> Many ATM machines ran it because it was 8000% more stable than any of microsoft's Operating systems
A lot of the ATMs that ran OS/2 ran the Microsoft version of OS/2 (yes, Microsoft developed the first versions of OS/2 for IBM and had permission to OEM it, just like DOS). OS/2 went to IBM from v2.0, IIRC.
I've noticed more "loading then removing" of content with Chrome/AdThwart than I remember from Firefox/AdblockPlus
That's because Chrome's extension API doesn't allow extensions to stop loading resources, it only allows resources to be removed after they are loaded.
"The court established that Apple could not make copyright claims based on these ideas and could only make claims on the precise expression of them."
And the key word here is _precisely_.
> - trashcan copied Actually, that's exactly why Microsoft never called it the "trashcan". They called it a Recycle Bin. It looks different, too.
> Shutdown procedure copied Windows has a start button attached to a start menu. To shut down, you go Start > Shut down... >... This is not _precisely_ the same as the Mac.
And so on...
The point is look-and-feel protection is a very narrow protection. It protects you from lookalikes, not workalikes.
And finally: sue or shut up. Frankly, if some Mac fans (or Apple) feel Windows 7 ripped the Mac off, they ought to get Apple to sue. Lord knows Apple isn't litigation-shy. Thankfully, their lawyers are a little more grown-up than the average Mac fanboy.
I've been using Firefox since Phoenix 0.5 (December 2002 iirc, almost seven years now) and I have to say, the community process and the extensions make Firefox what it is.
Yes, these days there's another open source browser on the block (Chrome) and it too is very good. But it's great to have Mozilla and Firefox around because you can be sure that Mozilla will look after users' interests far more than Google or Microsoft will. If nothing else, it keeps the others honest.
So congratulations Firefox, and here's to five more years!
Linux had this since the beginning. The advantage of never having the windowing system integrated with the operating system. It's not a nifty innovative feature of Windows 7, it's Microsoft finally catching up with the rest of the industry as always.
Linux did not and does not have this feature. If X crashes, It's Ctrl Alt Backspace time, and you lose your work. And X can hard crash to the point where even Ctrl Alt Backspace doesn't work -- it's not an everyday occurrence but it does happen. In fact, the link I pointed to asked why Linux distros hadn't included this feature yet.
Boot time is fucking meaningless compared to actual operating speed. So you got to your desktop snappy? How fast is the fucking desktop? Stop bringing boot speed up as a meaningful metric of how fast an operating system is. It's stupid.
Geez. A mouth-breathing idiot who knows the f-word and isn't afraid to use it. Like I said, the time-to-desktop is snappy. This matters in the real world because workplace (and many home) PCs are switched off after use. Anyway, the desktop is snappy too, thanks for asking.
The OP asked a question about what Windows 7 brought to the table over Windows XP. I answered that the best I could. Of course, for morons like you, no thread on/. is complete without a rant about how Linux had it first, is superior to every other OS and is the be-all and end-all of technology. You know what? Users like you are the reason why Linux has a perception problem in the marketplace (to put it politely).
NOTE: These are benefits when upgrading from XP. Vista has some of these features, but usually 7's implementation of these is more refined.
The biggie is that display driver crashes don't bring down your system. The display flickers for a bit and the driver is reloaded.
7 also supports multiple drivers for multiple adapters, but that's a bit esoteric.
Libraries are useful if you're not compulsive about organizing your files.
The user home folder is now sanely organized (C:\Users\User\Videos, C:\Users\User\Downloads, C:\Users\User\Documents, not C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Videos).
Ships with Powershell. Decent scripting out of the box.
The taskbar works MUCH better than XP/Vista and imho even the OSX dock. You no longer have to choose between the insanity of XP style grouped taskbar buttons and an overflowing taskbar. Much better window mgmt tools (e.g. desktop peek).
Very subjective, but feels snappy. Time to login screen and time to a usable desktop is much lower than Vista.
Built-in Windows Media Player (v12) starts quickly and is a pleasure to use. To be fair v11 was pretty good too, but v12 plays DivX (and all the xvids I've thrown at it) and most Quicktime MOVs. The interface is minimal if you double-click a media file. You get a simple rectangle containing the media, or a small square if it's an audio file. You get the full interface only if you start the app or click the expand UI button. This is what iTunes should have been like.
Explorer has improved its "are you sure" dialogs and made them much more usable/informative. Thumbnail previews are much faster. On the other hand, the new explorer takes some getting used to over the XP one -- the toolbar is non-customizable and not very useful imho.
This is slightly off-topic, but your original post reminded me of something a Stanford Professor whose name I'd forgotten was pushing -- he was essentially calling for developed countries to set up autonomous zones in 3rd world countries and transfer their laws and rulesets to the 3rd world. This wouldn't be colonialism because it would be done essentially altruistically and with a legally enforceable get-out clause.
A few hours after replying to your post I came across this article on the Freakonomics blog with an interview with him... he's fleshed out his proposal a little more and calls it "Charter cities" these days. It certainly makes for very interesting reading, especially considering your point about whether a "culture is too fundamentally backward".
