Pardon me for not taking the opinion of a 25 year old so terribly seriously.:) I'm afraid I can't. The incredibly arrogant tone of your comment is beyond being redeemed by a smiley face. This person is 25 and therefore her opinion on formal writing is invalid? What utter bullshit.
Of course there are some situations in the workplace in which a relationship or rapport develops, allowing for a casual style or writing. The example she gave however appears to be a completely inappropriate use of such informality. Would you still feel that emoticons in formal use are justified by the "evolving mores of communication" if you received an e-mail from your doctor to the effect of "Hello Mr Smith, the test results are back and I'm afraid you have metastatic pancreatic cancer:O . I would estimate you have six months to live:'( "
"A wink says quite a lot," said Mr. Michel, a former lieutenant commander in the Navy. "An admiral could say a wink means a thousand different things -- but I know what it means. It's a kind of code." Indeed.
Yes, they have attempted to target it. However, few oems will support linux in fear of microsoft's wrath. Of the few that do, the "choice" given to users is pathetic at best. If it is failing on the desktop, it is not because of inferiority in any way; rather, it is due to microsoft's threats to oems. This one always comes up. I just don't get it. I could start building and selling machines with Linux pre-installed right now if I wanted to. OK so it wouldn't be a huge endeavour at first and to start with profits would be limited due to lack of an economy of scale, but if the demand is as great as Linux supporters claim it should only be a matter of time before all that changes. In other words, the threat to existing OEMs is not the be-all-and-end-all of pre-installed Linux computers. It's a free market and if I or anyone else so chooses they can go out and start their own business, and the fact that nobody is doing that says one of two things: - People have tried and failed. ie. the demand for Linux is far lower than people like to think it is - Nobody's really tried it. In which case the Linux community (if not the Linux OS itself) has only themselves to blame.
It's reasoning like yours that Linux has never *taken hold* on the desktop. Failure would connote that Linux at one point made a big hit on "everyone's" desktop and was left for something else. This NEVER HAPPENED. "Failure" connotes that Linux, or at least some Linux vendors, have attempted to target the desktop audience and have not substantially penetrated it. Are you saying that isn't accurate?
How much storage space do you have in your laptop? I haven't seen a single laptop that provides more than 250GB HDD space (not that I've been particularly looking). That's not nearly enough for what many people use desktops for, and that isn't a problem I see getting solved any time soon.
A far greater "threat" to the traditional desktop model IMO is the media PC. I don't consider that to be the death of the desktop though, rather a natural evolution. Basically a media PC as I'm thinking of it would be a convergence of stereo system, DVD player, video recorder, and set-top box. Of course also with the ability to perform as a regular desktop PC and games playing machine.
Laptops are inevitably going to get more powerful, and provided the battery power can keep up I'm sure in 50 years or so the idea of using a non-portable computer for anything but the most gargantuan task will seem very foreign. For the time-being however I don't think my desktop needs to worry about the portable angle.
Gushing? You mean the part where I stated a simple fact? Or are you actually disputing that Internet Explorer was the dominant browser for around that length of time? If you'd bothered to read on you'd have noticed I was saying that IE's dominance became an excuse for hack web developers to write IE-specific code, and lamenting the fact that to a lesser degree it still happens today.
I don't know how your mind can be so twisted as to think that any of my posts were "gushing" in support of Microsoft or could be construed as shilling Microsoft or its wares. You need help.
Who's a shill? And what are they shilling? I honestly don't get if you're talking about me or Comcast. Either way I still don't know what's being shilled.
If you want to know the reasons why Comcast require IE on their site I suggest you look at the other replies that have been made by several past and present employees of Comcast. Notice how it has nothing to do with Microsoft paying them off, which was the ridiculous claim that I first replied to.
PS. I love how you call it Internet Exploder. It really makes me think you're completely objective and mature in your reasoning behind not liking that browser. It doesn't at all make you sound childish and petty. Before the outrage-brigade come running I'll point out that I don't like IE either and I'm writing this from Firefox on Linux, but that doesn't mean I have to be so blinded by hatred that I feel the need to blame every cloud in the sky on one company because of my dislike of their dominant position in modern computing.
Yeah. That must be it. Comcast are doing something which requires their users to use a web browser that has been the dominant browser for the better part of ten years, a practice that was common on many websites for years and unfortunately is still quite regular even today. Obviously this is Microsoft's doing. It couldn't possibly be that the ISP in question are run by idiots, are willing to save any money any way they can by only supporting the most popular browser in their ignorance and greed. No this is Microsoft's doing, they bullied and bribed poor little Comcast who got confused by the fast talking businessmen and big bright lights of Redmond. Oh curse that Steve Ballmer and his minions for desecrating the virginal and well-intioned Comcast!
