I see people ranting about Yahoo's "bad search results" and how google is "better". It's relative. For searching through information that has been specifically published to a web page, google is better. But they're not resting there, and Yahoo has a couple legs up on google that they're not playing yet.
Yahoo has loads more information about many users than google does, via the Yahoo personals, my yahoo, and other personalized services. If they can integrate some of that information into the search process, they'll be the new search king.
Google recognizes this already, with the purchase of the blogger stuff they're going to go after that market, but it's still aggregating info from people who already consider themselves publishers of some sort (at least for now).
Google has groups.google.com, but Yahoo has groups.yahoo.com, yet seems to treat it as a separate property. If someone is a recognized authority on a topic, and has a yahoo personalized page, they need to come up as a resource when I search for something before/above 'web pages' which probably have less relevance.
of a 'better product' unless there's more people using it? They're giving it away for free in hopes that people will view ads, so *of course* they want more visitors. If google had a $10/year version with no ads, I bet they'd make a load of money off that, AND save bandwidth and processing power (or fit more *real* results in the same bandwidth). Sadly, I suspect that anyone that did this would price it higher than most could afford. $9.95/year *feels* like a good price point to probably a majority of consumers, but I think it'd be priced at $24.95 or $39.95/year or $14.95/month or something insanely greedy.:)
Probably what'll happen is google (or maybe teoma or someone smaller) will try 'ad-free' pages purchased in bulk - like $5 gets you 1000 ad-free results pages or something like that, so I can use them when I want, not on a timed basis (doesn't slashdot have this in place now?)
I have some tag(s) in my shoes - didn't ask for them there, but I set off many shoplifting alarms when I'm walking *in* to stores. And I get stopped at airports pretty much every time I walk thru the scanners, because my shoes look like there's something 'in' them via xray. really annoying...
Something which seems to get lost in the Mac/PC debates *sometimes* is the cost factor. I looked those graphs and thought "Wow - mac is faster at this benchmark". Then I looked up pricing - minimum I can get that mac for would be $1999. An equivalent PC system with the P4 2.66ghz is probably under $900 (didn't spec it out entirely, just did a rough lookup on Dell). Great - Mac is faster. But I can apparently get within reasonable range on PC hardware for probably 50% less cost.
I'd read some thread a while back on another board saying that "Macs are cheaper than PCs". I still can't believe anyone would make that argument. Doesn't being really good in a few areas satisfy the mac people? Do they have to try to spin higher costs as 'lower' (craziest thing I'd ever heard...)
To the best of my recollection, there isn't much else that's not backwards-compatible.
Somewhere between php 4.1 and 4.2 (IIRC) the get_object_vars simply changed behavior. It used to only return an array of object properties which had values (not null), then suddenly after upgrading it started returning *everything* even if it was null. NO documentation change, nothing in the changelog - nothing. I was more than a little surprised that such a fundamental behaviour was changed and not noted *anywhere*, when much lesser things get listed in the changelog(s) all the time.
APC was committed to PECL
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 1
and PECL is "The PHP Extension Code Library (PECL)".
Recompile for PDF support?
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 1
You don't have to recompile all of PHP to get PDF support. Depending on distros, there are a number of precompiled.so extensions that you can use dl() on to load dynamically, without recompiling PHP. You may need to walk through recompiling *part* of PHP to make the specific module from source, but you don't need to recompile the whole thing and reploy it, just enable it because it's an.so file.
1. Probably not. 2. Probably not. 3. Mandrake, for one.
More on #3 - most organizations *don't* rely on MS directly for support. They hire employees or contractors to support desktops or software packages after reasonably assuring themselves those people have some experience with the particular MS products they want support for. You want/need Mandrake Linux support? Hire people who have Linux experience. They will troubleshoot and track down problems in man pages, IRC channels and forums the same way most MS techs track down and resolve problems - via helpdocs, forums and email lists. It's a small percentage of people that go direct to MS support when they have problems (outside of the web knowledgebase, which most linux distros have too).
While on face value, yes, that's true, how will any company ever be able to compete *ever* when huge contracts are only handed out to huge companies? This is classic chicken/egg. I've got a strong gut feeling that if redhat had landed a $490 million dollar six year contract they damn sure would be around in 6 years, and be much stronger for it. That type of taxpayer money going to continually aid a company which has been recently found in violation of federal laws is decidedly poor judgement. Would spending somewhat more on open source packages be a better use of taxpayer money? Yes. Notice I said 'spend more' - Move it to 500 million. Or 600 million. That would be money which would be more easily returned back to the community which would have a more positive knock off effect for a broader segment of society, not just MS shareholders.
