I use metric (Australian) but I do believe the old Imperial measures have better sounding names.
It's much easier to say "mile" than "kilometer", "inch" instead of "centimetre", "pound" over "kilogram".
As a fellow Aussie - I'd have expected you to be used to "kay" for kilometer, "kilo" for kilogram as that's all you tend to here, although you've got a point with inches, but I'd have to say inches/centimeters don't come up that often. As far as for a universal system - metric seems to make sense - given one of the mars landers went splat wasting X millions of dollars due to this conversion issue, and given the US is one of 3 countries still using imperial measurements, it would make sense purely from an ease of interacting/scientific trade point of view that I don't understand the retisence.
That said, why is it in these stories of runaway acceleration, that nobody slaps the thing into neutral and hits the brakes? The stories always read like "I was powerless to stop my deathcar!" but drivers have lots of options in situations like that. You can even just turn the car off and hope you haven't picked up a vacuum leak.
I believe the issue is that some of these cars have a computer controlled auto gearbox that does not actually disengage drive when slapped into neutral.
Same for Australia - nothing but Microsoft Windows from Dell for any consumer grade machine, which is frustrating as a customer, there is no way I'm going to be paying for something I don't want.
The break-even point would immediately change to about 2 years if people had to actually (gasp!) pay for the damage their carbon emissions produce, or carbon emissions were capped at the level necessary to avert catastrophe.
What price would that make solar cells? The initial ones would cost a massive amount in carbon taxes. Think about the energy costs and emissions involved in the production of solar cells. Of course once they reach critical mass and the amount of energy produced by them that goes into production of more.... but until that point.
Good lord I cannot but help myself to make a comment in this thread.
The engineering genius behind the Veyron is how the power is delivered - quickly and from low revs, mated to a quick semi auto gearbox(DSG). I'd be prepared to bet that the Veyron would outhandle and outlast the 1000hp M3.
And for the people posting about F1 race cars - the comparison car that the article was talking about was the McLaren F1 road car, which weighs a poofteenth of any other car with a similar engine.
We don't get movies or TV shows down here.
It is kind of disappointing to see things like this happening in the US, as it means there is even less likelihood that we will get better/larger bandwidth limits if they are being rolled out by US ISP's.
* AAC (.mp4,.m4a,.m4b,.mov): Up to 320 Kbps, Low Complexity (LC), up to 48-kHz sample rate
From Creative
Listen to your music in multiple supported formats. With support for MP3, WMA as well as non-protected AAC (.m4a) from iTunes® Plus, sync your player to enjoy all your favorite hits today. Learn more on the quick transfer of AAC music using the Creative Media Explorer.
Now - I say this in the sense of only wishing to see them succeed in getting ONE of these scams err, schemes that limit fair use through. It will only stifle innovation within America on media devices - if the American public believe that they are missing out they will likely be able to get their senator/congressman/representative of the people to enact change that gives back the rights to people and removes them from this monopoly organisation
I am not citizen of the US, nor have I ever visited - my country looks like it will soon be enacting some laws to give fair use rights to consumers that currently do not exist (.AU)
Ever since the Air Conditioner test I have not been happy to sit and watch mythbusters with my friends. The issues I felt with it were that it was not scientific enough or appropriate to the myth that they were trying to bust.
Two seperate vehicles used, and not reverse tested - no comments relating to serviceing, mileage, economy each vehicle has - things like air filters make a big difference, and many mass produced cars will vary in economy by up to 10% (our fleet of 3.6L Commodoores do)
Vehicle chosen does not represent vehicle shape or aerodymanics that this "myth" relates to - referring to more common passenger sedans, not urban assult vehicles
The Air Conditioned Vehicle was on coldest for the duration - the point of the use your A/C not the Windows is to keep you at a comfortable temperature - not to have it on full blast - so the myth morphed into something else that they were testing
It's things like that were the myth that is being tested is not what the myth originates about, and the scientific method (or lack thereof) that annoys me. Before that one I quite enjoyed the show, post that one, I became super critical of all tests! Other stuff that annoyed me - cans in cars exploding - which was "busted" I have personally had it happen to one of 12 sitting in a car, i think the hiding of branding gave extra strength or something to the can. Admittedly it appears that that one is more related to manufacturing flaws and faults in the container than anything else
Funny how you guys don't seem to get the CDs in the States.
