You must have an old version of IE or use XP still.
IE 9 for a year had h.264 and IE 10 which is almost beta standardizes on h.264 for METRO apps. Apple and MS love h.264 since they can afford the license.
The issue does remain with XP and Windows 7 starter edition and non Andriod/Iphone smartphones which do not support it due to licensing costs and drm requirements. This will be an issue in Africa and Asia as it will be the main prefered method to get on the web over an $$$ desktop.
Well it sounds like a CIO to manage and streamline the procurement process is what is needed and well overdue. Obama did the right thing as past presidents were old and out to lunch in terms of technology.
If they need to check for spyware crap and security then set a budget with interns providing the wiping of the hard drives 7 times with an IT department to provide the encryption and come up with procedures to retire and fix PCS and so on.
I would think a job as important as the executive branch would be important enough. If I were president a 2% downtime would have someone's head on the block let alone a 23% downtime.
This is coming from someone who is fairly conservative I may add too. This is one cost that is needed
The DOD still standardizes on IE 6 from what I am told.
It is not cutting edge at all.
Obama's staff at least did a WTF and quickly hired the first CIO to clear the red tape. True he was not a good CIO, but someone was needed. It is unacceptable to have email down PERIOD at such an important job. The president's job is the most important in the world and any loss of email or downtime when WW3 starts or something unrelated is unacceptable. In the private sector downtime is measured by costs with employees salary x time of outage.
As information is needed rapidly the whiteshouse should have the most advanced technology second only to the DOD and IT needs to be involved.
Maybe Bush was out to lunch which is not surprising but if I were president I would be flipping the second email would go down for more than a few seconds as I know my staff needs up to the second information to do their jobs.
Doesn't it bother you that your paying more in your health care costs than rent? 15 years ago $75 a month was considered a lot for health insurance. Wages have remained stagnent since then adjusted for inflation too. Now if you over 40 expect to pay $900 a month if you have a family!
These drug companies are the reason and I see more stupid commercials targetted to consumers on TV than any other product. You pay for it every month in your premium.
These companies do not operate on a free market because they have a monopoly. Not only a monopoly, but a monopoly where you get it for free if you have insurance... WAHOO and what if your life is in danger you will pay anything for it. So the drug companies are taking all of us as consumers, benefitors, and tax payers for a ride with most of the research done by universities anyway where the companies buy the research for $100,000 and turn it into a $50,000,000,000 product.
Good for India. Maybe regulation is needed... oh god forbid that is socialist... as it is obviously a public good since only one company can own a particular drug or patent a set of genes in your body.
Because XP users will whine to the webmasters their internets wont show videos at the website.
What about Linux users? Leave them in the dark too? Mobile users? In India and China there will likely be more people browsing the web on phones than desktops and not everyone of them will have an expensive patent paid IPhone or Andriod. These mobile browsers do not support these patents to cut down on costs.
Still it is copyrighted and the requirements to use mean your os and browser must support DRM. The issue mentioned on Ars Technica, is that XP does not support h.264 because its GDI does not support DRM like Vista/7 due with HDMI.
Or pay $$$ for proprietary tools for developing websites.
One of the reasons I hated flash was the web was no longer open. 10 years ago you could use Linux to develop web pages because it had cool xml, php, database and other tools. Then flash and Adobe came around and turned it into a win32 and to a much lesser extent mac platform.
All the good candidates with the right skills had these $2,000 tools as HR check listed flash, flex, dreamweaver, illustrator, etc.
I view h.264 as another tie in to expensive tools that force you to pirate and not update your own pc just be job competitive. That is against the spirit of the web. No free tool can exist because h.264 is licensed and proprietary.
It looks like one of the technical (not political) arguments agaisn't h.264 is it is not supported on XP. Firefox could make h2.64 on newer versions of Windows, but that would create issues as web developers who test it on their Windows 7 boxes with FF will look fine, but their users with XP wont be able to see anything.
As someone learning web development, I am sick and tired of supporting old versions of IE on XP and it would just die already if people stopped supporting it.... political wise it is a shame h.264 is patented and licensed. It is the only stumbling block on a political basis
Php is amazing fast as it is not pure interpretative. It is, but it simply calls DSO objects already compiled via Apache so the rendering engine itself is inside the server software at native C++ speeds.
