I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't a bit earlier. Around 1997 I can remember watching a program in the UK on how you could use your cell phone in Japan to pay for goods in a vending machine (see here), though I can't remember whether it was only in test phase. When I visited Australia in 2005 you could use your cell phone to pay for parking.
The truth is North America behind when it comes to what people can do with their cell phones. They are only now starting to catch up. I believe the Qualcomm CDMA / GSM divide wasn't helping things.
People who are in power are generally very confident people. When you lie you need to be confident or people will not be convinced.
Sometimes you simply need to be a good liar with a bunch of well placed people to back you up. People in power may make better liars, but people who lie without getting caught find out how to get the power. Or liars are often the ones with no care for anyone else and simply want to control them. There are many ways to spin the numbers.
How the 'democracy' works depends on the given project. Some projects are very top-down, while others are more cooperative. In other cases its only a democracy if you know how to code.
As as user you get to have input, but in the end it is put up or change allegiances. This is no different that a buying a product from a private company. The difference is that most users don't pay a dime for their open source solutions and won't pay a dime to encourage the development of a given feature. If you want something for free, then accept it for what it is. If you don't want to vote with a contribution (fiscal or otherwise), then don't expect the Earth.
Didn't we just recently learn of two Canadian Conservative MPs acting like arse holes at airport security? Not only do they get to keep their job, there doesn't seem to be any attempt to convict them either. Heck, I will happy once we have tossed this government out of power.
Now, browsing the internet is different, but browsers like Firefox and Opera are better than IE and still support XP.
It may be, but once you are in the "whatever I have is enough" mindset, they will probably be in the same mindset when it comes to their browser. When the general momentum is forward, it is hard to support everyone who is not moving. Heck, from a business point of view why invest in a market which is no longer interested in giving you their money.
Does this mean you are attempting to create a smaller core and then make everything else a module? Something similar to the architecture of Apache HTTPD?
XP's graphics handling is really crappy compared to 7 and Vista, so this is no surprise. Flip an LCD to portrait mode in XP, then try to turn on vsync because horizontal tearing just became vertical tearing. Can't be done.
Whether or not XP can handle it doesn't really matter. Windows 7 is where Microsoft's focus is now and their money is better spent supporting the road forward. One other thing worth looking at is why people are still using XP? Chances are in a couple of years once Windows 7 has proved itself many companies will upgrade to the new OS, invalidating any effort Microsoft put into making IE9 work with the older platform.
Beyond companies, who are probably still using IE6 anyhow (ugh), people who really want to stick to XP and want to have the latest version of IE might end up being gifted by some hacker making it possible.
You're right and the statement you reference is obviously wrong. Multiple implementations will of course diverge no matter what a standard says. IE may suck, but back in the day most web sites could be designed without worrying about other browsers. Sure, it only supported Windows and the Mac, but that was good enough to reach the vast majority of users.
Today, most sites support browsers that run on Linux and that's a good thing, but it's made the web developers job harder.
This is why it is important that browsers do their best to adhere to standards and be functionally equivalent when it comes to rendering standards compliant content. If your favourite is not adhering to an accepted test case, then it is important, IMHO, that you open up a ticket for the developers to fix it.
If these allegations are true, it is the very definition of unclean hands...
Sounds like typical marketing/advertising companies. Apparently they do this all the time with the TV stations, trying to find any reason not to pay for the commercial, even though it was aired.
Just put grating just above the floor, so any liquid ends up under the grating. The truth is, if the potential costs saving are significant, then people will get creative and find ways to deal with the 'minor' issues.
I predict the next step will be a major overhaul of the evaluation system which will be widely hailed as a vast improvement on paper but turn out to be a huge mess and pleasing to no one.
Well that and plenty of people complaining it is the same old shit, due the lack of quests. Unless the dungeon masters, uh managers, recognise this will simply cause the people to move on to the next environment where quests are implemented.