I never fail to be baffled at the degree of inertia in the IT world. I sometimes thing every computer person thinks technology should be frozen at whatever point they got tired of learning new stuff. "File name extensions and symbolic links were good enough for me lad!" It's a weird attitude.
Whoah - what distros are you using? I've seen people here use various redhat, mandrakes and suses over the past couple years with various versions of Mozilla and Evolution. No one has ever seen dependancies between those two - I can upgrade or delete Mozilla multiple times without ever affecting evolution. ???
I asked my dad to try using OO instead of MSOffice for a day at work to see how well he could transition. Couldn't use it for more than 10 minutes because all the Excel files they have had specific macros to kick off printing and do weird formatting and calculations. OO wasn't able to deal with them. Sure, you could try to rewrite them, but why do that? They're already working in MSOffice. If/when Excel can import and use those, he'd switch.
If you're in *remote* areas, you won't get the real-time connectivity, unfortunately. Hopefully the connectivity is improved from a year or so ago. Good in some areas, no coverage at all in others (much like some phone service too, but it lessens the usefulness)
Nothing to do with 'conspiracy' - banks aren't conspiring to do this, not in a 'behind closed doors, smoke-filled room' kind of way. This'll will be fairly out in the open, and it will make perfect logical sense to most people. I don't see anything particularly 'conspiratorial' about what I've written at all...
I've seen the inevitable 'online banking' scenario thrown up here a few times. What's going to happen is this...
At some point, bank X will say "we're now going to require IE8 to secure online banking".
People will complain and say "hey, but I only have WinXP, and I can't get Win2006" (or whatever it becomes).
Microsot will have contacted banks and negotiated a way for banks to giveaway (or sell) copies of the latest Windows version, locking in users who may have considered switching at that point.
Bank replies with (or promotes in branches) "Hey - to give you the ultimate in security, we're going to require Windows 2006 - the best in security. If you don't have a copy, we can sell you an copy for only $29.95, which can be applied to your checking account over a 3 month period - that's less than $10 month for modern security!" or something like that.
People will just use it because it's going to be pushed by most major banks. MS is the only company that can afford to do this (buy mindshare from large companies) and they're about the only company can can't afford NOT to do it as well.
Perhaps banking with MS software will be 'free' and using something else (linux/mac) will cost a 'security fee' because you're using something that can't be 'trusted'. There are teller fees, why not 'browser fees' for 'untrusted' browsers?
Microsoft may have already bought a bank (or started their own) in the next few years anyway. Banking fees are certainly a stream of steady income. If WalMart can sell used cars (probably real estate at some point too!) does MS banking sound all that far-fetched? Perhaps everyone writing M$ will give the idea even more credibility!:)
There's probably some C and VB and other technologies being used there too. Just because it's being used there doesn't mean it's necessarily a good fit. Microsoft uses that line - "look at all the places VB is being used!" - but you constantly hear about delays, bugs, incompatibilities about VB. So they're using Java at the US State Department. Big deal. Was it the best choice? Was it even a good choice? Will they stick with it? If so, is it because it's a good choice, or just because switching to something else is too hard? Honestly, we'll never know all the factors there, and pointing to someone using it without more info on 'why' it's used and 'how well' it works is not very helpful.
It starts off with "End User: Documentation geared towards the user." and contains links to various bits of info on how to install and use mozilla. Sounds like one hand doesn't know what the other is doing there.
You make some good points, but one thing about maintaining open source projects is that you can always just release the code under the GPL
Excellent idea. Let me go over this again...
I'm in a particular industry, with competitors. Let's say I spend $150k developing something over a 6-12 month period (multiple developer pay and proj mgt, etc). I then 'release it' under GPL, my competitor picks it up, spends about $6k 'learning ' the code and integrating it with their business processes (again - it's my competitor) and they start to undercut my pricing. They've got the benefit of my software, my knowledge that's gone into my software, and have shelled out a small fraction of what I've had to to gain that knowledge and benefit.
However, COMBAT was just *one* cartridge. COMBAT didn't look like YAR'S REVENGE, or PACMAN, or ADVENTURE, or BATTLEZONE, or STARCOMMAND, or DEMON ATTACK, or PITFALL, or... (you get the picture).
Yes, it was 'easier' in some ways in those days, but you couldn't have had Pitfall! 1, 2, 3 and 4, with the only major different being different types of monsters.
Slashdot Mirror
I see people ranting about Yahoo's "bad search results" and how google is "better". It's relative. For searching through information that has been specifically published to a web page, google is better. But they're not resting there, and Yahoo has a couple legs up on google that they're not playing yet.
Yahoo has loads more information about many users than google does, via the Yahoo personals, my yahoo, and other personalized services. If they can integrate some of that information into the search process, they'll be the new search king.
