Actually, it defaults to on. You may have been confused by the "Always open popups in new window" option in which controls the behavior of a a popup that's already been allowed. Check the Privacy tab for the popup blocker settings.
Re:Obesity comes from a simple condition...
on
Obesity Contagious?
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· Score: 1
Sure, some people have higher appetites... or lower metabolisms
It should be noted that while some have it easier than others, these things are easily controllable. Everything from the type of foods you eat, how often you eat, when you eat, and how active you excercise affects your metabolism.
Take responsibility for your unhealthy lifestyle.
on
Obesity Contagious?
·
· Score: 1
It makes people feel more comfortable to think that obesity stems from lack of control
Of course it does. I'm not sure how conclusive this research is, but people will go to all ends to shift responsibility from themselves. I will go out on a limb and say, even considering this research, that the largest cause obesity is still poor diet and a lack of excercise.
No, he didn't. MSFT didn't start as a multibillion dollar company or with any special help, other than that Apple had a strong foothold on both the Education and Home market. When Win95 came out it was the biggest retail software rush ever. There was no monopoly then, there was no overbearing and slightly questionable OEM agreements, there was no drug in the water, that forced people to adopt Windows.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist.
No they are not. This statement doesn't even make sense, because having am monopoly is not even illegal. They are conviced of aggressive OEM deals and leveraging their monopoloy in ways that are not legal. But even then these are grey issues (unless you're a narrow minded typical/. reader, in which case it's all 0's and 1's). Regardless, Gates was already the richest man before the monopoly was in existance. Second, even if MSFT never bundled IE, it wouldn't have really mattered in the short term from a profit standpoint. It cost MSFT *more* money to bundle IE than not. The reality is that any modern OS needs a browser, and integrating it allows ISV's to write software against the MSIE components without worrying whether or not it's installed. So then we have the OEM agreements which piss me off just as much as they do you. I'm glad that was resolved, but let's be honest - niether BeOS nor OS/2 Warp were ready for the majority of desktops during the critical part of Windows' success.
e.g. if Gates gave away 3/4 of everything he owned, he could still live incredibly comfortably.
So you're not giving enough unless you give so much that you can't live comfortably or with luxuries from the money you've earned?. Plus Gates has claimed multiple times that over 90% of his wealth will be going to charitable causes.
But when someone goes on and on about how great he is because of his charity, I tell them they are full of shit. He has made no sacrifice to do so.
So pretty much anyone who is successful and charitable is full of shit, even though from a practical standpoint they've done a lot more for these organizations than most middle income people can do within three lifetimes. From an idealistic standpoint the sacrifice made by those who make personal sacrifices is important, and it's important to an extent practically as well. But the bottom line is that these organizations need a LOT of money to function, and they don't run because of the likes of you. Your entire post reeks of jealousy of those who are very successful and able to contribute to charitable causes in ways you could never dream of.
So technically superior alternatives like OS/2 and BeOS weren't given a fair chance, and consumers never got to try them out.
Subjective at best. True, both OS's had technical advantages to Windows at the time. But both, especially BeOS (yes, I dual booted BeOS) were not ready for prime time on a Joesumer PC. Customers didn't care about choice here any more than they cared about the brand of memory used in the machine. The only customers who cared either bought an Apple or built their own machine. Stop putting yourself into the demographic of the masses. People just don't care about these alternatives. They wanted something cheap, easy, and ubiquitous, and crap hardware + Windows was the only option at the time.
Your perspective is very binary. There are two options for Google. Zero Google in China(100% censored), or China controlled Google (1% censored). Google does not have the option not to censor. Rather, after protest, it has decided that a small amount of censoring is better than complete censoring.
I've always believed that if you aren't willing to die for the freedoms that you care about that you don't deserve them (e.g. like many Americans willing to give up freedoms for "security"). If the Chinese people want freedom, they will need to revolt against their oppressive government. In the mean time, while we as individuals should continue to encourage these freedoms, it does no good for Google to be banned from China due to noncompliance from their law. It only limits the avenues for information even more for the Chinese people. Google is not sacrificing any ethics here.
I agree that it makes sense for Apple to sell their machines with their preferred OS. I just made the comment because I see no difference with this than Dell selling their machines with their preferred OS. It's really (obviously?) not a tax - I used the term very loosely.
