I have no doubt that this was the case, but how can you be absolutely *sure* that there is not one single piece of living matter on the craft ? Answer - you can't. You can only be as thorough as possible and it's still not a guarantee. True, we know that Gallileo didn't go through this procedure, but I don't belive that the procedure could even be 100% on a 'sterilised' craft. If it were the case that you could nuke all life traces from a particular area, I'm sure that hospitals would be considerably safer places than they actually are. But they aren't. M.
My immediate thoughts about this are that whether by accident of design, we will transport 'life' to other planetary bodies anyway. It'll just hitch a lift. One of the supplied links gives details of how small organisms have been transported to the moon. It would seem a reasonable guess to suggest that just about any planetary body we've sent a probe or craft to has probably got them too. Take, for example, the Mars lander craft. Even if it crashed and was broken into millions of little bits, there are probably bacteria and microbes kicking about. We also know that these are resilient little monsters too. Whilst that's got no real big short term implication, in the very long term we may have already started 'life' off somewhere in one form or another. Bacteria/microbes can mutate pretty quickly. It won't be long before they can withstand the environment. True, on hotter planets (Venus ?) the chances are pretty slim due to a pretty nasty atmosphere, but elsewhere, there's a pretty good chance we've done the work ourselves already. Meanwhile, why crash land the craft on Jupiter ? It may be inhospitable for us... but what about the little critters ? A 'self-destruct' button would be a much better idea - as long as nobody says, "What does this do ?". Alternatively, we could just send it out of the solar system into deep space, and see what it sends back... M.
How would you like to be shafted today ?
on
Copyrant
·
· Score: 1
This sounds like M$ knew that the decision in court was going to go against them, so in the meantime, they changed their 'licensing' agreement in place to protect their patch.
As no doubt anyone is aware, hardly anyone just jumps in with both feet to a new OS. The usual way of doing things is to partition your hard disk so that the old OS and new OS can peacefully co-exist.
This applies to anyone who is changing OS - it doesn't matter whether you start using NT, BeOs, MacOs, Linux or whatever. Having recently made the decision to go do dual boot with MacOs and LinuxPPC, I would probably drop MacOs like a shot if it started 'nudging' other OSes I installed off the hard disk, which sounds similar to what MS might be trying to do to Linux.
Micro$oft are nailing their own coffin by doing this. Corporate clients are not going to be amused. For example, what about all those MIS departments that have to set up PCs with specific setups ? Is MS saying that they can't burn CDs of their own disk images ? I don't think any MIS executive is going to be impressed by being told that they can only use a standard setup as provided by MS, if at all. Neither are they going to be impressed by having to pay a huge premium just to get a master CD.
Hardly, "Where do you want to go today ?", is it ?
I find these OS comparisons quite frankly, to be annoying. I don't actually see the point in comparing Operating Systems together.
To quote an interesting article I read somewhere else:
"Just because I am happy with my operating system choice, doesn't mean that I should flame you or talk you out of what you use."
Ultimately a computer, with whatever operating system you have on it is merely a tool. Use it, enjoy it, get on with your work and shut up. We should be grateful that we have choice. The world would be a very dull place if every computer user was stuck with the same generic OS. Choice is what keeps the market alive.
It's strange how computing advocacy works and is rarely found in any other industry. For example - just because I drive Model A of a particular car doesn't give sufficient reason as to why I should flame you for driving Model B. In fact, you'd think I was a bit mad if I kept trying....
Whilst many operating systems have come and gone, OS/400 still seems to be one of the traditional workhorses of corporate computing. The OS is pretty damn robust, the hardware is reliable, and the 'e' series has improved it considerably. At work, we have an AS/400e, which has NT running on the IPCS card, and I think it's pretty impressive. The integration is certainly there. NT uses AS/400 resources, and the OS/400 can do quite a bit of the NT administration. We use the NT side of things as a web server, and it makes life easier, especially with the ease of pulling the data out of OS/400 files.
Processor landmarks aside, I think this actually says a lot more, namely that IBM think that midrange computing still has a lot of life in it. There are an awful lot of business out there who don't want to move hardware platform, and this is the sort of market they're angling for - a significant performance boost, without the upheval of migration to a new architecture and OS.
As for Linux, I hadn't realised that it could run on the 'e' series yet, but I'd like to see it in action....
