Microsoft has seemingly started to take the competition seriously. This is a Good Thing!
Or it WOULD be, if MS's response were to respond by dedicating more resources to Windows DEVELOPMENT, rather than just ramping up Windows' MARKETING which is what they are doing.
By "threatening to sue for time wasted", you're pretty much proving that your time is NOT worth money, if you have enough if both to spare that you can take up the hobby of barratry.
Oh, and good luck getting a store to give you anything but store credit or an exchange for the same title on an opened DVD return.
this seems to explicitly legalize Comercial [sic] Advance.
The text of the bill that I saw explicitly referred to home viewing of movies on DVD. I don't see the relevance to skipping over commercials in television programming using a PVR.
This sentiment seems to come largely from people who have never had children.
Think back to your own childhood. Did your parents keep you within eye and earshot at all times, up until you turned 18? No. Parents hold their children close at times, and allow them to roam at others.
No parent has time to pre-screen all the culture their children will be exposed to for appropriateness, especially in a time like this where both parents have to work, and media is generated and distributed in real time. That's why I'm in favor of programming ratings, V-chips, CAPalert, ClearView, and any other tools available to parents to help them guide their children.
But, if they use cookies or the like, then they don't have it.
Well... they're not going to use an HTTP cookie to store your entire browsing history. No, they'll use a cookie to store a unique ID token, and use that to query their big backend database of everything that everyone has searched for.
If you activate this feature, your search history WILL be databased somewhere. It may not be easily identified as YOUR search history, but it's something to weigh if you have concerns over privacy.
Things go swimingly until some really un-fun interface code needs to be written.
It's not the interface code that's the bottleneck; I'm sure there are enough coders out there who can write a windowing API and write it flawlessly.
It's that the Open Source Community is well-stocked with developers, who understand the hardware/software interaction intimiately, but lacking in interface designers who understand the software/human interaction. It's almost as if "usability studies" and "focus groups" are anathema to the OSS model, shunned as a useless relic of bloated corporate suit-wearers.
Apple understands the importance of the human interface and it shows. What can be done to get open source projects to give more consideration to interface design?
a physics engine wherein EVERY part of the gameworld is totally fluid and deformable, where an impact on an object can cause it to, completely dynamically, fracture into a number of parts, each of which are processed independently with nary a framerate drop.
I'm excited to hear that the PS3 archictecture will allow the console to create KEWLER LQQKIN EXPLOSIONS THAN EVER BEFORE.
But will the games be as fun and addictive as, say, Asteroids?
Yeah right. Like Adobe would even consider putting a "WARNING: PRO-GRADE NIKON CAMERAS' RAW FORMAT IS NOT FULLY SUPPORTED" on every Photoshop carton. That would be perceived as a flaw in Adobe's product, not Nikon's, and do nothing but confuse the 99% of PS buyers who aren't in the market for such camera models anyway.
They first get people interested in the 'low density' variant
But CAN they do that at the 300GB capacity point?
I can go out TODAY and build a RAID of mirrored 300GB winchester disks for about $500. What incentive do I have to wait around until next year for a non-rewritable storage format that will undoubtedly cost more and be more susceptible to errors?
IANAL, but I wouldn't say that a code of conduct that offers the ISPs no consideration in exchange for agreeing to be the media industry's lackeys really stands up as a "goodwill attempt". It's like if you offered to buy my house for $100. Would I take you seriously?
Hopefully the courts would see this tactic for what it is if they proceed with it.
even Microsoft's 64-bit XP is fully 64-bit including graphics.
Imagine how much more pleasant Windows' user experience would be if they had prioritized UI functionality and refinement over developing 64-bit versions of all their various graphics APIs.
I think Apple made the right choice to leave Carbon and Cocoa in 32-bit-land for now, since the market for 64-bit applications is still pretty small. The feature list for Tiger is impressive, isn't it?
But by installing your 1-seat license for OS X on 5 computers, don't you worry that when it calls home to Apple every night, they'll notice that you've got the same registration code running on machines with 5 different MAC addr.... oh, sorry, I forgot we weren't talking about Windows XP.
Linux brought a huge number of people into Unix and gave them a political orientation
No, fuck that. I don't look to my COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEM for a "political orientation", and neither should anyone. I look to an OS to make my computer usable. EOM.
(Go ahead and mod me down for speaking so bluntly, I've got Karma to burn...)
1991... a conductor drunk at the controls caused a crash.
Why did the motorman let a conductor, who's not qualified to operate a subway train, work the control? I hope they BOTH lost their jobs over that one.
What makes you think that a closing door is somehow going to hurt someone?
It's not so much that the doors are going to clamp down like jaws and bite your arm off, but rather the consequences of what happens when your arm is stuck in the door, the door THINKS it's closed, and the train starts leaving the platform.
This scenario happens once a week or so. A human conductor will be able to use the emergency brake, but will a computer?