I knew all of the literal nerds here would take this out of context (in your defense, it was poorly worded on my part). Within the context of Dell, Windows is a critcal part of their product (the computer). They don't have a business shipping machines that don't work in a user friendly fashion out of the box. For an Apple computer, OSX is a critical part. Yes it can run Yellow Dog Linux and I'm sure all sorts of interesting things, but as far as Apple is concerned, OS X is a critical part of their product, just as much as Windows is for Dell. If you don't like Dell or Apple's product offerings, you can build your own product.
In regards to licensing, it's probably cheaper for Dell to license Windows for all desktops regardless of the extremely insignificant percentage of desktops in which does not ship with Windows preinstalled. It's a simple business decision. I gurunatee that if Dell was shipping even 10% of its desktops with Linux preinstalled that you would not be paying for Windows on these machines, just as you don't pay for Windows on an Apple or from a smaller build-it-yourself type vendor.
No, you don't pay for it. Dell has a bulk licensce agreement in which they purchase hundreds of thousands of Windows licenses because they're an OS vendor. The number of "non-Windows" machines that they sell are so insignificant (I'm not consumer desktops here, since servers are licensed differently) that it's cheaper to simply include this part with all machines whether or not it gets swapped out with another part. This is the same as many other Dell offers, such as Printers and Web cams. You can chose NOT to have the printer or webcam, but the price does NOT change. Dell is all about efficiency, not about making your perfect custom box. If you want that, there are *plenty* of OEMs who do not have these types of Microsoft licensing agreements. Dell makes "exclusive" distribution with many companies. If you don't like how Dell does business, don't by a Dell.
Name a tier 1 Computer assembler/maker that doesn't pay a microsoft tax.
Apple. It's silly to argue that Apple isn't one just because they aren't x86. A computer is a computer regardless of the parts, and plenty of people buy Apple computers. Of course as most of us know even the x86 argument - invalid as it is - goes out the window once Apple starts selling x86 computers.
The operating system is not a tax. If Dell ships all of their machines with Maxtor hard drives, you are not paying a "Maxtor tax", you're paying for the part inside. Windows is a critical part of a computer. If you don't want that part, go build your own computer.
GP>"...and the coders of Photoshop would be out of work and unpaid"
This is the problem with many economic "beliefs". They are limited in scope. Companies that pay for Photoshop now would get a free (new and improved) GIMP and have lower overhead costs.
So pretty much you're saying is that a bunch of people work for free on the Gimp so that for-profit companies can lower their overhead which in turn their shareholders and executives get more money?
I've already made this point previously but I'll make it briefly again. One of the reasons for offshoring has to do with scale, especially within the context of software developers. For example, software companies in the Seattle/Redmond area have significantly more open positions than they are able to fill. If a company needs to grow its development capabilities than India is a great place to do it.
Demand will begin to outpace supply in India's IT sector causeing the price of IT skilled labor to increase.
Wage inflation is already happening and at alarming rates. Even then, India developers are still a fraction of the cost of US developers, especially those in major cities with high costs of living. But investing in India is not just about lower cost development. It's about scale. It's very hard to hire even average software developers (and as many of us know, an average software developer is not all that great). So while we definitely expect to see costs rising in India they will still be significantly less than the US while also providing enough talent meet demand.
Bottom line, were are be bombarded with crap. Dell and there "bad" capacitors, Apples scratching nano screens, Sony's PSP and now Microsoft's overheating XBox 3-POS-0 powersupplies... and this has been in the past 18 months.
Many of these cases have to do with user issues. Nano's are small enough to put in the same pocket as your keys, do you're scratching them more often - you didn't do this as much with your bigger iPods. XBox 360's are working fine in the vast, vast majority of cases. There maybe be a few faulty units, but for the most part it is well known that these power supplies are hot and can not be placed on thick carpet. I'm all for the improvement of quality overall, and to an extent I share your sentiment that we need demand higher quality as consumers. On the other hand there are tolerances for faulty units and these tolerances are fairly low. They seem to affect so many people because you don't have 900,000 artciles on how the XBox worked, you only have one or two about a few people who are having problems. Without some tolerance for lower quality we would be paying through the nose for these products. Maybe the bar needs to be raised a little, but I personally do not want to be paying $1200 for a military grade Nano.
Re:Admin permissions required in windows? Hogwash.
on
Antispyware Shootout
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· Score: 1
The point you're making is so important that it needs to be emphasized. People don't by machines to be secure, they buy them to be usable. The most secure machine is one that doesn't power on. It's very hard to make security transparent to the user. I really liked OSX's approach with the root dialog, but that is nowhere near bulletproof.