I'm still a Nutscoop user. I've been using communicator 4.7x for a good while now, but I'm wondering what is supposed to entice me to any future versions. Whilst it's interesting to see Mozilla proceed with future milestones, I'm not sure it's really worth the effort of changing.
Unfortunately, both IE and Netscape/Mozilla are turning into bloatware and as a Mac user I'm starting to look to other projects, such as iCab. How can I justify allocating 30MB of memory to one program ?
Stability aside (I know these shouldn't be considered in milestone builds), the last milestone build I tried was visually appalling. The user interface didn't seem to conform to anything on earth (mind you, does Quicktime or Sherlock ?) and the speed seemed to have taken a nosedive, with the HD thrashing away. (I assume the debug info is still in there).
Someone has already made comments that more Mac coders could be done with on that particular build, but I'm not sure they'll get them. When Apple signed the deal with M$ to make IE the browser of choice, it was the nail in the coffin for any other browser, and I think it's starting to show. I don't like IE, but at the same time, I'm starting not to like Netscape either. It's gradually being assimilated into the AOL ways.... yuk.
Just my 2p. I'm not sure a milestone release is newsworthy - a beta maybe...
I don't know if anyone has actually tried to shop at boo.com's site, but once you start using it, it gives you some pretty good ideas as to why it failed.
1) Speed (Or lack thereof) - I tried it a few days ago. This is a site that wants bandwidth and plenty of it. When you get to the first page, your connection is assessed as to whether you want the funky version (read:slow) or the simpler version (read:nearly as slow). There's just too much going on. I connected on a 56k modem (like most home shoppers), but the assessment told me that I was going to have to use the simple version. Basically, if you wanted good speed, you were probably going to have use at least a 2 channel ISDN connection to get it. I've done connections using the fixed line at work, and it's still pretty lousy.
That immediately alienates the majority of home users straight away, who aren't prepared to grow old during the download. Most people are still using 56k modems.
2) From what I can gather, they employed at least 300 people and this was going to be the biggest money burner of all. If they had been more conscious of their money/resource allocation from the start, they probably could have lasted longer, which in turn would have given them considerably more time to start getting the money in.
3) The relative success of some sites is in their discounting. You are enticed to a site because of it's cut price goods. That's supposed to be the benefit of going to a site - the reduction in overheads are passed on to you. Boo seemed to sell at full retail price for everything. Yet again, another incentive not to shop there. I can go down the high street and get things for the same price, sometimes cheaper. What's my incentive to go there ?
4) Finally, their advertising was lousy. I only went there because I heard it was going down the pan. Ultimately, considering the marketing/advertising budget they had, I really don't understand who they were targeting. I don't have my head buried in the sand all day and I never saw a single advert. My colleagues say the same. I think they must have pitched the marketing very badly.
Ultimately, those commerce sites that have good business plans along with sound marketing will survive. In all fairness, I've heard statistics that 1 in 3 UK businesses fail in their first year, so perhaps this isn't such a big surprise. What's the big deal if 1 in 3.com's fail at about the same rate ?
1) Against - After trashing most of our own planet, we consider the ruining of another body in the solar system. Environmentalism gets a slightly bigger scope to it.
2) For - The Moon, not capable of sustaining life (as it is at the moment), could be used as a vast testing ground. We could do a variety of really nasty tests that we don't want to do on earth, so we don't kill everyone here.
Neither option is particularly nice really, but there will be those people that say it will be necessary to perform the act(s) in the name of 'progress'. I just find it sad statement on the human race that we need Nuclear Weaponry at all.
To my mind, this make perfect sense and I'm surprised they haven't thought of it earlier. Here's my reasoning:
Take an x86 processor for example. Usually, there is a premium associated with buying in at the top of the speed end. A 1GHZ chip is bound to be more than twice the price of 2 500Mhz chips. Absolutely bound to be. It's the membership fee for that exclusive club that last about 2 weeks before the next speed ramp comes along.
Anyone with any sense knows that comparing on Mhz along is lame. If you can effectively double your processing ability whilst still being able to use more commonly available (and cheaper) chips, you're bound to be on a winner. The pressure is taken off developing a 2Ghz processor if you can set 4 500Mhz processors working together nicely. Apple has had the MP support in the OS for a little while now, although I wouldn't want to hazard a guess on how effective it is.
