Latex is really the solution. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel. In fact, reinventing the wheel might cause problems when submitting papers. From what I have seen, many academic journals prefer.tex and.eps files. I can't imagine what they would do with HTML.
The nice thing about LaTex is that, like HTML, it is a pure markup language, but it is a markup language that understands typesetting so one tend to get a good page layout no matter what. OTOH, HTML merely identifies blocks of text as various generic types, and really does not have a context for the types. The render engine is free visualize, make a sound, or do whatever it wishes to represent the blocks. CSS is what imposes a consistent visual framework, so what one needs to duplicate LaTex is in fact CSS.
Use LaTex. Except for the often limited fonts, it is vastly superior to an word processor, because a word processor is not the write tool to create real documents. We have know that for many years. That is why people bought pagemaker. And I think the lack of fonts forces people to create compelling content. LaTex is free, there are many good books,and if you do have a hankering to code, you can always play with Tex.
This is really annoying. If I pay for a machine, and I pay for the software. then I don't want it changing the options. I want to set what will happen. And I want it to work efficiently, without useless overhead put in simply to increase bragging rights of the vendor.
I have noticed that IE7 and IE8, anything typed into the URL field will go to Bing, unless it is 100% qualified. I know MS has always wanted everything to go through it's servers, but now it seems it is getting more extreme. If you don't type in HTTP it will go to bing. I also recall a time, or maybe not, when you could the URL field to go to google. In any case, the idea that a URL will go to a search engine never made sense to me. If the URL is not sufficiently qualified, then it should return a 404. The security risk of expecting a URL to return something other than the intended target is certainly a securty risk.
But no one else is any better. I have noticed on Adobe updates that they try to sneak in Yahoo tool bar. Apple will change the default browser to Safari with any little excuse, almost at every reboot. I don't know what google is doing, but since I prefer it to other things, I haven't had any issues in trying to get rid of it. I suspect when they begin to lose market share, all hell will break loose.
For the under 14 year old set, a white list is the only way to go. A firefox extension is one way to do it, until they start figuring out how to use IE. One might think that a filter might work, but kids know how to use proxies, even HTTPS, and will spend all day trying to get to that one site they want. Whitelists are about the only way to go.
Separate user accounts might work, as long as the kid cannot possibly install any software. Mac OS allows this, as well as whitelists and execution restrictions. Of course this can be set up in any *nix using the host file and file permissions, so the Ubuntu set up properly on CD would be the most secure solution.
I am not really for overly restricting children movements, but this falls under the general idea of not letting a child go home in another person car, not letting children talk to strangers, generally making sure kids are supervised at least through high school, when, as we all know, all hell breaks loose and there is little anyone can do.
This is a valid concern, but is not really an issue with the office suite. If the goal is consistent display across products, this will never happen with any office product. There is simply little incentive. Any software developer is going to want all users to use their product, at the latest version. There is almost no incentive to build interoperability outside of the proprietary suite. This is the primary reason why I stopped using MS Office. I would send stuff out, and people, who were using a more recent version, could not read my files. Since they were the customer, it was my responsibility to upgrade, but I did not have the money. The solution was to move OO.org which was more likely to be able to write files in whatever version of MS Office the customer was using.
The issue really is the state of MS Office as a defacto standard, which really never really existed because there is no cross platform year after year guarantee that files will remain accessible. The way to insure that formating will remain constant across platform and through time, at least so far, is the PDF file. I laugh every time I get a.doc memo. I think how simple it would be to change the memo slightly, spoof the address, and get someone in trouble. MS Office security is not nearly as secure as Adobe PDF.
Back to the subject. PDF is a better way to exchange files, as long as they do not need to be edited. MS can provide a superior solution where files are edited. HTML is also good for distribution of files. I have also taken to converting my presentations into HTML or flash. Again, I see all these presentations on the web. Change the presentation, hack, upload, frivolity ensues.
My current situation is that I have machines that run MS Office 2003, and other runs later versions. The later versions tend to bork the 2003 files, and I will not even deal with the later version in 2003. I have OO.org installed, and if 2003 will not work I use OO.org.
Way back when, MS got itself into businesses by being cheaper than Unix. Seriously. I worked on a vertical application solution and the MS solution was cheaper than 1/3. For a small business, this was significant. We had no problem paying the money, as we were going to make money, but there seemed little reason to be little reason to spend the money just to get the (declining) industry standard solution. Add to this that, at that time, MS OS was a reletively simple structure and basically any minimal competent person could set it up, the MS solution would end up being an order of magnitude cheaper.
Fast forward. MS only produces complicated behemoths. To this day MS Windows has not completely understood it is a network OS(perhaps 7 will do it). It is no longer the case that a part time person can keep 20 machines running. And when something does happen, it can be very difficult to fix. A single event can require a complete reinstall of the OS. I've made mistakes of going to a wrong web site and had this happen on a completely up to date machine. I have allowed untrusted parties to run my MS machines and have had significant damage caused within the hour. MS machines are the dependable work horses they once were. It now requires a significant infrastructure to keep MS machines a production. The best case scenario is to treat each machine as a RAID, keeping data off the machine, and using a standard HD disk images. Doesn't this sound like the pre-MS days of the so-called inefficient mainframe. MS is worried about this and has began a defensive campaign against IBM.
