Since we're having a correction party here, may I point out that both you and your parent got "never mind" wrong. "Nevermind" is a fine Nirvana album though - maybe you were referencing it?
Damn, you got me! In my defense, at least my little typo doesn't change the core meaning of my message.
Interestingly enough, the newest Apache modifications (that I had heard about, this was Spring 2001) put a Voodoo 4 in for the HUD displays. So, again, the question, "what shit can they accomplish with a Voodoo 4, that they can't with something else?"
They obviously couldn't have used a Voodoo3, since 22bpp isn't enough to allow for nice alpha on a HUD. Duh.
Speedball 2 is one of my favourite sports games ever, although I don't think a modern graphics engine would actually make it any more fun.
I never played Speedball 2, but I did enjoy the original Speedball back in the day. If you want to try the spiritual successor to that game, go try to find a copy of Deathrow[1] (pronounced "Death Throw", not "Death Row") for Xbox. Sadly, the game was released just a bit too soon to have Live support (launched 10/2002, Live launched 11/2002), and it didn't sell well enough to justify a sequel. That said, it's still one of the best "fantasy" sports games I've ever played. A definite sleeper, and it's a shame few people ever played it. Good luck finding a copy, though, as it never even made the "Platinum Hits" series. It looks like there are a few available on ebay, and you could try your local used game store.
[1] Warning: Strong language and graphic violence. This game deserves its M rating (no, there's no hidden Hot Coffee mod). This is definitely not something you want your kids playing.
Only planned accidents? Isn't a core defining characteristic of an accident that it's random? Otherwise, it wouldn't be called an accident, would it?
We are at SUBWAYS! Hooray.
You seem to have missed a key step in the transformation to subways -- moving the traffic uderground. It's called a SUBway, because it's subterranean. Without that, they'd just be "ways".
But, Internet Explorer never lasted a day. It seems that in the ActiveX element that handles XML requests(IE itself doesn't do it internally like Firefox does) there is a memory leak and within 2 hours our app was chewing up over 120MB of RAM and was getting slower. We tried several fixes and the only way to get the memory back was to kill the iexplore.exe process(This was on IE5.0 through 6.1). And that is the reason we recommend only Firefox for intensive AJAX apps.
The leak is not with the XMLHTTP object, but with Javascript itself. You have to be very careful about DOM manipulation order to avoid circular references that can't be garbage collected, and you pretty need to avoid using closures entirely (which sucks because closures are damn cool). Make sure you clean up after yourself when pages unload (detach events and such), and as long as you're careful you should be fine.
IE's problem is that the DOM is not a pure javascript implementation. Each DOM object is a COM object, and Jscript's garbage collector doesn't handle COM objects properly. Thus, if you get into a circular reference (a node has an expando property that references a jscript method that references the node), the GC can't clean it up because it can't clear COM objects. So long as the node reference stays around, the jscript can't be cleaned up and you're leaking memory.
There's a lot more to it than that, and a lot of other scenarios that can cause leaks. More information, including suggested practices to avoid leaking as much as possible.
Hopefully IE7 will fix these memory leaks, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.
I assume you meant Google Maps, not Google Earth. Google Maps is the AJAX (ugh, I hate that name) app. Google Earth is a rich desktop app.
Flash earth is cool, but it doesn't seem to provide anything more useful than Virtual Earth does. Certainly not in terms of UI. Sure, it may zoom in a little quicker but it's still dependent on how long it takes to load new images for closer zooms. Other than that, it's a click-and-drag, scroll-to-zoom interface just like VE's (and just like Google Maps with the proper set of Greaasemonkey scripts). In fact, it's even less useful than Google Maps or Virtual Earth because you can't search for sites, you can't add pushpins, you can't get directions, etc. It's a nifty UI, but I see no reason why you'd need Flash for this.
The market cannot "fracture" as there is nothing keeping a user from buying a hd if he wants/needs it. I'm guessing games that do not take advantage of the hd when available for advanced features are going to be few and far between.