I was just thinking that myself. I remember that a no cost option for most of the machines we buy at work is to have no CD Media included with the package. I just specced up the Australian "Gaming PC" from Dell (Dimension 9150) and Windows MCE was a $89 option. But all Windows OS options (Home, MCE, Pro) specifically stated CD Media in the little blue text.
Also reading the review I noticed that some of the drivers they mentioned were specifically for MCE, could have any of the issues they experienced be caused by MCE (I have no interest in using it and have no first hand experience with this product)
As to the Auto-Run not working, surely that is a GOOD thing, especially with the number of Audio "CD's" shipping with root kits, or auto-installing DRM junk, not being suseptible to this must be a hidden benefit?
The last nit-pick I have is that my experience with Dells, is that the cases while looking allright from a distance are really really nasty - and prone to rattling and dust build up in odd places.
That said it was an interesting read. I tend to reccomend people where to go and what to get based on their needs and not wanting to deal with it in the future, dell is currently a commonly referred supplier due to having a degree of support that allows me to wash my hands of it all, now that they have a line of relatively cheap "gaming" machines with decent graphics, and support is able to resolve the issues that people face, I'm done supporting PC's for friends and family members:D.
I thought manual ignition refers to the archaic way of starting a vehicle - pushing a button or turning a key (it is marked IGN on the surround on several vehicles.) Automatic ignition would have to be referring to the cars that start up based on proximity sensors that pickup the card you have in your (wallet, pocket, purse, bag, shoe, or somewhere else on your person).
white box - if you build it yourself you know what's in there. It's cheaper. But you don't have a warranty.
Unfortunatly it is much more complicated that that. While there is an aspect of Cost vs Support there are many factors to consider these might include, performance, budget, use, estimated time till replacement, environment and company policy.
Consider a charitable organisation, they may need a server to do tasks, x to z which will require a certain level of performance which dictates the hardware required. More often than not a charitable organisation will be running on a tight budget. The ones that have a competant in house IT department will usually choose the cheapest to roll out option, rather than opt for long term stability viewing their IT people as able to deal with any issues that may crop up, and rationalise it with a viewpoint that they were paying wages anyways, so if it makes for slightly more work over a few years so what. (Guess what I used to work for). All is not lost with whiteboxes - some companies offer decent support on their equipment and long warrantee's (intel white boxes, tyan have also proven to be useful), this also means that YOU pick and get to research what ends up in your equipment.
Perhaps one issue with buying from an OEM (Dell, IBM, HP etal) is that there exists the risk that a large purchase of idential kit is more likely to be at risk from a single batch of faulty componants. Admittedly this risk is not excluded in the whitebox scenario, but if you are buying a large quanity of machines, it implies that a budget is at least somewhat substantial, and discounts along with the support tend to have a higher percieved value in volume purchases to the bean counters (possibly as the labour aspect of assembly and deployment can be seen to be having a large impact on the overall effectiveness the IT department.
I would have to say, that overall OEM vs Whitebox comes down to budget, needs, level of support required and performance expected. OEM's will tend to come to the party with price on large enough orders and there is potential to get something other than cookie cutter boxes out of OEM's if you are big enough and regular enough. If you can't find a cost effective OEM solution to meet your needs (especially if adding ram, CPU or disk adds tremendously to the final price) I dont think that Whiteboxes should be ignored, but rather you need to be extremely careful what you select, remembering that although you are going whitebox, it does not mean that you should use staticice.com.au (newegg or USAians) for every componant that you select, a bit of common sense goes a long way.
I resigned almost two weeks ago and still have two weeks left before my four week notice period is up.
I will continue to do my job cabably until the very end and won't be doing anything malicious, it is our corporate culture that people (even those in powerful/trusted positions) work to the very end of their contract.
I'm surprised how well the boss took me writing "I resign" on the whiteboard though.
"Better" is an opinion, not a fact. Just because you don't like MSN doesn't mean it's worse than whatever you use. I mean... feel free to provide examples of why MSN sucks or whatever.
I tend to view something as better, when it enables me to control its behaviour. MSN Messenger is a POS it will (did before I got rid of it) start up when you start up OE. It would start up every time you logged into the system and it required a series of long rundll arguments on the command like to get rid of the bloody thing.