Personally, I don't believe any culture is too 'fundamentally backward', and that any culture where a middle class can be bootstrapped will do well -- the challenge is bootstrapping one, and here Romer's ideas are provocative and potentially very useful.
India is as solid as it is because its former dozen warring states (remember, it was not always a single country) got head-banged by the Brits during the Imperial era -- if that job had been finished, rather than abandoned as the British Empire fell apart, we might not have today's conflicts, or at least they'd be on a smaller scale
That's an interesting example, but I don't think colonialism alone can build nations.
In India's case, the British didn't leave India with Indians marching into the sunrise in patriotic unison. Oh sure, the post-Independence honeymoon lasted a year or two, but secession and splintering back into a bunch of states was never really off the table for the first quarter-century after Independence, and it was especially touchy because of the partition that accompanied Independence.
Hell, there are sporadic movements *now* but they're not considered serious threats any more, largely because India's political system has evolved to the point that even very small sections of society can get a voice in the political process.
So while Britain did do a lot to create a modern nation-state, I think post-Independence Indian society deserves a lot of credit for seeing that, to misquote Ben Franklin, it's better to hang together than be hanged separately.
The bigger point is the British did all of this in many places, including Africa. The problem is, as soon as they left, the societies fell back to their old patterns of conflict. I'm not sure more Imperialism would have fixed that.
Imperialism may be "evil" if your small state is the loser, but in the long view it appears to stop more trouble than it causes.
Imperialism is evil because imperial powers don't come into colonized countries even wearing the fig leaf of spreading democracy or development, they come to use the resources of the colonized country the best they can. In India's case, the British exploited India's farmers with exploitative taxes (even during famine years) and took as much of India's natural resources (mined metal, timber, etc) as they could given a 19th century supply chain. Whatever problems arise *after* an imperial power leaves, at least they are problems brought upon by the people themselves, not a foreign power.
> Chrome should have been built on top of Qt from day 1.
RTFA.
I sincerely wonder, why didn't you just use Qt for the UI from the beginning? It blends very well with the native look&feel on each platform, while still letting you implement the distinctive Chrome features. Qt 4.5 will even have native look in GNOME.
Ben Goodger:
In general, we've avoided cross platform UI toolkits because while they may offer what superficially appears to be a quick path to native looking UI on a variety of target platforms, once you go a bit deeper it turns out to be a bit more problematic. As Amanda says, your app ends up "speaking with a foreign accent".
Our experience is that using these frameworks also limits what you can do to a lowest common denominator subset of what's supported by that framework on each platform.... The architecture of Chrome has converged over the past few months on a solid separation of view from state, and this has given us the flexibility to make these decisions and choose from the widest range of alternatives.
> It turns on ClearType. Globally. It can't be turned off (well, without a lot of work.)
Not that you're missing much with IE7, but have you tried unchecking Tools > Options > Advanced > Multimedia > Always use ClearType for HTML and restarting IE?
> ClearType anti-aliases fonts.
Also, I don't think ClearType applies anti-aliasing across the board -- in fact cleartype text has more jaggies than standard font-smoothed text produced using Windows' old method -- here's an example.
AFAIK ClearType tunes the letter forms in multiple ways (including using subtly different shaping rules -- this works especially well if the font has been designed with ClearType in mind, e.g., Consolas and Candara). This makes screen text at 11-18px (the vast majority of UI text) much easier to read.
If you have a LCD monitor you might want to set Windows to globally enable ClearType and try the Windows ClearType tuner powertoy -- well-tuned Cleartype fonts really do look a lot better with it on for *most* people.
> Spanish is my native language, maybe that's why I was able to follow the movie from beginning to end, it was like poetry.
I don't speak Spanish and my only other Spanish-language film has been Y Tu Mama Tambien, but I can tell you that you didn't need to understand Spanish to get the poetry of Pan's Labyrinth.
For the first ten minutes I thought it was going to be a Narnia-wannabe, and then I realized that this fairy-tale was fucked up, and I saw what the director was doing counterposing the equally fucked up real world against the fairy tale (note: this film doesn't do PG-13 action scenes. You *will* feel disturbed watching some of the real world action unless you are borderline psycho.) Still, it was a fairy tale, I reasoned, and happily waited for the happy ending. It never came. Or did it? The fairy tale did end happily after all -- the princess went back to her father and lived happily ever after. How the viewer chooses to understand this is his own business, but the cognitive dissonance created in this film is par excellence.
And oh -- the sparingly used monsters in this film are *way* more intense than the relatively bland CGI creatures being turned out by Hollywood (see for example Narnia and now The Golden Compass).
And this doesn't even begin to cover the talented actors, especially Ivana Baquero, and the excellent music.
I do realize this film isn't for everyone -- it requires the viewer to connect emotionally with the characters on-screen. But the director makes it really, really easy to do this given the quality of the work.
For example, readers from India might want to check out the CIA's files about the India-China war of 1962, especially since India's Freedom of Information laws (IIRC) don't cover matters of national security.