Couldn't javascript do this... or is that what makes it insecure?
IE 9 is a good browser. Running everything is so IE 6 pre XP SP 2. Even IE 8 only runs signed activeX controls on intranets only. THe only downside is its sandbox is prone to memory corruption and is exploitable. FF does not even have a sandbox. IE 10 will fix this.
It doesn't I reran the test at zdnet and I did not find any.exe in my %appdata/roaming folders.
My guess is if it is not a flash exploit but a javascript one.
One downside is many are reporting on ZDNet, that the IE 9 exploit that was shown yesterday has new trojans already working for it.
Since it is a 0 day exploit it is undetectable by any anti virus scanner yet and all you need to do is search under Google Image and you are instantly infected without clicking on anything.
Google at least patched the last one in 24 hours, but I do not trust other browsers or users to patch that quick.
One of the reasons I use Chrome and IE 9 is because of sandboxing. Firefox still does not support it, but there are ways around it. Java had sandboxing too from day 1 and we all know how well that turned out to be the last few years security wise.
Why don't you have a banner that says "Optimized for IE 6! Enjoy the new support the best browser available.. Link a whole bunch of articles including the one at arstechnica that showed IE 6 usage jumped last month.
Go dig up some CSS from Slashdot 2002 era from slashcode. Let us officeworkers use it for a day or need to click "compatibility mode" for IE 8 and 9. You have the code?
Maybe put the blue colors of XP mode in its colors.
I bought a book set years ago on Win32 and the MFC after learning general C++ in a college course. My GOD, ugly and complicated compared to Java Swing and certainly easier with web development.
I am trying to learn the ins and out of IE 6 right now as I am making an e-com website without much luck. I found a great CSS book that talks about IE 6 but not 7 which I imagine businesses are using as some sites are now refusing IE 6 support, but still support IE 7.
Sure, with IE 6 things wrapped around elements that shouldn't, the outer padding in the box model isn't supported and you need zoom to let IE 6 even know it should at least try to position elements on the page, but it works. Just with a few tricks. It is not too bad compared to the many bugs and strange Hungarian notation in MFC.
Even with these strange behaviors (do not know about IE 7 yet, other than it is picky on what gets moved in css rules as it can't figure out margins on its own) it is still much quicker and easier.
I looked at the Andriod SDK API and it is shallow and neutered. You can't do much with it on purpose which is why no good anti virus scanners exist for Andriod yet as they just scan existing apps and an exploit can execute underneath undetected. My guess is with Andriod you need to hack it with a buffer overflow or heap stack as the java api is next to useless unless you use it for basic things like HTML 5 goodness. While Google wants their apps to be easier to develop they crippled power users and I can only imagine the GPU situation between the devices. A Galaxy S will have an awesome GPU, but the $79 el chepo by Tmobile probably does everything in software to cut costs. So you need to program all those scenarios in.
Better HTML 5 and webGL is needed but even that is basic functionality. I would rather develop websites than deal with the horrible inner works of Windows anyday. Maybe.NET would change my mind but it seems you need tons and tons of code to get anything done with bugs that look like plain crap when you are done with win32 unless you use.NET
Given the options most businesses chose IE 6 instead and loved the idea of only a single company with a single product with a single version and then cry foul when times change later as it would cut into the CEOs bonus
I disagree. Underemployment is better than no employment. It means some goods are produced and those that work under employed jobs are statistically more likely to get back to their skill level when the economy improves.
Is it is as good as not working what they once did? No, but it is better than nothing.
Every employer I met will not hire anyone out of work. You are unhirable and something must be wrong if you are out of work for more than a month. Recession? They do not care. They figured your skills are not fresh anymore anyway.
An experienced maybe $15 an hour. Your wages reflected demand 2002-2006 when builders could not find enough qualified workers and these homes needed to be sold FAST while they WERE STILL HOTT.
Today, there are more electricians than jobs and these wages are gone forever. Even if another bubble starts there are more electricians now than demand so the builders can say take it or leave it.
