JM2C but dealing with this issue in my own household and from a lan admin view point: at home my son is set up with about 20 sites, all main stream stuff that I've reviewed. If he hears about a new site he wants to see I check it out and add it to the list that he can view. He's young enough that it doesn't seem to bother him that he can't get to slashdot or playboy or wherever plus I think that I've raised him well enough and been active enough in his life that what I consider objectionable he may be less likely to seek out.
I previously ran a small lan like this where the users only had access to a relatively small handpicked list of sites and had very quick turn around time in getting sites added to the list. This also didn't appear to cause any problems. So my suggestion to schools would be: with computers in the class room limit them to sites directly related to the curriculum. If the curriculum is general computer use then they don't really need to be on the internet, lock them into an intranet or don't even hook them up to the net. The problem that I see with all of these software solutions is that noone tailors them to the needs of the student/user and therefore they fail --- miserably. If your going to use filtering software that uses some algorythm or requires some third party to police it you might as well have parents start signing forms to either release the school of obligation or block the child from using computers.
Dear Mr. Whitaker, Please excuse Tommy from participating in Computer Science today. We are afraid that he might be subjected to inappropriate material and are not sufficiently intelligent enough parents to deal with the issue on our own and would just rather avoid it all together. We are aware of the social implications of our actions and that Tommy may develop slower than other children because of this but we would rather deal with that later (when he's 36 and still living at home). Please understand our concern. What use is an internet that's 90% porn infested anyway.
Remember that the people who are pushing internet filtering are the same people who would like to see Huck Finn and Romeo and Juliet pulled from the school curriculum because of "questionable" content. These people are a minority that use the majorities ignorance in an attempt to sway what laws are passed, to enforce their own agenda, there own special brand of morality and conscience.
Plain and simple... I don't expect any teacher to stop my child from misbehaving. I don't expect any teacher to stop my child from misbehaving. I expect my child to stop himself as I know he is capable of doing so. If I put my trust in my child and my effort into raising him correctly he shall do well and if he does not I have only myself to blame.
I dislike reports like these. They are by design created to prove a specific point. I think the data can be manipulated to show that at some point yes there will be 'zero' growth, but how long will it last. Alot of people have cars, is there 'zero' growth in the auto industry? Is there 'zero' growth in the cell or telephone industry, what about the television/radio/vcr market. Sales are cyclical. New products are pushed into the market and are expensive at first, the more people buy the more competative pricing becomes which in turn tightens profit margins for the individual companies, some companies lower prices to the point where they damage themselves (eventually disolving) other companies lower margins even further to maintain market share and rely on other product sales to make up the differences. Eventually the market reaches a point where it's "saturated" and growth slows, some companies close their doors, some find other revenue to rely on, and some innovate their products to produce new markets. There's a huge amount of room for innovation within the PC market, some companies will tap into this and continue to grow and thrive, others will simply give up.
I think everyone should look at the automobile industry for clues into these trends. Remember there were just cars, then trucks, then vans. Within the past twenty years we've seen the explosion of brand new markets of vehicles and genre's of transportation. The mini-van, SUV, Extended cabs, hybrid, electric, wired vehicles... what's growth like for the plain-old-car market? What's growth like for the SUV, hybrid, and wired markets. It appears to me that the SUV/mini-van market has started saturation and are beginning to look into innovation, while the hybrid and wired markets are just beginning their run.
One thing to notice in the auto market is generic vs. customization. Some vehicles are marketed toward the generic "I just need transportation" people, other vehicles are very specifically targeted towards the "I haul lumber", "I like leather", "I don't want to polute" groups. In the PC market very little of that is being done. I personally haven't seen much difference in the systems that are available they are all basic generic work horses that do the same tasks equally well. I'm waiting to see companies market "LeEt HaXor BoXEn" or "The Investors Buddy" or "MCLMFGM (Mushroom Cloud Laying M***F*** Gaming Machine)" or even the "Sesame Street PC". Now some companies have come out with branded machines like the Barbie PC or the RugRats PC but these aren't anything but the basic generic machines with some special software and stickers. What I'm talking about is specifically chosen hardware that is put together to perform a certain task. People who use their PC's for Games typically do it for only that and likewise with people who use their PC to surf the net. I guess this thought is what's driving the Net appliance and console market, but I think it can be done in the PC market also.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on this. It reminds me of one of the tech support guys at work that was MCSE certified and making 40k a year to play Quake 36 hours a week. Guy had the brain of a cracked out labotimized monkey how he ever passed MCSE certification is beyone me, he couldn't even figure out how to fix an NT problem I was having. The day I had the problem and he walked away from it I got on another PC hit MSDN found the solution in 2 minutes and had my PC back up and running in 10. Guess I shoulda known not to call him in the first place.
I've seen tons of these people though, sure they have the diploma, certification, experience but put it to the test and they fail miserably.
