Re:GUI still too basic, counter-intuitive
on
Mozilla 0.9.9 Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I agree in general. My beef is not with the tabbed browser, which I don't use anyway, but the mail and news programs. I think they're still a bit muddled compared to Outlook Express. The GUI is carried over directly from Netscape 4 with no improvements. Merging multiple accounts is a real pain. Don't get me wrong- I'm no MS fan. I even like KMail/Knode better. OE just works, GUI wise. Of course, its text editor is buggy as hell, and it has all those security problems... but it's still the easiest to use.
Easy, it's written into the players...
on
More on MPEG4
·
· Score: 1
They'd do it the same way it's done now- owners of the codec charge royalties to the companies who distribute the players, who then try to make money any way they can. This might be through "pay" versions of the software, advertising, subscription fees, pay per view, or any combination thereof. Viewing time can easily be tracked by a player app "phoning home."
I wonder about that scroll bar, does it work with Linux and Linux apps? The reason I ask is that it doesn't even work with all Windows apps. I rely on it a lot since I have to do a lot of web surfing, and I use IE because the scrollbar works. (Mozilla doesn't.) I'd wipe Windows right off this thing if I knew I could get this with Linux. Right now I'm running VMWare and Redhat without X for web development. I haven't tried X on the T20 yet.
BTW, is that scroll bar just equivalent to a mousewheel, or is it something else?
I love my T20, they'll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers!
What students pay is a drop in the bucket of a school like MIT. There's are hundreds of millions of endowment dollars floating around there, often for projects of dubious value. A few dollars siphoned off for a freebie public network won't be missed, and probably would add more to society.
Chinese system administrators may be leaving their mail relays open on purpose, to escape liability for not filtering "properly." If they actively make decisions about who has access and who doesn't, then they're liable for those decisions, which could be dangerous under an oppressive government. So they refrain from making those decisions at all, and leave everything open to the four winds...
They also may be trying to allow access to outsiders whose own networks may have been restricted somehow. All we see are the spammers, but there may be some important political or other communication going on here too, which they want to help keep flowing any way they can.
If you're worried about this, just put a copyright symbol on your paper. If you're really worried, you can join the Writers' Guild of America, and register all your work with them. It's not that hard...
Not to denigrate the hemp plant, which may be useful... however, I've noted that anyone who even brings it up seems to be smoking a lot of it, which is the real reason behind their enthusiasm...
Yes, the physical danger of something spinning at tens, or hundreds of thousands of rpm is very real. But flywheels are feasible in more stationary situations- they're already being used in large UPS systems, and solar electricity systems. They're typically installed underground, in such a way that the shrapnel won't kill anyone if the thing explodes.
They're experimenting with flywheels in buses, etc. Automotive use is theoretically possible, but a long way off.
The downside of flywheels is the challenge of building a device with moving parts that has to be so precisely constructed, and operate at such high speeds. I cannot stress this enough- the rotors themselves must be carefully engineered, and flawlessly constructed of exotic materials like carbon fiber, etc., just to withstand the centrifugal force of spinning so fast. The principle may be simple, but actually building a flywheel like this is a hell of a challenge.
So they're expensive to build, and probably won't get much cheaper any time soon. And the cost doesn't scale down with size- so flywheels will probably only be cost effective for large projects, like backup power for mult-imillion dollar computer installations, hospitals, and maybe buses on heavy traffic routes.
Compared to a laptop battery, a fuel cell would be about the same size, and generate about the same amount of heat. It's likely we'll see fuel cells that take replaceable methanol cartridges, which will be available in convenience stores just like batteries. They'll be similar to CO2 cartridges. We might have these already, if it weren't for 9/11- there are concerns about small canisters of flammable fluid on airlines, etc.
The industry standard for technical writers is Adobe Framemaker, a $900 word processing and page layout program. Though a lot of people do, you can't effectively use Word for thousand page documents, and there are important things you can't do at all with Word (like frames). So if you want to play in the big leagues, you have to use Framemaker.