Any guesses on whether they can put a cube design together ? I'd like to see something like that rip through my RC5 blocks....:-)
In all honesty, I'm not surprised by this report. Here's another one for you, which goes into a little bit more detail about the ethics and practices of computer manufacturers (or lack thereof).
I seem to remember a previous thread on a similar subject on/. a few months ago. It's getting a bit like usenet these days... the same threads/subjects popping up.
Getting back on topic, I think it does go to show that no matter how much you research the products you buy, whether that's a pair of trainers or a computer, you can never be entirely sure that the company concerned doesn't have any skeletons in it's cupboard. Although that said, this particular article is a little bit patchy in places.
I would like to know what measures will be in place to stop Microsoft A working in constant tandem with Microsoft B ? How are they going to compete like two regular companies ? It's just not going to happen. Even if they're aiming at two distinctly different sections of the software market, they'll still work towards tight integration.
It is pointless considering them as two separate entities if everything they do is a joint project. Essentially, that's exactly the same company with a slightly different structure to it, which is pointless. Bill could do a reorganisation tomorrow, and it wouldn't be much different.
I doubt very much that once the break up has happened, every single company communication is going to monitored to ensure that this situation doesn't occur.
Two companies with exactly the same motive, still working together isn't much different from a cartel, and in good few countries, that's illegal too.
I am not a fan of Microsoft whatsoever, but at the same time I don't see the point in the break-up. I would actually rather see more punitive measures taken, such as crippling fines in conjunction with regulation of their selling policies. Whilst open-source is a great thing, I don't actually think that forcing MS to make their core code open source is the correct thing to do. A company has the right to keep it's work secret and Microsoft is no exception to the rule.
I think/. should lay off the Microsoft stories until we have some *real* news to talk about. This is all purely speculative at the moment, and if Microsoft is successful in it's appeal strategy, then it'll be years before this actually comes to anything.
40 pounds a month is too expensive for my liking, but this is pretty typical of BT. They tend to price products at the top end of what people will pay for them.
BT have also done something in the past called Home Highway, which was supposed to have been 2*64K digital channels. The costs of this was prohibitively expensive too. I don't know of anyone that took that up either. Most people were waiting for ADSL to be introduced.
It wouldn't surprise me if BT also charge for each moment you use it. I also doubt that the £40 is a flat unlimited usage fee. They also subscribe to the typical British notion that if you have a computer, it must be a Windoze PC. Support for other machines and operating systems is only likely to come after substantial lobbying. Better start lobbying now.
I guess that London (as usual) will be the first to use it. Most of the country will be given the chance to use it - eventually, but I won't hold my breath waiting.
Hopefully, they will get kicked a bit by the regulator to speed things up.
"The court today has been adjourned, due to a VB runtime error."
"I'm sorry - due to a bug, you got life for a parking offence, but that's the cost of progress!".
Is anyone mildly worried by a Micro$oft product getting involved in the justice system ? It's a good job it isn't already in large-scale use in the US......
Just thought of yet another money making scam that Mr Mucas can do.
Let's suppose that there were 20 cut scenes from the original film. Now, how about if he divided the 20 cut scenes into four little piles (i.e 5 scenes a piece) and the made four different DVDs. Perhaps we could call them, "Red", "Blue", "Green", "Yellow".
Mr Mucas could then make four times as much money from Star Wars fans by saying things like, "Star Wars! Gotta got them all":-)
Maybe I'm just a cynical old chap, but doesn't anyone out there think that this is just an exercise in fleecing the public, in particular die-hard Star Wars fans ?
I think I must be about the only person on the planet not to have seen the film. In fact, I've deliberately chosen not to watch it. The more the Star Wars mania continues, the more it'll continue to push me away from the notion. I hate hype. My basis for this reasoning is the popular vs good theory. A thing can either be one or the other. For example, the British Tabloid papers are popular - but they are not good journalism. Over hyped films (and this most certainly was one of them) will be at the bottom of my viewing list.
Give it 10 years, and I might watch it, on my Betamax video.....
Rather than descend into the 'I agree' bit here, I do. (Doh!)
I live in the South East of England. Each day, I see millions of people trying to break their necks to get into work. They read the Daily Mail, a newspaper that is so sensationalist and narrow minded that it seems unable to post any other frontpage story apart from 'Justice Being Done' and the 'Waste of Taxpayers Money'.