Tell that to Sony about their PS2 HD upgrade. Oh, wait, only two games took advantage of it, and it was so poorly received that the PSTwo redesign removed support for the HD entirely. Now the real question here is what do you mean when you say 'take advantage'? If you mean games can use it to save state if the hard drive is available, then of course that'll happen. If you mean games will use it to make your gaming experience better (caching on the hd to reduce or eliminate DVD load times, allowing for multiplayer patches, etc), then I really doubt that will happen. As an example, take Halo 2. It's designed in such a way that once you start the game you'll never see another load screen (talking single player here, not multiplayer where you'll certainly see load screens before each match). It can only do this because the Xbox 1 has a built-in hard drive that Bungie could rely upon. No built-in hard drive, no loading-free gameplay regardless of whether or not you bought the HD upgrade. It's that simple.
All BeOS needs is better hardware support, and it'd be a viable desktop OS.
Better hardware support, more applications, and a solvent company behind it (because Be is no more, in case you hadn't noticed, and the source is not available).
Seriously, if you never used BeOS, you don't know what you're missing.
There's nothing stopping you from writing multi-thread GUIs in current operating systems (well, at least not in Windows, which is where I have most of my experience). Be just "forced" you to do so (as I understand it, you couldn't not write a multi-threaded GUI app). From a Windows-centric point of view there are some hoops to jump through (accessing controls from a different thread than that which spawned them), but it's certainly doable as long as you stay away from broken shit like mshta (which I believe is dead, though that doesn't stop people from trying to use it).
This was an article related to the "Top 10 Dot-Com Busts" that was linked here yesterday. It was linked from that article. This isn't a dupe on anyone's part, just a companion article.
And it wouldn't be Slashdot if they didn't take two inter-related articles and split them up across two different stories (double the ad impressions!). Now they just need to dupe each one at least once to complete the process (quadruple the ad impressions!).
i dont get all the love for kozmo, its like saying "and i want a perpeptual motion machine that makes infinite money too!, AND A PONEY."
I'd be happy with a pony, personally. The love for Kosmo is an irrational one -- there's no possible way anybody could ever make money providing a service such as Kosmo's (as it was implemented, anyway -- I'm sure there are ways to do it, such as charging more for convenience, not overreaching on too many markets too soon, charging a nominal delivery fee, etc). It's just one of those things where if it were possible for such a service to exist, that'd be awesome.
Do you still write everything in assembler because higher level languages have too much overhead? If we were talking about implementing networked multi-player games over XMLHTTP, you might have a point. We're not, and the overhead of http is trivial to a chat application (your example). Technology progress to more and more abstract levels, and the cost is overhead. When that cost becomes trivial (through increases in hardware power facilitating a move to higher level languages, or broadband and cheap bandwith costs facilitating a switch to http-based communication methods), convenience wins out. Using my example of MSN's web messenger, most of the functionality is available in the web version compared to the rich client. You don't have the fancy crap like nudges and winks the new client has, but I don't use that crap anyway. The overhead of communicating via http is negligible in this case, and in most other valid examples you could come up with (again, nobody's talking about implementing Quake-over-http).
Now, I agree that AJAX-based web apps will not overtake desktop apps any time soon. However, I base this on realistic measures, like I don't want to have my IM client tied into my web browser (why? Because browsers still have many memory leak issues dealing with javascript, and when my browser has leaked 200MB of memory I don't want to have to close my IM client so I can restart my browser. Because I occassionally dabble with BHO development for IE, and I constantly need to stop and start my browser while doing this kind of development. Because I don't think that the browser interface is ideal for every application). Your overhead argument is irrelevant to your example, and will only grow more irrelevant as time passes.
There's something be said for the elegant assembler hack, or the purpose-built network protocol that has limited overhead and is efficient for a single task. However, 95% of all software no longer needs that. You're not going to write an IM client in assembly when you could do it in a fraction of the time using java or C# and still have comparable quality, and you're not going to design a new protocol for a web-based IM network when you can build it using http in a fraction of the time and still have comparable quality. This isn't embedded development, or game development, or device driver development. Your argument might have merit in those limited fields, but not here.
As for the people who think that Microsoft is going to get into losses because of this, you should _really_ cut down on your dope. In case you had forgotten, Microsoft has not traditionally been defeated by superior products, and they are actually working on a system of their own for providing a rich user experience through the web (XAML).