Palm devices worked very much like the iPhone: touch screen, a launcher with a bunch of icons, pretty easy to use. Sync required some fiddling, but the original iPhone also required iTunes for activation.
In many ways the iPhone is what the Palm could have become, since there are enough similarities there. The problem is that Palm lost direction big time and burnt many of its valuable resources in doing so. The Palm Pre has plenty of potential, but the build quality of the unit is a major issue. You can't make a quality product by making it feel like cheap plastic.
It is not good enough making a great device, instead you have to continue making devices as great as you can. Apple failed at the end of the 80s, by sitting on its laurels and that almost destroyed them. There are no winners in business, since there is no finishing line, instead there are simply competitors who are currently taking the lead.
Unfortunately, it seems that even if God almighty would have stepped down and told Mr. Conroy that filtering of this sort is a bad idea i wouldn't have helped much.
Chances are he turned to God, looked down at him and sneered "You a god? I am my own god. I will ignore the drivel coming from a being such as you".
Most people consider good and bad to be two extremes of a straight line. I see them as opposing points on a circle. If you go too far one way there is a chance that you will end up where you didn't mean to be. The best place is somewhere in the middle, IMHO. No, its not a perfect view, but what is?
The Apple culture is about obsession. This goes from creation to use. Despite any flaws the iPhone it has, it feels likes someone actually thought how non-engineers would use it. This is an important factor IMHO, because even with the 'wow' factor, a device will only work if people can find it usable. Too many gadgets, IMHO, are designed by engineers and almost feel like the primary user was an engineer. To many people the "it just works" element is as important as any of the features that the device it may include.
There are other companies who have understood the people factor, but all to often it doesn't feel like it is running through the veins of the companies.
Looking at Microsoft, I feel that they are confused about what it means be user friendly. There are elements of the company who seem to get it, while there are other parts that thinks bells and whistles are what user friendly is about. For me being user friendly is something a little complex, it is that right balance of simplicity and richness of functionality. Hiding features or dumbing down an application is not going to magically solve the problem, if the humans factor is forgotten in the process.
The irony in all this is that Apple spends less on R&D than Microsoft, yet whether it is through focused R&D or some other factor I feel they seem to capture the magic combination better. Maybe there is something to be said of having a company run by a guy who is so obsessive that his passion captivates people, rather than alienating them - yes, I am insinuating that Balmer's passion at developer conferences is more an after thought than something that drives the company in a cohesive way.
I thought cartels were generally considered illegal. By supporting these entities he is essentially supporting the notion of legal cartels. I think the USA is going to become more and more isolated in its point of views.
I had great hope for some real change when Obama came in, but he standing shows that there isn't really much separating the Democrats and the Republicans. For me, it really goes to show the whole notion of democracy in the states is more about changing the logo of the party in charge, rather than anything else. Which ever party is in charge, it is still the corporations which hold them by the balls. What it will take to institute a government which is by the people for the people, rather than by the people for the corporations.
I have nothing against copyright, rather I disagree with copyrights going beyond a reasonable amount of time.
One question I do have, is what will the reaction of the open source community be in 70 years when the first copyrights of Linux become public domain? This is not a indication of support for long copyrights, but trying to understand the reaction of the community when the shoe is on the other foot.
I'm pretty sure that the tail of an airplane falling off is an unanticipated scenario that humans cannot deal with either;)
I know you meant that as a joke, but people generally have one advantage over a computer: the urge to want to survive the accident, which makes people more creative out of desperation. If a computer runs into unexpected scenario, then how it deals with it depends on how it was programmed. In some cases you can think of a default behaviour kicking in, or maybe even a reboot. There may be other creative solutions, but the chances are the computer will run out of ideas before the pilot does.
In fact all this reminds me of chess, in that we make a big thing about computers beating humans, but I haven't heard of human vs computer flight competitions. The way I see it is to present both the pilot and the simulator similar conditions and challenges and see which one recovers the best.