I dunno maybe it's just me but I really don't see it where I'm at. In my group of 11 the line up is like this f-21, m-25, m-28, f-31, m-35, m-37, m-43, m-47, m-54, f-55, m-62, so we're kinda spread wide across the board. More women than me, but the spread between decades is about even. The problems that I see with the job pool here and the problems that my boss passes along have more to do with skill set than anything else, he'd love to hire older workers if they had the skills he needed (Java, C++, etc..) unfortunately he runs across alot of older workers that have just gotten into Java and don't have any experience. The company won't let him hire any java programmers unless they've had at least a year or two real world experience with Java. Most of the older workers that I see have experience with Cobol and AS-400 and not the newer languages like Java. Even the older men that are in my group know they need to learn a newer language but just don't seem to have the time to do it because of their current workload.
another problem with the age discrimination issue is that it's just really hard to prove. There's some prejudices that come with age that need to be gotten over like that young people are inexperienced, or older people don't work weekends or over time, and that the group right in the middle 25-35 are ideal because they haven't established a life yet and they're willing to work harder. I think the truth of the matter is that the middle section probably appears to be doing more but gets the same amount of work done as any of the other groups.
Just me thoughts.
Re:What irritates me about the win32 version.
on
Send Some Mo' Zilla
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So here are the two things that I'm hearing.
1. We should all abandon PC's and move to the Mac so we can use IE 5/Mac since it's the most standard compliant production browser to date.
2. That any company should avoid puting any product or requested feature into a product until all of their competitors agree that it would be nice and they'll all put it in too.
For some reason the logic just doesn't quite work for me.
What people fail to take into account is that the organizations that produce these 'standards' are 1. Made up of competing companies/groups that will do anything to screw over their competitor (even if this means holding up a standard (see AOL)) 2. Typically months if not years behind market demand (see issue 1).
Personally I use IE, I develop html using the 'standards' and I've found that if I do that everything looks fine in IE, fine in Mozilla and like shit in Netscape 4, so see the problem with the standards isn't MS's extensions (which you DON'T HAVE to use despite popular opinion) but is Netscape 4's almost complete lack of adherence to standards (CSS-P, layer, LiveConnect/Javascript, anyone, anyone).
The problem with standards though is that they are worthless if the consumer doesn't want to use them or finds something non-standard (*cough* IE) easier to use or more robust. There are alot of people out there coding pages for their own entertainment, they don't get reports that show 25% of their users are using a browser that doesn't support tag 'X', and honestly they could care less. They want to create something that looks cool to them and that they like. It's called being selfish, and it happens. Businesses look at it from the financial perspective of "Well 75% of our customer base really likes this page and it doesn't completely screw up in the other 24%, and the remaining 1% it isn't cost effective enough to fix the problems, wahoooo, we're a success!"
I'm sorry did you feel that you were somehow being singled out and that I would make any assumption about who you were or how you lived. Oh I do apologize, I'm sorry that you feel that I some how butted into your life and requested more information than you are willing to give. But you know looking back on what I wrote I don't think I did ask whether or not you knew what it was like to be in a wheelchair. It was obvious to anyone, given the ignorant statement that you made, that you have never been in a wheelchair. That's not an assumption, that's a statement of fact based on the evidence given. You evidenced your ignorance by the crass comment and the fact that the only action you could relate to was one of violence.
live your life in a chair for even a day and you'll see the need to be at eye-level with someone. What if you could only hug your loved ones if they bent down to you? What if you had to use a specialized tool to get groceries off the shelf or had to ask people to get something for you (every single trip to the store)? What if you couldn't get UP and dance with someone at a club? What if you couldn't peak out a window with your co-workers because you were confined to viewing things at belt buckle height? Or you couldn't take a walk on the beach or through a park because of your wheelchair. Being in a wheelchair presents a perspective of not being able to meet the world on it's own terms, not being able to face people at their own level. Stature means alot in our society and being able to meet people on equal footing means alot to those who can't do it.
For all of those OH SO IGNORANT people out there, take a test, it will take one week out of your year but give you a new perspective on life.
Day 1) Don't use anything that requires electricity, gas, etc (utilities). No phone, microwave, lights, t.v., radio, car, no hot water, no refrigerated foods, use bottled water or better yet go down to your local river and get a bottle of water. No utilities for 24hours.
Day 2) Blindfold yourself. You can't use your eyes for anything for 24hours. No cheating.
Day 3) Stuff cotton in your ears and put on some ear muffs. You can't use your ears for anything for 24hours. (you can still hear but it's much harder than your normal hearing.)
Day 4) Rent a wheelchair, have a seat and go to it. Go to the grocery store, the mall, the bookstore, the movies. No legs for 24hours.
Day 5) Same as day 4 but now you are not allowed to use your arms either. Have fun finding someone to help you go to the bathroom.
Day 6) Same as day 4 and 5 but now you can no longer speak to request help, grunts and groans are the only acceptable forms of communication. No "voice" for 24hours.