Whoa there, buddy! Let's get your information correct.
First, AJAX is Microsoft technology, except that they called it "remote scripting" back in 1999. That's when Microsoft introduced the XMLHTTP ActiveX object. Microsoft didn't really promote the technology all that well, and up until a few years ago (2003? 2002?) the other browsers didn't have a competing mechanism, but you really can't take this one away from Microsoft -- they did it first, even if they didn't capitalize on it like Google has done.
Second, XAML has nothing to do with the web, unless you think that XML is somehow tied to the web. XAML is an XML-based markup language for describing visual pieces of an application (like windows, for example). It's backed by.NET code, and a XAML-created app runs locally as a desktop app. There's nothing web-related about it.
Here's some food for thought: imagine a simple instant messaging program, written in your favorite programming languages. One the connection to your chat party is established, all you need to do is send the text the user types, and wait for incoming text and display it. Now, imagine implementing the same sort of application in an environment where the only possible communication is you making an HTTP request and receiving an XML response.
You mean something like Web Messenger (probably not the first online chat tool, but one of the best I've used)? Not only does it do the simple chatting you mentioned, it even goes so far as to implement the same "user is typing a message" notifications you'd get from the rich client. That way you know if the person on the other end is idling, or if they're just writing a long reply and that's why they're not saying anything. Also, just because "AJAX" contains the word XML doesn't mean you have to use XML. You can request HTML pages, text, data, whatever -- XMLHTTP/XmlhttpRequest is misnamed because it's just a way to make an http request. That XML is usually returned means nothing (and in fact may mean "the developer is an idiot", because there's no reason to use XML for many simple pieces of data).
With that said, I agree with your premise that AJAX apps will never replace desktop apps. You just don't quite understand the technology, and thus you've given a bad example.
[I] hate them because they make it harder to grip the mouse properly and move it without pressing them.
Try a properly designed mouse next time. For example, I'm currently using a wireless Intellimouse Explorer with side buttons and I have no difficulties at all moving it around without hitting the side buttons. Why? The side buttons are on a little ridge, high on the left side. Below them is an indentation for my thumb. By holding the mouse with my thumb in the indentation, I've never once accidentally hit the side buttons (note: this mouse is only good if you're right handed, of course). If you have a mouse where the side buttons consistenly get in your way, you have a poorly designed mouse.
That's my take on it, anyway. Sorry to hear you had trouble with you Toshiba, but I've found them to be generally reliable books. The only thing I'd really stay away from are Compaqs and HPs. I can tell you from working in a support/service job that they have major mechanical problems, the most common being the powerjack breaking off the mobo.
A friend bought a Toshiba right around the same time I bought mine and his ended up melting (video card overheated, nothing they could do about it). I could've dealt with cracking plastic if only it was easy to service the heatsink/fan for overheating problems, and more importantly if the powerack didn't break (the problem you mentioned re: hp and compaq laptops is exactly what happened to my Toshiba).
Maybe they had quality issues a couple years ago and are better now, but I'm not going back. My new laptop is a Dell, and has a nice metal lid (no way this one is going to crack at the hinges!). The powerjack is a much sturdier design, and best of all is the point you mentioned -- Dell's business model means that their laptops are easily disassembled, and spare parts are easily available (even from Dell, if you don't want to go the ebay route). Add to that the crazy deals that are out there if you hit some of the coupon sites and you can get a really good laptop for a great price. (note: not affiliated with Dell, just really enjoying my new laptop).
As for the Toughbook suggestion, I'm not hard on laptops. I don't drop them, or put them in bookbags or anything like that. That's why I was so disappointed that normal wear and tear could so effectively shred a higher-end laptop in such a short time.
If they're using a standard savings account (and not emigrant or ING direct) you would be telling them "Look, you have $10,000 in the bank, and you just made $13 off of it this month."
Thanks. I was thinking in terms of yearly statements (on the kid's birthday, show him the effect of saving last year's gifts), and figured I'd estimate low so as not to look like a total idiot.