Maybe the best way to get ISPs to stop being censorship bitches is every time you have connectivity issues, is to call them up and complain your site has probably been caught in the government censorship filter and you can't see any reason why it would be blocked. Here is hoping that enough complaints of false positives will change things. After all how are you to know whether a site is mearly slashdotted or being blocked?
Sounds like like you guys really need a pirate party to defend your liberties and in the mean time VPN all your important traffic.
That's a huge upside for linking up video devices though. No interference from the neighbors, no interference from the other room.
There is probably another use (ironically based off 'NCIS: LA') which I can think of: temporary connection to a visual display device without needing a physical connection. Imagine the following:
You have a large display screen in the conference room with a line of sight receptor built in. You want to quickly show something to everyone in the room, but don't want to spend time leaning over to physically connect to the device or set up any special network connections (think security issues). Instead you simply point your iPad type device towards the screen and hey presto you are sharing what you see on your device with everyone else in the room. Since it is line of sight you know no one outside the room can tap it.
Beyond that you could do the same with game consoles. You charge up the device, remove it from its charging cradle and simply point it to the TV. No cables and easy way of deciding which device is making use of the TV.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't a bit earlier. Around 1997 I can remember watching a program in the UK on how you could use your cell phone in Japan to pay for goods in a vending machine (see here), though I can't remember whether it was only in test phase. When I visited Australia in 2005 you could use your cell phone to pay for parking.
The truth is North America behind when it comes to what people can do with their cell phones. They are only now starting to catch up. I believe the Qualcomm CDMA / GSM divide wasn't helping things.
As for web sites with concrete dates that I could show you, C-mode appears to a compatible technology: http://eurotechnology.com/market_reports/imode/faq-cmode.shtml and that was field tested in 2001.
BTW As for what you can do with vending machines in Japan: http://www.photomann.com/japan/machines/
People who are in power are generally very confident people. When you lie you need to be confident or people will not be convinced.
Sometimes you simply need to be a good liar with a bunch of well placed people to back you up. People in power may make better liars, but people who lie without getting caught find out how to get the power. Or liars are often the ones with no care for anyone else and simply want to control them. There are many ways to spin the numbers.
Oh, and vague statistics help make better lies ;)
How the 'democracy' works depends on the given project. Some projects are very top-down, while others are more cooperative. In other cases its only a democracy if you know how to code.
As as user you get to have input, but in the end it is put up or change allegiances. This is no different that a buying a product from a private company. The difference is that most users don't pay a dime for their open source solutions and won't pay a dime to encourage the development of a given feature. If you want something for free, then accept it for what it is. If you don't want to vote with a contribution (fiscal or otherwise), then don't expect the Earth.
See that? First pass he was cool. On the second, he was all skinny and shit. Third pass was the ghost. Call the ASPCA!
Well, its wasn't their fault. They just didn't know what to feed an ASCII (or the Soviet equivalent of) cat.
Why do people post their own stuff here, knowing that their site will crash and burn within seconds? Both of the links are dead. Both!
Free load testing. Seriously you would pay someone to do that ;)
Didn't we just recently learn of two Canadian Conservative MPs acting like arse holes at airport security? Not only do they get to keep their job, there doesn't seem to be any attempt to convict them either. Heck, I will happy once we have tossed this government out of power.
Now, browsing the internet is different, but browsers like Firefox and Opera are better than IE and still support XP.
It may be, but once you are in the "whatever I have is enough" mindset, they will probably be in the same mindset when it comes to their browser. When the general momentum is forward, it is hard to support everyone who is not moving. Heck, from a business point of view why invest in a market which is no longer interested in giving you their money.
Does this mean you are attempting to create a smaller core and then make everything else a module? Something similar to the architecture of Apache HTTPD?
