Same here. I want an Apple computer with tablet functionality, capable of keyboardless use. At this point I'd accept any form factor from PDA sized up to notebook size.
We're probably going to have to buy a Windows XP Tablet machine because of Apple's continuing lack of options in this area.
I mean, come on, how hard would it be? They already have the handwriting recognition...
I had much the same problem. I heard how great Eclipse was, tried it, was unable to work out how to edit a trivial existing project, and threw it away.
I should mention that I use Apple Xcode, so I'm not against IDEs per se; I just think Eclipse is way too complicated.
I understand the points that DRM with WMP could present a corner market, but the thing is, I don't really mind WMP.
Well, that's fine and dandy for you, but I don't own any computers capable of running a current version of WMP, so I'd like the content providers not to be able to assume WMP is everywhere, and not to provide their content only in WMP format.
If it takes unbundling WMP for that to happen, then that's fine by me, and I don't see that it is a major inconvenience for you. Hell, if Microsoft want to they can provide free WMP CDs in stores for anyone who wants, hand 'em out like AOL CDs.
For media, it'll be everything is locked down with WMP DRM; and everyone who wants to provide media will have to pay MS for the right to make WMP-compatible files/streams.
...and everyone who wants to play media will need to run Windows. If anyone thinks Microsoft are going to produce a version of their DRM for Linux or BSD, I'd like some of what they're smoking.
If one of them did, you might see anti-trust action, and restrictions on what kinds of radios they could bundle. (e.g. Sirus vs XM vs FM vs leaving the slot open so there can be competition.)
It's really very simple: a company that has a monopoly has to abide by different rules, because otherwise it can completely slant the market for other products and leverage its monopoly into other areas. Microsoft is restricted in ways other companies aren't, because Microsoft is a monopoly (as per the legal definition) and the other companies aren't. Got it?
If those "forks" aren't 100% compatible, they are not Java(tm).
In the real world, application developers do not restrict themselves to "100% Pure Java" (which is what the test suites test for compatibility with). They also make assumptions, like assuming that the XML processor will be the one Sun happen to bundle in their JRE.
For instance, Azureus runs fine under Sun's JRE, but doesn't run so well under IBM's JRE. I don't know if anyone's managed to compile it with GCJ.
Because good games that do involve Italian plumbers, cutesy animals, or anime characters with big eyes talking in speech bubbles threaten your heterosexuality?
Scratches are inevitable; I was talking about actual construction quality, not how durable the surface is. I was thinking about the iBook, which compares well to an IBM ThinkPad in durability. Yeah, it gets surface scratches, but...
I agree that Nokia are generally well-engineered, though. Unfortunately, their recent designs seem to have been devised by crack-smoking monkeys. Circular keypads, diagonal keypads, keypads with 2 numbers on each button... and let's pretend the N-Gage never happened.
I'm probably gonna get a Nokia for my next cell phone. I just wish they'd fill out their basic range a bit before letting the designers go wild--demand the basics, like Bluetooth, and there really aren't that many Nokias to choose from.
Well, there you go--I've tried out Motorola phones in the stores, and not been able to work out the interface to add multiple numbers.
Does it let you categorize the numbers? Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones show different icons for home, work, mobile etc, so you can tell which number is which. I've been looking at the RAZR manual, and I see no mention of that.
Nintendo has a hard time producing games that appeal to people over the age of 12. Sure, there are a few, but not many.
I have a GBA, and I find it really frustrating how few good games there are that don't involve Italian plumbers, cutesy animals, or anime characters with big eyes talking in speech bubbles. (Yes, I have Advance Wars thanks.)
Sony has more games I want to play in the launch lineup, than I own GBA games. I see myself buying a PSP and selling the GBA once I finish with Advance Wars.
What could be more irresistible than a device combining the digital-music prowess of Apple Computer (AAPL) with the wireless expertise of Motorola (MOT)?
A device combining the digital music prowess of Apple, the user interface design of Apple, the build quality of Apple, and the wireless expertise of Nokia.
Frankly, Motorola's user interface is a hideous piece of crap that doesn't seem to have improved since the 80s: menus that SHOUT AT YOU, and a phone book that still can't cope with people having more than one phone number (duh!). No matter how good the RAZR looks, it's the same craptastic software on it, and that's why I'm not gonna touch it.