Or maybe Comcast is just another company, ignorant to the ways of the Internets and all too quick to save a buck based on their own ignorant assumptions about their user's choice of software. I know Slashdot is trolled by a ridiculous amount of anti-Microsoft sentiment but it's really getting to something when even a major ISP is gotten off the hook in favour of blaming it on Microsoft.
I'm sure some people won't like it. Most businesses don't like spending money, even if they know it's for their own benefit in the long-term. If they've got code that they have no means of supporting that's bad management, I mean how can a business rely on something that they have no means of updating or fixing if it goes wrong?
If a small business owner got an employee who knew a bit about electrical wiring to come in and wire their physical place of business, and then a few years later a safety regulator comes in and says the wiring is unsafe and could cause a fire would the business owner find it unreasonable that he should have to pay to get a professional to do the job properly? I'd hope not. And this is the same situation. PHP4 and things like register_globals present a security risk and by stubborn or ignorant website owners believing that they shouldn't need to update their code it puts everyone on the server at risk.
...reminds me of this thing men and women used to do together, before the internet, before the dark times. Sit around and talk about how they wished there was some way they could share all their porn?
I suppose it's an apt term. Something that seems big and impressive from a long way away but if you get up close you see it's nothing more than vapour, completely intangible.
My kids and I spent nearly an hour looking at all of these last night. Sam kept exclaiming "That's totally awesome!" Even four year-old Emma enjoyed the blending of the Barbies. You do realise you're going to have to keep your blender under lock and key for the next 12 years right?
I don't mind it as a supplementation as long as it works, but there is going to be some idiot who thinks that this may be a replacement for parents...for which there can NEVER be a real replacement. I don't really get where you're going with that. Who is the idiot going to be? A scientist who tries to kills some autistic kid's family so it can be raised by robots? An autistic kid's parent thinking they can dump their kid with a robot and never deal with it again? A politician deciding that robots are the parents of the future, declaring families illegal and taking all children into state-owned robot-run child farms to indoctrinate the boys as loyal soldiers and the girls as doting housewives?
Sorry, I just don't see who the idiot you describe would be or what you think they're going to do.
Bear in mind my original point was never to say that DVDs were already fading away or that they would completely disappear immediately, it was that the DVD is no longer the technological pinnacle of consumer-grade media and that the price of early adoption that the GGGGetc.P was talking about didn't buy all that long a time at the top of the technological pile. Will he still be able to watch DVDs with it? Of course. Will DVDs still be available for the forseeable future? Sure. But he's now about to shell out $500 for (possibly!) the next step and in all likelihood that too will be surplanted in less than 10 years by pure-digital content and TVoIP.
Point being, is a year or so extra experiencing any new format (whether it's Blu-Ray or DVD or anything else) worth the cost of early-adoption? Especially when considering the relatively small volume of content available for it at first and the relatively short time any format seems to last before the next one comes along to demand your money.
My point was that he could've saved $1000 and skipped the DVD altogether. Or waited maybe 2-3 years and saved $800 or more.
The question would be whether the extra time he had with the technology was worth the premium he paid for early adoption. Maybe for him it was worth it, but I know for myself and I imagine most others it wouldn't be. The same situation applies to Blu-Ray, perhaps even more so since there's still the possibility it will lose the format war.
Is this the part where you tell me that DVDs will be around for ages? I doubt it. Almost all TVs produced now are HD-capable, give it 2 years for the players to go down in price and maybe another year for people to buy them and I'll bet you any money that one or both formats will be outselling DVD.
The conversion from DVD to HD formats won't be as slow as VHS to DVD was. The fact that there is a format war just means that both parties are pushing harder than ever to get their format adopted. Plus the fact that HD-format capable players are backwards compatible means that once the prices go down (within the next 2 years) buying an HD-format capable player will be the only expense instead of an additional one as was the case with VHS to DVD.
I really might consider buying at that price, if only for the BluRay. Hell, I paid $1000 for my DVD player!!! I think I can pay $500 for a BluRay player and a console in one. But a few years later you could buy a fully-spec'd multi-region DVD player for $50. Plus DVDs are already being phased out in favour of a new technology, making your investment overpriced and shortlived. And yet here you are about to do the same thing all over again. It seems you just don't learn.