Britain is a nation of winging penny pinchers. The average man in the street reads the Daily Mail, has 2.2 children and gets a new car every year or so. He lives in his shoebox house and doesn't think that the matter of censorship really has any effect to him. Unfortunately, he is wrong. He also thinks that his is powerless to change things that he doesn't agree with. The infringement of civil liberties starts this way, by breaking the spirit of the people so that they don't care any more. Tony Blairs government has a policy aimed at creating 'normality'. It doesn't want people who are different, have different things to say, or want to different things. We should all do the same things, at the same time.
I'm an IT contractor that works in Central London. I am stared at like some sort of freak because I have long hair and I wear bright purple shoes to work. Is that really a big deal ? London likes to think of itself as a somewhat Cosmopolitan city. Rubbish. It's more narrow minded than you think. The current climate regarding censorship is not really a surprise. "Let's pull the plug on what we don't agree with"
It is also amusing to think that Tony Blair tried to say (before being elected in) that they had a fair and consistent ethical/humanitarian policy. Is free speech not a basic right in itself ? In the last year or so, many of the governments policies have made a bit of a mockery of this. The bill regarding encryption and "handing over the keys" is a classic example.
In the same way that consumers can vote with their feet if they don't like the way companies behave, Web-Masters can do exactly the same. I am considering moving my site to servers hosted in another country, preferably not European. I would encourage others to do the same. When it harms British business, the government will take notice and modernise. Eventually.
The whole concept of ethics is subjective. For example, IBM sell massive machines to the American military research sector - namely for computer simulations of nuclear weapon detonation. You have to ask the question - is it worse for a company to be selling products that promote the development of nuclear weaponary, or is it better that real nuclear testing is not happening ? Perhaps I would vote for the latter. At the same time, I don't like either of them. It's the lesser of the two evils. I don't believe there is a need for nuclear weapons.
There are also matters to be considered, such as whether the materials used are recyclable, how 'componentised' the computer in question is (i.e how much you can upgrade it before you dump it and get something newer) and how energy efficient it is, along with the ethical policies of the manufacturer (i.e labour practices, pollution, etc....).
See here for more information. The reality is that there is no such thing as an ethical and environmental computer. All we can do is make informed choices that allow us to minimise the damage we do. That goes for virtually any product that has come about through the use of new technology.
My day to day job is as an electronic commerce specialist. I work primarily in EDI (follow the URL below for info), and I specialise in basic business functionality like invoicing, raising orders, electronic payments to banks and so on and so forth.
Go to http://www.edi.wales.org/ediinfo/edirc.htm if you want to find out a bit more. Yeah, I know, it says 'Wales' all over it, but don't hold that against them....
We did our Y2K testing a good while back, and as a consequence I've been working for about the last 6 months to do the remedial work to get things fixed. I know for a fact, that if I hadn't done any remedial work:
i) None of our employees would have got their expenses/salaries paid. (Mind you, the business might have liked that....)
ii) All ordering/invoicing would have screwed up.
Those are just for a start. There are other things. The above might seem trivial, but if a business that's primarily in retail can't order, it's screwed.
One point to mention. If a company had a Y2K problem, do you seriously think that they'd mention it to the public ? Course not - the shareholders would weep too much.
I get a mite peeved when people say it was a hoax. It's only because so much effort was put into it that the problem wasn't more significant. If we hadn't bothered, and there'd been problems, us developers would have been branded as incompetent instead. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Slashdot Mirror
I have no doubt that this was the case, but how can you be absolutely *sure* that there is not one single piece of living matter on the craft ? Answer - you can't. You can only be as thorough as possible and it's still not a guarantee. True, we know that Gallileo didn't go through this procedure, but I don't belive that the procedure could even be 100% on a 'sterilised' craft. If it were the case that you could nuke all life traces from a particular area, I'm sure that hospitals would be considerably safer places than they actually are. But they aren't. M.