But once I started using Linux at home, I learned I could do everything Frame did with the free tools that come with Linux- TeX, LaTeX, all the.ps and.pdf tools, etc. Adobe then considered offering Frame for Linux, and released a free beta. I downloaded and fooled around with it for a bit. But I had become so enamored with the free stuff, I didn't bother with Frame anymore. And the cost wasn't really an issue- I could easily justify it, if I really needed the tool.
The moral of the story is that as people become more familiar with the free stuff, and as the free stuff improves, MS will be more and more irrelevent. It's already happened in the server realm. I predict.Net will not change anything.
News organizations, magazines, etc. shamelessly suck up to their readers, even more than they do their advertisers or owners. If MS-bashing is selling, that's what they produce. The bottom line is the bottom line. The big boss doesn't care what the little guy says about him, as long as he brings home the bacon.
A good analogy would be musicians and bands who have made careers out of being anti-corporate and anti-industry, while being backed by that same industry. Whatever sells...
Business class service is just an excuse to charge more. I'm not being flip- it's the truth. ISPs know that certain users will pay more, so they create a separate product class for that type of user. The latest crackdowns on home servers, alternate OSes, and routers are part of this strategy. They want that $100-200 that's going to Linksys. They want to cash in on enthusiasts with multiple PCs. But mostly, they know a business user who needs remote access to his home machine can probably be squeezed for a few more $$$ a month, and over the years, this really adds up.
The bottom line is, how important is this service to you, and how much are you willing to pay? ISPs have armies of MBAs working on this, and they have a pretty good idea.
How do I know this? I used to work in the marketing dept. of a major regional ISP, which was bought by a national one. We had endless meetings about different types of users, and how much per month they were each "good" for, usually in light of their other options (competition).
Ultimately, prices are set by the market. The market doesn't care what your costs are. You have little control over what you can charge. Your only leverage is blather and bullshit, which people will either buy, or they won't. If you can keep your costs low enough make a profit at a certain price point, great. If not, well, that's the gamble of being in business.
Now, of course it might cost more to provide a more reliable line. But whether or not higher reliablity is actually being provided for that higher price is arguable. In most cases it's not- the business service just costs more, and has just as many problems as the "consumer" service. Look at the systems, and the nature of outages- it's all the same network, and you're all on the same local loops. It's not like they're going to build you your own, special network for an extra $10, $20, or $50 a month.
So use your head, don't take their crap. If they're promising higher reliability, get it in writing. And read the fime print... it's usually full of weasel phrases!
A lot of youngsters and hackers just like to fool with their own systems. But looking at it strictly from a cost point of view, it might not make much sense. Besides bandwidth, you have to figure in the cost of the server, plus the power it will use. If you average this over two years, hosting is probably cheaper. Then there's tne mucking about and administration time- dealing with DNS issues for dynamic addresses, and just basic admin chores. If you're making any kind of a serious effort, your time is better spent working on the site itself, not keeping the server running. The only reasons to run your own server are if the marginal cost of doing so is virtually nil (putting an old computer to use on a connection you already have), that you can't get the server tools you want (J2EE, etc.) at a reasonable price, and the inevitable downtime isn't an issue.
The original attraction of cable was to be able to watch near-first-run and "R" rated movies at home, at all! This was back in the 70s, before VCRs! The first cable movie channel I'm aware of was the "Z" channel, around '75 or '76. It was a pretty big deal to sneak over to someone's house when their parents weren't home, to watch an "R" rated movie like "Rocky."
Everyone knows that drug dealers all use beepers, to stay in contact with their customers. Beepers definately play a major role in the illegal drug trade. So we should outlaw beepers, or hold beeper companies liable for all crimes enabled by beepers.
Who the hell do they think they are, telling us what we need to do? They can just blow all of us...
They ought to feel lucky to have access to our users. That's what the media business is all about- delivering an audience to advertisers. Apparently, these arrogant clowns have forgotten where their bread is buttered.
Tom's Hardware doesn't do anything relevent, unless you consider Quake relevent. I've never seen anything on that site that would be useful to a real systems engineer. It's just a bunch of whack-off material for geeky college kids and pseudo-techie gadget freaks.
And who could respect such a slow, buggy, messy website anyway?
STrategic? No kidding! I was *pissed off* when I heard Microsoft bought Visio. And Great Plains (MAS accounting software, the industry pro standard). I just hope they don't get Autocad!
