It is not nonsense just because you are not willing to do any research.
MS accounts for the sale of an item (XP/Zune/360/etc) over (typically) 6 quarters. That means that they can argue that work they do in the meantime is compensated for (under sabarnes oaxley (sic)).
Apple, apart from the iphone and appletv, has typically accounted for profits immediately. S-O laws state that any future features must be accounted for, or else they have to re-file their SEC reports to modify the sales record such that x% of the original sale was in the quarter the new functionality was delivered.
It's a well meaning law which has stupid consequences. From the outside, you would argue that MS is scamming the SEC by accounting for a single xbox sale over 6 quarters, and that apple is doing the RIGHT thing by doing all profits immediately. This is not the case, though, thanks to the law.
Two companies already sell matchbox sized addon batteries which allow you to recharge and use a dead iphone simply by plugging it into the charge port. 2 hours later you have a fully charged phone.
If you were making homebrew games for the DS (or for the iphone itself, as many people are) then it's somewhat believable. I doubt there is a single person out there making a bona fide attempt at a full NES homebrew game right now.
I'm posting this right now on an hp pavilion ze4430us bought in early 2003. It was $990 at the time from Circuit City (close to bottom of the line) with 512mb ram and a "mobile AMD Athlon(tm) XP2400+" (so says cat/proc/cpuinfo).
We run a google spreadsheet with 5 tabs and a few hundred rows in each tab (and some longrunning calculations on the front page) and it never has any performance issues with google docs, even with 3 of us editing at the same time. This is in firefox3 on ubuntu hoary something 8.04.
So an almost bottom of the line usable PC nowadays (i just use it for web and chat) has no problems with it...
To be fair to MS they have never, to my knowledge, banned anyone who runs a modded xbox OFFLINE but connects it online to xbox live only as a "pure" xbox.
By this I refer to switchable mod chips. As long as you NEVER connected to live with it on they didn't ban you, even though it would have been simple to put a random check into every new game to send the "I hacked my box" packet next time they connect.
By your reasoning they should also charge the same cost per item in the store, since the stocking cost is the cost of doing business. People are buying ITEMS, so any ITEM should be X$ no matter what payment method or item.
Should stores lose money selling beer since per ounce there are more taxes on it than on milk, and that's also "just the cost of doing business" (or charge the same for milk and beer?)
Since the article is about Australia it's worth pointing out that in the last few years those terms and conditions were legislated obsolete.
Vendors can (and often do) pass on the direct amount charged. This happens always at small markets and fairs (specifically the computer markets) but JB-HIFI (think the best buy of aus) charges an extra 1-2% for amex.
Google posted this to the ACCC NOT anonymously. It was the ACCC posting it to their site anonymously to protect google's plans to launch google checkout into the AU.
You are an idiot who doesn't do research before spouting off.
Google submitted their documentation of protest to the ACCC formally, and with identification. NO astroturfing as their name was on the documentation.
The ACCC had the obligation to publish ALL of the official comments filed. Any company filing protests had the option of asking the ACCC to display them anonymously (and giving reasons). Google's reason was that Google Checkout is NOT officially released in Australia, but their reasons for protesting the ebay-paypal-only change is that they DO plan to roll out to Australia with an official launch.
But I'm sure you knew all that since you spent more than 2 seconds reading the article before posting FUD and bullshit, right?
-2007 works BETTER in many cases in Firefox than in IE -If you're having problems with AD that's an infrastructure issue. 2007 uses a pluggable provider model which is the same model used by everything MS. If you're having auth issues it's likely a zone/security issue setting in IE, or more likely that your admins do not understand how to set up kerberos (which would get them in trouble in a NOVELL or unix based network with SSO as well, not unique to MS)
-The search engine in sharepoint is crazy powerful. Read up on it. It's very programmable and has some of the best full text capabilities on the market (without paying hundreds of thousands) and 2007 added the ability to powerfully query structured data as well. You do know that MS has actually spun off the search engine as a seperate product, right? And that there's a LOT more to sharepoint search than just the little search box, right?
-What do wikis have to do with sharepoint? WSS 3.0 added the ability to add a wiki to a site, but it's neither the focus of sharepoint nor something you'd use in most situations. It's like saying, about ubuntu (what I'm posting this from...):
"Seriously. A program that lists the files in a directory, only it takes an hour to install and my mouse is broken. WTF?"