MSN Messeneger was not bundled with Windows until the point Microsoft launched their own service to take on ICQ then poof a free client was "handily included" and whoosh up screams Microsofts market share.
When it comes to Microsofts Anti-Spyware and Anti-Virus products I am actually quite happy for them to bundle them with the OS, providing that they are FREE (as in no cost) as they are there to protect flaws in the Operating System that Microsoft are unable to fix properly, without the end user needing to resort to using AV or AS products. Hell if Microsoft release them and charge for them, I hope they smacked by some sort of suit - release problems charge for product. release a form of protection from problems - charge for product.
My issue is where does one draw the line with what can be bundled with windows (by Microsoft), if someone has a piece of software that is innovative or new and Microsoft wants a piece of that market all they need do (and did in the case of the MSN Messenger Client, Internet Explorer) is bundle it in the OS. It becomes so all pervasive that its accepted and thought of as normal.
The reason I dont have an issue with Apple doing it is because if for example Dell, Gateway, HP etal were to package their own selection of software with the default installs of those systems (even if it was the same package as what Microsoft does right now on the disk) is that it is a seperate company making a concious decision with regards as to what got packaged. They could (in theory assuming no special convincing) end up choosing Firefox for browser, Google Talk for IM and WMP for media.
As to tracking of what you do - it is anonymous, but Microsoft build up a nice database to target their ad's to you. WMP has anonymous data collection features it kind of tells you about when you first use it, that is enabled by default.
Whoever it is, forcing links to be placed to "sites that allow one to download competiting versions of such software" is ridiculous. This is basically forcing a business to advertise for its competitors - it makes no logical sense!
Windows is the defacto operating system for many people. Microsoft placing these pieces of software into the Operating System install (and making them very difficult to remove by end users) gives them an unfair advantage. I am sick of the number of people who use MSN - because it came with windows is invariably the response ditto for WMP (but the use of WMP by people who I want to IM does not affect me, so I care a little less about this) this means that if I want to IM these people and cannot convince them to use a better/different protocol - I too have to use a MSN compatible program etal (sometimes the protocols change and I end up lagging behind, although this has not happened for quite some time). Forcing Microsoft to link to alternatives (for the version that has WMP and MSNIM installed) is certainly not rediculous, the consumer is purchasing an OPERATING SYSTEM not the associated tat that helps microsoft make even more money and build a nice little database about your uses and habits with your computer.
I have no problem if microsoft were to offer these products for free, or even offer them via Windows Update (optional software section) as people would need to make a concious decision about what program or client they wish to use and would be more likely to research, rather than swallow the spoon fed baby food that Microsoft is shoving down their throat.
Comparing a distro like Ubuntu to Microsoft in light of this ruling is just silly. Distro's are not operating systems that you are paying for per-se, they are bundles of software packages that can be found all over the net, and as others have pointed out, you get a lot of choice with most distro's. With Microsoft there is no re-packaging available to other companies so there could not be Soupysoft's Rindows made that for arguments sake packaged mplayer and google talk as its IM, while running the NT kernel and shell. If that were the case I doubt that this type of lawsuit would be as it is today.
I understand your point, but how about something as simple as a "cleanup memory" button. I too often have several tabs open (4 instances right now with 24 tabs) but most of those tabs will sit idle most of the time, like my PHP/MySQL/M-W.com windows that are mainly used for occasional reference. Being able to force a cleanup would be good. I'd still save the time to reload the entire page, even if it does take a second to redraw when I flip back to the tab.
Great for people like us, who knows whats going on in the background. Many people never run into the firefox memory issues because they tend to single process with their machines, and switch their machines off regularly. The solution should not be a manual thing, it should be able to be solved with clever programming (perhaps an idle, lack of mouse movement detection?) its hard enough to train users to use computers to do their jobs, without adding extra load to their fragile little minds.
M
The other problem is that you'll still have to periodically close out the browser to free all the memory that's in use, meaning that you have to reload all those pages that you have open in various tabs. Forgive me for comparing Firefox to Windows, but I have to effectively "reboot" Firefox from time to time in order to get all that memory back. It makes it harder to send the message that Linux doesn't suffer from the same problems that Windows does when you have to restart the browser.