There are actually many viable alternatives to Visio, they just don't get much press. So little, that I can't even remember them right now...
Like Netscape/Mozilla, I wonder if the open version will grow to be better than the free one!
"Private" toll roads are a government boondoggle!
on
Every Road a Toll Road
·
· Score: 1
In CA, the pseudo-libertarian nitwits propose new roads paid for by tolls. The roads get built, so developers can make money building houses. But inevitably, the toll roads go bankrupt, and the taxpayers are left holding the bag anyway. So what we wind up with is a government subsidy for real estate developers, and that isn't fair.
...and that's what these morons haven't figured out. The kind of fan that records or trades for recordings is the one that will watch a second, third, or fourth time when the show is on the air, even if they have the recording. Their trading activity gets other fans involved, creating a cult around the show. This cult atmosphere just feeds on itself, and can keep a show alive long after it should have been planted.
Some of the most successful shows in the last 10 years- the X-files, Ally McBeal, The Simpsons, Friends, the Star Treks, have all benefitted from this cult of collectors and home recorders.
It's amazing Paypal was able to get this far. Negotiating deals with MC & Visa, and the banks, was almost miraculous. Frankly, I think the only reason they all allowed Paypal to go ahead was to let them be the guinea pig! EVenutally, they'd like to take over this space themselves, but not until the market forces them to. Corporations like the status quo, even when new opportunities are slapping them in the face.
I think bricks-and-morter banking is absurd, anyway. How much of our money is going for high-street real estate, and for what? I'd like to see Paypal take 'em all down, but it'll never happen. They're holding their own now, but when the establishment gets into this space, they'll be lucky not to get steamrolled.
Of course, some sharp, forward thinking big bank executive could have the bright idea to buy Paypal, but sharp and forward thinking and the banking industry don't usually go together.
Hey buddy, I checked out your website. It looks like it could be a wonderful resource. But I have one big, fat, peeve- DON'T BREEAK MY BACK BUTTON! This pisses me off, and a lot of other people too. It only puts you on the same level as a scumbag porn site. If you feel you have to "capture" your readers, you have a content problem. If you can't keep your hands off cheesy Javascript techniques, open a new window.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree in general. My beef is not with the tabbed browser, which I don't use anyway, but the mail and news programs. I think they're still a bit muddled compared to Outlook Express. The GUI is carried over directly from Netscape 4 with no improvements. Merging multiple accounts is a real pain. Don't get me wrong- I'm no MS fan. I even like KMail/Knode better. OE just works, GUI wise. Of course, its text editor is buggy as hell, and it has all those security problems... but it's still the easiest to use.
They'd do it the same way it's done now- owners of the codec charge royalties to the companies who distribute the players, who then try to make money any way they can. This might be through "pay" versions of the software, advertising, subscription fees, pay per view, or any combination thereof. Viewing time can easily be tracked by a player app "phoning home."
I wonder about that scroll bar, does it work with Linux and Linux apps? The reason I ask is that it doesn't even work with all Windows apps. I rely on it a lot since I have to do a lot of web surfing, and I use IE because the scrollbar works. (Mozilla doesn't.) I'd wipe Windows right off this thing if I knew I could get this with Linux. Right now I'm running VMWare and Redhat without X for web development. I haven't tried X on the T20 yet.
BTW, is that scroll bar just equivalent to a mousewheel, or is it something else?
I love my T20, they'll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers!
What students pay is a drop in the bucket of a school like MIT. There's are hundreds of millions of endowment dollars floating around there, often for projects of dubious value. A few dollars siphoned off for a freebie public network won't be missed, and probably would add more to society.
Chinese system administrators may be leaving their mail relays open on purpose, to escape liability for not filtering "properly." If they actively make decisions about who has access and who doesn't, then they're liable for those decisions, which could be dangerous under an oppressive government. So they refrain from making those decisions at all, and leave everything open to the four winds...
They also may be trying to allow access to outsiders whose own networks may have been restricted somehow. All we see are the spammers, but there may be some important political or other communication going on here too, which they want to help keep flowing any way they can.
If you're worried about this, just put a copyright symbol on your paper. If you're really worried, you can join the Writers' Guild of America, and register all your work with them. It's not that hard...
