Firefox users by their very nature are the sort of people to try something new. Firefox is something you have to go out of your way to install on Windows, it's not bundled with Windows, and so I rather suspect that the 15% (approx) of internet users who have it as their primary browser are among the top 15% of people who are most likely to try a new video download service. Walmart are blocking the very people who will try this thing.
Now, if I were a Walmart stock holder I'd be asking some very searching questions about whether or not the board is acting in my best interest with this move. If I invest in a company I expect the people running it to work to make my investment pay a good return. Hell, they have a legal duty to do so (in the UK where I live anyway).
I'm a bit of a fan of computer games. I've been playing them pretty close to my entire life. I'm 29 now and since the days of the Zx Spectrum I've probably played at least a couple of hours a week, often much more.
Unfortunately I suck at games. My coordination is all over the place. I have NO patience. I play games for a laugh, I don't want to invest a great deal of time learning a game or practising it. I want to pick it up, play for a while, and be entertained. As a rule I always play games on Easy because I don't want a challenge. I don't want to get frustrated playing the same level over and over. I want that feeling of progression like I'm getting somewhere. I can honestly say that if I get stuck for more than an hour in a game it gets turned off and never switched on again. I make a mental note not to buy a game from the same people again.
Easy is for people like me. Lazy, good-for-nothing "casual" players who have no skill to speak of and a life of some sort that means there isn't the time to learn perfection. I expect Easy to be easy. I very much doubt that "mean minus standard deviation" of some enthuiastic professional testers or Beta players is really going to be down at my level.
Please, for the love of Mario, when you're writing a game, sit your mother down in front of it for a few hours and tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something she can cope with. That way I might buy your sequel.
All that "power" that they've given to the users, coupled with the nasty CSS it takes to use it, will be their undoing. There's no way that they can change now without breaking millions of profiles and really annoying a huge number of their users. It's a textbook example of poor long term vision. MySpace is a huge success now, and it will continue to be for a while. One day though someone will make a social network that is quick, easy, and customisable in a well-thought out way. Then MySpace will empty very, very quickly.
Mind you, there's no reason why that site wouldn't be MySpace2 or something. I'm only refering to the network, not the company.
Yet another person who doesn't get it. Let me explain for the hard of thinking:
OLPC laptops are for children in developing and developed countries whose governments are interested in moving their education system forward. They are not, and never have been, something that a government should spend money on if there are higher priority needs such as sanitation, food, shelter or an energy network. They are targetted very specifically at countries who have a working sanitation and drinking water system, who have a viable food market, who have a working power infrastructure. Don't be thinking that the countries who are signing up to this are populated by starving Africans who have no electricity and drink from a muddy river. That is not the case. Most of the countries who have joined in are actually not in Africa, and all of them have the necessary basics in place already. Hell, one of the countries on board is the USA (well, a state in the USA, but hey..).
The OLPC project seeks to improve the IT education of children in countries who are providing the basics but cannot (or will not) afford IT equipment. That is a problem, and it's one that is being solved in an innovative and exciting way. There really isn't any downside.
If you feel your money will work better donated to a different cause then spend it elsewhere. You have that choice. I'm glad you're thinking of others. That's more than a lot of people manage. Personally, I'll buy a couple of these computers if it means a couple of kids in Tunisia get a chance to hack some Python. Who knows, they might be the ones who create 2020's version of Google.
None. There's never been a fictional movie that features computers as a central theme thats got it right. Coz computers are very dull to watch. As interesting as I find writing code, I really wouldn't want to pay $10 for a ticket to see someone doing it on the silver screen.
Plus, as annecdotal evidence in favour of Hollywood's glossy shine, I was very nearly chucked out of univeristy for 'hacking' an email server, and I'm sure it gave several women the idea I was more interesting since they'd seen Hackers and associated hacking with Johnny Lee Miller. Thank heavens the director of the film used a daft 3D swooshy interface instead of vi I say.
The summary is basically saying "It's all looks, there's no substance, there's nothing good... it's a copy of OSX". That's not especially flattering toward OSX.
When your team rolls out an application update that was created by an external company, Microsoft for example, do their coders pop in and lend a hand? No. The dev team should write an application effectively as a third party external to the rest of the company. If they're writing things that the IT dept can't roll out without their help then they're not doing a good enough job.
If good looking people were actually capable of being nice then this sort of thing would never happen. It's a shame that the so-called attractive members of our society are all vacuuous, dull imbeciles who can't compliment anyone who they deem to be less socially acceptable than they are. I hate those people.
$12.8billion is nothing in the scale of the economies of the countries involved, and much less the combined economies of all parties. That sum represents about 0.5% of the US federal budget for 2006. Why on Earth has it taken so long? Ten years ago it should have been a matter of "How much? $100m a year for fifteen years? Who do I make the check out to?". We'd practically have the thing working by now.