This is deflation my friend. It happened in the 1930s and is a sign of a depression. Everyone I know makes less than 10 years ago except the ones I know who own a business who are taking advantage fo the situation by paying employees less and pocketing the difference. The fed pumping money it helping inflate the top 2% and business owners by great investments and access to cash. Us... need not apply go get a job etc.
You and I both know employers see inactivity on a resume as a flag and unhirable and a liability. It sucks, but the employers have the ball right now. We are still in a depression (The Great Depression had hiring and production increases twice before it was over) and we have 3rd world immigrants here and factories in their countries where people are jumping all desperate willing to help the CEO boost his stock price.
In this time you need to do what you can and keep looking and give them the finger and walk about when something does better come along. With 20 million under employed or not even working you simply can not unionize and demand better.
In 1999, we in I.T. had the power to ask for higher salaries and it worked. Network admins made $120,000 a year, programmers made $75,000 a year and people out of school answering phones made $35,000 a year. Today divide this by 2 and you get what your worth is.
The third option is no one wants to work harder for less. These same workers went to college to avoid these wages in the first place.
Only the CEOs and investors are making more money now than 10 years ago.
I graduated college in 2009 and still have not found stable work. I do odd jobs here and there. But, most employers want 5 years of experience doing statistical analysis or financial engineering and planning with excellent references with a $40,000 degree, then turn around and say $13 an hour or $28,000 a year?!
This worked in 2009 - 2011. Now they are whinning as enough employees with these qualifications are saying BS I am paying 50% of my income in gas and living at home with my parents. Give me my $38,000 or I walk!!
The rents keep going up and with the amount of debt the average person deals with + gas, food, and rent is unsustainable.
Or we need to live at work like the Chinese if this is the new standard. Corporations would love this as they are getting a taste of that in China.
Common sense. With 100 million users there are many bad sites and these are not games. It is a dangerous place.
Yes there are many bad websites and legit ones that have been compromised with ads or hacked to serve javascript exploits. Wordpress seems to be a popular legit series of sites that hackers keep injecting bad ads and malware to infect users who browse.
Go Google Norton Safe web and click the top 10? It changes everyday.
If you are really freaked out use an anti virus package that has cloud updates that blocklists bad sites and prevents them from opening. Avast Free is a popular one which updates every 8 minutes and blocks any browser. Commodo Dragon is a Chromium/Chrome based browser that has built in website blocking from bad domains as they make Commodo IS (haven't used it but has good ratings, though slows down your computer).
If you go to www.openDNS.com you can use the IP addresses in your DNS settings and it will provide filtering too (not as quick to block as other AV products I listed above).
Use a great Anti Virus product and do not got wierd unknown sites. Do not listen to the slashdot geeks who claim you do not need AV products and that they are not infected. 90% are and all it takes is one bad or flash exploit... keep flash up to date too by going to Adobe or www.filehippo.com. The new one will auto update. Good luck keeping secure
Ask any GeekSquad or Best Buy salesmen and they will tell you that you need full gold plated $2,000 HDMI cables for professional audio quality and $110 Monster ones for basic audio and video. They are not highly compensated so well for nothing you know
IE 9/10 have smart filtering. It is very good at blocking bad malware domains in all but 0 day exploits. You can also add additional protection lists to get rid of ads as well if you go to IE Gallary which is pretty cool and nice to use if you are stuck using it at work.
Since XSS protection is in every browser now I no longer need NoScript. I used it mainly to disable global cross site scripting as I find the bar allowing each site to execute code infuriatingly annoying.
My issue is it only runs on FF and NOTscript in Chrome is not the same. FF is not sandboxed by default so it defeats the purpose. Although, Avast 7 now adds sandboxing to it and it just came out.
IE 10 has a spelling and grammar checker that was lacking. At least website designers and grandmas can relax with IE as it behaves like a normal browser. IE 9 with full ASLR, DEP, sand-boxing and other enhancements. The malware writers tend to target flash and java now.
Slashdot Mirror
You must have an old version of IE or use XP still.
IE 9 for a year had h.264 and IE 10 which is almost beta standardizes on h.264 for METRO apps. Apple and MS love h.264 since they can afford the license.
The issue does remain with XP and Windows 7 starter edition and non Andriod/Iphone smartphones which do not support it due to licensing costs and drm requirements. This will be an issue in Africa and Asia as it will be the main prefered method to get on the web over an $$$ desktop.