Get your kid a checking account, and then they can use the debit card as a credit card online.
Better yet, get your kid a savings account (investing in CDs, bonds, and other long-term, risk-adverse investments). They'll thank you when they graduate college (preferably, but high school if they're unambitious) and aren't buried under student loans (or better, have no outstanding student loans and are able to start their independent life without debt).
They may hate you when you put 75% of their birthday/Christmas/easter/allowance money into the bank for them, but if you start when they're young they'll never know the difference. And then when they're older, you'll be able to show them the bank statements and say, "Look, you have $10,000 in the bank, and you just made $40 off of it." (numbers made up, since I didn't want to bother with calculating the actual amount of interest you'd make off of a $10,000 principle).
If minors need to buy stuff, that's your responsibility as a parent (or their responsibility to get a job, open a checking account, and learn how not to spend more than they make). More importantly, that keeps you involved in the process, so you can't go complaining about Hot Coffee because you didn't let your 8 year old buy the MA- now AO-rated GTA:SA.
Pessimistic? Think of it as putting away money to pay bail, lawyer fees, and court fines when your kids get old enough to start getting into real trouble. Why not make them pay for their own problems?
One thing they didn't list, but should have listed, is three button mice. I finally gave up trying to find a three button optical mouse last week and ordered a couple of the modern version of three button mice consisting of two buttons and a mouse wheel. I would have much preferred three real mouse buttons.
Why? A wheel mouse works just as well, with the wheel acting as a third button. On a good mouse (pretty much anything from Microsoft or Logitech), the button feel of the wheel is not much different than a "normal" button, and is no more difficult to press. At the same time, not only do you continue to have your all-important third button, you get the benefit of having a wheel. Maybe you never use it, but that's your loss. I'm to the point where I can't function without a wheel. It's so bad that when I recently purchased a new laptop I made sure that the touchpad had scroll support (both horizontal and vertical, though vertical is the killer app for me).
The real killer mouse application? Side buttons. Side buttons are even more important to me than a scroll wheel. I'm not a big PC gamer (most of my gaming is done on Xbox or PS2), so I'm not using the buttons for games. I need them for web browsing. With side buttons, I can map them to "forward" and "back" in my browser. It really streamlines the browsing experience. Back to my new laptop I mentioned above, the touchpad has an awesome "gesture" feature that allows me to drag my finger across the top of the pad and registers it as back/forward for browsers. Drag my finger left, I go back. Drag my finger right, I go forward. Genius! Sensitivity is the big issue here, but with a little tweaking it's just sensitive enough to catch an intended gesture, while not registering false gestures as I just mouse around. Maybe this is old news, but my previous ~2.5 year old laptop I replaced this summer didn't have the same functionality.
Ssidenote: A ~2.5 year old laptop isn't really that old, especially considering the specs on it were still better than "cheap" PCs today. However, it was a piece of shit Toshiba with a host of problems:
the battery was on its last legs (about 10 minutes of battery time off of the power) and Toshiba no longer offers a replacement for that model
the plastic case was cracking and splitting, and this was after spending ~$150 to replace the top cover because it had cracked around the hinges and would no longer physically open
the LCD had developed a few dead pixels and one "distressed" spot where the pixels weren't "dead" but they were consistently lighter than the surrounding pixels
it was prone to overheating that it didn't suffer from when new (I suspect the heatsink or fan had been jostled out of place, or were gummed up with dust and crap, but the ingenious design of the laptop made it almost impossible to reach those portions for maintenance)
the power adaptor plug on the laptop had developed a short that not only would fail to register a power plug being present, sometimes it would physically reboot the machine
So yeah, it was about time to upgrade. Hopfully this new (non-Toshiba) laptop fairs better midway through its life. Or maybe I'm just naive thinking that a laptop should maintain structural integrity for at least three years.
Not only did the poster say that Monad was removed from Vista because of the "virus" threat (which, as you pointed out, Monad was not going to ship with Vista anyway), the other link that says "it will be included on a major server operating system for servers" (which doesn't make sense in the first place) actually says Monad will ship with Exchange 12. Exchange is not an operating system (duh).
