There's a reason why rip-off Britain is sometimes called Treasure Island. How much does a similarly spec'ed PC cost? Thought so, and I bet it doesn't come in such a good form factor.
If they're going to finally make cuts to the farm budget, why not cut the overall EU budget? Those f*****rs are increasing the size of their budget when most of the member states are slashing spending and imposing painful austerity measures. They're so out of touch; it's so offensive. What value are they bringing? That's right: none, other than some more expensive unnecessary buildings
I was hoping somebody around here might explain the point of opening PDFs embedded in the browser. Instead, your post just confirms my own prejudices. The PDF plugins that I've seen trade off screen space for another toolbar, restrict the functionality over standalone PDF viewer, and break the browser's UI. Chrome's handling of PDF was the single reason I ditched it after a few weeks last year when I tried to switch to it from Firefox (even set to open the PDF viewer was broken as it didn't seem to pass it off to the Acrobat reader properly).
Just how are these things supposed to raise taxes? The article claimed they're cheaper than traffic lights, so how the hell do they cause higher taxes?
Heh: don't give me the physical country size BS;) Canada is bigger and has a small population, but historically has had some of the lowest broadband costs in the West. I know, I lived in Ontario. Both countries are urbanised and have masses of space with barely any population. Sounds like the other part of your post is more akin to the root cause. Besides, every thing's expensive in Australia for some reason.
Just been reminded this of myself. I will be staying with my partner's family for a while this summer (winter!) in Ballarat. That's over 100,000 people, but I just can't believe how bad the internet situation is there. They've upgraded their DSL so that I can work whilst I'm there, but the prices are outrageous, especially considering what one gets for the money: low speeds and tiny bit budget. For twice the price of what I get here in London (and the UK is hardly cheap), they get ADSL instead of ADSL2+, they get 10 GB/mo during the day (WTF is this BS?) and 40GB/mo off-peak versus unlimited, they get their upstream bandwidth artificially crippled at 384kbs versus whatever the line can handle. They're classified as "off-net", but they're not exactly out of town. What did Aussies do to deserve such wank internet service?
What are you talking about? COM is far from dead, and still represents a very important core technology on Windows. It's very mature now, even though it doesn't get nor need much hype or attention. It's a language neutral binary spec that has lasted the test of time. In fact I've used it on two projects this year already because it seemed the easiest and quickest solution to either exposing a.Net assembly to a native C++ app, and for providing a 64-bit app access to a 32-bit DLL that can't currently be ported.
Not as bad as the: "we apologise for the delay but we are experiencing higher than usual call volume." Some companies have that message for years, which just means they haven't bothered hiring enough people to answer the phones.
No need to be so judgemental. India has some serious paranoia around photography, due to terrorism. When we were there on holiday, we were told for instance that it might not be a good idea to take photos at railway stations if we valued our cameras.
Sounds like bullshit to me. Why not skip a few version numbers? Or why not get out of the version number game altogether and stop dancing to somebody else's tune? A high rate of version inflation is not the same as having a version number higher than the competitors.
Mountain: meet molehill (or, Slashdot: meet tabloid newspaper. This story to be filed with the recent.Net developer hyperbole)
Skype 2.8 on my Mac is showing a dialog offering the choices of: Later/Skip Version/Update.
It seems that it is in everybody's interest for Skype auto update, just because they can't write bug-free software. They were taken offline in December by a buggy version of the client on Windows.
I'm going to be hitting the Update button on that dialog BTW.
I don't know where you've been taking HSR in China, but it's not a little more expense than taking the bus. I've been going back and forth between Shanghai and Hangzhou since about 2006. The trains are much more expensive than the buses. I used to be able to get a return for about Y130 in first class (soft seats), on trains travelling up to 170kph. This has recently been replaced by a HSR line (up to 300kph?), and the ticket prices have doubled. Although rail time has been reduced, my journey time hasn't because the new HSR leaves from Hongqiao instead of Shanghainan, which takes considerably longer to reach, and much more money if you go via taxi, effectively tripling the price for no benefit.
You should be abolishing the sales tax entirely and making a more sensible personal and corporate income tax structure, not worrying about the fraction of the sales tax people do not pay.
Oh you're one of those are you? I'd rather pay more in consumption taxes and less on my income and savings. Income taxes are already high enough, making it harder than necessary to save and plan or prepare for my future.
You are kidding right. The only thing Java and Javascript have in common is the 4 letters in their name. OK the syntax is "in the family"-ish but the concept of the language is vastly different than any of the language you cite. (plenty of framework try to beat javascript into looking like a class based OO language with various degree of success)
Perhaps you could have taken the hint that I understand the differences between Java and JavaScript based on the list of the three other languages I mentioned. The syntactic similarity (grammar if you prefer) to other languages does make JavaScript easy to pickup (it doesn't get in the way of learning the platform in the same way as it would if you were picking up Scheme, SmallTalk, or any other very different language).