Well it sounds like a CIO to manage and streamline the procurement process is what is needed and well overdue. Obama did the right thing as past presidents were old and out to lunch in terms of technology.
If they need to check for spyware crap and security then set a budget with interns providing the wiping of the hard drives 7 times with an IT department to provide the encryption and come up with procedures to retire and fix PCS and so on.
I would think a job as important as the executive branch would be important enough. If I were president a 2% downtime would have someone's head on the block let alone a 23% downtime.
This is coming from someone who is fairly conservative I may add too. This is one cost that is needed
The DOD still standardizes on IE 6 from what I am told.
It is not cutting edge at all.
Obama's staff at least did a WTF and quickly hired the first CIO to clear the red tape. True he was not a good CIO, but someone was needed. It is unacceptable to have email down PERIOD at such an important job. The president's job is the most important in the world and any loss of email or downtime when WW3 starts or something unrelated is unacceptable. In the private sector downtime is measured by costs with employees salary x time of outage.
As information is needed rapidly the whiteshouse should have the most advanced technology second only to the DOD and IT needs to be involved.
Maybe Bush was out to lunch which is not surprising but if I were president I would be flipping the second email would go down for more than a few seconds as I know my staff needs up to the second information to do their jobs.
Who is stealing from whom?
Doesn't it bother you that your paying more in your health care costs than rent? 15 years ago $75 a month was considered a lot for health insurance. Wages have remained stagnent since then adjusted for inflation too. Now if you over 40 expect to pay $900 a month if you have a family!
These drug companies are the reason and I see more stupid commercials targetted to consumers on TV than any other product. You pay for it every month in your premium.
These companies do not operate on a free market because they have a monopoly. Not only a monopoly, but a monopoly where you get it for free if you have insurance ... WAHOO and what if your life is in danger you will pay anything for it. So the drug companies are taking all of us as consumers, benefitors, and tax payers for a ride with most of the research done by universities anyway where the companies buy the research for $100,000 and turn it into a $50,000,000,000 product.
Good for India. Maybe regulation is needed ... oh god forbid that is socialist ... as it is obviously a public good since only one company can own a particular drug or patent a set of genes in your body.
Because XP users will whine to the webmasters their internets wont show videos at the website.
What about Linux users? Leave them in the dark too? Mobile users? In India and China there will likely be more people browsing the web on phones than desktops and not everyone of them will have an expensive patent paid IPhone or Andriod. These mobile browsers do not support these patents to cut down on costs.
Weren't patents extended for 30 years now?
Still it is copyrighted and the requirements to use mean your os and browser must support DRM. The issue mentioned on Ars Technica, is that XP does not support h.264 because its GDI does not support DRM like Vista/7 due with HDMI.
XP needs to die and is very stale.
Or pay $$$ for proprietary tools for developing websites.
One of the reasons I hated flash was the web was no longer open. 10 years ago you could use Linux to develop web pages because it had cool xml, php, database and other tools. Then flash and Adobe came around and turned it into a win32 and to a much lesser extent mac platform.
All the good candidates with the right skills had these $2,000 tools as HR check listed flash, flex, dreamweaver, illustrator, etc.
I view h.264 as another tie in to expensive tools that force you to pirate and not update your own pc just be job competitive. That is against the spirit of the web. No free tool can exist because h.264 is licensed and proprietary.
It looks like one of the technical (not political) arguments agaisn't h.264 is it is not supported on XP. Firefox could make h2.64 on newer versions of Windows, but that would create issues as web developers who test it on their Windows 7 boxes with FF will look fine, but their users with XP wont be able to see anything.
As someone learning web development, I am sick and tired of supporting old versions of IE on XP and it would just die already if people stopped supporting it. ... political wise it is a shame h.264 is patented and licensed. It is the only stumbling block on a political basis
Dont all browsers do this?
Php is amazing fast as it is not pure interpretative. It is, but it simply calls DSO objects already compiled via Apache so the rendering engine itself is inside the server software at native C++ speeds.
Couldn't javascript do this ... or is that what makes it insecure?