Some people will claim that "OS X prompts you for a root password when performing an install, you don't need to log out and log in". Sure, that's useful - but most of the OS X users i've seen blindly type in the root/admin password whenever the dialog box pops up. They never even read the box to see what is going on! Often times they ask if there is any way to get rid of that box.
Exactly - users just don't care. People can cheer their "su" while running under locked down accounts all day long, but that's not what users want to deal with.
The average user sees computers as Apple, Gateway, Dell, HP, and whichever ones didn't spring to mind there.
As they should, because a computer is a product that combines many parts. One of these parts is essential - the operating system. Without it, this product would be useless to the demographic in which you speak of. Many of these products include the Windows operating system. Apple limits their products to their own operating system. Niether is a tax. There is not much of a market for a computer with missing parts in the major electronic stores - most people want a complete package. For the rest of us, there's bare bones PC's and many "build-to-order" shops that will use whatever motherboard, operating system, or hard drive that you specify. You don't need to build it yourself, they'll do it for you. If you don't want Windows, you don't have to have it on your computer, and you definitely don't have to pay for it. If you don't have the time to configure your machine that's not Microsoft's fault, it's yours.
It's all superfluous it tell you! The best collaborative development tool is the low lying cubical partition! All else pales to it's abilites to facilitate a tight dev team.
It must be nice working on a small team. Even then, since when was bug tracking, requirements tracking, or iteration task tracking superflous? Working on teams with dozens of people located in multiple locations around the world these features are almost critical.
It should be known that this was a MSDN publication that got it wrong, not anything about Team System in particular. As I predicted, that article eventually got pulled. I would also agree that Team System Test was not geared towards TDD, but I have been successful in using it for TDD with only a couple of minor annoyances.
go on then, list theses (modern) "consumer OSes" and their built in web browsers
Mac & Windows have already been listed
Now you're just being stubborn. There are no other modern consumer OS's that have any significant meanining to this discussion. Virtually all OS's on consumer PC's have built in web browsers.
Slashdot Mirror
Popup blocker defaults to off? Bleh.
Actually, it defaults to on. You may have been confused by the "Always open popups in new window" option in which controls the behavior of a a popup that's already been allowed. Check the Privacy tab for the popup blocker settings.
Sure, some people have higher appetites... or lower metabolisms
It should be noted that while some have it easier than others, these things are easily controllable. Everything from the type of foods you eat, how often you eat, when you eat, and how active you excercise affects your metabolism.
It makes people feel more comfortable to think that obesity stems from lack of control
Of course it does. I'm not sure how conclusive this research is, but people will go to all ends to shift responsibility from themselves. I will go out on a limb and say, even considering this research, that the largest cause obesity is still poor diet and a lack of excercise.
Gates made his fortune through criminal activity.
/. reader, in which case it's all 0's and 1's). Regardless, Gates was already the richest man before the monopoly was in existance. Second, even if MSFT never bundled IE, it wouldn't have really mattered in the short term from a profit standpoint. It cost MSFT *more* money to bundle IE than not. The reality is that any modern OS needs a browser, and integrating it allows ISV's to write software against the MSIE components without worrying whether or not it's installed. So then we have the OEM agreements which piss me off just as much as they do you. I'm glad that was resolved, but let's be honest - niether BeOS nor OS/2 Warp were ready for the majority of desktops during the critical part of Windows' success.
No, he didn't. MSFT didn't start as a multibillion dollar company or with any special help, other than that Apple had a strong foothold on both the Education and Home market. When Win95 came out it was the biggest retail software rush ever. There was no monopoly then, there was no overbearing and slightly questionable OEM agreements, there was no drug in the water, that forced people to adopt Windows.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist.
No they are not. This statement doesn't even make sense, because having am monopoly is not even illegal. They are conviced of aggressive OEM deals and leveraging their monopoloy in ways that are not legal. But even then these are grey issues (unless you're a narrow minded typical
e.g. if Gates gave away 3/4 of everything he owned, he could still live incredibly comfortably.
So you're not giving enough unless you give so much that you can't live comfortably or with luxuries from the money you've earned?. Plus Gates has claimed multiple times that over 90% of his wealth will be going to charitable causes.
But when someone goes on and on about how great he is because of his charity, I tell them they are full of shit. He has made no sacrifice to do so.