I was disappointed when it was first announced that Monad wouldn't ship in Vista, but I'm still holding out hope that it'll be a freely-available download when it does ship With Exchange. Also, Monad is currently not targetted directly to Vista. It runs on XP, 2k3, and 2000, and might even run on 98 (can't verify that one). The important thing is that you shouldn't need to buy a new OS to get a good shell.
So does anyone know which statement would take precedence here? They are forfeiting their legal affiliation before they claim copyright on it; so what happens here? [IANAL, BMWI (but my wife-ish-person is)].
Huh? Try reading that again. They're claiming no official support, not ownership. The copyright statement says that this is Microsoft's property. The disclaimer says that if the page fails to load, or disappears, or forgets all of the RSS feeds you painstakingly added, they're not at fault. Read it as a declaration of "use at your own risk", which does not give up legal ownership.
Like you, IANAL, but it doesn't take much more than common sense to understand what's going on with the disclaimar and copyright.
That's because the marketing crew hasn't gotten ahold of this service yet. Wait till it gets filtered through the entire MS camp and then we will see where that current minimalistic approach goes.
Like what they did to the MSN Search page? Oh, wait, that's still very minimalist...
I'm assuming you're referring to pages like the MSN home page, which is a portal like Yahoo (equally full of crap), and not a minimalist entry page designed around searching like Google. That's not to say that Google doesn't have their own share of pages that are full of crap. They just have a slightly different approach to their main entry page.
IMHO, the MSN.com page should be replaced with the MSN Search page and move the main page over to a "News" tab or something, but I doubt it'll ever happen.
Slashdot Mirror
The only flaw in your logic is that polar bears don't mind being wet.
Damn, you got me! In my defense, at least my little typo doesn't change the core meaning of my message.
Because we dont want to loose the next war?
I thought that's what the original poster was afraid of, building weapons for loosing the next war.
Oh, wait, you meant "lose". Nevermind. It's amazing how a single letter in a common typo can so change the meaning of a sentence.
(Just in case you still don't understand: loose, v. tr., to let loose, release.)
Thank you! I was just as annoyed, and so went off to research rather than try for a first post. Thus, an explanation.
They obviously couldn't have used a Voodoo3, since 22bpp isn't enough to allow for nice alpha on a HUD. Duh.
I never played Speedball 2, but I did enjoy the original Speedball back in the day. If you want to try the spiritual successor to that game, go try to find a copy of Deathrow[1] (pronounced "Death Throw", not "Death Row") for Xbox. Sadly, the game was released just a bit too soon to have Live support (launched 10/2002, Live launched 11/2002), and it didn't sell well enough to justify a sequel. That said, it's still one of the best "fantasy" sports games I've ever played. A definite sleeper, and it's a shame few people ever played it. Good luck finding a copy, though, as it never even made the "Platinum Hits" series. It looks like there are a few available on ebay, and you could try your local used game store.
[1] Warning: Strong language and graphic violence. This game deserves its M rating (no, there's no hidden Hot Coffee mod). This is definitely not something you want your kids playing.
Only planned accidents? Isn't a core defining characteristic of an accident that it's random? Otherwise, it wouldn't be called an accident, would it?
You seem to have missed a key step in the transformation to subways -- moving the traffic uderground. It's called a SUBway, because it's subterranean. Without that, they'd just be "ways".
The leak is not with the XMLHTTP object, but with Javascript itself. You have to be very careful about DOM manipulation order to avoid circular references that can't be garbage collected, and you pretty need to avoid using closures entirely (which sucks because closures are damn cool). Make sure you clean up after yourself when pages unload (detach events and such), and as long as you're careful you should be fine.
IE's problem is that the DOM is not a pure javascript implementation. Each DOM object is a COM object, and Jscript's garbage collector doesn't handle COM objects properly. Thus, if you get into a circular reference (a node has an expando property that references a jscript method that references the node), the GC can't clean it up because it can't clear COM objects. So long as the node reference stays around, the jscript can't be cleaned up and you're leaking memory.
There's a lot more to it than that, and a lot of other scenarios that can cause leaks. More information, including suggested practices to avoid leaking as much as possible.