IE 9 is a good browser. Running everything is so IE 6 pre XP SP 2. Even IE 8 only runs signed activeX controls on intranets only. THe only downside is its sandbox is prone to memory corruption and is exploitable. FF does not even have a sandbox. IE 10 will fix this.
It doesn't I reran the test at zdnet and I did not find any .exe in my %appdata/roaming folders.
My guess is if it is not a flash exploit but a javascript one.
One downside is many are reporting on ZDNet, that the IE 9 exploit that was shown yesterday has new trojans already working for it.
Since it is a 0 day exploit it is undetectable by any anti virus scanner yet and all you need to do is search under Google Image and you are instantly infected without clicking on anything.
Google at least patched the last one in 24 hours, but I do not trust other browsers or users to patch that quick.
Not just webkit but also Google's Sandbox.
One of the reasons I use Chrome and IE 9 is because of sandboxing. Firefox still does not support it, but there are ways around it. Java had sandboxing too from day 1 and we all know how well that turned out to be the last few years security wise.
Be Creative!
Why don't you have a banner that says "Optimized for IE 6! Enjoy the new support the best browser available. . Link a whole bunch of articles including the one at arstechnica that showed IE 6 usage jumped last month.
Go dig up some CSS from Slashdot 2002 era from slashcode. Let us officeworkers use it for a day or need to click "compatibility mode" for IE 8 and 9. You have the code?
Maybe put the blue colors of XP mode in its colors.
I bought a book set years ago on Win32 and the MFC after learning general C++ in a college course. My GOD, ugly and complicated compared to Java Swing and certainly easier with web development.
I am trying to learn the ins and out of IE 6 right now as I am making an e-com website without much luck. I found a great CSS book that talks about IE 6 but not 7 which I imagine businesses are using as some sites are now refusing IE 6 support, but still support IE 7.
Sure, with IE 6 things wrapped around elements that shouldn't, the outer padding in the box model isn't supported and you need zoom to let IE 6 even know it should at least try to position elements on the page, but it works. Just with a few tricks. It is not too bad compared to the many bugs and strange Hungarian notation in MFC.
Even with these strange behaviors (do not know about IE 7 yet, other than it is picky on what gets moved in css rules as it can't figure out margins on its own) it is still much quicker and easier.
I looked at the Andriod SDK API and it is shallow and neutered. You can't do much with it on purpose which is why no good anti virus scanners exist for Andriod yet as they just scan existing apps and an exploit can execute underneath undetected. My guess is with Andriod you need to hack it with a buffer overflow or heap stack as the java api is next to useless unless you use it for basic things like HTML 5 goodness. While Google wants their apps to be easier to develop they crippled power users and I can only imagine the GPU situation between the devices. A Galaxy S will have an awesome GPU, but the $79 el chepo by Tmobile probably does everything in software to cut costs. So you need to program all those scenarios in.
Better HTML 5 and webGL is needed but even that is basic functionality. I would rather develop websites than deal with the horrible inner works of Windows anyday. Maybe .NET would change my mind but it seems you need tons and tons of code to get anything done with bugs that look like plain crap when you are done with win32 unless you use .NET
Given the options most businesses chose IE 6 instead and loved the idea of only a single company with a single product with a single version and then cry foul when times change later as it would cut into the CEOs bonus
Maybe Foxconn is going to see if they can have Americans live their their Asian counterparts.
You could find some mexicans to do it.
I am not being racist here, but in parts of the south they made that much working these jobs and being out of work would gladly accept it.
There is a labor shortage.
I disagree. Underemployment is better than no employment. It means some goods are produced and those that work under employed jobs are statistically more likely to get back to their skill level when the economy improves.
Is it is as good as not working what they once did? No, but it is better than nothing.
Every employer I met will not hire anyone out of work. You are unhirable and something must be wrong if you are out of work for more than a month. Recession? They do not care. They figured your skills are not fresh anymore anyway.
In Florida they make about $12 an hour.
An experienced maybe $15 an hour. Your wages reflected demand 2002-2006 when builders could not find enough qualified workers and these homes needed to be sold FAST while they WERE STILL HOTT.
Today, there are more electricians than jobs and these wages are gone forever. Even if another bubble starts there are more electricians now than demand so the builders can say take it or leave it.