So pretty much anyone who is successful and charitable is full of shit, even though from a practical standpoint they've done a lot more for these organizations than most middle income people can do within three lifetimes. From an idealistic standpoint the sacrifice made by those who make personal sacrifices is important, and it's important to an extent practically as well. But the bottom line is that these organizations need a LOT of money to function, and they don't run because of the likes of you. Your entire post reeks of jealousy of those who are very successful and able to contribute to charitable causes in ways you could never dream of.
So technically superior alternatives like OS/2 and BeOS weren't given a fair chance, and consumers never got to try them out.
Subjective at best. True, both OS's had technical advantages to Windows at the time. But both, especially BeOS (yes, I dual booted BeOS) were not ready for prime time on a Joesumer PC. Customers didn't care about choice here any more than they cared about the brand of memory used in the machine. The only customers who cared either bought an Apple or built their own machine. Stop putting yourself into the demographic of the masses. People just don't care about these alternatives. They wanted something cheap, easy, and ubiquitous, and crap hardware + Windows was the only option at the time.
Your perspective is very binary. There are two options for Google. Zero Google in China(100% censored), or China controlled Google (1% censored). Google does not have the option not to censor. Rather, after protest, it has decided that a small amount of censoring is better than complete censoring.
I've always believed that if you aren't willing to die for the freedoms that you care about that you don't deserve them (e.g. like many Americans willing to give up freedoms for "security"). If the Chinese people want freedom, they will need to revolt against their oppressive government. In the mean time, while we as individuals should continue to encourage these freedoms, it does no good for Google to be banned from China due to noncompliance from their law. It only limits the avenues for information even more for the Chinese people. Google is not sacrificing any ethics here.
I agree that it makes sense for Apple to sell their machines with their preferred OS. I just made the comment because I see no difference with this than Dell selling their machines with their preferred OS. It's really (obviously?) not a tax - I used the term very loosely.
So what if I buy an Apple machine but use Windows exclusively on it? Do I have to pay for the OSX license?
In case you're still following this thread, I made a post that indirectly replies to some of your comments
here.
Windows is a critical part of a computer.
I knew all of the literal nerds here would take this out of context (in your defense, it was poorly worded on my part). Within the context of Dell, Windows is a critcal part of their product (the computer). They don't have a business shipping machines that don't work in a user friendly fashion out of the box. For an Apple computer, OSX is a critical part. Yes it can run Yellow Dog Linux and I'm sure all sorts of interesting things, but as far as Apple is concerned, OS X is a critical part of their product, just as much as Windows is for Dell. If you don't like Dell or Apple's product offerings, you can build your own product.
In regards to licensing, it's probably cheaper for Dell to license Windows for all desktops regardless of the extremely insignificant percentage of desktops in which does not ship with Windows preinstalled. It's a simple business decision. I gurunatee that if Dell was shipping even 10% of its desktops with Linux preinstalled that you would not be paying for Windows on these machines, just as you don't pay for Windows on an Apple or from a smaller build-it-yourself type vendor.
No, you don't pay for it. Dell has a bulk licensce agreement in which they purchase hundreds of thousands of Windows licenses because they're an OS vendor. The number of "non-Windows" machines that they sell are so insignificant (I'm not consumer desktops here, since servers are licensed differently) that it's cheaper to simply include this part with all machines whether or not it gets swapped out with another part. This is the same as many other Dell offers, such as Printers and Web cams. You can chose NOT to have the printer or webcam, but the price does NOT change. Dell is all about efficiency, not about making your perfect custom box. If you want that, there are *plenty* of OEMs who do not have these types of Microsoft licensing agreements. Dell makes "exclusive" distribution with many companies. If you don't like how Dell does business, don't by a Dell.
I heard these guys have been selling computers with an alternative operating system for quite some time: Apple.
Name a tier 1 Computer assembler/maker that doesn't pay a microsoft tax.
Apple. It's silly to argue that Apple isn't one just because they aren't x86. A computer is a computer regardless of the parts, and plenty of people buy Apple computers. Of course as most of us know even the x86 argument - invalid as it is - goes out the window once Apple starts selling x86 computers.
The operating system is not a tax. If Dell ships all of their machines with Maxtor hard drives, you are not paying a "Maxtor tax", you're paying for the part inside. Windows is a critical part of a computer. If you don't want that part, go build your own computer.
GP>"...and the coders of Photoshop would be out of work and unpaid"
This is the problem with many economic "beliefs". They are limited in scope. Companies that pay for Photoshop now would get a free (new and improved) GIMP and have lower overhead costs.