While ubuntu does have the "ls" command, it is not what ubuntu is about, and if you don't plug in your mouse it won't work. Does that mean your daughter shits out better software than ubuntu as well?
I know I'm feeding the troll, but flat out FUD is pointless.
I'm a python fan, and what you're referring to equates directly to "LINQ to Objects."
However, notice how every piece of code you have is prefaced by 2-5 lines of "other code." SQL/HTTPRequests/whatever. LINQ has the concept of a "provider" which you can implement yourself. The default ones are LINQ to Objects and LINQ to SQL. MANY others exist though, including a LINQ to Google.
SO while in python you do:
agent = 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1;.NET CLR 1.1.4322;.NET CLR 2.0.50727)' url = 'http://www.google.com/search?q=list+comprehensions' google = urllib2.Request(url, headers={'User-Agent': agent}) soup = BeautifulSoup.BeautifulSoup(urllib2.urlopen(google).read()) print [link.contents for link in soup.findAll('a')]
in LINQ you do:
var results = from searchResult in MyGoogleProvider.Searches
where searchResult.searchTerm == 'list comprehensions'
select searchResult;
foreach(var result in results) { ..... }
In python you said
sth.execute('select invdte from invoice where invid=%(invid)s', {'invid': 1000090340}) print [row[0] for row in sth]
You've been able to do the equivilant of that in.NET as well since.net2. Instead, with linq, you do:
int passedInInvoiceID = 1000090340; var invoiceDates = from invoice in InvoiceDB.Invoices
where invoice.invid == passInInvoiceID
select invoice.Date;
foreach(DateTime invoiceDate in invoiceDates) ....
Notice how, as long as the provider has been written, the program code is EXACTLY the same?
If you wrote an XML provider the code to get invoice dates from an XML file on the filesystem would look EXACTLY the same. Neat eh?
The beauty (and danger) of LINQ is that ANYONE can write a provider which parses the lamda expression tree generated by the "from... select" syntactical sugar. There is a FLICKR one already, as well as live.com/google/yahoo/etc. The danger is that it is VERY VERY HARD to write a "proper" LINQ data source, and if you get it wrong it can be hidden.
As far as I know in python you have the equivilan of IQueryable, but not IEnumerable (eg you can filter an existing or lazy created collection, but you cannot extract the expressions used for the filter and run them on the raw data source).
To sum up, I'm REALLY on the fence with LINQ. MS has done a great job with LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Objects. The guy who wrote LINQ to XML did a good job. The person who did LINQ to FLICKR did a shit job, as last I checked (maybe a month ago) it didn't even support "ORs"... or 90% of the actual LINQ syntax. LINQ to Google is "neat" as an experiment but functionally worthless. I think MS didn't provide enough framework or guidance around creating your own provider which is ALWAYS how they do things (put out a good reference implementation but refuse to document it!!!!)
Yes they both technically do the same "thing". But unlike firefox vs IE (where you can argue that not only is the open source solution "as good," but that it's actually BETTER) stellarium is not in the same realm as WWTelescope.
Info for you:.NET 3.0 is 4 additional dlls, otherwise it IS.NET 2.0. Same runtime/etc. It adds:
-WCF: GREAT new tech. You write a module, and then expose it remotely via config. So if you want to change from Remoting to Compliant Web Services you simply change a config setting. Or you can expose simple services via REST. It abstracts "transport" from "functionality". -Cardspace: dud. Single sign on/identity mgmt which is being replaced by openID it seems. Cool idea though. -WPF: Cool new xml based description language to fully abstract process from gui much in the way ASP.NET does. It also lets UI designers "skin" apps seperately from the app code itself. VERY nice tech, especially the bindings. -WF: Nice tech, not quite mature but neat to use. It allows for program logic to be described in an xml format (XAML) and shown in a gui designer. I really like workflow tech NOT because it lets business users program (it DOESN'T) but because it gives you an artifact that users can understand AND CONFIRM..NET 3.5 is enhancements and bugfixes of 3.0 PLUS LINQ. LINQ is either the best thing ever, or the worst thing ever, depending on who you ask. I think "both." LINQ allows you to apply "sql-esque" syntax to any IEnumerable provider. So if you have an in memory collection of animals you can do:
var monkeys = from animal in myAnimalsCollection
where animal.Type == monkey
select new {animal.ID, animal.Name, animal.BirthDay};
Properly tiered billing is much better for the consumer (and the provider).