Hopefully IE7 will fix these memory leaks, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.
Two points:
Tell that to Sony about their PS2 HD upgrade. Oh, wait, only two games took advantage of it, and it was so poorly received that the PSTwo redesign removed support for the HD entirely. Now the real question here is what do you mean when you say 'take advantage'? If you mean games can use it to save state if the hard drive is available, then of course that'll happen. If you mean games will use it to make your gaming experience better (caching on the hd to reduce or eliminate DVD load times, allowing for multiplayer patches, etc), then I really doubt that will happen. As an example, take Halo 2. It's designed in such a way that once you start the game you'll never see another load screen (talking single player here, not multiplayer where you'll certainly see load screens before each match). It can only do this because the Xbox 1 has a built-in hard drive that Bungie could rely upon. No built-in hard drive, no loading-free gameplay regardless of whether or not you bought the HD upgrade. It's that simple.
Better hardware support, more applications, and a solvent company behind it (because Be is no more, in case you hadn't noticed, and the source is not available).
There's nothing stopping you from writing multi-thread GUIs in current operating systems (well, at least not in Windows, which is where I have most of my experience). Be just "forced" you to do so (as I understand it, you couldn't not write a multi-threaded GUI app). From a Windows-centric point of view there are some hoops to jump through (accessing controls from a different thread than that which spawned them), but it's certainly doable as long as you stay away from broken shit like mshta (which I believe is dead, though that doesn't stop people from trying to use it).
And it wouldn't be Slashdot if they didn't take two inter-related articles and split them up across two different stories (double the ad impressions!). Now they just need to dupe each one at least once to complete the process (quadruple the ad impressions!).
I'd be happy with a pony, personally. The love for Kosmo is an irrational one -- there's no possible way anybody could ever make money providing a service such as Kosmo's (as it was implemented, anyway -- I'm sure there are ways to do it, such as charging more for convenience, not overreaching on too many markets too soon, charging a nominal delivery fee, etc). It's just one of those things where if it were possible for such a service to exist, that'd be awesome.
Do you still write everything in assembler because higher level languages have too much overhead? If we were talking about implementing networked multi-player games over XMLHTTP, you might have a point. We're not, and the overhead of http is trivial to a chat application (your example). Technology progress to more and more abstract levels, and the cost is overhead. When that cost becomes trivial (through increases in hardware power facilitating a move to higher level languages, or broadband and cheap bandwith costs facilitating a switch to http-based communication methods), convenience wins out. Using my example of MSN's web messenger, most of the functionality is available in the web version compared to the rich client. You don't have the fancy crap like nudges and winks the new client has, but I don't use that crap anyway. The overhead of communicating via http is negligible in this case, and in most other valid examples you could come up with (again, nobody's talking about implementing Quake-over-http).
Now, I agree that AJAX-based web apps will not overtake desktop apps any time soon. However, I base this on realistic measures, like I don't want to have my IM client tied into my web browser (why? Because browsers still have many memory leak issues dealing with javascript, and when my browser has leaked 200MB of memory I don't want to have to close my IM client so I can restart my browser. Because I occassionally dabble with BHO development for IE, and I constantly need to stop and start my browser while doing this kind of development. Because I don't think that the browser interface is ideal for every application). Your overhead argument is irrelevant to your example, and will only grow more irrelevant as time passes.
There's something be said for the elegant assembler hack, or the purpose-built network protocol that has limited overhead and is efficient for a single task. However, 95% of all software no longer needs that. You're not going to write an IM client in assembly when you could do it in a fraction of the time using java or C# and still have comparable quality, and you're not going to design a new protocol for a web-based IM network when you can build it using http in a fraction of the time and still have comparable quality. This isn't embedded development, or game development, or device driver development. Your argument might have merit in those limited fields, but not here.
Whoa there, buddy! Let's get your information correct.
First, AJAX is Microsoft technology, except that they called it "remote scripting" back in 1999. That's when Microsoft introduced the XMLHTTP ActiveX object. Microsoft didn't really promote the technology all that well, and up until a few years ago (2003? 2002?) the other browsers didn't have a competing mechanism, but you really can't take this one away from Microsoft -- they did it first, even if they didn't capitalize on it like Google has done.