I would argue that MS machines are now, overall, as expensive and inefficient as the Unix machines were when ATT tried to save themselves with the introduction of this machine. This does not mean that MS does not have value, at least to legacy customers, but it may not be the best choice for startups, as Unix was the not the best choice in the late 1980's.
I can point to an exact time, around 2000, when MS became too expensive to use. It was a time whem MS would accuse paying customers of theft. Force customer to undergo intrusive and expensive audits. Require support staff to be redirected from supporting the customers need to make a profit, to the MS need to make a profit.
In light of this, I think we are going to see non-MS solution, just like we say non-ATT and non-IBM solutions. The biggest impediment to this is the easy supply of reliable naked PCs with full support to the SOHO owner. I think some companies, like Gateway, made a mistake in continuing to hook their saddle to the MS bandwagon instead of providing *nix solution for common business problems. In many cases, smart firms buy solutions, not an OS.
This is the most complicated scenario, but has nothing to do with anything that is going on right now, at least in my reading.
As far as I can gather, what states are complaining about is that a package is shipped from a location within the state to an address within the state. Taxes are not being paid because the order was originated at a location outside of the state, which is legal. States are changing the law so that if the out of state entity is merely a broker, while the orders are in fact being processed and fulfilled in state, then taxes are paid. Now this is an oversimplification, but that is to counteract the overcomplicating.
Then there is the issue of what is taxed and what is not. Like the federal tax, the complications come in when a the brother in law or sister in law of a high ranking government official wants special treatment for their unique situation. Of course, when the taxes become simple, then it become a simple matter to avoid the tax.
These are not impediments to Amazon doing business, as they do enough business in all the states to pay for the software that would allow them to pay sales tax. If a vendor did have pay sales tax when shipping to a state, we would see software products pop up almost overnight that would allow that to happen. Amazon could afford them. Small startups could not. To make things even, the state would have to install a system that would allow any business to quickly check to see if a tax was needed, and how much it would be. This would require quite a bit of state investment(maybe good use of stimulus money) and would be the only way to balance the market for the small business. Such a state provided system would primarily be used by small businesses, as larger firms would find it more efficient to run an automatic system. Of course, at this point, we might start thinking about county and city taxes.
If states would put such a system in place, that provided a clearinghouse for small firms and a central information for firms that wanted to provide solutions to large firms, I would certainly support a system where the vendor pays the tax. After all, the tradition of the buyer, not vendor, paying the tax comes from a time when communication and information was expensive. This is no longer the case. OTOH, I don't think unfunded mandates that the government has become so fond of imposing(read NCLB, how much has that cost families in terms of lost education that has to be paid later in remedial college classes) are appropriate. If a state wants taxes, pay for some the infrastructure.
I remember when the walkman and similar cassettes came out. I did not know what the metal/normal switch was for, and I was more than 13. It did not seem that long until the auto reverse feature was common. I wonder how many people in the 90's, who never grew up with albums, really understood that there were two tracks, or sides, on a tape.
Here are the two reasons I liked my first MP3 player better than a tape or cd player. First, even on my primitive player, which I used from a time before the iPod existed until the Minis came out, it was nice to carry hours of music around without having to carry a my 30 tape case, not to mention the player that was huge by comparison. Second, battery life was much better. I would easily go through a set of batteries every day or so on a CD player. The MP3 player was closer to a week.
I would say the sound is a mater of personal taste. A walkman though a good pair of headphones is likely better than an iPod, depending if the tape was original or a rip. I wonder if music is not mastered differently for electronic playback. I wonder if people have not grown increasingly impatient about content delivery, and a tape playback is simply not efficient enough to be enjoyable. Back in the day we might have had to wait 20 minutes for the next Michael Jackson video to roll around in the MTV queue(kid, MTV stands for Music TV,and they once played videos all the time. It was cool.) Now just get on youtube and get whatever videos you want, without having to sit through damn Tears for Fears mashes.(no offense to the few that liked Tears for Fears videos). And believe me, not matter what your parents say, much more time was wasted watching the primeval cable stations than anyone could waste on the Internet, without the real benifits of the internet.
It is a town, of people. People are not rational. Even we are people. Do we hang out with people that dislike us. Do we shop at stores that are not advertising to our norms. I am hones enough to admit that there are stores I do not frequent simply because they are not my 'type of stores'.
The real issue is that everything that is published on the internet is considered fair game. It was a only a few stories back where we were getting in an uproar because a reasonable judge said, maybe summarizing an article with a link might be a violation of copyright. Would the newspaper have been in the clear if they had summarized the post with a link to the full post, even if the same damage was caused? What if the newspaper made a material error in the summary? The linking issue is the same. Many people who post what is essentially public content want to control where that material is published or linked from.