That's one way of looking at things, and certainly I would agree with your sentiment that it would be a terrible thing if that's the way things end up. But I disagree that albums, or at least "album songs" will disappear. As long as there are people like me and you, and I believe there are an awful lot of us, who continue to want and to buy the non-single stuff then there will always be people willing to produce it. Simple supply and demand.
To my mind the only thing digital content and the death of the album as a solid chunk of inseparable songs will do is remove the crap. The stuff that nobody would buy if it was left to stand on it's own two feet. By eliminating the album you're forcing each song to be good because there's no longer any way to force shit on people just because it comes on a plastic disc which contains a couple of other songs that are good. No more albums means no more filler.
We're finally in a situation where we can vote with our wallets on each individual song. If good songs get left by the wayside for generic attention-grabbing crap we'll have only ourselves to blame
Wrist watches have had this for years now. I think it was casio who first started doing it wide scale. Actually I think it was Seiko. I distinctly remember being told about "psycho-kinetic" watches and thinking they'd found a way to convert brainwave into kinetic energy to move the hands of the watch. Even though the actual tech was still pretty cool I couldn't help but feel disappointed when somebody explained what they really did. Stupid pronunciations...
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Of course there are some situations in the workplace in which a relationship or rapport develops, allowing for a casual style or writing. The example she gave however appears to be a completely inappropriate use of such informality. Would you still feel that emoticons in formal use are justified by the "evolving mores of communication" if you received an e-mail from your doctor to the effect of "Hello Mr Smith, the test results are back and I'm afraid you have metastatic pancreatic cancer
I bet that'd really soften the blow.
- People have tried and failed. ie. the demand for Linux is far lower than people like to think it is
- Nobody's really tried it. In which case the Linux community (if not the Linux OS itself) has only themselves to blame.
How much storage space do you have in your laptop? I haven't seen a single laptop that provides more than 250GB HDD space (not that I've been particularly looking). That's not nearly enough for what many people use desktops for, and that isn't a problem I see getting solved any time soon.
A far greater "threat" to the traditional desktop model IMO is the media PC. I don't consider that to be the death of the desktop though, rather a natural evolution. Basically a media PC as I'm thinking of it would be a convergence of stereo system, DVD player, video recorder, and set-top box. Of course also with the ability to perform as a regular desktop PC and games playing machine.
Laptops are inevitably going to get more powerful, and provided the battery power can keep up I'm sure in 50 years or so the idea of using a non-portable computer for anything but the most gargantuan task will seem very foreign. For the time-being however I don't think my desktop needs to worry about the portable angle.
You're correct but so are they. IE is only at 66.5%, remember there are other browsers besides IE and Firefox!
Gushing? You mean the part where I stated a simple fact? Or are you actually disputing that Internet Explorer was the dominant browser for around that length of time? If you'd bothered to read on you'd have noticed I was saying that IE's dominance became an excuse for hack web developers to write IE-specific code, and lamenting the fact that to a lesser degree it still happens today.
I don't know how your mind can be so twisted as to think that any of my posts were "gushing" in support of Microsoft or could be construed as shilling Microsoft or its wares. You need help.
Who's a shill? And what are they shilling? I honestly don't get if you're talking about me or Comcast. Either way I still don't know what's being shilled.
If you want to know the reasons why Comcast require IE on their site I suggest you look at the other replies that have been made by several past and present employees of Comcast. Notice how it has nothing to do with Microsoft paying them off, which was the ridiculous claim that I first replied to.
PS. I love how you call it Internet Exploder. It really makes me think you're completely objective and mature in your reasoning behind not liking that browser. It doesn't at all make you sound childish and petty. Before the outrage-brigade come running I'll point out that I don't like IE either and I'm writing this from Firefox on Linux, but that doesn't mean I have to be so blinded by hatred that I feel the need to blame every cloud in the sky on one company because of my dislike of their dominant position in modern computing.
OK you got me. Microsoft forced me to do it.
No money though. Ballmer just sent me a photo of a mannequin with a chair embedded in it's chest with the word "You" scrawled along the bottom.
Yeah. That must be it. Comcast are doing something which requires their users to use a web browser that has been the dominant browser for the better part of ten years, a practice that was common on many websites for years and unfortunately is still quite regular even today. Obviously this is Microsoft's doing. It couldn't possibly be that the ISP in question are run by idiots, are willing to save any money any way they can by only supporting the most popular browser in their ignorance and greed. No this is Microsoft's doing, they bullied and bribed poor little Comcast who got confused by the fast talking businessmen and big bright lights of Redmond. Oh curse that Steve Ballmer and his minions for desecrating the virginal and well-intioned Comcast!