Day 7) Fasting. No food, only the bottled water from day one is allowed (and this is a gift). No food 24hours
One week of walking in a other people's "shoes" as it were. While none of these exercises will give you the full impact of what it is like to be a person afflicted with the real issues, even 24hours will give most people enough of a taste that they will sympathize with those who have to live their life in such conditions. After one week you will no longer make ignorant assumptions like "the only reason I can find where I'd want to be at eye-level with someone is if I'm in a fight with them...".
I think the one take away that I learned from the things that Kamen has done is that people should use their brains and not just coast through life. Take nothing forgranted, make no assumptions, if you don't know - go find out!
All web browsers do this someone check bookmarks in NS4/NS6/MOZILLA they look like this
http://home.netscape.com/bookmark/4_72/ditech.ht ml
and this
http://home.netscape.com/bookmark/4_72/ecost.htm l
why because this allows the company to determine what is relevant for the next release. If they make a deal with a company like CNN and say "we'll put your bookmark out there for X amount of ad revenue" then they damn well need to justify that people are using the link. If noone is using the link then it's time to find another company to put in that one's place. Also it makes it easier to keep bookmarks relevant over the lifetime of the browser. Not everyone updates there browser everytime a patch comes out and no one I know of wants to download an updated list of bookmarks every time they hit the web (not over a 28800 connection), they've got better things to do. So what makes sense then, redirection, the company can track if the bookmarks are being used and keep 404's out of it, seemingly increasing the reliability and functionality of their browser to the public.
Get off the bandwagon. Stop bashing for bashing's sake. Do some damn research before you post as stupid ass story like this.
OMG that would mean that I would actually start getting ads for *GASP* things that I want to buy?!? Oh the horror. And as someone pointed out previously, what the fuck do I care that bob@bob.com is getting e-mail about new tractors for sale, or hot TEEEEEN action. Most times when software/sites ask me to register I give them bogus shit anyway as do many of the people I know out there. So Achmed Pettoooie I apologize for all the porn mail you've received because of people tracking me across the internet...
this is mostly bullshit anyway. As a web developer I develop shit all day that depends on being able to track a users every move and there are probably more server side ways to do it then there are client side. Most sites once you hit the site you've already been tracked, every browser sends a nice little readable data package that you can use to determine what to give them and track them when they go to the next page on your site. Does anyone know what "session" is and how to destroy one?
I don't know where you live but I get paid 53k a year in an IT job, I have three kids, a wife who loves Wal-Mart, 3 dogs, a cat two guinea pigs, and a computer hardware/software fetish and a sushi habbit to feed and I live quite comfortably on that. In reality I'm living my current lifestyle on about 28k. Remember there are some people who still work well below even the 1k a year salary. And I'm really tired of hearing about cheap foreign labor. All of the people that I work with in my shop that have come in on visa's get paid the same as I do and some even more depending on their skills. As for older programmers about 1/3 of our programmers are over 50. We have problems in our shop finding competent labor. We have plenty of people willing to say that they have Java/AS400/C++/Cobol experience but very little of those people actually have the experience or competence that we need.
I'm not sure who you're calling a dumb ass but the two products you sited, I assume as an example of products that have come down in price, are also products that lost large amounts of market share and were forced to bring down prices in order to compete. Compilers suffered a similar fate with the advent of the open source community creating free (as in beer) compilers, that's called competition. Until recently there were only a few major players in the compiler market which allowed them to keep high prices. A parallel is the Sun Solaris OS/Server market, companies are putting pressure on Sun for lower prices and better deals so Sun is having to bend in order to keep market share. Not that they are really suffering but they want to try to keep busting MS's chops so they have to do something.
I'd have to disagree with you 3.11 is selling for 68.97 right now. Full retail version.:) (never say NEVER) BTW I purchased Win98SE/PlusPack98 OEM for $99 a month ago. Most people buying 98 off the shelf aren't going for the full version they're going for the UP for $79-$89. People who are going for a full version typically are building a PC and if they are doing that they know who to buy from to not pay $189.00.
Anyway, I have failed to see any conclusive evidence that MS is overcharging anyone. No one has put forth any data that would suggest to me that MS is doing anything other than selling a product at fair market value. Just because other competing products on the market are selling for greatly reduced prices does not necessarily mean that MS should drop their prices out of "fairness".
Please someone provide some raw physical data about MS's financial accounting or justification of the cost of Windows. That I feel would be fair. For instance did you know that in 1985 Windows 1.0 cost the consumer $99.00 but that depending on where you went and what the availability of the product was and what part of the country you were in you may have had to pay up to $129-139 for it. According to inflation information, that copy of Windows 1 selling for $99 then, if sold today, would cost you $158. So if we went strictly by inflation MS would be overcharging by $31 (assuming the original $99 price tag was not also inflated). Unfortunately there are other factors involved such as marketing costs, employee retention, employee training, rising legal costs, etc. Then there are issues about market demand, needing to be quicker to market, a larger code base, which results in needing more developers than may have been needed for the comparitively lite Win 1.0. As a company they have now created more products to support within the package than the original singularly marketed product (bundled IE, Media player, DirectX, system software, messaging software, online services, etc.).