This is another expensive lesson that one should be careful what one posts to the internet in a personally identifiable manner. The lawsuit here is not relevant. Even if the newspaper was sued, it is unlikely that the lawsuit would bring any significant money. It was unethical for the newspaper to publish a letter not sent by the original author, although it is unclear that they did not know it was not sent by the original author. Kids sometimes do unwise things, and it sometimes have disastrous effects on the family. Adults should help kids minimize these mistakes, but some kids are hard headed. The appropriate person to bear the burden of the kid's mistake is the parents, not the bystanders.
That is true, but successful advertising tends to enhance the experience of the media they support. How many of us would listen to the radio of watch TV if the ads were just 30 seconds of monotonous droning, or if the ads interrupted the expected flow of content. For instance, if the ads were placed mid sentence instead of act breaks? How many of us would read magazines if there was a paragraph of text on each page, and the rest were ads. In sophisticated media, there is some experience in what works and what does not. The web is a free for all, unlike radio there was never even a hint of over arching philosophy or ethics for advertising, so we end up many pages that are just adverts.
I think much of the issues of ads is that they do tend to ill integrated on the page and do not enhance the viewing experience. One issue is that a page may have to link with many domains, each involving multiple requests, and often the page will not render until all ads are loaded. This is fair, but, again, does mature media expect to be successful if they serve lame ads? Ads support content in a number of ways, but must not conflict with the content.
Access to the video camera and computer is a price of admission.
My question is why is a reasonable price of admission so horrible. For instance, right now to vote in the US you have to register, make you're way down to a voting location, either during early voting hours, or during the normal voting day, present your registration card or a drivers license, and vote. All this is quite cumbersome, but it is the price o participating in democracy. Some may ask why not require official photo id, and the response is that it does really create added security. Fake IDs are probably much more a commodity that voter registration cards.
The same thing applies here. By discussing it on Youtube, you are focusing on a select group of people who participate on youtube. Like voting, those that want to participate will find a way. Those who won't, like those who choose not inconvenience themselves by voting, will not.
I hear tell that this is why the GPL exists. To stop exactly these kind of shenanigans. A person writes a derivative work, say a text editor, and wants to make it available to everyone, so does not copyright it. Another person makes a derivative work from the non copyrighted work, and then copyrights the result. Now, not even the original author has acess tot he work.
Some of this has been solved through copyright changes. Now everything is automatically copyrighted and if one can prove providence, then one can stop the theft of intellectual property. If one has the money. This still does not necessarily eliminate the threat from derivative works, which explains the GPL viral nature. Not only is this work GPL and in the public domain, but anything derived from it. This is only way to insure that the authors original intent, to have product in the public domain, is heeded. One might complain that the at some point the authors wishes should not be in play, and the work should enter the more general lawless public domain. Such issues though are not unique to the GPL. Such issues are governed by more general rules such as the leagth of copyright(essentially forever) and the applicability of the EULA. If the length of copyright were at most the lifetime of the author, and EULA were not allowed to excessively restrict free use by the user, for instant to disallow first sale doctrine and fair use, then these would not be an issue for the GPL either.
But they are issues, and the GPL does appear to provide a good protection against theft from the public domain, which is why those that make a living stealingfrom the public good are so against it. Of course they are. These companies seldom give anything back , at least not without a huge price tag. The one time that Bill Gates accidently gave something away, . Of course now an occasional tuppence are given to select beneficiaries to cloud the guilt, but there you are. he GPL is evil because it prevents thefts and insure the public domain. Which is, apparently, a very bad thing to do.
To me the issue is not how to get more resources when the load increases, but how to automatically decrease the resources needed for each web load. This requires efficient engineering and undestanding of the technology something I think is sorely lacking in many cases. For instance, the twitter page requires multiple database hits, and loads multiple thumbnails for every page. During crisis situations, these could be turned off with little loss of overall functionality.
I was on the New York Times site last night. I don't know if they added resources, but they did not go their crisis management mode, which is essentially a text only page. Maybe they have it worked out now so they don't have to. In any case, the kept the multimedia for Farrah, and added it for Jackson. I was also on the BBC site, and they were doing well, and that was with streaming video. Which leads to me believe that problems experienced by other sites may be a flaw in the implementation of current technology rather than a need for new technology.
Which is not to say that some sort of distributed processing is not needed. If an ISP is receiving multiple hits for a resource, it make sense for that ISP to send data from a cache rather than reloaded for the source 1000 times a second. This, of course, is a matter of policy and not technology.
And I will take you back all the way to Donkey Kong. The cheat allowed me to work out the movement up first, and then worry about dodging the barrels. Or the 'no disaster' mode in Simcity. This allowed the user to learn how to build a town without having it destroyed just as you are moving to the advanced stages. In effect, you have a sub level for each level of difficulty.
I would argue that having the game play through the really difficult parts allows the developer to add parts that would otherwise be labeled as 'too difficult' for the average consumer. As was stated in a previous game discussion, games are expensive to develop and everyone expects a huge return on their investment, be it time or money investments. This means tht games are meant to be bought and played by the largest audience, I think the niche audience that wants really hard games should be happy with this development. Just have the discipline not to use the cheat. And compete against yourself instead of complaining that others only finished faster because of the cheat.