Second, XAML has nothing to do with the web, unless you think that XML is somehow tied to the web. XAML is an XML-based markup language for describing visual pieces of an application (like windows, for example). It's backed by .NET code, and a XAML-created app runs locally as a desktop app. There's nothing web-related about it.
You mean something like Web Messenger (probably not the first online chat tool, but one of the best I've used)? Not only does it do the simple chatting you mentioned, it even goes so far as to implement the same "user is typing a message" notifications you'd get from the rich client. That way you know if the person on the other end is idling, or if they're just writing a long reply and that's why they're not saying anything. Also, just because "AJAX" contains the word XML doesn't mean you have to use XML. You can request HTML pages, text, data, whatever -- XMLHTTP/XmlhttpRequest is misnamed because it's just a way to make an http request. That XML is usually returned means nothing (and in fact may mean "the developer is an idiot", because there's no reason to use XML for many simple pieces of data).
With that said, I agree with your premise that AJAX apps will never replace desktop apps. You just don't quite understand the technology, and thus you've given a bad example.
Try a properly designed mouse next time. For example, I'm currently using a wireless Intellimouse Explorer with side buttons and I have no difficulties at all moving it around without hitting the side buttons. Why? The side buttons are on a little ridge, high on the left side. Below them is an indentation for my thumb. By holding the mouse with my thumb in the indentation, I've never once accidentally hit the side buttons (note: this mouse is only good if you're right handed, of course). If you have a mouse where the side buttons consistenly get in your way, you have a poorly designed mouse.
A friend bought a Toshiba right around the same time I bought mine and his ended up melting (video card overheated, nothing they could do about it). I could've dealt with cracking plastic if only it was easy to service the heatsink/fan for overheating problems, and more importantly if the powerack didn't break (the problem you mentioned re: hp and compaq laptops is exactly what happened to my Toshiba).
Maybe they had quality issues a couple years ago and are better now, but I'm not going back. My new laptop is a Dell, and has a nice metal lid (no way this one is going to crack at the hinges!). The powerjack is a much sturdier design, and best of all is the point you mentioned -- Dell's business model means that their laptops are easily disassembled, and spare parts are easily available (even from Dell, if you don't want to go the ebay route). Add to that the crazy deals that are out there if you hit some of the coupon sites and you can get a really good laptop for a great price. (note: not affiliated with Dell, just really enjoying my new laptop).
As for the Toughbook suggestion, I'm not hard on laptops. I don't drop them, or put them in bookbags or anything like that. That's why I was so disappointed that normal wear and tear could so effectively shred a higher-end laptop in such a short time.
Thanks. I was thinking in terms of yearly statements (on the kid's birthday, show him the effect of saving last year's gifts), and figured I'd estimate low so as not to look like a total idiot.
Better yet, get your kid a savings account (investing in CDs, bonds, and other long-term, risk-adverse investments). They'll thank you when they graduate college (preferably, but high school if they're unambitious) and aren't buried under student loans (or better, have no outstanding student loans and are able to start their independent life without debt).
They may hate you when you put 75% of their birthday/Christmas/easter/allowance money into the bank for them, but if you start when they're young they'll never know the difference. And then when they're older, you'll be able to show them the bank statements and say, "Look, you have $10,000 in the bank, and you just made $40 off of it." (numbers made up, since I didn't want to bother with calculating the actual amount of interest you'd make off of a $10,000 principle).
If minors need to buy stuff, that's your responsibility as a parent (or their responsibility to get a job, open a checking account, and learn how not to spend more than they make). More importantly, that keeps you involved in the process, so you can't go complaining about Hot Coffee because you didn't let your 8 year old buy the MA- now AO-rated GTA:SA.
Pessimistic? Think of it as putting away money to pay bail, lawyer fees, and court fines when your kids get old enough to start getting into real trouble. Why not make them pay for their own problems?