Now with all of that taken into account an easy fix to bring down the cost of Win would be to cut out all the "stuff" and sell/market it seperately. This would create confusion and some displacement among users. Long time Win users would become angry over being charged for something that they once got for free with the OS (despite the fact that the OS was now cheaper). New users would be frustrated about having to purchase all the "stuff" seperately and complain about "why can't I just get everything in one package". Linux users would complain that MS was trying to flood the market with cheap software and again try to force Linux out of the market place.
Meanwhile MS would lose it's positioning and alliances with some of the bigger companies because of loss of distribution of some components. For example: a large media company would not partner with or may seek other partnerships with MS competitors because MS no longer bundled it's MediaPlayer with the OS. It would then need to increase it's marketing to the Mediaplayer product in order to gain market share and regain those alliances. This in turn raises prices and depending on how they want to cover the cost of this marketing they would either raise the price of all products or have to raise the price of the single Mediaplayer product.
Take your pick of how you want to view it. In the end the people who drive these stories always need an enemey. If MS went away tomorrow, it would be AOL, if not AOL, then SUN, ORACLE, the government, the RED's, Satan, whatever... take your pick. In the end the only enemies we really have are ourselves and our own prejudices and choices. MS didn't get to 90% market share by purchasing it's own products...
I have to disagree. I grew up using WP from the DOS 2/3 days and it never seemed as intuitive or functional as Word. I switched to Office 95 (Word) and continued to use WP(8), but eventually just took it off my system because Word seemed for functional and complete. Just because you start learning on one system doesn't mean that another system isn't better. I started out programming on a Radio Shack (Tandy) MC-10 that hooked up to a TV and stored data on cassette tapes, migrated to a Mac then a DOS based PC, refused Windows until 3.11 and eventually made it to using 98SE and RedHat Linux. Even though I learned everything on text based systems it doesn't mean that I prefer them to GUIs. Likewise just because you learn one layout doesn't mean that another might not be more functional for you.
I guess K-Meleon has answered a few issues that I've had with Mozilla/Gecko.
The whole XUL/XML flexible interface is a great idea for us geeks, but my question has always been "What about non-geeks?" I mean. If I'm some newbie to the internet/computer thing and I download NS6 whatever and I'm running on a Mac is the program going to look like the rest of my Mac apps, is it going to conform to the GUI and conventions that's already provided by my OS or am I going to have to go hunting for some scheme or theme that will force it to conform. What if I'm running Kaleidoscope or I'm on MS and running Windowblinds will the themeing cover the browser or not.
Plus normal everyday users (that 90% of the population) is not going to give a flying f*** about what the liscensing states whether it's GPL'd, BSD'd, MPL'd, or BSOD'd. They want a browser that's ready to use out of the box and will work with the sites that they visit on a daily basis.
Right now I'm using IE 5.1, no major complaints except for a few issues where it doesn't cover the standards. I write sites based on the standards not based on what the browser can do, I might limit what standards I use to conform to what standards the browser permits but I never to use proprietary tags unless called on to do so. In my company when we looked line by line at what browser was most standards compliant it was IE and it's still IE. Unfortunately at the rate that Mozilla (although it's gaining momentum lately) is going IE will still be the most standards compliant browser when Mozilla ships as a final product.
One of the other issues I have with NS/Mozilla is the ability/ease-of-use in integrating other compenents into the set. For example: any user can go into internet settings in IE and choose which e-mail/newsreader/editor/etc. that they prefer to use which means I can mix and match apps based on my needs and whims. The interface is fairly simple and actions are easy to walk someone through. Unfortunately in Navigator you have to actually modify the file associations to get this functionality reproduced and then the functionality isn't represented on the toolbar or in the menuing, you can still only choose Messenger/Composer/etc. As far as I can tell the interface is similar in Mozilla. So yet again IE wins on ease-of-use. And as for stability, reliability, and speed (for me) IE wins. I use both Win98SE and NT4 and haven't had any problems with crashes for about the past year. In fact the only apps I've had crash on me lately were Netscape and Silverstream
... and yes I am awaiting the Flamebait ratings and/or Troll tag. So sue me.
*nix programmer - shoots self in foot... blames microsoft.
MS programmer - shoots self in foot... blames poor 3rd party video driver.
Only one problem with this assumption, from my understanding and statements from friends who are Mac users IE, OUTLOOK, and OFFICE are all better on the Mac than on Windows. Additionally if you go through MSDN sometime you'll see quite a few articles that are critical of the MS product that they are educating people on. For example roaming through the CSS HTML stuff you will find comments about how IE doesn't render certain things correctly or that it's buggy, or you might see a comment that the feature is really only in testing and not ready for primetime.
I guess I'm a little confused about your statement.