I believe the $20 is a media fee, the fee charged to cover the processing and media. IIRC, at lest back when I was in academic, the campus license for MS products covered not only the machines on campus, but also employee and student personal machines. This allowed employees to take work home and students to learn how to use the software. It was actually quite lucrative. While one could argue that Linux is a better deal than MS since with MS you have to pay for all this other stuff, with the MS licensing the way it is, MS becomes the better deal because the application are free. In fact this has been pretty constant through most of my career. MS has won by shifting all computing costs to the employer. I wonder why employers do not complain about this practice they way they complain about health care.
In any case, I think MS has it set up so that each user has to buy the OS, which is why MS hate naked PCs. For each naked PC they lose revenue, revenue that is often a result of a duplicated charge. The PC industry is based on people buying new computers, not upgrading the OS, which is why the retail cost of the OS must be as high as possible, while the applications must be as low as possible, at least as seen by the consumer.
In fact, I believe, employee can install a copy of most MS products on their personal machine. Even more interesting, I recently read where Sutodesk was allowing customers to do the same thing, install Autodesk Software on non-corporate machines with a site license.
The bigger difference is that Mac OS X is one SKU, while MS Windows 7 is n SKUs, where n>>1, to such a degree that it makes my head hurt. I know they do this to reach certain price points in the market, as well as to collude with the OEM to make it cheaper to buy a machine that to upgrade an old machine, but the strategy sucks for the consumer.
I can't believe that they can't see that part of the problem is the SKUS. For XP there was pretty much home and pro, with media center added later. I can see the need for entry level home, and full copy of home, but why fragment the bussiness market? Why not have simply a pro version. If one wanted some sort of developer version, why not sell it as part of the MSDN? As far as the home market goes, why not allow users to install the home premium on a few machines, or at least buy discounted licenses.
Of course I answered the question. MS does not want to sell individual copies of the software. Even with the outrageous prices, they probably don't make any money off of it. They have to provide support, they have to package the product, they are responsible if something goes wrong. Blame is not shifted to the OEM. And the high cost fo the MS product means that the OEM only makes money off volume, so MS has to make the retail version as complex and undesirable as possible. So old machines go into the landfill to make way for new machines.
For the american market that is not that excited about electric cars and is not going to drive a car without 10 cup holders and a movie screen, it is simply not feasable to build a very small car unless it is a highly tuned and precise machine.
However, that does not mean that one cannot produce a base car, that is minimal but effective, in the $25K entry market with the expectation to sell under 50,000 units a year. Look at the Miata. Small car, 20-25K, as few as 30,000 were sold in a year. Rip out the engine, put in an effecient drive and batteries, don't make it hybrid, I think we have a car that can be sold, base, 25K. It would require some engineering, would not make a huge profit, but it could be done. Remember that the Tesla is partially designed and built by Lotus, so it can be considered a Lotus like car. The cost of the Tesla and a Lotus Elise are not that significantly different.
The problem, as always, is there is little market incentive to do so. Look at the market incentive to make the SUV. It was a family car that did not have to respect the clean air rights of others. It was a car created by a legislative act. The electric car is require such an accidental side effect.
I suspect that someone will still need to fine tune the Java, and that will require an understanding of the original Cobol. Given the undeserved disparaging comments I hear around here on Cobol, Fortran, even C, I suspect the average modern developers feels overwork if they have to deal with anything more complex than Python, not saying anything bad about Python, or, even worse, does not fit into their preferred IDE. I find that if you have a basis in the original computer coding methods, all the new stuff is just a simple walk in the park.
Duh, it has always pretty been an implicit feature on a 'pod. No user replaceable parts, right? When was the last time you saw a 'pod with a user replaceable battery.
Just because I feel like, I am going to mention something about replaceable batteries. First, the main reason to have user replacable batteries is that they are extremely unreliable. There is no 100% real way to predict if a battery is going to work. I recall the procedure to certify a battery for space, just in hopes that it would not crap out, was quite extensive. This means that a manufacturer is taking a chance with a battery that require technician input. There are going to be a certain number that will have to replaced under warranty, unless they are very careful in certification.
Not having a user replaceable, to me, is mostly a matter of charge cycle. I do have an extra battery for my DSLR for those occasions when I might wear out the battery without time to recharge. It does happen. OTOH, I only bought a battery for my old phone when it would not charge. Am I going to risk such hardware to save a bit of money on the battery, effecting a few percent of the price of the gear? No, of course not. For the panasonic cameras the price differential might be a bit more, and user may not be so dedicated to the quality equipment. Of course we do know that third party batteries do explode, and it is not always clear who is responsible for the backlash.
This is just a typical case of not wanted to cite a source. This is typical of casual writing. No wants to take the time and resources to cite where the information came from.
