Over the past year or two, Opera has managed to do a good job of keeping people aware that new stuff is coming down the pike without actually giving away the goods before their announcements.
I'll second that. I remember when the race to ACID2 support was a big deal (amongst the browsers that care about standards), the Opera team did a great job of blogging about their efforts to get the Presto engine to pass the test. They've also been quite good about following the standards too. I don't really test on Opera anymore. I can basically count on it obeying the standards -- which cuts my testing down to WebKit, Gecko, and Trident (IE.) I have to find something that those three handle that Opera can't.
Were it made ten years later, I'd suspect this to be great viral advertising for the movie Gattaca. Unfortunately, it's not -- it's just another step towards abolishing personal privacy. One small step...
For the pedants, yes there is Wine/Cedega, but that's an emulator.
For the pedants, there's also the fact that Wine Is Not An Emulator. Seriously though -- that's why WINE is more than a little scary to MS -- it's not an emulator, so it lacks the major performance penalties that are usually associated with them. Instead, it's a fairly fast re-implementation of the Win32 API layer -- and since it's portable, it could (in theory, if it every gets DX10 support) provide unofficial backwards compatibility to people that MS would rather use Vista.
Lack of backward compatibility (software and hardware).
I agree with you about the software part, but the hardware part is partially due to performance. Vista performs poorly on a large portion of low-end home machines, making an upgrade from XP an unattractive proposition.
I'd also add a third reason to that list: It's not worth it to the average user.. The fully-functional versions costs about $200, and doesn't really offer all that much improvement to the end user. Yes, I know there's a new driver architecture, stack randomization, sandboxing, and that there was a significant effort to move a bunch of stuff back into userspace... but that's because I'm a nerd. The average user only really notices the pretty GUI (and even this poses a problem to some users, see above.) The real problem is that XP's "good enough" for most people.
If there's one thing that Apple has time and time demonstrated they're capable of, it's refining interfaces. Look at the original Mac UI. From a simple black and white 512x384 screen to the G4 Cube, the interface followed the same basic conventions -- everything was quite familiar. The iPod was no different. It started with a slightly inferior product in a shiny package, and went on to evolve into an exceptional interface/design. Once the initial design is done, and Apple has a chance to correct all the minor UI irritations (the things that reviews always preface with "One thing I did notice was"), I'll bet the iPhone will gain marketshare at a much faster rate.
I'm sorry, but you're flat out wrong. If you drop a new folder into a directory that already contains a folder with that name, you will be asked if you would like to replace the existing folder. In fact, the exact text of this dialog is:
An older item named "foo" already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the newer one you are moving?
I realize that this is supposed to be a "Look what Big Brother can do for you!" piece -- but is anyone else a little unsettled by what went on? A woman claims her innocence to the point where she breaks out of jail. After escaping, she goes on to live a normal life for 35 years (not harming anyone, and raising children), after which the government re-captures her, and will haul her back to prison to rehabilitate. Given that she spent 35 years on the outside with no further crimes, I'd say that she's pretty rehabilitated already.... but I guess not.
She and her husband ran a junk and antiques shop for a number of years, friends said. More recently, Darby worked cleaning houses and sitting with elderly people.
Whew! Glad we have her off the streets. Thank God for that database....
the G4 is a fairly efficient chip (some users never knew the iBook had fans)
Up until recently, Apple was one of the few manufacturers to use high capacity LiPo batteries.
OS X is very, very aggressive in its power management. It shuts off as much hardware as soon as it can.
Apple markets to students, etc. where battery life is a concern. If you look at laptops marketed to travelling groups (Thinkpads, for example), you'll probably find better numbers.
I have noticed that battery life has gotten better on the PC side, especially after they ditched the P4.
It's actually funny that you mention DirectX. Every version of DirectX from 6.1a to 9.0c was available for Windows 98. It's only DirectX 10 that's Vista exclusive. Now I fail to believe that's because of the new driver model -- or rather, I fail to believe that the new driver model makes it impossible to make DirectX 10 available for at least XP (if not also 2K, since the two are quite similar). I'd wager that the driver model in Vista is more akin to the XP/NT model than XP's model is to that of Windows 98.