IIRC Amarok (and lots of other players on Windows) handles unprotected AACs just fine?
Anyway, the DRM-free AAC thing is only from Apple. EMI will make it available in whatever format the retailer wants to sell in:
EMI expects that consumers will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free downloads from a variety of digital music stores within the coming weeks, with each retailer choosing whether to sell downloads in AAC, WMA, MP3 or other unprotected formats of their choice.
So you'll probably see Microsoft offer them as unprotected WMAs and eMusic (which, as EMI's CEO noted, could also offer EMI's catalog if it chooses to pay EMI's wholesale price) could offer MP3s.
Since you make it sound as if India is communications nirvana, I'll introduce a few elements of reality into the picture...
I spent a small amount of time in the US, and surprisingly the tarrif structure and the talk time etc., plans available in India are far better than in the US... in case of cellular connections countries like India are way ahead of the US/Europe, and very soon 3G deployment will be mainstream
You know, you really shouldn't lump Europe with the US in terms of mobile penetration. According to some very rudimentary looking-up, India's looking at 30% penetration by 2009 (ref), whereas Europe is going to have near-100% penetration by 2007 (ref). Also, the US even with it's "dismal" record in mobiles has a penetration rate of 70% estimated for 2006 (ref).
On top of this you have other indicators, like the percentage of subscribers actually using GPRS (leave 3G aside for the moment because its uptake hasn't been huge anywhere), which is embarassingly low in India -- which is why Airtel has a Rs99/'unlimited' use GPRS plan: they're pretty much begging the market to use the service. This is analogous to their free MMS plan in non-Delhi/Bombay markets for a long time: they pretty much had to give it away because no one wanted to send MMSes at Rs 5 a pop.
Finally, most markets tend to reward staying consumers rather than random prepaid customers who use a cellphone for a few days. I'd say if you were living in the US for a longer time you'd have been pleasantly surprised with some of the offers available, including free night+weekend minutes, and free long-distance to selected numbers.
In broadband access developed nations have lot of lead over developing ones, maybe because to have good connectivity you require undersea cables as most of the servers are in west
While India definitely needs more fiber, it doesn't use what's available well -- I wrote this in 2002 and obviously things have improved since then (cf Anil Ambani's new FALCON cable) but the lighted capacity ratios haven't(check out how much of FALCON is unlighted). The net result-- even now, 256kbps seems to be the median connect speed for residential DSL in India, when even stodgy old UK gives away 2Mbps connections practically for free, and 16/24Mbps services are becoming common. I know telcos keep a certain level of unlighted capability but given India's population and demand, the sheer amount of unlighted fiber is wasteful IMHO.
Also, millions of people in India who've ditched their government-supplied copper-line phones for GSM/CDMA/WLL phones from private companies. This bites broadband growth in the back, because these technologies have a low data trasmission limit, which is shared by all subscribers in a given area.
Realistically, if you want good residential broadband you need decent copper wiring (a concept which MTNL's/BSNL's illiterate field staff don't understand -- which is why most of India's copperline phones cannot carry 8Mbps traffic even though theoretically they could do even more) or decent Ethernet/OFC wiring (and no one's done fiber-to-the-home in India just yet). And technologies like community wifi (and Wimax) are ill-suited to India's dense urban jungles.
Re:That was actually surprisingly good article
on
The Cost of the iPod
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· Score: 1
People have done teardown analyses of iPods. Nanos cost $100, etc. But that's just a guess because you can't price intangibles like royalties they may be paying to PortalPlayer.
Now, one could say it's an analyst's job to do detective work, but the point is companies that hide information could end up misleading the market. A famous case was Enron (see "The smartest guys in the room" if you want more) and ultimately it took a couple of Fortune journalists to do what no analyst did and ask how Enron's making its money.
Not that I think Apple is wanting to be deceptive, but given recent financial scandals, transparent companies are better than secretive ones.
> I don't see the mention of loose coupling in the GP.
So you assumed that since I was talking about integration, I must necessarily be proposing bloatware? The sense I got was that whenever someone says "integration", you reflexively assume the "look at IE!" stance and assume and that the developers are idiots and incapable of good design. That smacks of ludditism.
Oh, and the nature of the two main DEs essentially is that the integration part is left to the developers and not the users.
Integration *should* be left to whoever's providing the software. In Firefox's case, it's the Mozilla Foundation. In a Linux Desktop's case, it's the distro provider (Ubuntu/SuSE/etc). And if a user doesn't like the integration, he can always become his own provider, the source's always there. This business of "letting the end-user decide" is a cop-out that appeals to a class of users I call "fiddlers".
> If the integration was done right, we would have a single file manager library, and two (or more) GUI wrappers on top of it.
We already have a single standard "file manager library", it's called stdio. Nautilus and Konquerer use stdio to do their file management.