For smaller files, I keep everything controlled using SVN. That is code, office type files, that sort of thing. I have a BASH script that pretty reliably works to commit, add, and update. Everyone once in a while I have to go in and manually fix something. I suppose I could put a chron entry in to make it automatic, but it is just as easy to go to the shell and update everything. Setting up the server was no issue, and it is an offsite backup.
For items that are larger, or that do not change so often, I use iDisk. This is just a fancy Webdav server that I do not have to manage.
I keep programs on an external hard disk. This is where I also keep my photo library and music and videos. I use one machine for Photos, so I do not really have anything to sync there. My music is not synced either, but I have used some third party software to hel with that.
It is getting to the point where if something goes wrong with a machine, I can have new one set up will all my data in a day. In normal circumstances, I can use any one of three machines and prety much have up to date information.
I have to agree that since the iPhone is a consumer device it is much less suitable for business. A blackberry is a workhorse, doing what needs to be done in an efficient manner. Really, it is like the Mac before all the toy gizmos like Quicktime and iTunes became deeply integrated into the OS, or even existed for that matter. One could set up a Mac as a production machine, have it do exactly what you wanted to, and not have to worry about the staff misusing it as a toy. Frankly that was my issue with MS Windows. Too many toys made it a toy and it was hard to use as a production machine without a lot of security and supervision. I am not sure what Apple can do about the iPhone. Right now if salesmen are given the iPhone, everyone will claim that they got a free iPod and video console. Not good for the PR.
As far as I can tell, this is simply a temper tantrum because the middle men are not getting their cut. The dollar ring tones seems to be the primary method in which catalog tracks can make money, now that no one has to replace worn plastic. Someone really should have figured out a way to pay off the these people. It is just like renting music. The RIAA does not really care if anyone makes any money off it, as long as they get their cut. And when someone seems to making too much money, the come in to find out why.
Out fo court settlement. Throw them a crumb just like one would with any other bugger.
Definitely find a more mainstream interest and peruse it. Perhaps you like gardening? Perhaps there is a evening class that you want to take? I know people who do things at toastmasters.
But here is what will say with all this good advice. An introvert will be an introverts. It takes time to build trust and let things develop. Many people go in and try a few things, then give up because something does not develop immediately. I think we all know what a social life means, and if one has spent the teenage years not spending prodigious time relating to other people on an extremely fundamental level, then one has to spend quite a bit more time developing those skills later on.
So spend some time being social, at what does not matter. It may not even be something particularly intreating. We all do things just to meet people.
User centric design is the issue. When MS puts clippy in, I don't know how much of that was some developer of pinhead thinking it would be really cook, and how much of it was actually user centric design. Same thing for putting the command to change the desktop on the context menu. Sure, it was something easy to do, and certainly showed those people who made fun of MS for being the only modern OS where one had to reboot to change resolution, but does it serve a rational purpose. One rational purpose it might serve are for those that occasionally need a lower resolution, but that problem has been better addressed through other means.
In the end one has to have a system where best practices win over bloat. Where things that aren't that useful are removed so they do not involve recurring resources at every release. For instance, i know that egos are tied up in the multiple *nix desktops, and all desktops have a right to exist, but significant progress could be made if the community could select on desktop to develop towards, even if means that the solution is imperfect.
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The nice thing about LaTex is that, like HTML, it is a pure markup language, but it is a markup language that understands typesetting so one tend to get a good page layout no matter what. OTOH, HTML merely identifies blocks of text as various generic types, and really does not have a context for the types. The render engine is free visualize, make a sound, or do whatever it wishes to represent the blocks. CSS is what imposes a consistent visual framework, so what one needs to duplicate LaTex is in fact CSS.
Use LaTex. Except for the often limited fonts, it is vastly superior to an word processor, because a word processor is not the write tool to create real documents. We have know that for many years. That is why people bought pagemaker. And I think the lack of fonts forces people to create compelling content. LaTex is free, there are many good books,and if you do have a hankering to code, you can always play with Tex.
I have noticed that IE7 and IE8, anything typed into the URL field will go to Bing, unless it is 100% qualified. I know MS has always wanted everything to go through it's servers, but now it seems it is getting more extreme. If you don't type in HTTP it will go to bing. I also recall a time, or maybe not, when you could the URL field to go to google. In any case, the idea that a URL will go to a search engine never made sense to me. If the URL is not sufficiently qualified, then it should return a 404. The security risk of expecting a URL to return something other than the intended target is certainly a securty risk.
But no one else is any better. I have noticed on Adobe updates that they try to sneak in Yahoo tool bar. Apple will change the default browser to Safari with any little excuse, almost at every reboot. I don't know what google is doing, but since I prefer it to other things, I haven't had any issues in trying to get rid of it. I suspect when they begin to lose market share, all hell will break loose.
Separate user accounts might work, as long as the kid cannot possibly install any software. Mac OS allows this, as well as whitelists and execution restrictions. Of course this can be set up in any *nix using the host file and file permissions, so the Ubuntu set up properly on CD would be the most secure solution.
I am not really for overly restricting children movements, but this falls under the general idea of not letting a child go home in another person car, not letting children talk to strangers, generally making sure kids are supervised at least through high school, when, as we all know, all hell breaks loose and there is little anyone can do.