Not to denigrate the hemp plant, which may be useful... however, I've noted that anyone who even brings it up seems to be smoking a lot of it, which is the real reason behind their enthusiasm...
Yes, the physical danger of something spinning at tens, or hundreds of thousands of rpm is very real. But flywheels are feasible in more stationary situations- they're already being used in large UPS systems, and solar electricity systems. They're typically installed underground, in such a way that the shrapnel won't kill anyone if the thing explodes.
They're experimenting with flywheels in buses, etc. Automotive use is theoretically possible, but a long way off.
The downside of flywheels is the challenge of building a device with moving parts that has to be so precisely constructed, and operate at such high speeds. I cannot stress this enough- the rotors themselves must be carefully engineered, and flawlessly constructed of exotic materials like carbon fiber, etc., just to withstand the centrifugal force of spinning so fast. The principle may be simple, but actually building a flywheel like this is a hell of a challenge.
So they're expensive to build, and probably won't get much cheaper any time soon. And the cost doesn't scale down with size- so flywheels will probably only be cost effective for large projects, like backup power for mult-imillion dollar computer installations, hospitals, and maybe buses on heavy traffic routes.
Compared to a laptop battery, a fuel cell would be about the same size, and generate about the same amount of heat. It's likely we'll see fuel cells that take replaceable methanol cartridges, which will be available in convenience stores just like batteries. They'll be similar to CO2 cartridges. We might have these already, if it weren't for 9/11- there are concerns about small canisters of flammable fluid on airlines, etc.
The industry standard for technical writers is Adobe Framemaker, a $900 word processing and page layout program. Though a lot of people do, you can't effectively use Word for thousand page documents, and there are important things you can't do at all with Word (like frames). So if you want to play in the big leagues, you have to use Framemaker.
.ps and .pdf tools, etc. Adobe then considered offering Frame for Linux, and released a free beta. I downloaded and fooled around with it for a bit. But I had become so enamored with the free stuff, I didn't bother with Frame anymore. And the cost wasn't really an issue- I could easily justify it, if I really needed the tool.
.Net will not change anything.
But once I started using Linux at home, I learned I could do everything Frame did with the free tools that come with Linux- TeX, LaTeX, all the
The moral of the story is that as people become more familiar with the free stuff, and as the free stuff improves, MS will be more and more irrelevent. It's already happened in the server realm. I predict
News organizations, magazines, etc. shamelessly suck up to their readers, even more than they do their advertisers or owners. If MS-bashing is selling, that's what they produce. The bottom line is the bottom line. The big boss doesn't care what the little guy says about him, as long as he brings home the bacon.
A good analogy would be musicians and bands who have made careers out of being anti-corporate and anti-industry, while being backed by that same industry. Whatever sells...
Business class service is just an excuse to charge more. I'm not being flip- it's the truth. ISPs know that certain users will pay more, so they create a separate product class for that type of user. The latest crackdowns on home servers, alternate OSes, and routers are part of this strategy. They want that $100-200 that's going to Linksys. They want to cash in on enthusiasts with multiple PCs. But mostly, they know a business user who needs remote access to his home machine can probably be squeezed for a few more $$$ a month, and over the years, this really adds up.
The bottom line is, how important is this service to you, and how much are you willing to pay? ISPs have armies of MBAs working on this, and they have a pretty good idea.
How do I know this? I used to work in the marketing dept. of a major regional ISP, which was bought by a national one. We had endless meetings about different types of users, and how much per month they were each "good" for, usually in light of their other options (competition).
Ultimately, prices are set by the market. The market doesn't care what your costs are. You have little control over what you can charge. Your only leverage is blather and bullshit, which people will either buy, or they won't. If you can keep your costs low enough make a profit at a certain price point, great. If not, well, that's the gamble of being in business.
Now, of course it might cost more to provide a more reliable line. But whether or not higher reliablity is actually being provided for that higher price is arguable. In most cases it's not- the business service just costs more, and has just as many problems as the "consumer" service. Look at the systems, and the nature of outages- it's all the same network, and you're all on the same local loops. It's not like they're going to build you your own, special network for an extra $10, $20, or $50 a month.