Also, I don't think the Linux Desktop needs an additional layer of abstraction to accomodate two DEs. Especially since the sole reason for the existence of two DEs is political (Gnome started because folk didn't like KDE using a then non-free Qt toolkit). In an ideal world, one of the two (KDE/Gnome) would fold and merge into the other project. In the real world, we're doomed to duplicating valuable developer time on two DEs.
> Start realising that the integration is a weakness, not a strength.
Looks like someone read only half of the Unix mantra, "Small pieces loosely joined". You read upto the small pieces part and forgot small pieces are useful only when they're joined. Joining is integration. It is at the heart of what drives software.
You see it in the money and energy being spent -- twice over! -- in writing a desktop environment for Linux. (In fact, every distro upgrade brings nothing except (shock, horror!) a little more polish and integration. You see it in dev tools, where tools like maven are managing entire projects.
There's integration and there's integration done right. One word for you: pluggable. Incidentally, that's what makes the Unix command line environment come together as a cohesive whole.
> Look at Internet Explorer. Now look at the security issues
IE's security issues come mostly from confusing the web/desktop boundary with their shell (which is a good idea) and the untrusted/trusted code boundary with ActiveX (which is a bad one). It's a rickety model but it doesn't mean no one can do better.
In this specific case, it's relatively easy to design things well so that the db is a pluggable component into the browser (The db should still ship by default, to spur adoption, but the point is it's basically a plugin). In fact the Derby folk already have a demo up. Similarly, a plugin approach could add every one of the other enhancements. All you then need is a revised DOM and a capable language for scripting and gluing the parts together.
Concerns of bloat are quite justifiable here, but the point is -- all of this is really Firefox + a few plugins. A _lot_ of the infrastructure is already there, it just hasn't come together yet. And people who just want a small, light browser can probably download a minimal Firefox build. Or Opera.
> You get none of this with the current generation of web apps.
You're right about the current generation, but the writing is on the wall...
Imagine a browser that ships with database (these days modern processors can run MySQL or SQL Server Desktop Edition pretty easily) and has top-notch WebDAV support.
Now imagine that unlike Firefox's relatively sucky file manager capabilities (well, it does give you a list of files if you type file:///), this browser's file manager look more like Nautilus and can do local files + WebDAV seamlessly.
Now imagine you have a rich control toolkit, like the WHAT-WG is cooking up, and that applications using these rich controls can be cached locally and take advantage of the local relational data store (the built-in database) to store data when the user is offline.
Just for kicks, add in a scheduler that can reliably move large files across localstoragewebstore.
By now, you have enough 'richness' in this 'browser' that it can with some justification call itself a GUI shell. Throw in an IM and email client and a large percentage of PC (including Mac) users wouldn't need much else.
As for 'silos', well-- implementing a clipboard on the web is simple using XML, as Ray Ozzie demonstrated recently. And if a rich browser environment ever caught on, I'd expect websites will soon start plugging into each other's UI seamlessly using a 'parts' approach.
Prediction: Google will do this (probably by working with the Mozilla Foundation). Because (a) it makes sense for them to do it (their advertising model works wonderfully here) and (b) if they don't, Microsoft will. Why would Microsoft do this? Because it'll improve the PC experience and make apps more web-like (install-on-demand, auto-upgradeable, etc) and because there's a real chance they can get annuity from customers (which improves stock price) instead of one-time sales. Of course, Microsoft does online ad sales now, so they'll probably offer a free ad-supported version as well.
> Punch them in the face for using hotmail and get them a REAL email account.
Yeah, right. I've had a Hotmail Plus account ($20/yr for a 2GB Inbox, no ads, offline access) for some time now (before Gmail was launched), and I must say bar some real idiocy on the part of MS I'm going to keep renewing, primarily for the spam protection (2-3 a day) and good customer service.
> I myself use yahoomail
Right now Yahoo's name == mud with me because they deactivated my Yahoo Mail account for 'non-use' (and deleted all my email). This was 3 weeks *after* I joined the Yahoo Mail Beta program and was using it regularly. And their customer support treats free webmail users like crap, dishing out form answers whatever you say to them. If you're using Yahoo, more power to you and good luck-- but don't expect much support if bad things happen to your account and you're a free user.
Frankly, Yahoo's rather callous attitude brought home for me the point that you can't really trust free web services. At least Google does the right thing and allows POP3 export, they get marks for that -- if you really don't want to be your own ISP or pay for webmail, give Gmail a go.
> If you have a yahoo email address, you're getting spam anyway, so how will you even know the difference?
Great point. Is it only me or has Yahoo Mail hit the bottom of the barrel? My hotmail account (and it's used for domain registrations) gets 2-3 spam emails a day (and these go to the junk mail folder 99% of the time). My gmail account gets about 2 a week. Yahoo gets over 50 a day and I don't even use it that much.
> People who judge a person by his attire are hopefully an endangered species.
Heh, that reminds me of a rather famous man who was disgusted by another famous man's clothing habits:
"It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi,... striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace... to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor."
- Winston Churchill, 1930
Of course, in all fairness, people judge you by your attire all the time. In the absence of any other information, it's a perfectly legitimate attribute to judge you by. But yeah, judging by attire alone to the exclusion of other attributes, even when those other attributes have been presented, is a sign of senility.