The issue really is the state of MS Office as a defacto standard, which really never really existed because there is no cross platform year after year guarantee that files will remain accessible. The way to insure that formating will remain constant across platform and through time, at least so far, is the PDF file. I laugh every time I get a .doc memo. I think how simple it would be to change the memo slightly, spoof the address, and get someone in trouble. MS Office security is not nearly as secure as Adobe PDF.
Back to the subject. PDF is a better way to exchange files, as long as they do not need to be edited. MS can provide a superior solution where files are edited. HTML is also good for distribution of files. I have also taken to converting my presentations into HTML or flash. Again, I see all these presentations on the web. Change the presentation, hack, upload, frivolity ensues.
My current situation is that I have machines that run MS Office 2003, and other runs later versions. The later versions tend to bork the 2003 files, and I will not even deal with the later version in 2003. I have OO.org installed, and if 2003 will not work I use OO.org.
Fast forward. MS only produces complicated behemoths. To this day MS Windows has not completely understood it is a network OS(perhaps 7 will do it). It is no longer the case that a part time person can keep 20 machines running. And when something does happen, it can be very difficult to fix. A single event can require a complete reinstall of the OS. I've made mistakes of going to a wrong web site and had this happen on a completely up to date machine. I have allowed untrusted parties to run my MS machines and have had significant damage caused within the hour. MS machines are the dependable work horses they once were. It now requires a significant infrastructure to keep MS machines a production. The best case scenario is to treat each machine as a RAID, keeping data off the machine, and using a standard HD disk images. Doesn't this sound like the pre-MS days of the so-called inefficient mainframe. MS is worried about this and has began a defensive campaign against IBM.
I would argue that MS machines are now, overall, as expensive and inefficient as the Unix machines were when ATT tried to save themselves with the introduction of this machine. This does not mean that MS does not have value, at least to legacy customers, but it may not be the best choice for startups, as Unix was the not the best choice in the late 1980's.
I can point to an exact time, around 2000, when MS became too expensive to use. It was a time whem MS would accuse paying customers of theft. Force customer to undergo intrusive and expensive audits. Require support staff to be redirected from supporting the customers need to make a profit, to the MS need to make a profit.
In light of this, I think we are going to see non-MS solution, just like we say non-ATT and non-IBM solutions. The biggest impediment to this is the easy supply of reliable naked PCs with full support to the SOHO owner. I think some companies, like Gateway, made a mistake in continuing to hook their saddle to the MS bandwagon instead of providing *nix solution for common business problems. In many cases, smart firms buy solutions, not an OS.
As far as I can gather, what states are complaining about is that a package is shipped from a location within the state to an address within the state. Taxes are not being paid because the order was originated at a location outside of the state, which is legal. States are changing the law so that if the out of state entity is merely a broker, while the orders are in fact being processed and fulfilled in state, then taxes are paid. Now this is an oversimplification, but that is to counteract the overcomplicating.
These are not impediments to Amazon doing business, as they do enough business in all the states to pay for the software that would allow them to pay sales tax. If a vendor did have pay sales tax when shipping to a state, we would see software products pop up almost overnight that would allow that to happen. Amazon could afford them. Small startups could not. To make things even, the state would have to install a system that would allow any business to quickly check to see if a tax was needed, and how much it would be. This would require quite a bit of state investment(maybe good use of stimulus money) and would be the only way to balance the market for the small business. Such a state provided system would primarily be used by small businesses, as larger firms would find it more efficient to run an automatic system. Of course, at this point, we might start thinking about county and city taxes.
If states would put such a system in place, that provided a clearinghouse for small firms and a central information for firms that wanted to provide solutions to large firms, I would certainly support a system where the vendor pays the tax. After all, the tradition of the buyer, not vendor, paying the tax comes from a time when communication and information was expensive. This is no longer the case. OTOH, I don't think unfunded mandates that the government has become so fond of imposing(read NCLB, how much has that cost families in terms of lost education that has to be paid later in remedial college classes) are appropriate. If a state wants taxes, pay for some the infrastructure.
Here are the two reasons I liked my first MP3 player better than a tape or cd player. First, even on my primitive player, which I used from a time before the iPod existed until the Minis came out, it was nice to carry hours of music around without having to carry a my 30 tape case, not to mention the player that was huge by comparison. Second, battery life was much better. I would easily go through a set of batteries every day or so on a CD player. The MP3 player was closer to a week.
I would say the sound is a mater of personal taste. A walkman though a good pair of headphones is likely better than an iPod, depending if the tape was original or a rip. I wonder if music is not mastered differently for electronic playback. I wonder if people have not grown increasingly impatient about content delivery, and a tape playback is simply not efficient enough to be enjoyable. Back in the day we might have had to wait 20 minutes for the next Michael Jackson video to roll around in the MTV queue(kid, MTV stands for Music TV,and they once played videos all the time. It was cool.) Now just get on youtube and get whatever videos you want, without having to sit through damn Tears for Fears mashes.(no offense to the few that liked Tears for Fears videos). And believe me, not matter what your parents say, much more time was wasted watching the primeval cable stations than anyone could waste on the Internet, without the real benifits of the internet.