Or maybe Comcast is just another company, ignorant to the ways of the Internets and all too quick to save a buck based on their own ignorant assumptions about their user's choice of software. I know Slashdot is trolled by a ridiculous amount of anti-Microsoft sentiment but it's really getting to something when even a major ISP is gotten off the hook in favour of blaming it on Microsoft.
I'm sure some people won't like it. Most businesses don't like spending money, even if they know it's for their own benefit in the long-term. If they've got code that they have no means of supporting that's bad management, I mean how can a business rely on something that they have no means of updating or fixing if it goes wrong?
If a small business owner got an employee who knew a bit about electrical wiring to come in and wire their physical place of business, and then a few years later a safety regulator comes in and says the wiring is unsafe and could cause a fire would the business owner find it unreasonable that he should have to pay to get a professional to do the job properly? I'd hope not. And this is the same situation. PHP4 and things like register_globals present a security risk and by stubborn or ignorant website owners believing that they shouldn't need to update their code it puts everyone on the server at risk.
...reminds me of this thing men and women used to do together, before the internet, before the dark times. Sit around and talk about how they wished there was some way they could share all their porn?Seriously, what's up with all the clouds Ballmer?
I suppose it's an apt term. Something that seems big and impressive from a long way away but if you get up close you see it's nothing more than vapour, completely intangible.
Sorry, I just don't see who the idiot you describe would be or what you think they're going to do.
Bear in mind my original point was never to say that DVDs were already fading away or that they would completely disappear immediately, it was that the DVD is no longer the technological pinnacle of consumer-grade media and that the price of early adoption that the GGGGetc.P was talking about didn't buy all that long a time at the top of the technological pile. Will he still be able to watch DVDs with it? Of course. Will DVDs still be available for the forseeable future? Sure. But he's now about to shell out $500 for (possibly!) the next step and in all likelihood that too will be surplanted in less than 10 years by pure-digital content and TVoIP.
Point being, is a year or so extra experiencing any new format (whether it's Blu-Ray or DVD or anything else) worth the cost of early-adoption? Especially when considering the relatively small volume of content available for it at first and the relatively short time any format seems to last before the next one comes along to demand your money.
My point was that he could've saved $1000 and skipped the DVD altogether. Or waited maybe 2-3 years and saved $800 or more.
The question would be whether the extra time he had with the technology was worth the premium he paid for early adoption. Maybe for him it was worth it, but I know for myself and I imagine most others it wouldn't be. The same situation applies to Blu-Ray, perhaps even more so since there's still the possibility it will lose the format war.
... Blu-Ray and/or HD-DVD.
Is this the part where you tell me that DVDs will be around for ages? I doubt it. Almost all TVs produced now are HD-capable, give it 2 years for the players to go down in price and maybe another year for people to buy them and I'll bet you any money that one or both formats will be outselling DVD.
The conversion from DVD to HD formats won't be as slow as VHS to DVD was. The fact that there is a format war just means that both parties are pushing harder than ever to get their format adopted. Plus the fact that HD-format capable players are backwards compatible means that once the prices go down (within the next 2 years) buying an HD-format capable player will be the only expense instead of an additional one as was the case with VHS to DVD.
That's one way of looking at things, and certainly I would agree with your sentiment that it would be a terrible thing if that's the way things end up. But I disagree that albums, or at least "album songs" will disappear. As long as there are people like me and you, and I believe there are an awful lot of us, who continue to want and to buy the non-single stuff then there will always be people willing to produce it. Simple supply and demand.
To my mind the only thing digital content and the death of the album as a solid chunk of inseparable songs will do is remove the crap. The stuff that nobody would buy if it was left to stand on it's own two feet. By eliminating the album you're forcing each song to be good because there's no longer any way to force shit on people just because it comes on a plastic disc which contains a couple of other songs that are good. No more albums means no more filler.
We're finally in a situation where we can vote with our wallets on each individual song. If good songs get left by the wayside for generic attention-grabbing crap we'll have only ourselves to blame
Indeed. That's what I meant by the rest of the post ("Stupid pronunciations...")
No. A pacemaker doesn't provide the energy to make the heart pump, it just provides a regular signal to tell the heart to pump.