Oh, I linked to Derby because they have a credible demo. Really, any storage engine could be used, or even multiple storage engines (unless of course the browser vendor bundled one, in which case you'd be better off targeting just that engine).
> While the Writely and Google Spreadsheets combo are not "killer apps" in terms of features
Actually, Writely and Google Spreadsheet are Labs toys right now. However fast forward one year, with Firefox sporting an embedded database, and Writely and Spreadsheets will look far less toy-like. Add support for rich controls from the WHAT-WG and in a couple of ears you have an office suite you can download on demand and run inside your browser. And you can work with it offline.
And if you think Microsoft hasn't read the writing on the wall, you haven't been looking at XAML and IE7 very closely.
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> Many ATM machines ran it because it was 8000% more stable than any of microsoft's Operating systems
A lot of the ATMs that ran OS/2 ran the Microsoft version of OS/2 (yes, Microsoft developed the first versions of OS/2 for IBM and had permission to OEM it, just like DOS). OS/2 went to IBM from v2.0, IIRC.
I've seen ATMs show "Microsoft OS/2" when rebooting to be serviced. Here's what the boot screen looks like.
I've noticed more "loading then removing" of content with Chrome/AdThwart than I remember from Firefox/AdblockPlus
That's because Chrome's extension API doesn't allow extensions to stop loading resources, it only allows resources to be removed after they are loaded.
John Whitney only proposed using computers for that sequence. Douglas Trumbull was inspired by his work and used the (analog) slit-scan technique.
And the key word here is _precisely_.
> - trashcan copied
Actually, that's exactly why Microsoft never called it the "trashcan". They called it a Recycle Bin. It looks different, too.
> Shutdown procedure copied ... > ... This is not _precisely_ the same as the Mac.
Windows has a start button attached to a start menu. To shut down, you go Start > Shut down
And so on...
The point is look-and-feel protection is a very narrow protection. It protects you from lookalikes, not workalikes.
And finally: sue or shut up. Frankly, if some Mac fans (or Apple) feel Windows 7 ripped the Mac off, they ought to get Apple to sue. Lord knows Apple isn't litigation-shy. Thankfully, their lawyers are a little more grown-up than the average Mac fanboy.
I've been using Firefox since Phoenix 0.5 (December 2002 iirc, almost seven years now) and I have to say, the community process and the extensions make Firefox what it is.
Yes, these days there's another open source browser on the block (Chrome) and it too is very good. But it's great to have Mozilla and Firefox around because you can be sure that Mozilla will look after users' interests far more than Google or Microsoft will. If nothing else, it keeps the others honest.
So congratulations Firefox, and here's to five more years!
Linux did not and does not have this feature. If X crashes, It's Ctrl Alt Backspace time, and you lose your work. And X can hard crash to the point where even Ctrl Alt Backspace doesn't work -- it's not an everyday occurrence but it does happen. In fact, the link I pointed to asked why Linux distros hadn't included this feature yet.
Geez. A mouth-breathing idiot who knows the f-word and isn't afraid to use it. Like I said, the time-to-desktop is snappy. This matters in the real world because workplace (and many home) PCs are switched off after use. Anyway, the desktop is snappy too, thanks for asking.
The OP asked a question about what Windows 7 brought to the table over Windows XP. I answered that the best I could. Of course, for morons like you, no thread on /. is complete without a rant about how Linux had it first, is superior to every other OS and is the be-all and end-all of technology. You know what? Users like you are the reason why Linux has a perception problem in the marketplace (to put it politely).
NOTE: These are benefits when upgrading from XP. Vista has some of these features, but usually 7's implementation of these is more refined.
The biggie is that display driver crashes don't bring down your system. The display flickers for a bit and the driver is reloaded.
7 also supports multiple drivers for multiple adapters, but that's a bit esoteric.
Libraries are useful if you're not compulsive about organizing your files.
The user home folder is now sanely organized (C:\Users\User\Videos, C:\Users\User\Downloads, C:\Users\User\Documents, not C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Videos).
Ships with Powershell. Decent scripting out of the box.
The taskbar works MUCH better than XP/Vista and imho even the OSX dock. You no longer have to choose between the insanity of XP style grouped taskbar buttons and an overflowing taskbar. Much better window mgmt tools (e.g. desktop peek).
Very subjective, but feels snappy. Time to login screen and time to a usable desktop is much lower than Vista.
Built-in Windows Media Player (v12) starts quickly and is a pleasure to use. To be fair v11 was pretty good too, but v12 plays DivX (and all the xvids I've thrown at it) and most Quicktime MOVs. The interface is minimal if you double-click a media file. You get a simple rectangle containing the media, or a small square if it's an audio file. You get the full interface only if you start the app or click the expand UI button. This is what iTunes should have been like.
Explorer has improved its "are you sure" dialogs and made them much more usable/informative. Thumbnail previews are much faster. On the other hand, the new explorer takes some getting used to over the XP one -- the toolbar is non-customizable and not very useful imho.