XP's graphics handling is really crappy compared to 7 and Vista, so this is no surprise. Flip an LCD to portrait mode in XP, then try to turn on vsync because horizontal tearing just became vertical tearing. Can't be done.
Whether or not XP can handle it doesn't really matter. Windows 7 is where Microsoft's focus is now and their money is better spent supporting the road forward. One other thing worth looking at is why people are still using XP? Chances are in a couple of years once Windows 7 has proved itself many companies will upgrade to the new OS, invalidating any effort Microsoft put into making IE9 work with the older platform.
Beyond companies, who are probably still using IE6 anyhow (ugh), people who really want to stick to XP and want to have the latest version of IE might end up being gifted by some hacker making it possible.
You're right and the statement you reference is obviously wrong. Multiple implementations will of course diverge no matter what a standard says. IE may suck, but back in the day most web sites could be designed without worrying about other browsers. Sure, it only supported Windows and the Mac, but that was good enough to reach the vast majority of users.
Today, most sites support browsers that run on Linux and that's a good thing, but it's made the web developers job harder.
This is why it is important that browsers do their best to adhere to standards and be functionally equivalent when it comes to rendering standards compliant content. If your favourite is not adhering to an accepted test case, then it is important, IMHO, that you open up a ticket for the developers to fix it.
If these allegations are true, it is the very definition of unclean hands...
Sounds like typical marketing/advertising companies. Apparently they do this all the time with the TV stations, trying to find any reason not to pay for the commercial, even though it was aired.
Just put grating just above the floor, so any liquid ends up under the grating. The truth is, if the potential costs saving are significant, then people will get creative and find ways to deal with the 'minor' issues.
Was he referring to Windows Vista as "a major overhaul", or D&D 4th Edition?
As long as there is a "golden chalice of wisdom" as a prize, I don't care ;)
I predict the next step will be a major overhaul of the evaluation system which will be widely hailed as a vast improvement on paper but turn out to be a huge mess and pleasing to no one.
Well that and plenty of people complaining it is the same old shit, due the lack of quests. Unless the dungeon masters, uh managers, recognise this will simply cause the people to move on to the next environment where quests are implemented.
The only way I can think of removing your information is to edit your profile with random information that makes sense but is generic.
How about adding some details about the people running MySpace in your profile?
If some of you are feeling left out, because you are using Linux or MacOS X. Here are sites listing alternative web browsers for your platforms:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers_for_Unix_and_Unix-like_operating_systems
- http://www.pure-mac.com/webb.html
Maybe we just need to cycle our subject line more often...............or encourage more people to join SETI to increase the size of the botnet!
Maybe we should simply try pimping them Viagra and Rolexes. It may be novel enough to interest them ;)
Palm devices worked very much like the iPhone: touch screen, a launcher with a bunch of icons, pretty easy to use. Sync required some fiddling, but the original iPhone also required iTunes for activation.
In many ways the iPhone is what the Palm could have become, since there are enough similarities there. The problem is that Palm lost direction big time and burnt many of its valuable resources in doing so. The Palm Pre has plenty of potential, but the build quality of the unit is a major issue. You can't make a quality product by making it feel like cheap plastic.
It is not good enough making a great device, instead you have to continue making devices as great as you can. Apple failed at the end of the 80s, by sitting on its laurels and that almost destroyed them. There are no winners in business, since there is no finishing line, instead there are simply competitors who are currently taking the lead.
Looks like ET's spam filter is working just fine ;)
Unfortunately, it seems that even if God almighty would have stepped down and told Mr. Conroy that filtering of this sort is a bad idea i wouldn't have helped much.
Chances are he turned to God, looked down at him and sneered "You a god? I am my own god. I will ignore the drivel coming from a being such as you".
Most people consider good and bad to be two extremes of a straight line. I see them as opposing points on a circle. If you go too far one way there is a chance that you will end up where you didn't mean to be. The best place is somewhere in the middle, IMHO. No, its not a perfect view, but what is?