My immediate thoughts about this are that whether by accident of design, we will transport 'life' to other planetary bodies anyway. It'll just hitch a lift. One of the supplied links gives details of how small organisms have been transported to the moon. It would seem a reasonable guess to suggest that just about any planetary body we've sent a probe or craft to has probably got them too. Take, for example, the Mars lander craft. Even if it crashed and was broken into millions of little bits, there are probably bacteria and microbes kicking about. We also know that these are resilient little monsters too. Whilst that's got no real big short term implication, in the very long term we may have already started 'life' off somewhere in one form or another. Bacteria/microbes can mutate pretty quickly. It won't be long before they can withstand the environment. True, on hotter planets (Venus ?) the chances are pretty slim due to a pretty nasty atmosphere, but elsewhere, there's a pretty good chance we've done the work ourselves already. Meanwhile, why crash land the craft on Jupiter ? It may be inhospitable for us... but what about the little critters ? A 'self-destruct' button would be a much better idea - as long as nobody says, "What does this do ?". Alternatively, we could just send it out of the solar system into deep space, and see what it sends back... M.
As no doubt anyone is aware, hardly anyone just jumps in with both feet to a new OS. The usual way of doing things is to partition your hard disk so that the old OS and new OS can peacefully co-exist.
This applies to anyone who is changing OS - it doesn't matter whether you start using NT, BeOs, MacOs, Linux or whatever. Having recently made the decision to go do dual boot with MacOs and LinuxPPC, I would probably drop MacOs like a shot if it started 'nudging' other OSes I installed off the hard disk, which sounds similar to what MS might be trying to do to Linux.
Micro$oft are nailing their own coffin by doing this. Corporate clients are not going to be amused. For example, what about all those MIS departments that have to set up PCs with specific setups ? Is MS saying that they can't burn CDs of their own disk images ? I don't think any MIS executive is going to be impressed by being told that they can only use a standard setup as provided by MS, if at all. Neither are they going to be impressed by having to pay a huge premium just to get a master CD.
Hardly, "Where do you want to go today ?", is it ?
M.
To quote an interesting article I read somewhere else:
"Just because I am happy with my operating system choice, doesn't mean that I should flame you or talk you out of what you use."
Ultimately a computer, with whatever operating system you have on it is merely a tool. Use it, enjoy it, get on with your work and shut up. We should be grateful that we have choice. The world would be a very dull place if every computer user was stuck with the same generic OS. Choice is what keeps the market alive.
It's strange how computing advocacy works and is rarely found in any other industry. For example - just because I drive Model A of a particular car doesn't give sufficient reason as to why I should flame you for driving Model B. In fact, you'd think I was a bit mad if I kept trying....
M.
Processor landmarks aside, I think this actually says a lot more, namely that IBM think that midrange computing still has a lot of life in it. There are an awful lot of business out there who don't want to move hardware platform, and this is the sort of market they're angling for - a significant performance boost, without the upheval of migration to a new architecture and OS.
As for Linux, I hadn't realised that it could run on the 'e' series yet, but I'd like to see it in action....
M.
Unfortunately, both IE and Netscape/Mozilla are turning into bloatware and as a Mac user I'm starting to look to other projects, such as iCab. How can I justify allocating 30MB of memory to one program ?
Stability aside (I know these shouldn't be considered in milestone builds), the last milestone build I tried was visually appalling. The user interface didn't seem to conform to anything on earth (mind you, does Quicktime or Sherlock ?) and the speed seemed to have taken a nosedive, with the HD thrashing away. (I assume the debug info is still in there).
Someone has already made comments that more Mac coders could be done with on that particular build, but I'm not sure they'll get them. When Apple signed the deal with M$ to make IE the browser of choice, it was the nail in the coffin for any other browser, and I think it's starting to show. I don't like IE, but at the same time, I'm starting not to like Netscape either. It's gradually being assimilated into the AOL ways.... yuk.
Just my 2p. I'm not sure a milestone release is newsworthy - a beta maybe...
M.
1) Speed (Or lack thereof) - I tried it a few days ago. This is a site that wants bandwidth and plenty of it. When you get to the first page, your connection is assessed as to whether you want the funky version (read:slow) or the simpler version (read:nearly as slow). There's just too much going on. I connected on a 56k modem (like most home shoppers), but the assessment told me that I was going to have to use the simple version. Basically, if you wanted good speed, you were probably going to have use at least a 2 channel ISDN connection to get it. I've done connections using the fixed line at work, and it's still pretty lousy.
That immediately alienates the majority of home users straight away, who aren't prepared to grow old during the download. Most people are still using 56k modems.
2) From what I can gather, they employed at least 300 people and this was going to be the biggest money burner of all. If they had been more conscious of their money/resource allocation from the start, they probably could have lasted longer, which in turn would have given them considerably more time to start getting the money in.