This is slightly off-topic, but your original post reminded me of something a Stanford Professor whose name I'd forgotten was pushing -- he was essentially calling for developed countries to set up autonomous zones in 3rd world countries and transfer their laws and rulesets to the 3rd world. This wouldn't be colonialism because it would be done essentially altruistically and with a legally enforceable get-out clause.
A few hours after replying to your post I came across this article on the Freakonomics blog with an interview with him ... he's fleshed out his proposal a little more and calls it "Charter cities" these days. It certainly makes for very interesting reading, especially considering your point about whether a "culture is too fundamentally backward".
Personally, I don't believe any culture is too 'fundamentally backward', and that any culture where a middle class can be bootstrapped will do well -- the challenge is bootstrapping one, and here Romer's ideas are provocative and potentially very useful.
That's an interesting example, but I don't think colonialism alone can build nations.
In India's case, the British didn't leave India with Indians marching into the sunrise in patriotic unison. Oh sure, the post-Independence honeymoon lasted a year or two, but secession and splintering back into a bunch of states was never really off the table for the first quarter-century after Independence, and it was especially touchy because of the partition that accompanied Independence.
Hell, there are sporadic movements *now* but they're not considered serious threats any more, largely because India's political system has evolved to the point that even very small sections of society can get a voice in the political process.
So while Britain did do a lot to create a modern nation-state, I think post-Independence Indian society deserves a lot of credit for seeing that, to misquote Ben Franklin, it's better to hang together than be hanged separately.
The bigger point is the British did all of this in many places, including Africa. The problem is, as soon as they left, the societies fell back to their old patterns of conflict. I'm not sure more Imperialism would have fixed that.
Imperialism is evil because imperial powers don't come into colonized countries even wearing the fig leaf of spreading democracy or development, they come to use the resources of the colonized country the best they can. In India's case, the British exploited India's farmers with exploitative taxes (even during famine years) and took as much of India's natural resources (mined metal, timber, etc) as they could given a 19th century supply chain. Whatever problems arise *after* an imperial power leaves, at least they are problems brought upon by the people themselves, not a foreign power.
> Chrome should have been built on top of Qt from day 1.
RTFA.
From the link above, given the sharp drop in cash reserves in Q4 2004, I wonder if that was when they decided to issue dividends, or buy back shares.
Remember that cash piles of 50bn+ are just silly and will never be reached again, now that MSFT issues dividends.
> It turns on ClearType. Globally. It can't be turned off (well, without a lot of work.)
Not that you're missing much with IE7, but have you tried unchecking Tools > Options > Advanced > Multimedia > Always use ClearType for HTML and restarting IE?
> ClearType anti-aliases fonts.
Also, I don't think ClearType applies anti-aliasing across the board -- in fact cleartype text has more jaggies than standard font-smoothed text produced using Windows' old method -- here's an example.
AFAIK ClearType tunes the letter forms in multiple ways (including using subtly different shaping rules -- this works especially well if the font has been designed with ClearType in mind, e.g., Consolas and Candara). This makes screen text at 11-18px (the vast majority of UI text) much easier to read.
If you have a LCD monitor you might want to set Windows to globally enable ClearType and try the Windows ClearType tuner powertoy -- well-tuned Cleartype fonts really do look a lot better with it on for *most* people.
> Spanish is my native language, maybe that's why I was able to follow the movie from beginning to end, it was like poetry.
I don't speak Spanish and my only other Spanish-language film has been Y Tu Mama Tambien, but I can tell you that you didn't need to understand Spanish to get the poetry of Pan's Labyrinth.
For the first ten minutes I thought it was going to be a Narnia-wannabe, and then I realized that this fairy-tale was fucked up, and I saw what the director was doing counterposing the equally fucked up real world against the fairy tale (note: this film doesn't do PG-13 action scenes. You *will* feel disturbed watching some of the real world action unless you are borderline psycho.) Still, it was a fairy tale, I reasoned, and happily waited for the happy ending. It never came. Or did it? The fairy tale did end happily after all -- the princess went back to her father and lived happily ever after. How the viewer chooses to understand this is his own business, but the cognitive dissonance created in this film is par excellence.
And oh -- the sparingly used monsters in this film are *way* more intense than the relatively bland CGI creatures being turned out by Hollywood (see for example Narnia and now The Golden Compass).
And this doesn't even begin to cover the talented actors, especially Ivana Baquero, and the excellent music.
I do realize this film isn't for everyone -- it requires the viewer to connect emotionally with the characters on-screen. But the director makes it really, really easy to do this given the quality of the work.
For example, readers from India might want to check out the CIA's files about the India-China war of 1962, especially since India's Freedom of Information laws (IIRC) don't cover matters of national security.
Anyway, the DRM-free AAC thing is only from Apple. EMI will make it available in whatever format the retailer wants to sell in:So you'll probably see Microsoft offer them as unprotected WMAs and eMusic (which, as EMI's CEO noted, could also offer EMI's catalog if it chooses to pay EMI's wholesale price) could offer MP3s.