-You can pay for a fast speed, but just 5 gigs per month (if all you do is email and surf the web a little, but want it fast). -You can pay for a slow speed and say 1 gig per month if you are a grandmother type (just emailing the kids/grandkids, etc) -You can pay for a slow speed and 100 gigs per month if you're a bulk.... "sharer" and just care about it getting down, now when it gets down -You can pay for fast and 235892389432 gigs per month if you're crazy
It doesn't confuse people with cars, nor with utilities. You charge them for a speed, and for usage. As long as it's done properly (average bill stays the same) it's better for all involved.
It's what's done here in Australia, and the only problems are: -Telstra fucking around on local exchanges (refusing to resell adsl2+, putting out RIMs, refusing/charging too much for LSS and dry pairs) -Telstra being the only major provider of international traffic The first is being legislated around and "fixed" by companies putting out their own last mile solutions The second makes intl bandwidth expensive for resellers, making bandwidth expensive, but that is being fixed by companies putting in their own links.
Now actually, in a perfect world (and to refute what I've just said, all lines would be uncapped (speed wise) and you'd pay for usage. Contention, caused by usage, is the ONLY thing that costs ISPs money. It doesn't cost them more to provide you with uncapped (up to 8M) ADSL1 than with a capped 256kbps ADSL1 line. The jump from ADSL 1 to 2 does require a new DSLAM, but most of the DSLAMs sold in the last few years are 2+ capable already.
That's if you want to read it all in as quickly as possible (no buffering). What's tough about that?
Obviously if you need buffering you have to do some REALLY complex work:
while (s.Position < s.Length) {//process your stream... read one byte at a time out of it
int oneLittleByte = s.ReadByte();//or chunk 50 bytes out of it, don't hardcode like this kids!
byte[] someBytes = new byte[50];
int bytesRead = s.Read(someBytes, s.Position, someBytes.Length); }
That is both tough and complex. I don't know how I can cope.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you writing a novel soon? I sure hope so with that imagination and prose.
It is not nonsense just because you are not willing to do any research.
MS accounts for the sale of an item (XP/Zune/360/etc) over (typically) 6 quarters. That means that they can argue that work they do in the meantime is compensated for (under sabarnes oaxley (sic)).
Apple, apart from the iphone and appletv, has typically accounted for profits immediately. S-O laws state that any future features must be accounted for, or else they have to re-file their SEC reports to modify the sales record such that x% of the original sale was in the quarter the new functionality was delivered.
It's a well meaning law which has stupid consequences. From the outside, you would argue that MS is scamming the SEC by accounting for a single xbox sale over 6 quarters, and that apple is doing the RIGHT thing by doing all profits immediately. This is not the case, though, thanks to the law.
Australia has a typical 37.5-38 hour work week (excluding lunch, so 40 hours including a 30ish minute lunch) and record low unemployment.
And public health care.
And a pension system for those who cannot work.
And an economy kicking the US's...
How? AFAIK this is the difference between GPL and LGPL.
The SDK is "XCode and GCC" but you cannot use the SDK without linking to non GPLd libraries in order to actually DO anything.
Two companies already sell matchbox sized addon batteries which allow you to recharge and use a dead iphone simply by plugging it into the charge port. 2 hours later you have a fully charged phone.
Yes, it is.
If you were making homebrew games for the DS (or for the iphone itself, as many people are) then it's somewhat believable. I doubt there is a single person out there making a bona fide attempt at a full NES homebrew game right now.
I'm posting this right now on an hp pavilion ze4430us bought in early 2003. It was $990 at the time from Circuit City (close to bottom of the line) with 512mb ram and a "mobile AMD Athlon(tm) XP2400+" (so says cat /proc/cpuinfo).
We run a google spreadsheet with 5 tabs and a few hundred rows in each tab (and some longrunning calculations on the front page) and it never has any performance issues with google docs, even with 3 of us editing at the same time. This is in firefox3 on ubuntu hoary something 8.04.
So an almost bottom of the line usable PC nowadays (i just use it for web and chat) has no problems with it...
To be fair to MS they have never, to my knowledge, banned anyone who runs a modded xbox OFFLINE but connects it online to xbox live only as a "pure" xbox.