Is that because we are treating the browser in a different fasion to previously. To stay with the windows theme, I find that I too have to periodically close or quit firefox on a semi regular basis, but I am often running 4 windows each with 9-20 tabs open, with various history states that it seems to remember quite well. Take IE for example - (as far as my current understanding of 6.0) it instances a new process for each IE window that is open (meaning that force killing a window will not cause all IE windows to close) which means when you close a window its memory is freed, it no longer keeps the full history of pages viewed as mozilla/firefox tabs do.
I do think that this will be an issue that microsoft will also find - typical memory usage patterns with their tabbed IE 7 will likely see the same issues that firefox has today. (Unless they do something along the lines of treating the "main" IE window as a basic container and instance a new IE for each tab or something, but hell I have nfi what will happen) (disclaimer - i dont use IE for anything other than emergency checking of pages that I "trust").
Memory usage has to be viewed as a function of how much data is being read/accessed/used/stored. Yes mozilla/firefox is a pig as far as memory is concerned and closing a tab does not always seem to free the amount of memory that it uses, I hope that something gets looked at in this regard without slowing the interface down.
Admittedly my solution to my firefox woes was to install memory, because the occasional pauses when windows decided to poke the on disk VM was irritating, and with 2G firefox can stay open for weeks at a time, I do notice running on a machine (work) that only has 1G. However, I would not like to see CPU intensive processing that adds any form of interface lag to firefox to be developed, it would be a negative experience for myself.
I, for one, welcome our thong-wearing coworker overlords!
In Australia what most North Americans would refer to as a thong is termed a G-String or G-Banger! Thongs are rubber footwear, which I believe North Americans call flip-flops. See pic here
It's the Zealots who screw things up for everyone.
1) Its not open source if it runs on windows - (dot net nuke) - umm yes it is, hell with the BSD licence its more open source than the linux kernel (the level's of freedom it allows)
2) RIAA/MPAA/ARIA/MIPI - They are over zealous in attempting to protect their existing revenue streams rather than adapting to the new environment that we now have and finding better ways, more customer friendly ways to make money.
All I have to say is mad props to anyone (company, person, organisation) who releases anything where the source is availailbe, modifiable and distributable.
Slashdot Mirror
I use metric (Australian) but I do believe the old Imperial measures have better sounding names.
It's much easier to say "mile" than "kilometer", "inch" instead of "centimetre", "pound" over "kilogram".
As a fellow Aussie - I'd have expected you to be used to "kay" for kilometer, "kilo" for kilogram as that's all you tend to here, although you've got a point with inches, but I'd have to say inches/centimeters don't come up that often. As far as for a universal system - metric seems to make sense - given one of the mars landers went splat wasting X millions of dollars due to this conversion issue, and given the US is one of 3 countries still using imperial measurements, it would make sense purely from an ease of interacting/scientific trade point of view that I don't understand the retisence.
That said, why is it in these stories of runaway acceleration, that nobody slaps the thing into neutral and hits the brakes? The stories always read like "I was powerless to stop my deathcar!" but drivers have lots of options in situations like that. You can even just turn the car off and hope you haven't picked up a vacuum leak.
I believe the issue is that some of these cars have a computer controlled auto gearbox that does not actually disengage drive when slapped into neutral.
Same for Australia - nothing but Microsoft Windows from Dell for any consumer grade machine, which is frustrating as a customer, there is no way I'm going to be paying for something I don't want.
The break-even point would immediately change to about 2 years if people had to actually (gasp!) pay for the damage their carbon emissions produce, or carbon emissions were capped at the level necessary to avert catastrophe.
What price would that make solar cells? The initial ones would cost a massive amount in carbon taxes. Think about the energy costs and emissions involved in the production of solar cells. Of course once they reach critical mass and the amount of energy produced by them that goes into production of more.... but until that point.
Good lord I cannot but help myself to make a comment in this thread.
The engineering genius behind the Veyron is how the power is delivered - quickly and from low revs, mated to a quick semi auto gearbox(DSG). I'd be prepared to bet that the Veyron would outhandle and outlast the 1000hp M3.
And for the people posting about F1 race cars - the comparison car that the article was talking about was the McLaren F1 road car, which weighs a poofteenth of any other car with a similar engine.
We don't get movies or TV shows down here. It is kind of disappointing to see things like this happening in the US, as it means there is even less likelihood that we will get better/larger bandwidth limits if they are being rolled out by US ISP's.