Why should I pay twice the fare so that some fat union bastard can sit there doing a pointless job?
Subway cars cost approximately $2 million a piece. Motormen get paid maybe $30/hr. Do you really think that having a person operating the train accounts for a full 50% of the fare you pay?
Do you fly on airplanes? Are you upset that "fat pilot's license-havin' bastards" are sitting up front doing a "pointless job"?
And if you have ever been in NY, you will know that ppl all surround the train doors before they open and then push each other chaotically. having a 2nd set of doors, along with a series of gates to herd the ppl aboard quickly, would be a simple solution to this.
Simple, except for the part where all 450+ stations in the NYC subway system, some of which are 100 years old, would have to be gutted and redesigned from scratch to put gated walls between the tracks and the platforms. That's a project that would make the train automation seem cheap and quick by comparison, if it were feasible at all, which I'd say it isn't.
And your weigh-the-passengers idea has so many things wrong with it I don't know where to start. Put yourself in the shoes of the only guy waiting at a station as train after train passes you by. What fucking good is a train if you can't get on it? We already have separate Express and Local tracks on many subway lines.
Here I'm referring to America -- we've been tottering on being a plice state for like 50 years,
Um, no.
Please try visiting some second- and third-world countries sometime. Even with the current trend towards government involvement in social issues, the United States is just about as FAR as you can get from a "plice state".
I'm sure a time will come when America is no longer the world's sole economic superpower, and I welcome it -- we could use the humility. But there's absolutely no reason to believe that the evolution of the nation's economy will take the form of an utter collapse into abject poverty. That's ridiculous.
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Microsoft has seemingly started to take the competition seriously. This is a Good Thing!
Or it WOULD be, if MS's response were to respond by dedicating more resources to Windows DEVELOPMENT, rather than just ramping up Windows' MARKETING which is what they are doing.
I know of an OS that does not have the ability to have files in more than one folder simultaneously, but then again it's PC-DOS 1.0.
Don't you people know anything?
The "hard drive" is the big metal boxy thing that sits on or under your desk and you plug your keyboard and mouse and TV into it.
It also goes by the names "CPU", "processor", "modem", "computer", "box", and "thingy". They all mean the same thing.
Who needs a visa just to go sightseeing for a couple days? A valid passport should be sufficient.
By "threatening to sue for time wasted", you're pretty much proving that your time is NOT worth money, if you have enough if both to spare that you can take up the hobby of barratry.
Oh, and good luck getting a store to give you anything but store credit or an exchange for the same title on an opened DVD return.
this seems to explicitly legalize Comercial [sic] Advance.
The text of the bill that I saw explicitly referred to home viewing of movies on DVD. I don't see the relevance to skipping over commercials in television programming using a PVR.
can't you simply watch over their actions a bit?
This sentiment seems to come largely from people who have never had children.
Think back to your own childhood. Did your parents keep you within eye and earshot at all times, up until you turned 18? No. Parents hold their children close at times, and allow them to roam at others.
No parent has time to pre-screen all the culture their children will be exposed to for appropriateness, especially in a time like this where both parents have to work, and media is generated and distributed in real time. That's why I'm in favor of programming ratings, V-chips, CAPalert, ClearView, and any other tools available to parents to help them guide their children.
But, if they use cookies or the like, then they don't have it.
Well... they're not going to use an HTTP cookie to store your entire browsing history. No, they'll use a cookie to store a unique ID token, and use that to query their big backend database of everything that everyone has searched for.
If you activate this feature, your search history WILL be databased somewhere. It may not be easily identified as YOUR search history, but it's something to weigh if you have concerns over privacy.
Things go swimingly until some really un-fun interface code needs to be written.
It's not the interface code that's the bottleneck; I'm sure there are enough coders out there who can write a windowing API and write it flawlessly.
It's that the Open Source Community is well-stocked with developers, who understand the hardware/software interaction intimiately, but lacking in interface designers who understand the software/human interaction. It's almost as if "usability studies" and "focus groups" are anathema to the OSS model, shunned as a useless relic of bloated corporate suit-wearers.
Apple understands the importance of the human interface and it shows. What can be done to get open source projects to give more consideration to interface design?
a physics engine wherein EVERY part of the gameworld is totally fluid and deformable, where an impact on an object can cause it to, completely dynamically, fracture into a number of parts, each of which are processed independently with nary a framerate drop.
I'm excited to hear that the PS3 archictecture will allow the console to create KEWLER LQQKIN EXPLOSIONS THAN EVER BEFORE.
But will the games be as fun and addictive as, say, Asteroids?
Xbox 360 - It's a "cool" name for the "skaters".
It's also only a character away from '3DO', and we all remember how great THAT console was...
That still doesn't explain why the white balance data would be ENCRYPTED. Who are they trying to hide that information from?
Encoding != encryption.