By this I refer to switchable mod chips. As long as you NEVER connected to live with it on they didn't ban you, even though it would have been simple to put a random check into every new game to send the "I hacked my box" packet next time they connect.
By your reasoning they should also charge the same cost per item in the store, since the stocking cost is the cost of doing business. People are buying ITEMS, so any ITEM should be X$ no matter what payment method or item.
Should stores lose money selling beer since per ounce there are more taxes on it than on milk, and that's also "just the cost of doing business" (or charge the same for milk and beer?)
What you've said makes no sense.
Since the article is about Australia it's worth pointing out that in the last few years those terms and conditions were legislated obsolete.
Vendors can (and often do) pass on the direct amount charged. This happens always at small markets and fairs (specifically the computer markets) but JB-HIFI (think the best buy of aus) charges an extra 1-2% for amex.
In the US they still stand, though.
You are an idiot.
Google posted this to the ACCC NOT anonymously. It was the ACCC posting it to their site anonymously to protect google's plans to launch google checkout into the AU.
You are an idiot who doesn't do research before spouting off.
Google submitted their documentation of protest to the ACCC formally, and with identification. NO astroturfing as their name was on the documentation.
The ACCC had the obligation to publish ALL of the official comments filed. Any company filing protests had the option of asking the ACCC to display them anonymously (and giving reasons). Google's reason was that Google Checkout is NOT officially released in Australia, but their reasons for protesting the ebay-paypal-only change is that they DO plan to roll out to Australia with an official launch.
But I'm sure you knew all that since you spent more than 2 seconds reading the article before posting FUD and bullshit, right?
Running it in 64 bit firefox in ubuntu is as easy as going to any site with flash and clicking on the "you need to install a plugin" notification.
I'll admit it does hang sometimes, but the same thing happens on windows with IE at times.
-2007 works BETTER in many cases in Firefox than in IE
-If you're having problems with AD that's an infrastructure issue. 2007 uses a pluggable provider model which is the same model used by everything MS. If you're having auth issues it's likely a zone/security issue setting in IE, or more likely that your admins do not understand how to set up kerberos (which would get them in trouble in a NOVELL or unix based network with SSO as well, not unique to MS)
-The search engine in sharepoint is crazy powerful. Read up on it. It's very programmable and has some of the best full text capabilities on the market (without paying hundreds of thousands) and 2007 added the ability to powerfully query structured data as well. You do know that MS has actually spun off the search engine as a seperate product, right? And that there's a LOT more to sharepoint search than just the little search box, right?
-What do wikis have to do with sharepoint? WSS 3.0 added the ability to add a wiki to a site, but it's neither the focus of sharepoint nor something you'd use in most situations. It's like saying, about ubuntu (what I'm posting this from...):
"Seriously. A program that lists the files in a directory, only it takes an hour to install and my mouse is broken. WTF?"
While ubuntu does have the "ls" command, it is not what ubuntu is about, and if you don't plug in your mouse it won't work. Does that mean your daughter shits out better software than ubuntu as well?
I know I'm feeding the troll, but flat out FUD is pointless.
An xbox 1 would be more capable.
It likely won't be able to upscale SD let alone play anything HD.
A popcorn hour is cheaper and more capable as a front end...
However, notice how every piece of code you have is prefaced by 2-5 lines of "other code." SQL/HTTPRequests/whatever. LINQ has the concept of a "provider" which you can implement yourself. The default ones are LINQ to Objects and LINQ to SQL. MANY others exist though, including a LINQ to Google.
SO while in python you do: in LINQ you do: In python you said You've been able to do the equivilant of that in
If you wrote an XML provider the code to get invoice dates from an XML file on the filesystem would look EXACTLY the same. Neat eh?
The beauty (and danger) of LINQ is that ANYONE can write a provider which parses the lamda expression tree generated by the "from... select" syntactical sugar. There is a FLICKR one already, as well as live.com/google/yahoo/etc. The danger is that it is VERY VERY HARD to write a "proper" LINQ data source, and if you get it wrong it can be hidden.
As far as I know in python you have the equivilan of IQueryable, but not IEnumerable (eg you can filter an existing or lazy created collection, but you cannot extract the expressions used for the filter and run them on the raw data source).