It is a big deal when compared to the bandwidth and data caps offered by Telstra to their customers
http://my.bigpond.com/internetplans/broadband/adsl/plansandoffers/default.jsp
From http://www.zune.net/en-us/meetzune/techspecs/player.htm The Zune plays the following AAC formats
.m4a, .m4b, .mov): Up to 320 Kbps, Low Complexity (LC), up to 48-kHz sample rate
* AAC (.mp4,
From Creative
Listen to your music in multiple supported formats. With support for MP3, WMA as well as non-protected AAC (.m4a) from iTunes® Plus, sync your player to enjoy all your favorite hits today. Learn more on the quick transfer of AAC music using the Creative Media Explorer.
Did you even look at the manufacturers sites?
Try the actual site http://abc.net.au/tv/chaser/ You can even podcast full episodes.
What do you mean Chartreuse - there is no yellow-green coloured Zune.
Dell don't sell the n-series in all markets.
Now - I say this in the sense of only wishing to see them succeed in getting ONE of these scams err, schemes that limit fair use through. It will only stifle innovation within America on media devices - if the American public believe that they are missing out they will likely be able to get their senator/congressman/representative of the people to enact change that gives back the rights to people and removes them from this monopoly organisation
I am not citizen of the US, nor have I ever visited - my country looks like it will soon be enacting some laws to give fair use rights to consumers that currently do not exist (.AU)
Are you sure that it is not an issue with your hardware or handbrake version?
I have seen an iBook G4 rip a DVD in a few hours (not mine and I do not know what options).
M
Ummm actually Australia is a series of colonies, some of which never had convicts.
South Australia for example was settled by free men and women who left (typically) the UK of their own free will.
Ever since the Air Conditioner test I have not been happy to sit and watch mythbusters with my friends. The issues I felt with it were that it was not scientific enough or appropriate to the myth that they were trying to bust.
It's things like that were the myth that is being tested is not what the myth originates about, and the scientific method (or lack thereof) that annoys me. Before that one I quite enjoyed the show, post that one, I became super critical of all tests! Other stuff that annoyed me - cans in cars exploding - which was "busted" I have personally had it happen to one of 12 sitting in a car, i think the hiding of branding gave extra strength or something to the can. Admittedly it appears that that one is more related to manufacturing flaws and faults in the container than anything else
Funny how you guys don't seem to get the CDs in the States.
:D.
I was just thinking that myself. I remember that a no cost option for most of the machines we buy at work is to have no CD Media included with the package. I just specced up the Australian "Gaming PC" from Dell (Dimension 9150) and Windows MCE was a $89 option. But all Windows OS options (Home, MCE, Pro) specifically stated CD Media in the little blue text.
Also reading the review I noticed that some of the drivers they mentioned were specifically for MCE, could have any of the issues they experienced be caused by MCE (I have no interest in using it and have no first hand experience with this product)
As to the Auto-Run not working, surely that is a GOOD thing, especially with the number of Audio "CD's" shipping with root kits, or auto-installing DRM junk, not being suseptible to this must be a hidden benefit?
The last nit-pick I have is that my experience with Dells, is that the cases while looking allright from a distance are really really nasty - and prone to rattling and dust build up in odd places.
That said it was an interesting read. I tend to reccomend people where to go and what to get based on their needs and not wanting to deal with it in the future, dell is currently a commonly referred supplier due to having a degree of support that allows me to wash my hands of it all, now that they have a line of relatively cheap "gaming" machines with decent graphics, and support is able to resolve the issues that people face, I'm done supporting PC's for friends and family members
I thought manual ignition refers to the archaic way of starting a vehicle - pushing a button or turning a key (it is marked IGN on the surround on several vehicles.) Automatic ignition would have to be referring to the cars that start up based on proximity sensors that pickup the card you have in your (wallet, pocket, purse, bag, shoe, or somewhere else on your person).
M
there are two sides the issue here
big name - warranty (saving your ass)
white box - if you build it yourself you know what's in there. It's cheaper. But you don't have a warranty.
Unfortunatly it is much more complicated that that. While there is an aspect of Cost vs Support there are many factors to consider these might include, performance, budget, use, estimated time till replacement, environment and company policy.