Yeah right. Like Adobe would even consider putting a "WARNING: PRO-GRADE NIKON CAMERAS' RAW FORMAT IS NOT FULLY SUPPORTED" on every Photoshop carton. That would be perceived as a flaw in Adobe's product, not Nikon's, and do nothing but confuse the 99% of PS buyers who aren't in the market for such camera models anyway.
They first get people interested in the 'low density' variant
But CAN they do that at the 300GB capacity point?
I can go out TODAY and build a RAID of mirrored 300GB winchester disks for about $500. What incentive do I have to wait around until next year for a non-rewritable storage format that will undoubtedly cost more and be more susceptible to errors?
record companies that sign 15 year olds
to lifetime exclusive contracts?
I've never heard of any such "lifetime exclusive" contract in the music business, especially ones involving a signee who is a minor.
Are you referring to any incident(s) in particular, or just making up strawmen?
IANAL, but I wouldn't say that a code of conduct that offers the ISPs no consideration in exchange for agreeing to be the media industry's lackeys really stands up as a "goodwill attempt". It's like if you offered to buy my house for $100. Would I take you seriously?
Hopefully the courts would see this tactic for what it is if they proceed with it.
APPLESCRIPT IS A NIGHMARE!!! I wish they would dump it for a usable OSS language like perl or python.
If only there were a way to run Perl or Python on OS X...
even Microsoft's 64-bit XP is fully 64-bit including graphics.
Imagine how much more pleasant Windows' user experience would be if they had prioritized UI functionality and refinement over developing 64-bit versions of all their various graphics APIs.
I think Apple made the right choice to leave Carbon and Cocoa in 32-bit-land for now, since the market for 64-bit applications is still pretty small. The feature list for Tiger is impressive, isn't it?
But by installing your 1-seat license for OS X on 5 computers, don't you worry that when it calls home to Apple every night, they'll notice that you've got the same registration code running on machines with 5 different MAC addr.... oh, sorry, I forgot we weren't talking about Windows XP.
if you have a 128 MB GFX card but the processor will get the job done faster, then it will use the processor.
Yeah, but I'd kind of like to use my main processor for other things. Like running the game engine.
I thought that was the whole point of having a dedicated graphics co-pro... to free up cycles on the CPU for things that aren't graphics rendering?
Linux brought a huge number of people into Unix and gave them a political orientation
No, fuck that. I don't look to my COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEM for a "political orientation", and neither should anyone. I look to an OS to make my computer usable. EOM.
(Go ahead and mod me down for speaking so bluntly, I've got Karma to burn...)
1991... a conductor drunk at the controls caused a crash.
Why did the motorman let a conductor, who's not qualified to operate a subway train, work the control? I hope they BOTH lost their jobs over that one.
What makes you think that a closing door is somehow going to hurt someone?
It's not so much that the doors are going to clamp down like jaws and bite your arm off, but rather the consequences of what happens when your arm is stuck in the door, the door THINKS it's closed, and the train starts leaving the platform.
This scenario happens once a week or so. A human conductor will be able to use the emergency brake, but will a computer?
Why should I pay twice the fare so that some fat union bastard can sit there doing a pointless job?
Subway cars cost approximately $2 million a piece. Motormen get paid maybe $30/hr. Do you really think that having a person operating the train accounts for a full 50% of the fare you pay?
Do you fly on airplanes? Are you upset that "fat pilot's license-havin' bastards" are sitting up front doing a "pointless job"?
And if you have ever been in NY, you will know that ppl all surround the train doors before they open and then push each other chaotically. having a 2nd set of doors, along with a series of gates to herd the ppl aboard quickly, would be a simple solution to this.
Simple, except for the part where all 450+ stations in the NYC subway system, some of which are 100 years old, would have to be gutted and redesigned from scratch to put gated walls between the tracks and the platforms. That's a project that would make the train automation seem cheap and quick by comparison, if it were feasible at all, which I'd say it isn't.
And your weigh-the-passengers idea has so many things wrong with it I don't know where to start. Put yourself in the shoes of the only guy waiting at a station as train after train passes you by. What fucking good is a train if you can't get on it? We already have separate Express and Local tracks on many subway lines.
Project this onto an untreated wooden surface, you have zero bugs and nothing to clean:
Nothing... except for your untreated wooden surfaces.
And the wounds on your fingertips from mashing them against an untreated wooden surface 8 hours a day.
Here I'm referring to America -- we've been tottering on being a plice state for like 50 years,
Um, no.
Please try visiting some second- and third-world countries sometime. Even with the current trend towards government involvement in social issues, the United States is just about as FAR as you can get from a "plice state".
I'm sure a time will come when America is no longer the world's sole economic superpower, and I welcome it -- we could use the humility. But there's absolutely no reason to believe that the evolution of the nation's economy will take the form of an utter collapse into abject poverty. That's ridiculous.