This is deflation my friend. It happened in the 1930s and is a sign of a depression. Everyone I know makes less than 10 years ago except the ones I know who own a business who are taking advantage fo the situation by paying employees less and pocketing the difference. The fed pumping money it helping inflate the top 2% and business owners by great investments and access to cash. Us ... need not apply go get a job etc.
Not everyone will.
You and I both know employers see inactivity on a resume as a flag and unhirable and a liability. It sucks, but the employers have the ball right now. We are still in a depression (The Great Depression had hiring and production increases twice before it was over) and we have 3rd world immigrants here and factories in their countries where people are jumping all desperate willing to help the CEO boost his stock price.
In this time you need to do what you can and keep looking and give them the finger and walk about when something does better come along. With 20 million under employed or not even working you simply can not unionize and demand better.
In 1999, we in I.T. had the power to ask for higher salaries and it worked. Network admins made $120,000 a year, programmers made $75,000 a year and people out of school answering phones made $35,000 a year. Today divide this by 2 and you get what your worth is.
It is simply supply and demand.
The third option is no one wants to work harder for less. These same workers went to college to avoid these wages in the first place.
Only the CEOs and investors are making more money now than 10 years ago.
I graduated college in 2009 and still have not found stable work. I do odd jobs here and there. But, most employers want 5 years of experience doing statistical analysis or financial engineering and planning with excellent references with a $40,000 degree, then turn around and say $13 an hour or $28,000 a year?!
This worked in 2009 - 2011. Now they are whinning as enough employees with these qualifications are saying BS I am paying 50% of my income in gas and living at home with my parents. Give me my $38,000 or I walk!!
The rents keep going up and with the amount of debt the average person deals with + gas, food, and rent is unsustainable.
Or we need to live at work like the Chinese if this is the new standard. Corporations would love this as they are getting a taste of that in China.
Can you build it in Clang?
THis was discussed 6 years ago here and the Linux Kernel has many GCC specific headers and hooks that it wont compile in anything else.
Common sense. With 100 million users there are many bad sites and these are not games. It is a dangerous place.
Yes there are many bad websites and legit ones that have been compromised with ads or hacked to serve javascript exploits. Wordpress seems to be a popular legit series of sites that hackers keep injecting bad ads and malware to infect users who browse.
Go Google Norton Safe web and click the top 10? It changes everyday.
If you are really freaked out use an anti virus package that has cloud updates that blocklists bad sites and prevents them from opening. Avast Free is a popular one which updates every 8 minutes and blocks any browser. Commodo Dragon is a Chromium/Chrome based browser that has built in website blocking from bad domains as they make Commodo IS (haven't used it but has good ratings, though slows down your computer).
If you go to www.openDNS.com you can use the IP addresses in your DNS settings and it will provide filtering too (not as quick to block as other AV products I listed above).
Use a great Anti Virus product and do not got wierd unknown sites. Do not listen to the slashdot geeks who claim you do not need AV products and that they are not infected. 90% are and all it takes is one bad or flash exploit ... keep flash up to date too by going to Adobe or www.filehippo.com. The new one will auto update. Good luck keeping secure
Ask any GeekSquad or Best Buy salesmen and they will tell you that you need full gold plated $2,000 HDMI cables for professional audio quality and $110 Monster ones for basic audio and video. They are not highly compensated so well for nothing you know
IE 9/10 have smart filtering. It is very good at blocking bad malware domains in all but 0 day exploits. You can also add additional protection lists to get rid of ads as well if you go to IE Gallary which is pretty cool and nice to use if you are stuck using it at work.
Since XSS protection is in every browser now I no longer need NoScript. I used it mainly to disable global cross site scripting as I find the bar allowing each site to execute code infuriatingly annoying.
My issue is it only runs on FF and NOTscript in Chrome is not the same. FF is not sandboxed by default so it defeats the purpose. Although, Avast 7 now adds sandboxing to it and it just came out.
IE 10 has a spelling and grammar checker that was lacking. At least website designers and grandmas can relax with IE as it behaves like a normal browser. IE 9 with full ASLR, DEP, sand-boxing and other enhancements. The malware writers tend to target flash and java now.