Consider a charitable organisation, they may need a server to do tasks, x to z which will require a certain level of performance which dictates the hardware required. More often than not a charitable organisation will be running on a tight budget. The ones that have a competant in house IT department will usually choose the cheapest to roll out option, rather than opt for long term stability viewing their IT people as able to deal with any issues that may crop up, and rationalise it with a viewpoint that they were paying wages anyways, so if it makes for slightly more work over a few years so what. (Guess what I used to work for). All is not lost with whiteboxes - some companies offer decent support on their equipment and long warrantee's (intel white boxes, tyan have also proven to be useful), this also means that YOU pick and get to research what ends up in your equipment.
Perhaps one issue with buying from an OEM (Dell, IBM, HP etal) is that there exists the risk that a large purchase of idential kit is more likely to be at risk from a single batch of faulty componants. Admittedly this risk is not excluded in the whitebox scenario, but if you are buying a large quanity of machines, it implies that a budget is at least somewhat substantial, and discounts along with the support tend to have a higher percieved value in volume purchases to the bean counters (possibly as the labour aspect of assembly and deployment can be seen to be having a large impact on the overall effectiveness the IT department.
I would have to say, that overall OEM vs Whitebox comes down to budget, needs, level of support required and performance expected. OEM's will tend to come to the party with price on large enough orders and there is potential to get something other than cookie cutter boxes out of OEM's if you are big enough and regular enough. If you can't find a cost effective OEM solution to meet your needs (especially if adding ram, CPU or disk adds tremendously to the final price) I dont think that Whiteboxes should be ignored, but rather you need to be extremely careful what you select, remembering that although you are going whitebox, it does not mean that you should use staticice.com.au (newegg or USAians) for every componant that you select, a bit of common sense goes a long way.
He was lucky.
I resigned almost two weeks ago and still have two weeks left before my four week notice period is up.
I will continue to do my job cabably until the very end and won't be doing anything malicious, it is our corporate culture that people (even those in powerful/trusted positions) work to the very end of their contract.
I'm surprised how well the boss took me writing "I resign" on the whiteboard though.
"Better" is an opinion, not a fact. Just because you don't like MSN doesn't mean it's worse than whatever you use. I mean... feel free to provide examples of why MSN sucks or whatever.
I tend to view something as better, when it enables me to control its behaviour. MSN Messenger is a POS it will (did before I got rid of it) start up when you start up OE. It would start up every time you logged into the system and it required a series of long rundll arguments on the command like to get rid of the bloody thing.
MSN Messeneger was not bundled with Windows until the point Microsoft launched their own service to take on ICQ then poof a free client was "handily included" and whoosh up screams Microsofts market share.
When it comes to Microsofts Anti-Spyware and Anti-Virus products I am actually quite happy for them to bundle them with the OS, providing that they are FREE (as in no cost) as they are there to protect flaws in the Operating System that Microsoft are unable to fix properly, without the end user needing to resort to using AV or AS products. Hell if Microsoft release them and charge for them, I hope they smacked by some sort of suit - release problems charge for product. release a form of protection from problems - charge for product.
My issue is where does one draw the line with what can be bundled with windows (by Microsoft), if someone has a piece of software that is innovative or new and Microsoft wants a piece of that market all they need do (and did in the case of the MSN Messenger Client, Internet Explorer) is bundle it in the OS. It becomes so all pervasive that its accepted and thought of as normal.
The reason I dont have an issue with Apple doing it is because if for example Dell, Gateway, HP etal were to package their own selection of software with the default installs of those systems (even if it was the same package as what Microsoft does right now on the disk) is that it is a seperate company making a concious decision with regards as to what got packaged. They could (in theory assuming no special convincing) end up choosing Firefox for browser, Google Talk for IM and WMP for media.
As to tracking of what you do - it is anonymous, but Microsoft build up a nice database to target their ad's to you. WMP has anonymous data collection features it kind of tells you about when you first use it, that is enabled by default.
Whoever it is, forcing links to be placed to "sites that allow one to download competiting versions of such software" is ridiculous. This is basically forcing a business to advertise for its competitors - it makes no logical sense!
Windows is the defacto operating system for many people. Microsoft placing these pieces of software into the Operating System install (and making them very difficult to remove by end users) gives them an unfair advantage. I am sick of the number of people who use MSN - because it came with windows is invariably the response ditto for WMP (but the use of WMP by people who I want to IM does not affect me, so I care a little less about this) this means that if I want to IM these people and cannot convince them to use a better/different protocol - I too have to use a MSN compatible program etal (sometimes the protocols change and I end up lagging behind, although this has not happened for quite some time). Forcing Microsoft to link to alternatives (for the version that has WMP and MSNIM installed) is certainly not rediculous, the consumer is purchasing an OPERATING SYSTEM not the associated tat that helps microsoft make even more money and build a nice little database about your uses and habits with your computer.