This sounds like the crap that preceded Vista, and all the hyperbole about Microsoft replacing the filesystem with some sort of DB or object system (I can barely even remember now!). Microsoft have a long history backwards compatibility, and a good sense not to kill off their existing developers. For those who want to jump on the bandwagon, there will be something new and exciting for people to cut their teeth on, and place on their resume/CV.
I don't know why JS gets such a bad wrap. It's got some really cool features, like closures and dynamic functionality like being able to compile and execute any string. With syntax very familiar to Java/C++/C/C#, it's easy to pickup and write object based code.
For those wanting to break out of the sandbox on Windows, Microsoft has allowed creation of COM objects for a very long time. I guess those are the roots of AJAX too.
There was probably a time (a decade ago?) when they were coding for the lowest common C++ compiler denominator, which was a bit of a problem with all of the platforms they target. I have a feeling that this was a reason at one time why they didn't use some features of C++. Is this still a problem? Even Microsoft have come a long way with their ANSI compliance in this time, but what about weird proprietary compilers on some minor version of UNIX? I remember being shocked by the crapness of Sun's compiler for instance compared with even MSDev95 or or Visual Studio 6!!! Yes I know, sounds like a tall order:)
Wrong level of granularity for me. Tell me which pages/tabs/windows are consuming the most memory, and I'll consider closing them. For me, JS isn't the biggest problem. The following about:memory from Firefox 4 on my Mac isn't much use to me. Has it improved in the nightlies? Unless you can demonstrate why, I couldn't care less about malloced memory. I just want to know which tabs to kill, or how much is in cached recently closed tabs, etc. I don't see Firefox helping with. Google does it much better with Chrome. In fact with Chrome and IE I can make a guess based on process information without overly detailed browser memory reports
Overview
Memory mapped: 505,745,408
Memory in use: 371,368,272
Sounds possibly useful to web developers, but not at all to end users. This whole thing would be solved simply if Mozilla would hurry up and bring FF in to the modern browser age with a multi-process implementation
Slashdot Mirror
There's a reason why rip-off Britain is sometimes called Treasure Island. How much does a similarly spec'ed PC cost? Thought so, and I bet it doesn't come in such a good form factor.
What are the market shares of the other individual PC manufacturers?
Signature for a credit card transaction? How quaint. How many places are there left that are still behind the times and requiring that?
If they're going to finally make cuts to the farm budget, why not cut the overall EU budget? Those f*****rs are increasing the size of their budget when most of the member states are slashing spending and imposing painful austerity measures. They're so out of touch; it's so offensive. What value are they bringing? That's right: none, other than some more expensive unnecessary buildings
Check out gmap-pedometer.com. I use this to plot running and hiking routes mostly. It has an option to show elevation changes.
I was hoping somebody around here might explain the point of opening PDFs embedded in the browser. Instead, your post just confirms my own prejudices. The PDF plugins that I've seen trade off screen space for another toolbar, restrict the functionality over standalone PDF viewer, and break the browser's UI. Chrome's handling of PDF was the single reason I ditched it after a few weeks last year when I tried to switch to it from Firefox (even set to open the PDF viewer was broken as it didn't seem to pass it off to the Acrobat reader properly).
Just how are these things supposed to raise taxes? The article claimed they're cheaper than traffic lights, so how the hell do they cause higher taxes?
Heh: don't give me the physical country size BS ;) Canada is bigger and has a small population, but historically has had some of the lowest broadband costs in the West. I know, I lived in Ontario. Both countries are urbanised and have masses of space with barely any population. Sounds like the other part of your post is more akin to the root cause. Besides, every thing's expensive in Australia for some reason.
Just been reminded this of myself. I will be staying with my partner's family for a while this summer (winter!) in Ballarat. That's over 100,000 people, but I just can't believe how bad the internet situation is there. They've upgraded their DSL so that I can work whilst I'm there, but the prices are outrageous, especially considering what one gets for the money: low speeds and tiny bit budget. For twice the price of what I get here in London (and the UK is hardly cheap), they get ADSL instead of ADSL2+, they get 10 GB /mo during the day (WTF is this BS?) and 40GB/mo off-peak versus unlimited, they get their upstream bandwidth artificially crippled at 384kbs versus whatever the line can handle. They're classified as "off-net", but they're not exactly out of town. What did Aussies do to deserve such wank internet service?
What are you talking about? COM is far from dead, and still represents a very important core technology on Windows. It's very mature now, even though it doesn't get nor need much hype or attention. It's a language neutral binary spec that has lasted the test of time. In fact I've used it on two projects this year already because it seemed the easiest and quickest solution to either exposing a .Net assembly to a native C++ app, and for providing a 64-bit app access to a 32-bit DLL that can't currently be ported.
Most often those people are just call centre employees. Why give them a hard time about a situation they have control over or no say in changing?
Not as bad as the: "we apologise for the delay but we are experiencing higher than usual call volume." Some companies have that message for years, which just means they haven't bothered hiring enough people to answer the phones.