Well, it's the same old problem Mozilla/Netscape has always had--insistence on reinventing the wheel.(*)
Any decent OS has a standard mechanism for software updates. The smart thing would be to use it. But no, Mozilla have to invent their own non-standard update mechanism for their applications.
And of course, it doesn't work on Windows, Linux or OS X, as I never run Firefox under an administrative ID, for reasons which should be painfully obvious.
I mean, come on people, if you must reinvent the wheel, try not to reinvent a square one.
(*) Examples: Ignoring HTML 3.0 in favor of proprietary tags to do the same things, ignoring CSS in favor of JavaScript-based style sheets, ignoring native widgets in favor of building an entire widget rendering system,...
The majority of people hate Microsoft that much? I don't think so. Sure, I hate them, and you probably hate them, but the average Google user?
Plus, so what anyway? It's not like anyone using Microsoft products has such a shortage of ways to find Microsoft's web site that they have to use Google.
Because the new URL is not the canonical one; that would be a 301 redirect. For a 302, the old URL is the canonical one, and the content is merely temporarily at the new URL.
Frankly, I'd like to see Google start blocking content-free traffic-boosting sites from the page results entirely.
Google has login accounts, so let logged-in users have a link saying "report spam site". Track who files the most reliable reports, and if a few of those people all agree that a site is spam, nuke its pagerank.
See how OpenRatings does reliability calculations for more info. Or buy them:-)
I'd accept DRM on music if the price dropped to around 25 cents per track.
If the price dropped to under 5 cents per track, I'd probably accept "pay per play" pricing. In fact, my ideal solution would be the Celestial Jukebox: have all the world's music available at 5 cents per play per track, and just stream me what I want to listen to when I want to listen to it. I wouldn't need to "own" anything.
Almost every major board game has been extensively defended in this fashion, especially Monopoly, Battleship and The Game of Life, but more recently in the electronic world Tetris, Archon, Bandit Kings of Ancient China and so forth.
Minor correction: Monopoly is not patented. Hasbro stole the game and attempted to patent it, but the patent was declared fraudulent in court.
...the truth is that the "loan" for studio time comes out of your future cut of the profits, and if none exist you simply walk away.
Sure, if you don't mind your musical career being over.
See, the big labels put in an exclusivity clause. Sure, you can "simply walk away", but you can't then release music commercially, even as part of another band, until you've paid them back what you owe and they've given you permission to record for someone else, or the duration of the contract you signed has expired.
And that's not the worst of it. It's not necessarily you who gets to decide whether to "simply walk away"; the record label can decide that it's not going to bother releasing anything you record, but you're still under contract and can't record for anyone else.
I know a couple of musicians who got fucked that way. They signed with a major label (Polygram). After a couple of singles, the label decided the musicians hadn't been profitable enough, so nothing more would be released. However, they couldn't go back to their indie label, because they were under contract for the next 8 years. So, that was the end of their musical career as artists; they worked as producers for a while, then found jobs outside the music industry.
I guess if all you care about is making money, and you don't mind your musical career ending totally if you fail to make big bucks, then a major label contract would seem like an OK deal.
Oh dear, you're right. It's Yet Another CR System, but with some standard sender verification (a la SpamAssassin) glued on the front.
In other words, it's as utterly useless and counterproductive as any other challenge-response system. See http://www.xciv.org/~meta/2005/02/15/ for more discussion (from me) of why CR won't work.
It's basically Debian Unstable, plus a kernel pre-configured so everything just works (e.g. Centrino wireless), plus better hardware detection, plus Mozilla with all the usual plugins.
All on a bootable KNOPPIX-like CD, so you can see if it'll work with your hardware before going ahead with the install.
Linus made that choice two years ago, though, and both Arch and Subversion have probably improved since then
Yes, arch has improved massively. It's now something I'm prepared to use, though I'd like it more if it didn't {have} +the silly--filename !requirements.
Adding header is trivial. Footers are a little trickier, but not much.
It's also not a big deal to make the outer columns variable width, but most sites seem to use fixed width side columns with variable width content.