3) The relative success of some sites is in their discounting. You are enticed to a site because of it's cut price goods. That's supposed to be the benefit of going to a site - the reduction in overheads are passed on to you. Boo seemed to sell at full retail price for everything. Yet again, another incentive not to shop there. I can go down the high street and get things for the same price, sometimes cheaper. What's my incentive to go there ?
4) Finally, their advertising was lousy. I only went there because I heard it was going down the pan. Ultimately, considering the marketing/advertising budget they had, I really don't understand who they were targeting. I don't have my head buried in the sand all day and I never saw a single advert. My colleagues say the same. I think they must have pitched the marketing very badly.
Ultimately, those commerce sites that have good business plans along with sound marketing will survive. In all fairness, I've heard statistics that 1 in 3 UK businesses fail in their first year, so perhaps this isn't such a big surprise. What's the big deal if 1 in 3 .com's fail at about the same rate ?
M.
1) Against - After trashing most of our own planet, we consider the ruining of another body in the solar system. Environmentalism gets a slightly bigger scope to it.
2) For - The Moon, not capable of sustaining life (as it is at the moment), could be used as a vast testing ground. We could do a variety of really nasty tests that we don't want to do on earth, so we don't kill everyone here.
Neither option is particularly nice really, but there will be those people that say it will be necessary to perform the act(s) in the name of 'progress'. I just find it sad statement on the human race that we need Nuclear Weaponry at all.
M.
Take an x86 processor for example. Usually, there is a premium associated with buying in at the top of the speed end. A 1GHZ chip is bound to be more than twice the price of 2 500Mhz chips. Absolutely bound to be. It's the membership fee for that exclusive club that last about 2 weeks before the next speed ramp comes along.
Anyone with any sense knows that comparing on Mhz along is lame. If you can effectively double your processing ability whilst still being able to use more commonly available (and cheaper) chips, you're bound to be on a winner. The pressure is taken off developing a 2Ghz processor if you can set 4 500Mhz processors working together nicely. Apple has had the MP support in the OS for a little while now, although I wouldn't want to hazard a guess on how effective it is.
Any guesses on whether they can put a cube design together ? I'd like to see something like that rip through my RC5 blocks.... :-)
M.
I seem to remember a previous thread on a similar subject on /. a few months ago. It's getting a bit like usenet these days... the same threads/subjects popping up.
Getting back on topic, I think it does go to show that no matter how much you research the products you buy, whether that's a pair of trainers or a computer, you can never be entirely sure that the company concerned doesn't have any skeletons in it's cupboard. Although that said, this particular article is a little bit patchy in places.
M.
It is pointless considering them as two separate entities if everything they do is a joint project. Essentially, that's exactly the same company with a slightly different structure to it, which is pointless. Bill could do a reorganisation tomorrow, and it wouldn't be much different.
I doubt very much that once the break up has happened, every single company communication is going to monitored to ensure that this situation doesn't occur.
Two companies with exactly the same motive, still working together isn't much different from a cartel, and in good few countries, that's illegal too.
I am not a fan of Microsoft whatsoever, but at the same time I don't see the point in the break-up. I would actually rather see more punitive measures taken, such as crippling fines in conjunction with regulation of their selling policies. Whilst open-source is a great thing, I don't actually think that forcing MS to make their core code open source is the correct thing to do. A company has the right to keep it's work secret and Microsoft is no exception to the rule.
I think /. should lay off the Microsoft stories until we have some *real* news to talk about. This is all purely speculative at the moment, and if Microsoft is successful in it's appeal strategy, then it'll be years before this actually comes to anything.
M.
I can then shout "SHUT THE F**K UP" when Celine Dion comes on.... :-)
How immensely gratifying that would be.
M.
BT have also done something in the past called Home Highway, which was supposed to have been 2*64K digital channels. The costs of this was prohibitively expensive too. I don't know of anyone that took that up either. Most people were waiting for ADSL to be introduced.
It wouldn't surprise me if BT also charge for each moment you use it. I also doubt that the £40 is a flat unlimited usage fee. They also subscribe to the typical British notion that if you have a computer, it must be a Windoze PC. Support for other machines and operating systems is only likely to come after substantial lobbying. Better start lobbying now.
I guess that London (as usual) will be the first to use it. Most of the country will be given the chance to use it - eventually, but I won't hold my breath waiting.