The real issue is that everything that is published on the internet is considered fair game. It was a only a few stories back where we were getting in an uproar because a reasonable judge said, maybe summarizing an article with a link might be a violation of copyright. Would the newspaper have been in the clear if they had summarized the post with a link to the full post, even if the same damage was caused? What if the newspaper made a material error in the summary? The linking issue is the same. Many people who post what is essentially public content want to control where that material is published or linked from.
This is another expensive lesson that one should be careful what one posts to the internet in a personally identifiable manner. The lawsuit here is not relevant. Even if the newspaper was sued, it is unlikely that the lawsuit would bring any significant money. It was unethical for the newspaper to publish a letter not sent by the original author, although it is unclear that they did not know it was not sent by the original author. Kids sometimes do unwise things, and it sometimes have disastrous effects on the family. Adults should help kids minimize these mistakes, but some kids are hard headed. The appropriate person to bear the burden of the kid's mistake is the parents, not the bystanders.
I think much of the issues of ads is that they do tend to ill integrated on the page and do not enhance the viewing experience. One issue is that a page may have to link with many domains, each involving multiple requests, and often the page will not render until all ads are loaded. This is fair, but, again, does mature media expect to be successful if they serve lame ads? Ads support content in a number of ways, but must not conflict with the content.
My question is why is a reasonable price of admission so horrible. For instance, right now to vote in the US you have to register, make you're way down to a voting location, either during early voting hours, or during the normal voting day, present your registration card or a drivers license, and vote. All this is quite cumbersome, but it is the price o participating in democracy. Some may ask why not require official photo id, and the response is that it does really create added security. Fake IDs are probably much more a commodity that voter registration cards.
The same thing applies here. By discussing it on Youtube, you are focusing on a select group of people who participate on youtube. Like voting, those that want to participate will find a way. Those who won't, like those who choose not inconvenience themselves by voting, will not.
Some of this has been solved through copyright changes. Now everything is automatically copyrighted and if one can prove providence, then one can stop the theft of intellectual property. If one has the money. This still does not necessarily eliminate the threat from derivative works, which explains the GPL viral nature. Not only is this work GPL and in the public domain, but anything derived from it. This is only way to insure that the authors original intent, to have product in the public domain, is heeded. One might complain that the at some point the authors wishes should not be in play, and the work should enter the more general lawless public domain. Such issues though are not unique to the GPL. Such issues are governed by more general rules such as the leagth of copyright(essentially forever) and the applicability of the EULA. If the length of copyright were at most the lifetime of the author, and EULA were not allowed to excessively restrict free use by the user, for instant to disallow first sale doctrine and fair use, then these would not be an issue for the GPL either.
But they are issues, and the GPL does appear to provide a good protection against theft from the public domain, which is why those that make a living stealing from the public good are so against it. Of course they are. These companies seldom give anything back , at least not without a huge price tag. The one time that Bill Gates accidently gave something away, . Of course now an occasional tuppence are given to select beneficiaries to cloud the guilt, but there you are. he GPL is evil because it prevents thefts and insure the public domain. Which is, apparently, a very bad thing to do.
I was on the New York Times site last night. I don't know if they added resources, but they did not go their crisis management mode, which is essentially a text only page. Maybe they have it worked out now so they don't have to. In any case, the kept the multimedia for Farrah, and added it for Jackson. I was also on the BBC site, and they were doing well, and that was with streaming video. Which leads to me believe that problems experienced by other sites may be a flaw in the implementation of current technology rather than a need for new technology.
Which is not to say that some sort of distributed processing is not needed. If an ISP is receiving multiple hits for a resource, it make sense for that ISP to send data from a cache rather than reloaded for the source 1000 times a second. This, of course, is a matter of policy and not technology.
I would argue that having the game play through the really difficult parts allows the developer to add parts that would otherwise be labeled as 'too difficult' for the average consumer. As was stated in a previous game discussion, games are expensive to develop and everyone expects a huge return on their investment, be it time or money investments. This means tht games are meant to be bought and played by the largest audience, I think the niche audience that wants really hard games should be happy with this development. Just have the discipline not to use the cheat. And compete against yourself instead of complaining that others only finished faster because of the cheat.
In any case, I think MS has it set up so that each user has to buy the OS, which is why MS hate naked PCs. For each naked PC they lose revenue, revenue that is often a result of a duplicated charge. The PC industry is based on people buying new computers, not upgrading the OS, which is why the retail cost of the OS must be as high as possible, while the applications must be as low as possible, at least as seen by the consumer.
In fact, I believe, employee can install a copy of most MS products on their personal machine. Even more interesting, I recently read where Sutodesk was allowing customers to do the same thing, install Autodesk Software on non-corporate machines with a site license.