And honestly, I don't understand these artificial limitations. Vista should have been an update to XP (SP3/4), and should have taken 2 years at the most. Instead, it took more than twice as long, and implements its "improvements" poorly. Seriosuly: the improvements sounded nice, but the execution sucked. They implemented a brand new, shiny network stack... which proceeded to behave incredibly poorly during audio playback. They _finally_ put the NT permissions system to work by setting sane defaults... and then made an interface that annoyed users to no end (on top of that, it still doesn't have completely sane defaults.) They redid part of the UI with a new look.... and then redid a different part with a different look... and then... All these improvements would have been great if done right, and released for a decent price. Unfortunately, Microsoft botched the implementation, and charged far too much for the resulting product.
It's stuff like this that makes it really hard to seriously consider a Windows OS a server OS, even when you're supposed to. Add that to the fact that automation is 10x harder on a Windows server than a *nix one, and you've got a good case for never allowing Windows in the datacenter. Seriously though -- it couldn't be that hard for them to include an SSH server...
Well put. If you look at the OS image for the iPhone, you'll notice a couple frameworks/libraries that are making their desktop debut on Leopard (most notably Core Animation). Since the iPhone depends on these libraries/frameworks quite heavily, it couldn't really be released before they were finished. I don't think that Apple pulled people from the Leopard dev. team to work on the iPhone -- but I do think that they focused their development time on the shared components that the iPhone depends upon.
Now imagine someone's showing you that attitude, yet your body is setup such that you can't use anything but Firefox.
Too bad for me then. They are under no obligation to make their site compatible with my browser, with my OS, or with my body. None. It'd be nice if their site worked in all browsers, and was perfectly accessible by everyone -- but if they don't want to invest the time into making it compatible, then that's their decision -- not mine.
Not all humans are equal.
I'll repeat that, since it's an important concept. Not all humans are equal. Part of living in a mature, free society is learning how to deal with people who are inferior to you, people who are equally as capable as you, and people who are superior to you. Trying to legislate equality (which is what this case really is) is a doomed effort -- people aren't equal, and no law can make them be equal.
Now the good, considerate thing to do is to make your sites Section 508 compliant. Personally, I check every layout that I produce for Section 508 compliance. Partially because I never know when a blind person might have to navigate the layout -- but also because I've found that Section 508 compliant sites tend to have an edge when it comes to SEO -- search engines love a semantic layout with alt attributes, appropriate headings, and a logical structure. But even if I didn't want to make the site compliant -- that's my choice too.
Slashdot Mirror
In all fairness, there are plenty of reasons why the NSA would want to keep it secret if they did discover a weakness in PGP....
Nah, MySpace could never be the new Usenet. They've had idiots on MySpace from the start. Usenet actually used to be good...
Damn I feel old.
I'll second that. I remember when the race to ACID2 support was a big deal (amongst the browsers that care about standards), the Opera team did a great job of blogging about their efforts to get the Presto engine to pass the test. They've also been quite good about following the standards too. I don't really test on Opera anymore. I can basically count on it obeying the standards -- which cuts my testing down to WebKit, Gecko, and Trident (IE.) I have to find something that those three handle that Opera can't.
Yep. I realized a split-second after clicking submit. Damn my office's low-latency connection!
Were it made ten years later, I'd suspect this to be great viral advertising for the movie Gattaca. Unfortunately, it's not -- it's just another step towards abolishing personal privacy. One small step...
For the pedants, there's also the fact that Wine Is Not An Emulator. Seriously though -- that's why WINE is more than a little scary to MS -- it's not an emulator, so it lacks the major performance penalties that are usually associated with them. Instead, it's a fairly fast re-implementation of the Win32 API layer -- and since it's portable, it could (in theory, if it every gets DX10 support) provide unofficial backwards compatibility to people that MS would rather use Vista.
I agree with you about the software part, but the hardware part is partially due to performance. Vista performs poorly on a large portion of low-end home machines, making an upgrade from XP an unattractive proposition.
I'd also add a third reason to that list: It's not worth it to the average user.. The fully-functional versions costs about $200, and doesn't really offer all that much improvement to the end user. Yes, I know there's a new driver architecture, stack randomization, sandboxing, and that there was a significant effort to move a bunch of stuff back into userspace... but that's because I'm a nerd. The average user only really notices the pretty GUI (and even this poses a problem to some users, see above.) The real problem is that XP's "good enough" for most people.