Hopefully, they will get kicked a bit by the regulator to speed things up.
M.
"The court today has been adjourned, due to a VB runtime error."
"I'm sorry - due to a bug, you got life for a parking offence, but that's the cost of progress!".
Is anyone mildly worried by a Micro$oft product getting involved in the justice system ? It's a good job it isn't already in large-scale use in the US......
M.
Beware of smelling pistakes.
M.
Let's suppose that there were 20 cut scenes from the original film. Now, how about if he divided the 20 cut scenes into four little piles (i.e 5 scenes a piece) and the made four different DVDs. Perhaps we could call them, "Red", "Blue", "Green", "Yellow".
Mr Mucas could then make four times as much money from Star Wars fans by saying things like, "Star Wars! Gotta got them all" :-)
M.
I think I must be about the only person on the planet not to have seen the film. In fact, I've deliberately chosen not to watch it. The more the Star Wars mania continues, the more it'll continue to push me away from the notion. I hate hype. My basis for this reasoning is the popular vs good theory. A thing can either be one or the other. For example, the British Tabloid papers are popular - but they are not good journalism. Over hyped films (and this most certainly was one of them) will be at the bottom of my viewing list.
Give it 10 years, and I might watch it, on my Betamax video.....
M.
I live in the South East of England. Each day, I see millions of people trying to break their necks to get into work. They read the Daily Mail, a newspaper that is so sensationalist and narrow minded that it seems unable to post any other frontpage story apart from 'Justice Being Done' and the 'Waste of Taxpayers Money'.
Britain is a nation of winging penny pinchers. The average man in the street reads the Daily Mail, has 2.2 children and gets a new car every year or so. He lives in his shoebox house and doesn't think that the matter of censorship really has any effect to him. Unfortunately, he is wrong. He also thinks that his is powerless to change things that he doesn't agree with. The infringement of civil liberties starts this way, by breaking the spirit of the people so that they don't care any more. Tony Blairs government has a policy aimed at creating 'normality'. It doesn't want people who are different, have different things to say, or want to different things. We should all do the same things, at the same time.
I'm an IT contractor that works in Central London. I am stared at like some sort of freak because I have long hair and I wear bright purple shoes to work. Is that really a big deal ? London likes to think of itself as a somewhat Cosmopolitan city. Rubbish. It's more narrow minded than you think. The current climate regarding censorship is not really a surprise. "Let's pull the plug on what we don't agree with"
It is also amusing to think that Tony Blair tried to say (before being elected in) that they had a fair and consistent ethical/humanitarian policy. Is free speech not a basic right in itself ? In the last year or so, many of the governments policies have made a bit of a mockery of this. The bill regarding encryption and "handing over the keys" is a classic example.
In the same way that consumers can vote with their feet if they don't like the way companies behave, Web-Masters can do exactly the same. I am considering moving my site to servers hosted in another country, preferably not European. I would encourage others to do the same. When it harms British business, the government will take notice and modernise. Eventually.
There are also matters to be considered, such as whether the materials used are recyclable, how 'componentised' the computer in question is (i.e how much you can upgrade it before you dump it and get something newer) and how energy efficient it is, along with the ethical policies of the manufacturer (i.e labour practices, pollution, etc....).
See here for more information. The reality is that there is no such thing as an ethical and environmental computer. All we can do is make informed choices that allow us to minimise the damage we do. That goes for virtually any product that has come about through the use of new technology.
M.
Go to http://www.edi.wales.org/ediinfo/edirc.htm if you want to find out a bit more. Yeah, I know, it says 'Wales' all over it, but don't hold that against them....
We did our Y2K testing a good while back, and as a consequence I've been working for about the last 6 months to do the remedial work to get things fixed. I know for a fact, that if I hadn't done any remedial work:
i) None of our employees would have got their expenses/salaries paid. (Mind you, the business might have liked that....)
ii) All ordering/invoicing would have screwed up.
Those are just for a start. There are other things. The above might seem trivial, but if a business that's primarily in retail can't order, it's screwed.
One point to mention. If a company had a Y2K problem, do you seriously think that they'd mention it to the public ? Course not - the shareholders would weep too much.
I get a mite peeved when people say it was a hoax. It's only because so much effort was put into it that the problem wasn't more significant. If we hadn't bothered, and there'd been problems, us developers would have been branded as incompetent instead. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
M.