Google recognizes this already, with the purchase of the blogger stuff they're going to go after that market, but it's still aggregating info from people who already consider themselves publishers of some sort (at least for now).
Google has groups.google.com, but Yahoo has groups.yahoo.com, yet seems to treat it as a separate property. If someone is a recognized authority on a topic, and has a yahoo personalized page, they need to come up as a resource when I search for something before/above 'web pages' which probably have less relevance.
of a 'better product' unless there's more people using it? They're giving it away for free in hopes that people will view ads, so *of course* they want more visitors. If google had a $10/year version with no ads, I bet they'd make a load of money off that, AND save bandwidth and processing power (or fit more *real* results in the same bandwidth). Sadly, I suspect that anyone that did this would price it higher than most could afford. $9.95/year *feels* like a good price point to probably a majority of consumers, but I think it'd be priced at $24.95 or $39.95/year or $14.95/month or something insanely greedy. :)
Probably what'll happen is google (or maybe teoma or someone smaller) will try 'ad-free' pages purchased in bulk - like $5 gets you 1000 ad-free results pages or something like that, so I can use them when I want, not on a timed basis (doesn't slashdot have this in place now?)
I have some tag(s) in my shoes - didn't ask for them there, but I set off many shoplifting alarms when I'm walking *in* to stores. And I get stopped at airports pretty much every time I walk thru the scanners, because my shoes look like there's something 'in' them via xray. really annoying...
Why not show an mflops/$ chart? Related to my 'cost' post as well, but I felt it deserved its own post. :)
This seems to confirm my belief that most mac people don't buy their own hardware, but get it through work or school.
$2999 for the mac 2x2ghz
Something which seems to get lost in the Mac/PC debates *sometimes* is the cost factor. I looked those graphs and thought "Wow - mac is faster at this benchmark". Then I looked up pricing - minimum I can get that mac for would be $1999. An equivalent PC system with the P4 2.66ghz is probably under $900 (didn't spec it out entirely, just did a rough lookup on Dell). Great - Mac is faster. But I can apparently get within reasonable range on PC hardware for probably 50% less cost.
I'd read some thread a while back on another board saying that "Macs are cheaper than PCs". I still can't believe anyone would make that argument. Doesn't being really good in a few areas satisfy the mac people? Do they have to try to spin higher costs as 'lower' (craziest thing I'd ever heard...)
To the best of my recollection, there isn't much else that's not backwards-compatible.
Somewhere between php 4.1 and 4.2 (IIRC) the get_object_vars simply changed behavior. It used to only return an array of object properties which had values (not null), then suddenly after upgrading it started returning *everything* even if it was null. NO documentation change, nothing in the changelog - nothing. I was more than a little surprised that such a fundamental behaviour was changed and not noted *anywhere*, when much lesser things get listed in the changelog(s) all the time.
and PECL is "The PHP Extension Code Library (PECL)".
You don't have to recompile all of PHP to get PDF support. Depending on distros, there are a number of precompiled .so extensions that you can use dl() on to load dynamically, without recompiling PHP. You may need to walk through recompiling *part* of PHP to make the specific module from source, but you don't need to recompile the whole thing and reploy it, just enable it because it's an .so file.
1) Open Source products use Open Standards, which will interoperate with anything
except Microsoft products.
A bit overdramatic, I know, but MS is usually the vendor everyone needs to 'interoperate' with, and it's harder than it needs to be.
1. Probably not.
2. Probably not.
3. Mandrake, for one.
More on #3 - most organizations *don't* rely on MS directly for support. They hire employees or contractors to support desktops or software packages after reasonably assuring themselves those people have some experience with the particular MS products they want support for. You want/need Mandrake Linux support? Hire people who have Linux experience. They will troubleshoot and track down problems in man pages, IRC channels and forums the same way most MS techs track down and resolve problems - via helpdocs, forums and email lists. It's a small percentage of people that go direct to MS support when they have problems (outside of the web knowledgebase, which most linux distros have too).
Isn't there something called starbasic included with staroffice and openoffice?
While on face value, yes, that's true, how will any company ever be able to compete *ever* when huge contracts are only handed out to huge companies? This is classic chicken/egg. I've got a strong gut feeling that if redhat had landed a $490 million dollar six year contract they damn sure would be around in 6 years, and be much stronger for it. That type of taxpayer money going to continually aid a company which has been recently found in violation of federal laws is decidedly poor judgement. Would spending somewhat more on open source packages be a better use of taxpayer money? Yes. Notice I said 'spend more' - Move it to 500 million. Or 600 million. That would be money which would be more easily returned back to the community which would have a more positive knock off effect for a broader segment of society, not just MS shareholders.
I never fail to be baffled at the degree of inertia in the IT world. I sometimes thing every computer person thinks technology should be frozen at whatever point they got tired of learning new stuff. "File name extensions and symbolic links were good enough for me lad!" It's a weird attitude.