So pretty much you're saying is that a bunch of people work for free on the Gimp so that for-profit companies can lower their overhead which in turn their shareholders and executives get more money?
HTML is good for making web pages, but bad for web apps. For that you have DHTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, etc...
I think you meant, "HTML is good for making web pages, but bad for web apps. For that you have chicken wire and duct tape."
I've already made this point previously but I'll make it briefly again. One of the reasons for offshoring has to do with scale, especially within the context of software developers. For example, software companies in the Seattle/Redmond area have significantly more open positions than they are able to fill. If a company needs to grow its development capabilities than India is a great place to do it.
Demand will begin to outpace supply in India's IT sector causeing the price of IT skilled labor to increase.
Wage inflation is already happening and at alarming rates. Even then, India developers are still a fraction of the cost of US developers, especially those in major cities with high costs of living. But investing in India is not just about lower cost development. It's about scale. It's very hard to hire even average software developers (and as many of us know, an average software developer is not all that great). So while we definitely expect to see costs rising in India they will still be significantly less than the US while also providing enough talent meet demand.
Bottom line, were are be bombarded with crap. Dell and there "bad" capacitors, Apples scratching nano screens, Sony's PSP and now Microsoft's overheating XBox 3-POS-0 powersupplies ... and this has been in the past 18 months.
Many of these cases have to do with user issues. Nano's are small enough to put in the same pocket as your keys, do you're scratching them more often - you didn't do this as much with your bigger iPods. XBox 360's are working fine in the vast, vast majority of cases. There maybe be a few faulty units, but for the most part it is well known that these power supplies are hot and can not be placed on thick carpet. I'm all for the improvement of quality overall, and to an extent I share your sentiment that we need demand higher quality as consumers. On the other hand there are tolerances for faulty units and these tolerances are fairly low. They seem to affect so many people because you don't have 900,000 artciles on how the XBox worked, you only have one or two about a few people who are having problems. Without some tolerance for lower quality we would be paying through the nose for these products. Maybe the bar needs to be raised a little, but I personally do not want to be paying $1200 for a military grade Nano.
The point you're making is so important that it needs to be emphasized. People don't by machines to be secure, they buy them to be usable. The most secure machine is one that doesn't power on. It's very hard to make security transparent to the user. I really liked OSX's approach with the root dialog, but that is nowhere near bulletproof.
Some people will claim that "OS X prompts you for a root password when performing an install, you don't need to log out and log in". Sure, that's useful - but most of the OS X users i've seen blindly type in the root/admin password whenever the dialog box pops up. They never even read the box to see what is going on! Often times they ask if there is any way to get rid of that box.
Exactly - users just don't care. People can cheer their "su" while running under locked down accounts all day long, but that's not what users want to deal with.
The average user sees computers as Apple, Gateway, Dell, HP, and whichever ones didn't spring to mind there.
As they should, because a computer is a product that combines many parts. One of these parts is essential - the operating system. Without it, this product would be useless to the demographic in which you speak of. Many of these products include the Windows operating system. Apple limits their products to their own operating system. Niether is a tax. There is not much of a market for a computer with missing parts in the major electronic stores - most people want a complete package. For the rest of us, there's bare bones PC's and many "build-to-order" shops that will use whatever motherboard, operating system, or hard drive that you specify. You don't need to build it yourself, they'll do it for you. If you don't want Windows, you don't have to have it on your computer, and you definitely don't have to pay for it. If you don't have the time to configure your machine that's not Microsoft's fault, it's yours.
It's all superfluous it tell you! The best collaborative development tool is the low lying cubical partition! All else pales to it's abilites to facilitate a tight dev team.
It must be nice working on a small team. Even then, since when was bug tracking, requirements tracking, or iteration task tracking superflous? Working on teams with dozens of people located in multiple locations around the world these features are almost critical.
It should be known that this was a MSDN publication that got it wrong, not anything about Team System in particular. As I predicted, that article eventually got pulled. I would also agree that Team System Test was not geared towards TDD, but I have been successful in using it for TDD with only a couple of minor annoyances.
go on then, list theses (modern) "consumer OSes" and their built in web browsers
Mac & Windows have already been listed
Now you're just being stubborn. There are no other modern consumer OS's that have any significant meanining to this discussion. Virtually all OS's on consumer PC's have built in web browsers.