My web site has header, footer, and dynamic column sizes according to the user's chosen font size, all done with CSS.
Accessibility is much less of an issue for CSS than for tables. A web browser for the blind can read the text and get something sensible. You can even arrange the divs in an appropriate order so that when you read the page as audio, it makes sense.
And of course, a CSS layout can also work unmodified with lynx, PDA and phone browsers, and so on.
Slashdot Mirror
Same here. I want an Apple computer with tablet functionality, capable of keyboardless use. At this point I'd accept any form factor from PDA sized up to notebook size.
We're probably going to have to buy a Windows XP Tablet machine because of Apple's continuing lack of options in this area.
I mean, come on, how hard would it be? They already have the handwriting recognition...
I had much the same problem. I heard how great Eclipse was, tried it, was unable to work out how to edit a trivial existing project, and threw it away.
I should mention that I use Apple Xcode, so I'm not against IDEs per se; I just think Eclipse is way too complicated.
Well, that's fine and dandy for you, but I don't own any computers capable of running a current version of WMP, so I'd like the content providers not to be able to assume WMP is everywhere, and not to provide their content only in WMP format.
If it takes unbundling WMP for that to happen, then that's fine by me, and I don't see that it is a major inconvenience for you. Hell, if Microsoft want to they can provide free WMP CDs in stores for anyone who wants, hand 'em out like AOL CDs.
No car manufacturer has 90% of the market.
If one of them did, you might see anti-trust action, and restrictions on what kinds of radios they could bundle. (e.g. Sirus vs XM vs FM vs leaving the slot open so there can be competition.)
It's really very simple: a company that has a monopoly has to abide by different rules, because otherwise it can completely slant the market for other products and leverage its monopoly into other areas. Microsoft is restricted in ways other companies aren't, because Microsoft is a monopoly (as per the legal definition) and the other companies aren't. Got it?
In the real world, application developers do not restrict themselves to "100% Pure Java" (which is what the test suites test for compatibility with). They also make assumptions, like assuming that the XML processor will be the one Sun happen to bundle in their JRE.
For instance, Azureus runs fine under Sun's JRE, but doesn't run so well under IBM's JRE. I don't know if anyone's managed to compile it with GCJ.
I'm bisexual, but thanks for playing.
Scratches are inevitable; I was talking about actual construction quality, not how durable the surface is. I was thinking about the iBook, which compares well to an IBM ThinkPad in durability. Yeah, it gets surface scratches, but...
I agree that Nokia are generally well-engineered, though. Unfortunately, their recent designs seem to have been devised by crack-smoking monkeys. Circular keypads, diagonal keypads, keypads with 2 numbers on each button... and let's pretend the N-Gage never happened.
I'm probably gonna get a Nokia for my next cell phone. I just wish they'd fill out their basic range a bit before letting the designers go wild--demand the basics, like Bluetooth, and there really aren't that many Nokias to choose from.
Well, there you go--I've tried out Motorola phones in the stores, and not been able to work out the interface to add multiple numbers.
Does it let you categorize the numbers? Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones show different icons for home, work, mobile etc, so you can tell which number is which. I've been looking at the RAZR manual, and I see no mention of that.
Nintendo has a hard time producing games that appeal to people over the age of 12. Sure, there are a few, but not many.
I have a GBA, and I find it really frustrating how few good games there are that don't involve Italian plumbers, cutesy animals, or anime characters with big eyes talking in speech bubbles. (Yes, I have Advance Wars thanks.)
Sony has more games I want to play in the launch lineup, than I own GBA games. I see myself buying a PSP and selling the GBA once I finish with Advance Wars.
A device combining the digital music prowess of Apple, the user interface design of Apple, the build quality of Apple, and the wireless expertise of Nokia.
Frankly, Motorola's user interface is a hideous piece of crap that doesn't seem to have improved since the 80s: menus that SHOUT AT YOU, and a phone book that still can't cope with people having more than one phone number (duh!). No matter how good the RAZR looks, it's the same craptastic software on it, and that's why I'm not gonna touch it.
Well, it's the same old problem Mozilla/Netscape has always had--insistence on reinventing the wheel.(*)
...