:(
If I had modpoints I'd mod that up!
Whoah - what distros are you using? I've seen people here use various redhat, mandrakes and suses over the past couple years with various versions of Mozilla and Evolution. No one has ever seen dependancies between those two - I can upgrade or delete Mozilla multiple times without ever affecting evolution. ???
I am an Internet Explorer user simply because I need to be able to access ANYTHING on the net that my clients throw at me.
If I threw XUL at you, could you 'access' it?
I asked my dad to try using OO instead of MSOffice for a day at work to see how well he could transition. Couldn't use it for more than 10 minutes because all the Excel files they have had specific macros to kick off printing and do weird formatting and calculations. OO wasn't able to deal with them. Sure, you could try to rewrite them, but why do that? They're already working in MSOffice. If/when Excel can import and use those, he'd switch.
If you're in *remote* areas, you won't get the real-time connectivity, unfortunately. Hopefully the connectivity is improved from a year or so ago. Good in some areas, no coverage at all in others (much like some phone service too, but it lessens the usefulness)
Whenever I read the word 'searchking', I can't help but think of Popeye 'searchking' for Olive Oyl or Bluto. :)
Nothing to do with 'conspiracy' - banks aren't conspiring to do this, not in a 'behind closed doors, smoke-filled room' kind of way. This'll will be fairly out in the open, and it will make perfect logical sense to most people. I don't see anything particularly 'conspiratorial' about what I've written at all...
I've seen the inevitable 'online banking' scenario thrown up here a few times. What's going to happen is this...
:)
At some point, bank X will say "we're now going to require IE8 to secure online banking".
People will complain and say "hey, but I only have WinXP, and I can't get Win2006" (or whatever it becomes).
Microsot will have contacted banks and negotiated a way for banks to giveaway (or sell) copies of the latest Windows version, locking in users who may have considered switching at that point.
Bank replies with (or promotes in branches)
"Hey - to give you the ultimate in security, we're going to require Windows 2006 - the best in security. If you don't have a copy, we can sell you an copy for only $29.95, which can be applied to your checking account over a 3 month period - that's less than $10 month for modern security!" or something like that.
People will just use it because it's going to be pushed by most major banks. MS is the only company that can afford to do this (buy mindshare from large companies) and they're about the only company can can't afford NOT to do it as well.
Perhaps banking with MS software will be 'free' and using something else (linux/mac) will cost a 'security fee' because you're using something that can't be 'trusted'. There are teller fees, why not 'browser fees' for 'untrusted' browsers?
Microsoft may have already bought a bank (or started their own) in the next few years anyway. Banking fees are certainly a stream of steady income. If WalMart can sell used cars (probably real estate at some point too!) does MS banking sound all that far-fetched? Perhaps everyone writing M$ will give the idea even more credibility!
There's probably some C and VB and other technologies being used there too. Just because it's being used there doesn't mean it's necessarily a good fit. Microsoft uses that line - "look at all the places VB is being used!" - but you constantly hear about delays, bugs, incompatibilities about VB. So they're using Java at the US State Department. Big deal. Was it the best choice? Was it even a good choice? Will they stick with it? If so, is it because it's a good choice, or just because switching to something else is too hard? Honestly, we'll never know all the factors there, and pointing to someone using it without more info on 'why' it's used and 'how well' it works is not very helpful.
After all, it's not an end-user product.
Do you mean *mozilla* is not end-user product? Why does this page exist then?
http://www.mozilla.org/catalog/end-user/
It starts off with "End User: Documentation geared towards the user." and contains links to various bits of info on how to install and use mozilla. Sounds like one hand doesn't know what the other is doing there.
You make some good points, but one thing about maintaining open source projects is that you can always just release the code under the GPL
Excellent idea. Let me go over this again...
I'm in a particular industry, with competitors. Let's say I spend $150k developing something over a 6-12 month period (multiple developer pay and proj mgt, etc). I then 'release it' under GPL, my competitor picks it up, spends about $6k 'learning ' the code and integrating it with their business processes (again - it's my competitor) and they start to undercut my pricing. They've got the benefit of my software, my knowledge that's gone into my software, and have shelled out a small fraction of what I've had to to gain that knowledge and benefit.
Tell me again why this is a good business move?
However, COMBAT was just *one* cartridge. COMBAT didn't look like YAR'S REVENGE, or PACMAN, or ADVENTURE, or BATTLEZONE, or STARCOMMAND, or DEMON ATTACK, or PITFALL, or... (you get the picture).
Yes, it was 'easier' in some ways in those days, but you couldn't have had Pitfall! 1, 2, 3 and 4, with the only major different being different types of monsters.