Why? A wheel mouse works just as well, with the wheel acting as a third button. On a good mouse (pretty much anything from Microsoft or Logitech), the button feel of the wheel is not much different than a "normal" button, and is no more difficult to press. At the same time, not only do you continue to have your all-important third button, you get the benefit of having a wheel. Maybe you never use it, but that's your loss. I'm to the point where I can't function without a wheel. It's so bad that when I recently purchased a new laptop I made sure that the touchpad had scroll support (both horizontal and vertical, though vertical is the killer app for me).
The real killer mouse application? Side buttons. Side buttons are even more important to me than a scroll wheel. I'm not a big PC gamer (most of my gaming is done on Xbox or PS2), so I'm not using the buttons for games. I need them for web browsing. With side buttons, I can map them to "forward" and "back" in my browser. It really streamlines the browsing experience. Back to my new laptop I mentioned above, the touchpad has an awesome "gesture" feature that allows me to drag my finger across the top of the pad and registers it as back/forward for browsers. Drag my finger left, I go back. Drag my finger right, I go forward. Genius! Sensitivity is the big issue here, but with a little tweaking it's just sensitive enough to catch an intended gesture, while not registering false gestures as I just mouse around. Maybe this is old news, but my previous ~2.5 year old laptop I replaced this summer didn't have the same functionality.
Ssidenote: A ~2.5 year old laptop isn't really that old, especially considering the specs on it were still better than "cheap" PCs today. However, it was a piece of shit Toshiba with a host of problems:
- the battery was on its last legs (about 10 minutes of battery time off of the power) and Toshiba no longer offers a replacement for that model
- the plastic case was cracking and splitting, and this was after spending ~$150 to replace the top cover because it had cracked around the hinges and would no longer physically open
- the LCD had developed a few dead pixels and one "distressed" spot where the pixels weren't "dead" but they were consistently lighter than the surrounding pixels
- it was prone to overheating that it didn't suffer from when new (I suspect the heatsink or fan had been jostled out of place, or were gummed up with dust and crap, but the ingenious design of the laptop made it almost impossible to reach those portions for maintenance)
- the power adaptor plug on the laptop had developed a short that not only would fail to register a power plug being present, sometimes it would physically reboot the machine
So yeah, it was about time to upgrade. Hopfully this new (non-Toshiba) laptop fairs better midway through its life. Or maybe I'm just naive thinking that a laptop should maintain structural integrity for at least three years.Not only did the poster say that Monad was removed from Vista because of the "virus" threat (which, as you pointed out, Monad was not going to ship with Vista anyway), the other link that says "it will be included on a major server operating system for servers" (which doesn't make sense in the first place) actually says Monad will ship with Exchange 12. Exchange is not an operating system (duh).
I was disappointed when it was first announced that Monad wouldn't ship in Vista, but I'm still holding out hope that it'll be a freely-available download when it does ship With Exchange. Also, Monad is currently not targetted directly to Vista. It runs on XP, 2k3, and 2000, and might even run on 98 (can't verify that one). The important thing is that you shouldn't need to buy a new OS to get a good shell.
The short answer: It's a codename. It won't ship with that name. Most likely it'll go with the less interesting "Microsoft Shell" or "msh".
The long answer: Monad and Monads in functional programming (long answer has been diverted to Wikipedia, because I'm lazy).
The non-answer: Get your mind of the gutter, you pervert. Not everything ending in "-nad" refers to genitalia.
Huh? Try reading that again. They're claiming no official support, not ownership. The copyright statement says that this is Microsoft's property. The disclaimer says that if the page fails to load, or disappears, or forgets all of the RSS feeds you painstakingly added, they're not at fault. Read it as a declaration of "use at your own risk", which does not give up legal ownership.
Like you, IANAL, but it doesn't take much more than common sense to understand what's going on with the disclaimar and copyright.
Like what they did to the MSN Search page? Oh, wait, that's still very minimalist ...
I'm assuming you're referring to pages like the MSN home page, which is a portal like Yahoo (equally full of crap), and not a minimalist entry page designed around searching like Google. That's not to say that Google doesn't have their own share of pages that are full of crap. They just have a slightly different approach to their main entry page.
IMHO, the MSN.com page should be replaced with the MSN Search page and move the main page over to a "News" tab or something, but I doubt it'll ever happen.