To sum up, I'm REALLY on the fence with LINQ. MS has done a great job with LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Objects. The guy who wrote LINQ to XML did a good job. The person who did LINQ to FLICKR did a shit job, as last I checked (maybe a month ago) it didn't even support "ORs"... or 90% of the actual LINQ syntax. LINQ to Google is "neat" as an experiment but functionally worthless. I think MS didn't provide enough framework or guidance around creating your own provider which is ALWAYS how they do things (put out a good reference implementation but refuse to document it!!!!)
Stellarium : WWTelescope :: lynx : firefox
Yes they both technically do the same "thing". But unlike firefox vs IE (where you can argue that not only is the open source solution "as good," but that it's actually BETTER) stellarium is not in the same realm as WWTelescope.
Info for you: .NET 3.0 is 4 additional dlls, otherwise it IS .NET 2.0. Same runtime/etc. It adds:
.NET 3.5 is enhancements and bugfixes of 3.0 PLUS LINQ. LINQ is either the best thing ever, or the worst thing ever, depending on who you ask. I think "both." LINQ allows you to apply "sql-esque" syntax to any IEnumerable provider. So if you have an in memory collection of animals you can do:
.... do stuff
-WCF: GREAT new tech. You write a module, and then expose it remotely via config. So if you want to change from Remoting to Compliant Web Services you simply change a config setting. Or you can expose simple services via REST. It abstracts "transport" from "functionality".
-Cardspace: dud. Single sign on/identity mgmt which is being replaced by openID it seems. Cool idea though.
-WPF: Cool new xml based description language to fully abstract process from gui much in the way ASP.NET does. It also lets UI designers "skin" apps seperately from the app code itself. VERY nice tech, especially the bindings.
-WF: Nice tech, not quite mature but neat to use. It allows for program logic to be described in an xml format (XAML) and shown in a gui designer. I really like workflow tech NOT because it lets business users program (it DOESN'T) but because it gives you an artifact that users can understand AND CONFIRM.
var monkeys = from animal in myAnimalsCollection
where animal.Type == monkey
select new {animal.ID, animal.Name, animal.BirthDay};
foreach(var monkey in monkeys)
Properly tiered billing is much better for the consumer (and the provider).
-You can pay for a fast speed, but just 5 gigs per month (if all you do is email and surf the web a little, but want it fast).
-You can pay for a slow speed and say 1 gig per month if you are a grandmother type (just emailing the kids/grandkids, etc)
-You can pay for a slow speed and 100 gigs per month if you're a bulk.... "sharer" and just care about it getting down, now when it gets down
-You can pay for fast and 235892389432 gigs per month if you're crazy
It doesn't confuse people with cars, nor with utilities. You charge them for a speed, and for usage. As long as it's done properly (average bill stays the same) it's better for all involved.
It's what's done here in Australia, and the only problems are:
-Telstra fucking around on local exchanges (refusing to resell adsl2+, putting out RIMs, refusing/charging too much for LSS and dry pairs)
-Telstra being the only major provider of international traffic
The first is being legislated around and "fixed" by companies putting out their own last mile solutions
The second makes intl bandwidth expensive for resellers, making bandwidth expensive, but that is being fixed by companies putting in their own links.
Now actually, in a perfect world (and to refute what I've just said, all lines would be uncapped (speed wise) and you'd pay for usage. Contention, caused by usage, is the ONLY thing that costs ISPs money. It doesn't cost them more to provide you with uncapped (up to 8M) ADSL1 than with a capped 256kbps ADSL1 line. The jump from ADSL 1 to 2 does require a new DSLAM, but most of the DSLAMs sold in the last few years are 2+ capable already.
True DTSHD/DDHD 7.1 cannot be carried over SPDIF, only over HDMI 1.3 (or greater).
DTS-ES fakes 6.1 using oldschool dolby pro logic technology to create a virtual channel from SL and SR, and then the amp drives two speakers.
Hints:
-books.slashdot.org
-"Book Reviews:"
-" Read below for the rest of Simon's review. "
You are biased. His non-scifi stuff is leaps and bounds better than his SF.
Excession is still my favourite book of his, though, if not my favourite book full stop.
That's if you want to read it all in as quickly as possible (no buffering). What's tough about that?
Obviously if you need buffering you have to do some REALLY complex work:
That is both tough and complex. I don't know how I can cope.