The Apple culture is about obsession. This goes from creation to use. Despite any flaws the iPhone it has, it feels likes someone actually thought how non-engineers would use it. This is an important factor IMHO, because even with the 'wow' factor, a device will only work if people can find it usable. Too many gadgets, IMHO, are designed by engineers and almost feel like the primary user was an engineer. To many people the "it just works" element is as important as any of the features that the device it may include.
There are other companies who have understood the people factor, but all to often it doesn't feel like it is running through the veins of the companies.
Looking at Microsoft, I feel that they are confused about what it means be user friendly. There are elements of the company who seem to get it, while there are other parts that thinks bells and whistles are what user friendly is about. For me being user friendly is something a little complex, it is that right balance of simplicity and richness of functionality. Hiding features or dumbing down an application is not going to magically solve the problem, if the humans factor is forgotten in the process.
The irony in all this is that Apple spends less on R&D than Microsoft, yet whether it is through focused R&D or some other factor I feel they seem to capture the magic combination better. Maybe there is something to be said of having a company run by a guy who is so obsessive that his passion captivates people, rather than alienating them - yes, I am insinuating that Balmer's passion at developer conferences is more an after thought than something that drives the company in a cohesive way.
I thought cartels were generally considered illegal. By supporting these entities he is essentially supporting the notion of legal cartels. I think the USA is going to become more and more isolated in its point of views.
I had great hope for some real change when Obama came in, but he standing shows that there isn't really much separating the Democrats and the Republicans. For me, it really goes to show the whole notion of democracy in the states is more about changing the logo of the party in charge, rather than anything else. Which ever party is in charge, it is still the corporations which hold them by the balls. What it will take to institute a government which is by the people for the people, rather than by the people for the corporations.
I have nothing against copyright, rather I disagree with copyrights going beyond a reasonable amount of time.
One question I do have, is what will the reaction of the open source community be in 70 years when the first copyrights of Linux become public domain? This is not a indication of support for long copyrights, but trying to understand the reaction of the community when the shoe is on the other foot.
I'm pretty sure that the tail of an airplane falling off is an unanticipated scenario that humans cannot deal with either ;)
I know you meant that as a joke, but people generally have one advantage over a computer: the urge to want to survive the accident, which makes people more creative out of desperation. If a computer runs into unexpected scenario, then how it deals with it depends on how it was programmed. In some cases you can think of a default behaviour kicking in, or maybe even a reboot. There may be other creative solutions, but the chances are the computer will run out of ideas before the pilot does.
In fact all this reminds me of chess, in that we make a big thing about computers beating humans, but I haven't heard of human vs computer flight competitions. The way I see it is to present both the pilot and the simulator similar conditions and challenges and see which one recovers the best.
Maybe the best way to get ISPs to stop being censorship bitches is every time you have connectivity issues, is to call them up and complain your site has probably been caught in the government censorship filter and you can't see any reason why it would be blocked. Here is hoping that enough complaints of false positives will change things. After all how are you to know whether a site is mearly slashdotted or being blocked?
Sounds like like you guys really need a pirate party to defend your liberties and in the mean time VPN all your important traffic.
BTW does the filter support IPv6
That's a huge upside for linking up video devices though. No interference from the neighbors, no interference from the other room.
There is probably another use (ironically based off 'NCIS: LA') which I can think of: temporary connection to a visual display device without needing a physical connection. Imagine the following:
You have a large display screen in the conference room with a line of sight receptor built in. You want to quickly show something to everyone in the room, but don't want to spend time leaning over to physically connect to the device or set up any special network connections (think security issues). Instead you simply point your iPad type device towards the screen and hey presto you are sharing what you see on your device with everyone else in the room. Since it is line of sight you know no one outside the room can tap it.
Beyond that you could do the same with game consoles. You charge up the device, remove it from its charging cradle and simply point it to the TV. No cables and easy way of deciding which device is making use of the TV.