So use your head, don't take their crap. If they're promising higher reliability, get it in writing. And read the fime print... it's usually full of weasel phrases!
A lot of youngsters and hackers just like to fool with their own systems. But looking at it strictly from a cost point of view, it might not make much sense. Besides bandwidth, you have to figure in the cost of the server, plus the power it will use. If you average this over two years, hosting is probably cheaper. Then there's tne mucking about and administration time- dealing with DNS issues for dynamic addresses, and just basic admin chores. If you're making any kind of a serious effort, your time is better spent working on the site itself, not keeping the server running. The only reasons to run your own server are if the marginal cost of doing so is virtually nil (putting an old computer to use on a connection you already have), that you can't get the server tools you want (J2EE, etc.) at a reasonable price, and the inevitable downtime isn't an issue.
The original attraction of cable was to be able to watch near-first-run and "R" rated movies at home, at all! This was back in the 70s, before VCRs! The first cable movie channel I'm aware of was the "Z" channel, around '75 or '76. It was a pretty big deal to sneak over to someone's house when their parents weren't home, to watch an "R" rated movie like "Rocky."
Everyone knows that drug dealers all use beepers, to stay in contact with their customers. Beepers definately play a major role in the illegal drug trade. So we should outlaw beepers, or hold beeper companies liable for all crimes enabled by beepers.
Who the hell do they think they are, telling us what we need to do? They can just blow all of us...
They ought to feel lucky to have access to our users. That's what the media business is all about- delivering an audience to advertisers. Apparently, these arrogant clowns have forgotten where their bread is buttered.
Tom's Hardware doesn't do anything relevent, unless you consider Quake relevent. I've never seen anything on that site that would be useful to a real systems engineer. It's just a bunch of whack-off material for geeky college kids and pseudo-techie gadget freaks.
And who could respect such a slow, buggy, messy website anyway?
???
STrategic? No kidding! I was *pissed off* when I heard Microsoft bought Visio. And Great Plains (MAS accounting software, the industry pro standard). I just hope they don't get Autocad!
There are actually many viable alternatives to Visio, they just don't get much press. So little, that I can't even remember them right now...
Like Netscape/Mozilla, I wonder if the open version will grow to be better than the free one!
In CA, the pseudo-libertarian nitwits propose new roads paid for by tolls. The roads get built, so developers can make money building houses. But inevitably, the toll roads go bankrupt, and the taxpayers are left holding the bag anyway. So what we wind up with is a government subsidy for real estate developers, and that isn't fair.
I have a friend who just started a business doing that- offering subscription website "bundles."
...and that's what these morons haven't figured out. The kind of fan that records or trades for recordings is the one that will watch a second, third, or fourth time when the show is on the air, even if they have the recording. Their trading activity gets other fans involved, creating a cult around the show. This cult atmosphere just feeds on itself, and can keep a show alive long after it should have been planted.
Some of the most successful shows in the last 10 years- the X-files, Ally McBeal, The Simpsons, Friends, the Star Treks, have all benefitted from this cult of collectors and home recorders.
It's amazing Paypal was able to get this far. Negotiating deals with MC & Visa, and the banks, was almost miraculous. Frankly, I think the only reason they all allowed Paypal to go ahead was to let them be the guinea pig! EVenutally, they'd like to take over this space themselves, but not until the market forces them to. Corporations like the status quo, even when new opportunities are slapping them in the face.
I think bricks-and-morter banking is absurd, anyway. How much of our money is going for high-street real estate, and for what? I'd like to see Paypal take 'em all down, but it'll never happen. They're holding their own now, but when the establishment gets into this space, they'll be lucky not to get steamrolled.
Of course, some sharp, forward thinking big bank executive could have the bright idea to buy Paypal, but sharp and forward thinking and the banking industry don't usually go together.
Hey buddy, I checked out your website. It looks like it could be a wonderful resource. But I have one big, fat, peeve- DON'T BREEAK MY BACK BUTTON! This pisses me off, and a lot of other people too. It only puts you on the same level as a scumbag porn site. If you feel you have to "capture" your readers, you have a content problem. If you can't keep your hands off cheesy Javascript techniques, open a new window.