Since you make it sound as if India is communications nirvana, I'll introduce a few elements of reality into the picture...
... in case of cellular connections countries like India are way ahead of the US/Europe, and very soon 3G deployment will be mainstream
I spent a small amount of time in the US, and surprisingly the tarrif structure and the talk time etc., plans available in India are far better than in the US
You know, you really shouldn't lump Europe with the US in terms of mobile penetration. According to some very rudimentary looking-up, India's looking at 30% penetration by 2009 (ref), whereas Europe is going to have near-100% penetration by 2007 (ref). Also, the US even with it's "dismal" record in mobiles has a penetration rate of 70% estimated for 2006 (ref).
On top of this you have other indicators, like the percentage of subscribers actually using GPRS (leave 3G aside for the moment because its uptake hasn't been huge anywhere), which is embarassingly low in India -- which is why Airtel has a Rs99/'unlimited' use GPRS plan: they're pretty much begging the market to use the service. This is analogous to their free MMS plan in non-Delhi/Bombay markets for a long time: they pretty much had to give it away because no one wanted to send MMSes at Rs 5 a pop.
Finally, most markets tend to reward staying consumers rather than random prepaid customers who use a cellphone for a few days. I'd say if you were living in the US for a longer time you'd have been pleasantly surprised with some of the offers available, including free night+weekend minutes, and free long-distance to selected numbers.
In broadband access developed nations have lot of lead over developing ones, maybe because to have good connectivity you require undersea cables as most of the servers are in west
While India definitely needs more fiber, it doesn't use what's available well -- I wrote this in 2002 and obviously things have improved since then (cf Anil Ambani's new FALCON cable) but the lighted capacity ratios haven't(check out how much of FALCON is unlighted). The net result-- even now, 256kbps seems to be the median connect speed for residential DSL in India, when even stodgy old UK gives away 2Mbps connections practically for free, and 16/24Mbps services are becoming common. I know telcos keep a certain level of unlighted capability but given India's population and demand, the sheer amount of unlighted fiber is wasteful IMHO.
Also, millions of people in India who've ditched their government-supplied copper-line phones for GSM/CDMA/WLL phones from private companies. This bites broadband growth in the back, because these technologies have a low data trasmission limit, which is shared by all subscribers in a given area.
Realistically, if you want good residential broadband you need decent copper wiring (a concept which MTNL's/BSNL's illiterate field staff don't understand -- which is why most of India's copperline phones cannot carry 8Mbps traffic even though theoretically they could do even more) or decent Ethernet/OFC wiring (and no one's done fiber-to-the-home in India just yet). And technologies like community wifi (and Wimax) are ill-suited to India's dense urban jungles.
People have done teardown analyses of iPods. Nanos cost $100, etc. But that's just a guess because you can't price intangibles like royalties they may be paying to PortalPlayer.
Now, one could say it's an analyst's job to do detective work, but the point is companies that hide information could end up misleading the market. A famous case was Enron (see "The smartest guys in the room" if you want more) and ultimately it took a couple of Fortune journalists to do what no analyst did and ask how Enron's making its money.
Not that I think Apple is wanting to be deceptive, but given recent financial scandals, transparent companies are better than secretive ones.
> I don't see the mention of loose coupling in the GP.
So you assumed that since I was talking about integration, I must necessarily be proposing bloatware? The sense I got was that whenever someone says "integration", you reflexively assume the "look at IE!" stance and assume and that the developers are idiots and incapable of good design. That smacks of ludditism.
Oh, and the nature of the two main DEs essentially is that the integration part is left to the developers and not the users.
Integration *should* be left to whoever's providing the software. In Firefox's case, it's the Mozilla Foundation. In a Linux Desktop's case, it's the distro provider (Ubuntu/SuSE/etc). And if a user doesn't like the integration, he can always become his own provider, the source's always there. This business of "letting the end-user decide" is a cop-out that appeals to a class of users I call "fiddlers".
> If the integration was done right, we would have a single file manager library, and two (or more) GUI wrappers on top of it.
We already have a single standard "file manager library", it's called stdio. Nautilus and Konquerer use stdio to do their file management.
Also, I don't think the Linux Desktop needs an additional layer of abstraction to accomodate two DEs. Especially since the sole reason for the existence of two DEs is political (Gnome started because folk didn't like KDE using a then non-free Qt toolkit). In an ideal world, one of the two (KDE/Gnome) would fold and merge into the other project. In the real world, we're doomed to duplicating valuable developer time on two DEs.
> Start realising that the integration is a weakness, not a strength.
Looks like someone read only half of the Unix mantra, "Small pieces loosely joined". You read upto the small pieces part and forgot small pieces are useful only when they're joined. Joining is integration. It is at the heart of what drives software.
You see it in the money and energy being spent -- twice over! -- in writing a desktop environment for Linux. (In fact, every distro upgrade brings nothing except (shock, horror!) a little more polish and integration. You see it in dev tools, where tools like maven are managing entire projects.