If there's one thing that Apple has time and time demonstrated they're capable of, it's refining interfaces. Look at the original Mac UI. From a simple black and white 512x384 screen to the G4 Cube, the interface followed the same basic conventions -- everything was quite familiar. The iPod was no different. It started with a slightly inferior product in a shiny package, and went on to evolve into an exceptional interface/design. Once the initial design is done, and Apple has a chance to correct all the minor UI irritations (the things that reviews always preface with "One thing I did notice was"), I'll bet the iPhone will gain marketshare at a much faster rate.
I'm sorry, but you're flat out wrong. If you drop a new folder into a directory that already contains a folder with that name, you will be asked if you would like to replace the existing folder. In fact, the exact text of this dialog is:
An older item named "foo" already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the newer one you are moving?
There are two buttons: "Stop" and "Replace".
Whew! Glad we have her off the streets. Thank God for that database....
I have noticed that battery life has gotten better on the PC side, especially after they ditched the P4.
It's actually funny that you mention DirectX. Every version of DirectX from 6.1a to 9.0c was available for Windows 98. It's only DirectX 10 that's Vista exclusive. Now I fail to believe that's because of the new driver model -- or rather, I fail to believe that the new driver model makes it impossible to make DirectX 10 available for at least XP (if not also 2K, since the two are quite similar). I'd wager that the driver model in Vista is more akin to the XP/NT model than XP's model is to that of Windows 98.
And honestly, I don't understand these artificial limitations. Vista should have been an update to XP (SP3/4), and should have taken 2 years at the most. Instead, it took more than twice as long, and implements its "improvements" poorly. Seriosuly: the improvements sounded nice, but the execution sucked. They implemented a brand new, shiny network stack... which proceeded to behave incredibly poorly during audio playback. They _finally_ put the NT permissions system to work by setting sane defaults... and then made an interface that annoyed users to no end (on top of that, it still doesn't have completely sane defaults.) They redid part of the UI with a new look.... and then redid a different part with a different look... and then... All these improvements would have been great if done right, and released for a decent price. Unfortunately, Microsoft botched the implementation, and charged far too much for the resulting product.
Not if you're a game publisher/developer.
It's stuff like this that makes it really hard to seriously consider a Windows OS a server OS, even when you're supposed to. Add that to the fact that automation is 10x harder on a Windows server than a *nix one, and you've got a good case for never allowing Windows in the datacenter. Seriously though -- it couldn't be that hard for them to include an SSH server...
Well put. If you look at the OS image for the iPhone, you'll notice a couple frameworks/libraries that are making their desktop debut on Leopard (most notably Core Animation). Since the iPhone depends on these libraries/frameworks quite heavily, it couldn't really be released before they were finished. I don't think that Apple pulled people from the Leopard dev. team to work on the iPhone -- but I do think that they focused their development time on the shared components that the iPhone depends upon.
Too bad for me then. They are under no obligation to make their site compatible with my browser, with my OS, or with my body. None. It'd be nice if their site worked in all browsers, and was perfectly accessible by everyone -- but if they don't want to invest the time into making it compatible, then that's their decision -- not mine.
Not all humans are equal.
I'll repeat that, since it's an important concept. Not all humans are equal. Part of living in a mature, free society is learning how to deal with people who are inferior to you, people who are equally as capable as you, and people who are superior to you. Trying to legislate equality (which is what this case really is) is a doomed effort -- people aren't equal, and no law can make them be equal.
Now the good, considerate thing to do is to make your sites Section 508 compliant. Personally, I check every layout that I produce for Section 508 compliance. Partially because I never know when a blind person might have to navigate the layout -- but also because I've found that Section 508 compliant sites tend to have an edge when it comes to SEO -- search engines love a semantic layout with alt attributes, appropriate headings, and a logical structure. But even if I didn't want to make the site compliant -- that's my choice too.
IANAL, but I'm betting their logic goes something like this:
Of course the time periods involved weaken the argument considerably... but Microsoft's got the resources that such an argument might work.