So a few years ago MS was going to port apps to javaStation but because it sucked so bad they didn't, and so because they didn't and they blamed the javaStation OS, which by your own admission sucked, then they are spreading FUD.And so now that MS has said they will port apps to *nix your afraid of what, exactly? That they might tell the truth about Linux like they did about javastation in 96? So what happened with Apple exactly, did MS decide that it didn't suck and so they had to port there apps over anyway? Did you ever think Linux might not suck and MS might do the same thing.
Guess I'm just not following the *nix train of thought very well.
:)
"...*nix programmer shoots self in foot, blames Microsoft."
Coca Cola in Thailand or somewhere like that pronounced phonetically ends up sounding like "sucks yaks milk" or something similarly strange. There are many other names out there that have similar phonetic problems when translated to other cultures/languages.
And I better not get some idiot trying to correct me and say that the Mamba is a dance because that would be the Mambo.
I think that everyone who doesn't live under a rock (excluding the morons) knows that Samba is a dance, and that under at least US trademark law you can't TM an English word or common phrase. Unfortunately I'm unsure on what the German law would conclude.
If in fact the name is legally taken in Germany, Samba can simply be renamed to GnuSamba or any other appropriate name. Many products are marketed in other countries under completely different names. I.E. Motorola markets a lot of their paging equipment under one name in the US, another in Canada and yet another in europe/asia. Part of this is just the typical product marketing and product name response.
Hmmm. I don't know how hush hush that whole USB issue is. I seem to be able to do a search on Windows USB support and come across a whole slew of articles including this one that specifically outlines which version have/not have support.
don't blame MS for your ignorance. Windows actually has a nifty little feature that backs up your registry if you forget to do it when you install some screwed up driver. Assuming that you had read the documentation half as well as you had read the linux docs you might have known this and not have had to reinstall all of windows just to fix a simple registry problem. Secondly if you had problems outside of the registry say with a dll Windows also includes a few little tools to restore those damaged dll's from a backup that it keeps or from the location of your choice. Shoot it will even tell you what file might be damaged or out of date or otherwise screwed up....
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I previously ran a small lan like this where the users only had access to a relatively small handpicked list of sites and had very quick turn around time in getting sites added to the list. This also didn't appear to cause any problems. So my suggestion to schools would be: with computers in the class room limit them to sites directly related to the curriculum. If the curriculum is general computer use then they don't really need to be on the internet, lock them into an intranet or don't even hook them up to the net. The problem that I see with all of these software solutions is that noone tailors them to the needs of the student/user and therefore they fail --- miserably. If your going to use filtering software that uses some algorythm or requires some third party to police it you might as well have parents start signing forms to either release the school of obligation or block the child from using computers.
Dear Mr. Whitaker,
Please excuse Tommy from participating in Computer Science today. We are afraid that he might be subjected to inappropriate material and are not sufficiently intelligent enough parents to deal with the issue on our own and would just rather avoid it all together. We are aware of the social implications of our actions and that Tommy may develop slower than other children because of this but we would rather deal with that later (when he's 36 and still living at home). Please understand our concern. What use is an internet that's 90% porn infested anyway.
Remember that the people who are pushing internet filtering are the same people who would like to see Huck Finn and Romeo and Juliet pulled from the school curriculum because of "questionable" content. These people are a minority that use the majorities ignorance in an attempt to sway what laws are passed, to enforce their own agenda, there own special brand of morality and conscience.
Plain and simple... I don't expect any teacher to stop my child from misbehaving. I don't expect any teacher to stop my child from misbehaving. I expect my child to stop himself as I know he is capable of doing so. If I put my trust in my child and my effort into raising him correctly he shall do well and if he does not I have only myself to blame.
I think everyone should look at the automobile industry for clues into these trends. Remember there were just cars, then trucks, then vans. Within the past twenty years we've seen the explosion of brand new markets of vehicles and genre's of transportation. The mini-van, SUV, Extended cabs, hybrid, electric, wired vehicles... what's growth like for the plain-old-car market? What's growth like for the SUV, hybrid, and wired markets. It appears to me that the SUV/mini-van market has started saturation and are beginning to look into innovation, while the hybrid and wired markets are just beginning their run.
One thing to notice in the auto market is generic vs. customization. Some vehicles are marketed toward the generic "I just need transportation" people, other vehicles are very specifically targeted towards the "I haul lumber", "I like leather", "I don't want to polute" groups. In the PC market very little of that is being done. I personally haven't seen much difference in the systems that are available they are all basic generic work horses that do the same tasks equally well. I'm waiting to see companies market "LeEt HaXor BoXEn" or "The Investors Buddy" or "MCLMFGM (Mushroom Cloud Laying M***F*** Gaming Machine)" or even the "Sesame Street PC". Now some companies have come out with branded machines like the Barbie PC or the RugRats PC but these aren't anything but the basic generic machines with some special software and stickers. What I'm talking about is specifically chosen hardware that is put together to perform a certain task. People who use their PC's for Games typically do it for only that and likewise with people who use their PC to surf the net. I guess this thought is what's driving the Net appliance and console market, but I think it can be done in the PC market also.