I can't believe that they can't see that part of the problem is the SKUS. For XP there was pretty much home and pro, with media center added later. I can see the need for entry level home, and full copy of home, but why fragment the bussiness market? Why not have simply a pro version. If one wanted some sort of developer version, why not sell it as part of the MSDN? As far as the home market goes, why not allow users to install the home premium on a few machines, or at least buy discounted licenses.
Of course I answered the question. MS does not want to sell individual copies of the software. Even with the outrageous prices, they probably don't make any money off of it. They have to provide support, they have to package the product, they are responsible if something goes wrong. Blame is not shifted to the OEM. And the high cost fo the MS product means that the OEM only makes money off volume, so MS has to make the retail version as complex and undesirable as possible. So old machines go into the landfill to make way for new machines.
However, that does not mean that one cannot produce a base car, that is minimal but effective, in the $25K entry market with the expectation to sell under 50,000 units a year. Look at the Miata. Small car, 20-25K, as few as 30,000 were sold in a year. Rip out the engine, put in an effecient drive and batteries, don't make it hybrid, I think we have a car that can be sold, base, 25K. It would require some engineering, would not make a huge profit, but it could be done. Remember that the Tesla is partially designed and built by Lotus, so it can be considered a Lotus like car. The cost of the Tesla and a Lotus Elise are not that significantly different.
The problem, as always, is there is little market incentive to do so. Look at the market incentive to make the SUV. It was a family car that did not have to respect the clean air rights of others. It was a car created by a legislative act. The electric car is require such an accidental side effect.
I suspect that someone will still need to fine tune the Java, and that will require an understanding of the original Cobol. Given the undeserved disparaging comments I hear around here on Cobol, Fortran, even C, I suspect the average modern developers feels overwork if they have to deal with anything more complex than Python, not saying anything bad about Python, or, even worse, does not fit into their preferred IDE. I find that if you have a basis in the original computer coding methods, all the new stuff is just a simple walk in the park.
Just because I feel like, I am going to mention something about replaceable batteries. First, the main reason to have user replacable batteries is that they are extremely unreliable. There is no 100% real way to predict if a battery is going to work. I recall the procedure to certify a battery for space, just in hopes that it would not crap out, was quite extensive. This means that a manufacturer is taking a chance with a battery that require technician input. There are going to be a certain number that will have to replaced under warranty, unless they are very careful in certification.
Not having a user replaceable, to me, is mostly a matter of charge cycle. I do have an extra battery for my DSLR for those occasions when I might wear out the battery without time to recharge. It does happen. OTOH, I only bought a battery for my old phone when it would not charge. Am I going to risk such hardware to save a bit of money on the battery, effecting a few percent of the price of the gear? No, of course not. For the panasonic cameras the price differential might be a bit more, and user may not be so dedicated to the quality equipment. Of course we do know that third party batteries do explode, and it is not always clear who is responsible for the backlash.
Specifically Wikipedia has a cite this page link in the left nav. For instance we can cite the article on . Once on the cite page, we can choose from any number of common citation formats. Just choose one that is acceptable. Saying they are all bad is pretty much aaying that any method of citation is bad.
This is just a typical case of not wanted to cite a source. This is typical of casual writing. No wants to take the time and resources to cite where the information came from.
For items that are larger, or that do not change so often, I use iDisk. This is just a fancy Webdav server that I do not have to manage.
I keep programs on an external hard disk. This is where I also keep my photo library and music and videos. I use one machine for Photos, so I do not really have anything to sync there. My music is not synced either, but I have used some third party software to hel with that.
It is getting to the point where if something goes wrong with a machine, I can have new one set up will all my data in a day. In normal circumstances, I can use any one of three machines and prety much have up to date information.
I have to agree that since the iPhone is a consumer device it is much less suitable for business. A blackberry is a workhorse, doing what needs to be done in an efficient manner. Really, it is like the Mac before all the toy gizmos like Quicktime and iTunes became deeply integrated into the OS, or even existed for that matter. One could set up a Mac as a production machine, have it do exactly what you wanted to, and not have to worry about the staff misusing it as a toy. Frankly that was my issue with MS Windows. Too many toys made it a toy and it was hard to use as a production machine without a lot of security and supervision. I am not sure what Apple can do about the iPhone. Right now if salesmen are given the iPhone, everyone will claim that they got a free iPod and video console. Not good for the PR.
Out fo court settlement. Throw them a crumb just like one would with any other bugger.
But here is what will say with all this good advice. An introvert will be an introverts. It takes time to build trust and let things develop. Many people go in and try a few things, then give up because something does not develop immediately. I think we all know what a social life means, and if one has spent the teenage years not spending prodigious time relating to other people on an extremely fundamental level, then one has to spend quite a bit more time developing those skills later on.
So spend some time being social, at what does not matter. It may not even be something particularly intreating. We all do things just to meet people.
In the end one has to have a system where best practices win over bloat. Where things that aren't that useful are removed so they do not involve recurring resources at every release. For instance, i know that egos are tied up in the multiple *nix desktops, and all desktops have a right to exist, but significant progress could be made if the community could select on desktop to develop towards, even if means that the solution is imperfect.