I have no problem if microsoft were to offer these products for free, or even offer them via Windows Update (optional software section) as people would need to make a concious decision about what program or client they wish to use and would be more likely to research, rather than swallow the spoon fed baby food that Microsoft is shoving down their throat.
Comparing a distro like Ubuntu to Microsoft in light of this ruling is just silly. Distro's are not operating systems that you are paying for per-se, they are bundles of software packages that can be found all over the net, and as others have pointed out, you get a lot of choice with most distro's. With Microsoft there is no re-packaging available to other companies so there could not be Soupysoft's Rindows made that for arguments sake packaged mplayer and google talk as its IM, while running the NT kernel and shell. If that were the case I doubt that this type of lawsuit would be as it is today.
I understand your point, but how about something as simple as a "cleanup memory" button. I too often have several tabs open (4 instances right now with 24 tabs) but most of those tabs will sit idle most of the time, like my PHP/MySQL/M-W.com windows that are mainly used for occasional reference. Being able to force a cleanup would be good. I'd still save the time to reload the entire page, even if it does take a second to redraw when I flip back to the tab.
Great for people like us, who knows whats going on in the background. Many people never run into the firefox memory issues because they tend to single process with their machines, and switch their machines off regularly. The solution should not be a manual thing, it should be able to be solved with clever programming (perhaps an idle, lack of mouse movement detection?) its hard enough to train users to use computers to do their jobs, without adding extra load to their fragile little minds. M
The other problem is that you'll still have to periodically close out the browser to free all the memory that's in use, meaning that you have to reload all those pages that you have open in various tabs. Forgive me for comparing Firefox to Windows, but I have to effectively "reboot" Firefox from time to time in order to get all that memory back. It makes it harder to send the message that Linux doesn't suffer from the same problems that Windows does when you have to restart the browser.
Is that because we are treating the browser in a different fasion to previously. To stay with the windows theme, I find that I too have to periodically close or quit firefox on a semi regular basis, but I am often running 4 windows each with 9-20 tabs open, with various history states that it seems to remember quite well. Take IE for example - (as far as my current understanding of 6.0) it instances a new process for each IE window that is open (meaning that force killing a window will not cause all IE windows to close) which means when you close a window its memory is freed, it no longer keeps the full history of pages viewed as mozilla/firefox tabs do.
I do think that this will be an issue that microsoft will also find - typical memory usage patterns with their tabbed IE 7 will likely see the same issues that firefox has today. (Unless they do something along the lines of treating the "main" IE window as a basic container and instance a new IE for each tab or something, but hell I have nfi what will happen) (disclaimer - i dont use IE for anything other than emergency checking of pages that I "trust").
Memory usage has to be viewed as a function of how much data is being read/accessed/used/stored. Yes mozilla/firefox is a pig as far as memory is concerned and closing a tab does not always seem to free the amount of memory that it uses, I hope that something gets looked at in this regard without slowing the interface down.
Admittedly my solution to my firefox woes was to install memory, because the occasional pauses when windows decided to poke the on disk VM was irritating, and with 2G firefox can stay open for weeks at a time, I do notice running on a machine (work) that only has 1G. However, I would not like to see CPU intensive processing that adds any form of interface lag to firefox to be developed, it would be a negative experience for myself.
I, for one, welcome our thong-wearing coworker overlords!
In Australia what most North Americans would refer to as a thong is termed a G-String or G-Banger! Thongs are rubber footwear, which I believe North Americans call flip-flops. See pic here
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It's the Zealots who screw things up for everyone.
1) Its not open source if it runs on windows - (dot net nuke) - umm yes it is, hell with the BSD licence its more open source than the linux kernel (the level's of freedom it allows)
2) RIAA/MPAA/ARIA/MIPI - They are over zealous in attempting to protect their existing revenue streams rather than adapting to the new environment that we now have and finding better ways, more customer friendly ways to make money.
All I have to say is mad props to anyone (company, person, organisation) who releases anything where the source is availailbe, modifiable and distributable.