Any decent OS has a standard mechanism for software updates. The smart thing would be to use it. But no, Mozilla have to invent their own non-standard update mechanism for their applications.
And of course, it doesn't work on Windows, Linux or OS X, as I never run Firefox under an administrative ID, for reasons which should be painfully obvious.
I mean, come on people, if you must reinvent the wheel, try not to reinvent a square one.
(*) Examples: Ignoring HTML 3.0 in favor of proprietary tags to do the same things, ignoring CSS in favor of JavaScript-based style sheets, ignoring native widgets in favor of building an entire widget rendering system,
The majority of people hate Microsoft that much? I don't think so. Sure, I hate them, and you probably hate them, but the average Google user?
Plus, so what anyway? It's not like anyone using Microsoft products has such a shortage of ways to find Microsoft's web site that they have to use Google.
Bush was born in Connecticut, you dumbass.
Because the new URL is not the canonical one; that would be a 301 redirect. For a 302, the old URL is the canonical one, and the content is merely temporarily at the new URL.
Frankly, I'd like to see Google start blocking content-free traffic-boosting sites from the page results entirely.
:-)
Google has login accounts, so let logged-in users have a link saying "report spam site". Track who files the most reliable reports, and if a few of those people all agree that a site is spam, nuke its pagerank.
See how OpenRatings does reliability calculations for more info. Or buy them
I'd accept DRM on music if the price dropped to around 25 cents per track.
If the price dropped to under 5 cents per track, I'd probably accept "pay per play" pricing. In fact, my ideal solution would be the Celestial Jukebox: have all the world's music available at 5 cents per play per track, and just stream me what I want to listen to when I want to listen to it. I wouldn't need to "own" anything.
Minor correction: Monopoly is not patented. Hasbro stole the game and attempted to patent it, but the patent was declared fraudulent in court.
http://www.antimonopoly.com/Sure, if you don't mind your musical career being over.
See, the big labels put in an exclusivity clause. Sure, you can "simply walk away", but you can't then release music commercially, even as part of another band, until you've paid them back what you owe and they've given you permission to record for someone else, or the duration of the contract you signed has expired.
And that's not the worst of it. It's not necessarily you who gets to decide whether to "simply walk away"; the record label can decide that it's not going to bother releasing anything you record, but you're still under contract and can't record for anyone else.
I know a couple of musicians who got fucked that way. They signed with a major label (Polygram). After a couple of singles, the label decided the musicians hadn't been profitable enough, so nothing more would be released. However, they couldn't go back to their indie label, because they were under contract for the next 8 years. So, that was the end of their musical career as artists; they worked as producers for a while, then found jobs outside the music industry.
I guess if all you care about is making money, and you don't mind your musical career ending totally if you fail to make big bucks, then a major label contract would seem like an OK deal.
Oh dear, you're right. It's Yet Another CR System, but with some standard sender verification (a la SpamAssassin) glued on the front.
In other words, it's as utterly useless and counterproductive as any other challenge-response system. See http://www.xciv.org/~meta/2005/02/15/ for more discussion (from me) of why CR won't work.
Or try MEPIS, my current favorite distribution.
It's basically Debian Unstable, plus a kernel pre-configured so everything just works (e.g. Centrino wireless), plus better hardware detection, plus Mozilla with all the usual plugins.
All on a bootable KNOPPIX-like CD, so you can see if it'll work with your hardware before going ahead with the install.
Yes, arch has improved massively. It's now something I'm prepared to use, though I'd like it more if it didn't {have} +the silly--filename !requirements.
Well, there's my Linux machines, my mobile phone, and my Palm PDA for starters. AAC is MPEG-4, after all.
Adding header is trivial. Footers are a little trickier, but not much.
It's also not a big deal to make the outer columns variable width, but most sites seem to use fixed width side columns with variable width content.
My web site has header, footer, and dynamic column sizes according to the user's chosen font size, all done with CSS.
Accessibility is much less of an issue for CSS than for tables. A web browser for the blind can read the text and get something sensible. You can even arrange the divs in an appropriate order so that when you read the page as audio, it makes sense.
And of course, a CSS layout can also work unmodified with lynx, PDA and phone browsers, and so on.
Maybe, if you don't know CSS. Let's see now......Ooh, so hard.