value zero, or even negative value because he destroyed something of intrinsic value to make something of no value. Conversely, the skilled chef produced something of higher value, because, with his skill, he produced a superior product.
That is why, here in the real world, people are rewarded based on their skill, and not based on their effort. Life is not a gimpy little league game where everybody gets a trophy, and out here, if you don't get results, you don't get paid. But if you get more and better results than someone else who is doing the same thing you get paid more than they do, even if it took you less time.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I did about 30 min of testing, going around all the quirks and compliance sites. The rendering engine has either not been worked on yet or maybe they are pushing that "feature" out to IE8.
Got some more details on my blog, case yer interested. (No ads, don't worry.)
>anything that is not a tangible object should cost nothing
:)
Using that logic, then you shouldn't be paid for any job you ever do - after all, it's just time on your part, right? Time spent exercising skills, knowledge, experience... but none of those are tangible things either, right? The cost to reproduce those on demand, are nil - so why should you get paid?
>You'd expect the price of the service to be proportional to how much work it takes to render the service.
Actually, I don't, and I suspect that many others (most?) don't either. I expect the price to be proportional to the type of service rendered, the skill(s), knowledge and experience necessary to render it, and the amount of time needed to do so.
>Paying for information is simply not something many people are ready to do.
The flaw in this statement, of course, is that software isn't "information" in any generally accepted sense. I'm sure you'd like to think so, to make it fall within the whole "information wants to be free" "thing". But, your desires notwithstanding, it isn't so, nor should it be.
So, to be accurate, and honest with yourself and the world, you should rephrase it: "Paying for software is simply not something I want to do, and I'd like to think that many others feel the same". There, that's better
>The idea that an idea has monetary value is not something I agree with.
You're confused. Actually, I initially thought you were a troll, but I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Here's an exercise: Let's consider an idea, for a program that allows someone to capture words, sentences, etc., in electronic form. Let's call this idea a "word processor". Got it? Great!
Congratulations, you're now in possession of an idea for which you paid nothing.
The specific manifestation of that idea in software, however, is owned by the person or company that created it. This is called "copyright", perhaps you've heard of it? In addition, the terms under which that is released is also owned by them, as copyright holders.
You are free to not accept those terms, which also means that you're not entitled to benefit from the items so protected.
Simple, no?
I've installed Vista on a Tablet PC tc4200, for all those that were wondering, it seems no tablet functionaliy is in this build of Vista, but it runs fine on the tablet. I'm not sure if MS plans on keeping 2 versions of the OS- one for 'standard' PC's and another for tablets. You can see some screenshots and comments I have about Vista Beta 1 on my blog. I'll keep it updated as I explore. http://mtavel.blogspot.com/
observe.
This is the result of the acid2 test, a test designed to rate the CSS compliance of a browser. At the moment, afaik Safari is the only fully compliant browser, with Firefox and Opera following closely behind.
This a great shame - I had naively hoped that Microsoft would fix their broken browser, and surprise us all by conforming to the standards. They had a great opportunity to really put IE back on the right track, and it looks like they've blown it.
Good job Microsoft - you're completely out of touch with what the web development community actualy wants.