Just my $.02
I've seen tons of these people though, sure they have the diploma, certification, experience but put it to the test and they fail miserably.
another problem with the age discrimination issue is that it's just really hard to prove. There's some prejudices that come with age that need to be gotten over like that young people are inexperienced, or older people don't work weekends or over time, and that the group right in the middle 25-35 are ideal because they haven't established a life yet and they're willing to work harder. I think the truth of the matter is that the middle section probably appears to be doing more but gets the same amount of work done as any of the other groups.
Just me thoughts.
So here are the two things that I'm hearing.
1. We should all abandon PC's and move to the Mac so we can use IE 5/Mac since it's the most standard compliant production browser to date.
2. That any company should avoid puting any product or requested feature into a product until all of their competitors agree that it would be nice and they'll all put it in too.
For some reason the logic just doesn't quite work for me.
What people fail to take into account is that the organizations that produce these 'standards' are 1. Made up of competing companies/groups that will do anything to screw over their competitor (even if this means holding up a standard (see AOL)) 2. Typically months if not years behind market demand (see issue 1).
Personally I use IE, I develop html using the 'standards' and I've found that if I do that everything looks fine in IE, fine in Mozilla and like shit in Netscape 4, so see the problem with the standards isn't MS's extensions (which you DON'T HAVE to use despite popular opinion) but is Netscape 4's almost complete lack of adherence to standards (CSS-P, layer, LiveConnect/Javascript, anyone, anyone).
The problem with standards though is that they are worthless if the consumer doesn't want to use them or finds something non-standard (*cough* IE) easier to use or more robust. There are alot of people out there coding pages for their own entertainment, they don't get reports that show 25% of their users are using a browser that doesn't support tag 'X', and honestly they could care less. They want to create something that looks cool to them and that they like. It's called being selfish, and it happens. Businesses look at it from the financial perspective of "Well 75% of our customer base really likes this page and it doesn't completely screw up in the other 24%, and the remaining 1% it isn't cost effective enough to fix the problems, wahoooo, we're a success!"
Just my $.02
I'm sorry did you feel that you were somehow being singled out and that I would make any assumption about who you were or how you lived. Oh I do apologize, I'm sorry that you feel that I some how butted into your life and requested more information than you are willing to give. But you know looking back on what I wrote I don't think I did ask whether or not you knew what it was like to be in a wheelchair. It was obvious to anyone, given the ignorant statement that you made, that you have never been in a wheelchair. That's not an assumption, that's a statement of fact based on the evidence given. You evidenced your ignorance by the crass comment and the fact that the only action you could relate to was one of violence.
For all of those OH SO IGNORANT people out there, take a test, it will take one week out of your year but give you a new perspective on life.
Day 1) Don't use anything that requires electricity, gas, etc (utilities). No phone, microwave, lights, t.v., radio, car, no hot water, no refrigerated foods, use bottled water or better yet go down to your local river and get a bottle of water. No utilities for 24hours.
Day 2) Blindfold yourself. You can't use your eyes for anything for 24hours. No cheating.
Day 3) Stuff cotton in your ears and put on some ear muffs. You can't use your ears for anything for 24hours. (you can still hear but it's much harder than your normal hearing.)
Day 4) Rent a wheelchair, have a seat and go to it. Go to the grocery store, the mall, the bookstore, the movies. No legs for 24hours.
Day 5) Same as day 4 but now you are not allowed to use your arms either. Have fun finding someone to help you go to the bathroom.
Day 6) Same as day 4 and 5 but now you can no longer speak to request help, grunts and groans are the only acceptable forms of communication. No "voice" for 24hours.
Day 7) Fasting. No food, only the bottled water from day one is allowed (and this is a gift). No food 24hours
One week of walking in a other people's "shoes" as it were. While none of these exercises will give you the full impact of what it is like to be a person afflicted with the real issues, even 24hours will give most people enough of a taste that they will sympathize with those who have to live their life in such conditions. After one week you will no longer make ignorant assumptions like "the only reason I can find where I'd want to be at eye-level with someone is if I'm in a fight with them...".
I think the one take away that I learned from the things that Kamen has done is that people should use their brains and not just coast through life. Take nothing forgranted, make no assumptions, if you don't know - go find out!
http://home.netscape.com/bookmark/4_72/ditech.ht ml
and this
http://home.netscape.com/bookmark/4_72/ecost.htm l
why because this allows the company to determine what is relevant for the next release. If they make a deal with a company like CNN and say "we'll put your bookmark out there for X amount of ad revenue" then they damn well need to justify that people are using the link. If noone is using the link then it's time to find another company to put in that one's place. Also it makes it easier to keep bookmarks relevant over the lifetime of the browser. Not everyone updates there browser everytime a patch comes out and no one I know of wants to download an updated list of bookmarks every time they hit the web (not over a 28800 connection), they've got better things to do. So what makes sense then, redirection, the company can track if the bookmarks are being used and keep 404's out of it, seemingly increasing the reliability and functionality of their browser to the public.