No need to be so judgemental. India has some serious paranoia around photography, due to terrorism. When we were there on holiday, we were told for instance that it might not be a good idea to take photos at railway stations if we valued our cameras.
Sounds like bullshit to me. Why not skip a few version numbers? Or why not get out of the version number game altogether and stop dancing to somebody else's tune? A high rate of version inflation is not the same as having a version number higher than the competitors.
Mountain: meet molehill (or, Slashdot: meet tabloid newspaper. This story to be filed with the recent .Net developer hyperbole)
Skype 2.8 on my Mac is showing a dialog offering the choices of: Later/Skip Version/Update.
It seems that it is in everybody's interest for Skype auto update, just because they can't write bug-free software. They were taken offline in December by a buggy version of the client on Windows.
I'm going to be hitting the Update button on that dialog BTW.
I don't know where you've been taking HSR in China, but it's not a little more expense than taking the bus. I've been going back and forth between Shanghai and Hangzhou since about 2006. The trains are much more expensive than the buses. I used to be able to get a return for about Y130 in first class (soft seats), on trains travelling up to 170kph. This has recently been replaced by a HSR line (up to 300kph?), and the ticket prices have doubled. Although rail time has been reduced, my journey time hasn't because the new HSR leaves from Hongqiao instead of Shanghainan, which takes considerably longer to reach, and much more money if you go via taxi, effectively tripling the price for no benefit.
They are your workers. You're paying for all that through your choices as a consumer. Don't like? Don't buy things that were made in China.
Is that debt interest just interest payments on the debt, or debt repayments, including interest?
Can you say that 15% of the money that the government takes from you goes just on debt interest? If so, that seems like good value for money.
Oh you're one of those are you? I'd rather pay more in consumption taxes and less on my income and savings. Income taxes are already high enough, making it harder than necessary to save and plan or prepare for my future.
Perhaps you could have taken the hint that I understand the differences between Java and JavaScript based on the list of the three other languages I mentioned. The syntactic similarity (grammar if you prefer) to other languages does make JavaScript easy to pickup (it doesn't get in the way of learning the platform in the same way as it would if you were picking up Scheme, SmallTalk, or any other very different language).
This sounds like the crap that preceded Vista, and all the hyperbole about Microsoft replacing the filesystem with some sort of DB or object system (I can barely even remember now!). Microsoft have a long history backwards compatibility, and a good sense not to kill off their existing developers. For those who want to jump on the bandwagon, there will be something new and exciting for people to cut their teeth on, and place on their resume/CV.
I don't know why JS gets such a bad wrap. It's got some really cool features, like closures and dynamic functionality like being able to compile and execute any string. With syntax very familiar to Java/C++/C/C#, it's easy to pickup and write object based code.
For those wanting to break out of the sandbox on Windows, Microsoft has allowed creation of COM objects for a very long time. I guess those are the roots of AJAX too.
There was probably a time (a decade ago?) when they were coding for the lowest common C++ compiler denominator, which was a bit of a problem with all of the platforms they target. I have a feeling that this was a reason at one time why they didn't use some features of C++. Is this still a problem? Even Microsoft have come a long way with their ANSI compliance in this time, but what about weird proprietary compilers on some minor version of UNIX? I remember being shocked by the crapness of Sun's compiler for instance compared with even MSDev95 or or Visual Studio 6!!! Yes I know, sounds like a tall order :)
Wrong level of granularity for me. Tell me which pages/tabs/windows are consuming the most memory, and I'll consider closing them. For me, JS isn't the biggest problem. The following about:memory from Firefox 4 on my Mac isn't much use to me. Has it improved in the nightlies? Unless you can demonstrate why, I couldn't care less about malloced memory. I just want to know which tabs to kill, or how much is in cached recently closed tabs, etc. I don't see Firefox helping with. Google does it much better with Chrome. In fact with Chrome and IE I can make a guess based on process information without overly detailed browser memory reports
Overview
Memory mapped: 505,745,408
Memory in use: 371,368,272
Other Information
Description Value
malloc/allocated 371,375,024
malloc/mapped 505,745,408
malloc/zone0/committed 368,321,568
malloc/zone0/allocated 463,474,688
js/gc-heap 101,711,872
js/string-data 4,967,696
js/mjit-code 8,063,468
storage/sqlite/pagecache 74,703,280
storage/sqlite/other 2,188,744
images/chrome/used/raw0images/chrome/used/uncompressed 527,096
images/chrome/unused/raw0images/chrome/unused/uncompressed0images/content/used/raw 5,760,063
images/content/used/uncompressed 3,856,569
images/content/unused/raw 5,620
images/content/unused/uncompressed 17,440
layout/all 11,927,351
layout/bidi 5,666
gfx/surface/image 4,614,336
shmem/allocated 1,888,256
shmem/mapped 1,888,256
content/canvas/2d_pixel_bytes 1,091,584
Sounds possibly useful to web developers, but not at all to end users. This whole thing would be solved simply if Mozilla would hurry up and bring FF in to the modern browser age with a multi-process implementation