There's integration and there's integration done right. One word for you: pluggable. Incidentally, that's what makes the Unix command line environment come together as a cohesive whole.
> Look at Internet Explorer. Now look at the security issues
IE's security issues come mostly from confusing the web/desktop boundary with their shell (which is a good idea) and the untrusted/trusted code boundary with ActiveX (which is a bad one). It's a rickety model but it doesn't mean no one can do better.
In this specific case, it's relatively easy to design things well so that the db is a pluggable component into the browser (The db should still ship by default, to spur adoption, but the point is it's basically a plugin). In fact the Derby folk already have a demo up. Similarly, a plugin approach could add every one of the other enhancements. All you then need is a revised DOM and a capable language for scripting and gluing the parts together.
Concerns of bloat are quite justifiable here, but the point is -- all of this is really Firefox + a few plugins. A _lot_ of the infrastructure is already there, it just hasn't come together yet. And people who just want a small, light browser can probably download a minimal Firefox build. Or Opera.
> You get none of this with the current generation of web apps.
You're right about the current generation, but the writing is on the wall...
Imagine a browser that ships with database (these days modern processors can run MySQL or SQL Server Desktop Edition pretty easily) and has top-notch WebDAV support.
Now imagine that unlike Firefox's relatively sucky file manager capabilities (well, it does give you a list of files if you type file:///), this browser's file manager look more like Nautilus and can do local files + WebDAV seamlessly.
Now imagine you have a rich control toolkit, like the WHAT-WG is cooking up, and that applications using these rich controls can be cached locally and take advantage of the local relational data store (the built-in database) to store data when the user is offline.
Just for kicks, add in a scheduler that can reliably move large files across localstoragewebstore.
By now, you have enough 'richness' in this 'browser' that it can with some justification call itself a GUI shell. Throw in an IM and email client and a large percentage of PC (including Mac) users wouldn't need much else.
As for 'silos', well-- implementing a clipboard on the web is simple using XML, as Ray Ozzie demonstrated recently. And if a rich browser environment ever caught on, I'd expect websites will soon start plugging into each other's UI seamlessly using a 'parts' approach.
Prediction: Google will do this (probably by working with the Mozilla Foundation). Because (a) it makes sense for them to do it (their advertising model works wonderfully here) and (b) if they don't, Microsoft will. Why would Microsoft do this? Because it'll improve the PC experience and make apps more web-like (install-on-demand, auto-upgradeable, etc) and because there's a real chance they can get annuity from customers (which improves stock price) instead of one-time sales. Of course, Microsoft does online ad sales now, so they'll probably offer a free ad-supported version as well.
> Punch them in the face for using hotmail and get them a REAL email account.
Yeah, right. I've had a Hotmail Plus account ($20/yr for a 2GB Inbox, no ads, offline access) for some time now (before Gmail was launched), and I must say bar some real idiocy on the part of MS I'm going to keep renewing, primarily for the spam protection (2-3 a day) and good customer service.
> I myself use yahoomail
Right now Yahoo's name == mud with me because they deactivated my Yahoo Mail account for 'non-use' (and deleted all my email). This was 3 weeks *after* I joined the Yahoo Mail Beta program and was using it regularly. And their customer support treats free webmail users like crap, dishing out form answers whatever you say to them. If you're using Yahoo, more power to you and good luck-- but don't expect much support if bad things happen to your account and you're a free user.
Frankly, Yahoo's rather callous attitude brought home for me the point that you can't really trust free web services. At least Google does the right thing and allows POP3 export, they get marks for that -- if you really don't want to be your own ISP or pay for webmail, give Gmail a go.
> If you have a yahoo email address, you're getting spam anyway, so how will you even know the difference?
Great point. Is it only me or has Yahoo Mail hit the bottom of the barrel? My hotmail account (and it's used for domain registrations) gets 2-3 spam emails a day (and these go to the junk mail folder 99% of the time). My gmail account gets about 2 a week. Yahoo gets over 50 a day and I don't even use it that much.
Heh, that reminds me of a rather famous man who was disgusted by another famous man's clothing habits:Of course, in all fairness, people judge you by your attire all the time. In the absence of any other information, it's a perfectly legitimate attribute to judge you by. But yeah, judging by attire alone to the exclusion of other attributes, even when those other attributes have been presented, is a sign of senility.
Oh, I linked to Derby because they have a credible demo. Really, any storage engine could be used, or even multiple storage engines (unless of course the browser vendor bundled one, in which case you'd be better off targeting just that engine).
> While the Writely and Google Spreadsheets combo are not "killer apps" in terms of features
Actually, Writely and Google Spreadsheet are Labs toys right now. However fast forward one year, with Firefox sporting an embedded database, and Writely and Spreadsheets will look far less toy-like. Add support for rich controls from the WHAT-WG and in a couple of ears you have an office suite you can download on demand and run inside your browser. And you can work with it offline.
And if you think Microsoft hasn't read the writing on the wall, you haven't been looking at XAML and IE7 very closely.