Get off the bandwagon. Stop bashing for bashing's sake. Do some damn research before you post as stupid ass story like this.
BZZZZZZZT! Browser cache????
URL ??? "www.somedumbasses.com/callMe/Leeet.js"
Save As ???
this is mostly bullshit anyway. As a web developer I develop shit all day that depends on being able to track a users every move and there are probably more server side ways to do it then there are client side. Most sites once you hit the site you've already been tracked, every browser sends a nice little readable data package that you can use to determine what to give them and track them when they go to the next page on your site. Does anyone know what "session" is and how to destroy one?
WAKE UP PEOPLE THIS IS NOTHING NEW.
VML
How about just trying "personal information" in the index of the help file?
I don't know where you live but I get paid 53k a year in an IT job, I have three kids, a wife who loves Wal-Mart, 3 dogs, a cat two guinea pigs, and a computer hardware/software fetish and a sushi habbit to feed and I live quite comfortably on that. In reality I'm living my current lifestyle on about 28k. Remember there are some people who still work well below even the 1k a year salary. And I'm really tired of hearing about cheap foreign labor. All of the people that I work with in my shop that have come in on visa's get paid the same as I do and some even more depending on their skills. As for older programmers about 1/3 of our programmers are over 50. We have problems in our shop finding competent labor. We have plenty of people willing to say that they have Java/AS400/C++/Cobol experience but very little of those people actually have the experience or competence that we need.
I'm not sure who you're calling a dumb ass but the two products you sited, I assume as an example of products that have come down in price, are also products that lost large amounts of market share and were forced to bring down prices in order to compete. Compilers suffered a similar fate with the advent of the open source community creating free (as in beer) compilers, that's called competition. Until recently there were only a few major players in the compiler market which allowed them to keep high prices. A parallel is the Sun Solaris OS/Server market, companies are putting pressure on Sun for lower prices and better deals so Sun is having to bend in order to keep market share. Not that they are really suffering but they want to try to keep busting MS's chops so they have to do something.
Anyway, I have failed to see any conclusive evidence that MS is overcharging anyone. No one has put forth any data that would suggest to me that MS is doing anything other than selling a product at fair market value. Just because other competing products on the market are selling for greatly reduced prices does not necessarily mean that MS should drop their prices out of "fairness".
Please someone provide some raw physical data about MS's financial accounting or justification of the cost of Windows. That I feel would be fair. For instance did you know that in 1985 Windows 1.0 cost the consumer $99.00 but that depending on where you went and what the availability of the product was and what part of the country you were in you may have had to pay up to $129-139 for it. According to inflation information, that copy of Windows 1 selling for $99 then, if sold today, would cost you $158. So if we went strictly by inflation MS would be overcharging by $31 (assuming the original $99 price tag was not also inflated). Unfortunately there are other factors involved such as marketing costs, employee retention, employee training, rising legal costs, etc. Then there are issues about market demand, needing to be quicker to market, a larger code base, which results in needing more developers than may have been needed for the comparitively lite Win 1.0. As a company they have now created more products to support within the package than the original singularly marketed product (bundled IE, Media player, DirectX, system software, messaging software, online services, etc.).Now with all of that taken into account an easy fix to bring down the cost of Win would be to cut out all the "stuff" and sell/market it seperately. This would create confusion and some displacement among users. Long time Win users would become angry over being charged for something that they once got for free with the OS (despite the fact that the OS was now cheaper). New users would be frustrated about having to purchase all the "stuff" seperately and complain about "why can't I just get everything in one package". Linux users would complain that MS was trying to flood the market with cheap software and again try to force Linux out of the market place.
Meanwhile MS would lose it's positioning and alliances with some of the bigger companies because of loss of distribution of some components. For example: a large media company would not partner with or may seek other partnerships with MS competitors because MS no longer bundled it's MediaPlayer with the OS. It would then need to increase it's marketing to the Mediaplayer product in order to gain market share and regain those alliances. This in turn raises prices and depending on how they want to cover the cost of this marketing they would either raise the price of all products or have to raise the price of the single Mediaplayer product.
Take your pick of how you want to view it. In the end the people who drive these stories always need an enemey. If MS went away tomorrow, it would be AOL, if not AOL, then SUN, ORACLE, the government, the RED's, Satan, whatever... take your pick. In the end the only enemies we really have are ourselves and our own prejudices and choices. MS didn't get to 90% market share by purchasing it's own products...
I have to disagree. I grew up using WP from the DOS 2/3 days and it never seemed as intuitive or functional as Word. I switched to Office 95 (Word) and continued to use WP(8), but eventually just took it off my system because Word seemed for functional and complete. Just because you start learning on one system doesn't mean that another system isn't better. I started out programming on a Radio Shack (Tandy) MC-10 that hooked up to a TV and stored data on cassette tapes, migrated to a Mac then a DOS based PC, refused Windows until 3.11 and eventually made it to using 98SE and RedHat Linux. Even though I learned everything on text based systems it doesn't mean that I prefer them to GUIs. Likewise just because you learn one layout doesn't mean that another might not be more functional for you.
So tell me which widely available OS less expensive than MS's gave you all of these abilities on the PC - before MS?
I guess K-Meleon has answered a few issues that I've had with Mozilla/Gecko.
The whole XUL/XML flexible interface is a great idea for us geeks, but my question has always been "What about non-geeks?" I mean. If I'm some newbie to the internet/computer thing and I download NS6 whatever and I'm running on a Mac is the program going to look like the rest of my Mac apps, is it going to conform to the GUI and conventions that's already provided by my OS or am I going to have to go hunting for some scheme or theme that will force it to conform. What if I'm running Kaleidoscope or I'm on MS and running Windowblinds will the themeing cover the browser or not.
Plus normal everyday users (that 90% of the population) is not going to give a flying f*** about what the liscensing states whether it's GPL'd, BSD'd, MPL'd, or BSOD'd. They want a browser that's ready to use out of the box and will work with the sites that they visit on a daily basis.
Right now I'm using IE 5.1, no major complaints except for a few issues where it doesn't cover the standards. I write sites based on the standards not based on what the browser can do, I might limit what standards I use to conform to what standards the browser permits but I never to use proprietary tags unless called on to do so. In my company when we looked line by line at what browser was most standards compliant it was IE and it's still IE. Unfortunately at the rate that Mozilla (although it's gaining momentum lately) is going IE will still be the most standards compliant browser when Mozilla ships as a final product.
One of the other issues I have with NS/Mozilla is the ability/ease-of-use in integrating other compenents into the set. For example: any user can go into internet settings in IE and choose which e-mail/newsreader/editor/etc. that they prefer to use which means I can mix and match apps based on my needs and whims. The interface is fairly simple and actions are easy to walk someone through. Unfortunately in Navigator you have to actually modify the file associations to get this functionality reproduced and then the functionality isn't represented on the toolbar or in the menuing, you can still only choose Messenger/Composer/etc. As far as I can tell the interface is similar in Mozilla. So yet again IE wins on ease-of-use. And as for stability, reliability, and speed (for me) IE wins. I use both Win98SE and NT4 and haven't had any problems with crashes for about the past year. In fact the only apps I've had crash on me lately were Netscape and Silverstream
*nix programmer - shoots self in foot... blames microsoft.
MS programmer - shoots self in foot... blames poor 3rd party video driver.
Only one problem with this assumption, from my understanding and statements from friends who are Mac users IE, OUTLOOK, and OFFICE are all better on the Mac than on Windows. Additionally if you go through MSDN sometime you'll see quite a few articles that are critical of the MS product that they are educating people on. For example roaming through the CSS HTML stuff you will find comments about how IE doesn't render certain things correctly or that it's buggy, or you might see a comment that the feature is really only in testing and not ready for primetime.
I guess I'm a little confused about your statement.
So a few years ago MS was going to port apps to javaStation but because it sucked so bad they didn't, and so because they didn't and they blamed the javaStation OS, which by your own admission sucked, then they are spreading FUD.And so now that MS has said they will port apps to *nix your afraid of what, exactly? That they might tell the truth about Linux like they did about javastation in 96? So what happened with Apple exactly, did MS decide that it didn't suck and so they had to port there apps over anyway? Did you ever think Linux might not suck and MS might do the same thing.
Guess I'm just not following the *nix train of thought very well.
"...*nix programmer shoots self in foot, blames Microsoft."
Coca Cola in Thailand or somewhere like that pronounced phonetically ends up sounding like "sucks yaks milk" or something similarly strange. There are many other names out there that have similar phonetic problems when translated to other cultures/languages.
In the Lion King it's Simba not Samba.
The snake is the Mamba not Samba.
And I better not get some idiot trying to correct me and say that the Mamba is a dance because that would be the Mambo.
I think that everyone who doesn't live under a rock (excluding the morons) knows that Samba is a dance, and that under at least US trademark law you can't TM an English word or common phrase. Unfortunately I'm unsure on what the German law would conclude.
If in fact the name is legally taken in Germany, Samba can simply be renamed to GnuSamba or any other appropriate name. Many products are marketed in other countries under completely different names. I.E. Motorola markets a lot of their paging equipment under one name in the US, another in Canada and yet another in europe/asia. Part of this is just the typical product marketing and product name response.
Hmmm. I don't know how hush hush that whole USB issue is. I seem to be able to do a search on Windows USB support and come across a whole slew of articles including this one that specifically outlines which version have/not have support.
http://support.micro soft.com/support/kb/articles/Q253/7/56.ASPThey've even got some articles on building your own USB drivers and add functionality to them.
Now explain to me exactly how that is hush hush?
In the end it's all in the reading...