Look at the list of countries that have expressed an interest so far:
* Brazil
* Thailand
* Egypt
* United States (specifically the states of Massachusetts and Maine)
* Cambodia
* Dominican Republic
* Costa Rica
* Tunisia
* Argentina
* Venezuela
* Nigeria
* Libya
Firstly, the minority are african, secondly most of them have basic housing and a working power infrastructure. This laptop idea is something that countries come in on when they want to improve education. It is not, and never has been, an alternative to buying food.
It's a shame. What could have been a fascinating treatment of neuroscience for laypeople, and how it applies to a quizshow, has been written like "the time I went on telly by Ogi Ogas aged 7 and 3/4".
The point the original poster was making was that installing IE7 breaks standalone applications that use IE controls to render things. Installing FF cannot do that. If you're using web applications that don't work in FF the solution is very simple: fire the developers, there's no excuse.
I'm not sure I agree. There are 4 reasons someone other than Bank of America might purchase bankofameriuca.com:
1. They're phishing. 2. They're typo-squatting in the hope of selling it to Bank of America. 3. They're link farming/click farming hoping for lots of typo hits. 4. Their name happens to be Banko F. Ameriuca.;)
In all cases there's no legal compulsion for Sedo to keep the domain out of any one person's hands. It's got nothing much to do with them. However, there is an ethical obligation on the part of Bank of America. They should be looking after their customers and making it difficult for phishers to try and sting them. Bank of America should have bought up all likely typos of their primary domain. If I had an account with them I would consider moving it. If they're willing to risk people losing out to phishing attacks to save the few dollars a domain costs to keep then they must be doing pretty damn badly, or they must not care much about my custom.
Google's not in any favorable position except in the most naive of interpretations.
Google are in the very favourable position of being able to buy emerging market leaders/market dominators. They don't need to innovate internally, they can simply wait for others to innovate and then sign a big cheque (check for you Americans). So long as they concentrate on their main goal (selling adverts) they'll stay ahead for a good while yet.
My inner cynic is wondering if this is actually their intention. Perhaps they've realised that home desktop operating systems aren't worth the effort.
They believe in the XBox brand and see that taking PC gamers away from their PCs and over to an XBox. Business users rarely upgrade hardware (except in dev boxes, a fraction of a percent of the total out there). Most security issues come to light through home PC use as corporations tend to run antispam and antivirus at a gateway level, and malware can't get in because most computers are running without admin rights. The only thing this affects is the home user market.
Maybe Gates has actually realised that competing with OSX and Linux will become a waste of Microsoft's resources in the future so they're cutting and running.
It's most likely just corporate incompetence, but...
Slashdot Mirror
Firefox users by their very nature are the sort of people to try something new. Firefox is something you have to go out of your way to install on Windows, it's not bundled with Windows, and so I rather suspect that the 15% (approx) of internet users who have it as their primary browser are among the top 15% of people who are most likely to try a new video download service. Walmart are blocking the very people who will try this thing.
Now, if I were a Walmart stock holder I'd be asking some very searching questions about whether or not the board is acting in my best interest with this move. If I invest in a company I expect the people running it to work to make my investment pay a good return. Hell, they have a legal duty to do so (in the UK where I live anyway).
I'm a bit of a fan of computer games. I've been playing them pretty close to my entire life. I'm 29 now and since the days of the Zx Spectrum I've probably played at least a couple of hours a week, often much more.
:)
Unfortunately I suck at games. My coordination is all over the place. I have NO patience. I play games for a laugh, I don't want to invest a great deal of time learning a game or practising it. I want to pick it up, play for a while, and be entertained. As a rule I always play games on Easy because I don't want a challenge. I don't want to get frustrated playing the same level over and over. I want that feeling of progression like I'm getting somewhere. I can honestly say that if I get stuck for more than an hour in a game it gets turned off and never switched on again. I make a mental note not to buy a game from the same people again.
Easy is for people like me. Lazy, good-for-nothing "casual" players who have no skill to speak of and a life of some sort that means there isn't the time to learn perfection. I expect Easy to be easy. I very much doubt that "mean minus standard deviation" of some enthuiastic professional testers or Beta players is really going to be down at my level.
Please, for the love of Mario, when you're writing a game, sit your mother down in front of it for a few hours and tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something she can cope with. That way I might buy your sequel.
Alternatively, give me God mode.
And yet, it succeeds anyway.
All that "power" that they've given to the users, coupled with the nasty CSS it takes to use it, will be their undoing. There's no way that they can change now without breaking millions of profiles and really annoying a huge number of their users. It's a textbook example of poor long term vision. MySpace is a huge success now, and it will continue to be for a while. One day though someone will make a social network that is quick, easy, and customisable in a well-thought out way. Then MySpace will empty very, very quickly.
Mind you, there's no reason why that site wouldn't be MySpace2 or something. I'm only refering to the network, not the company.
Yet another person who doesn't get it. Let me explain for the hard of thinking:
OLPC laptops are for children in developing and developed countries whose governments are interested in moving their education system forward. They are not, and never have been, something that a government should spend money on if there are higher priority needs such as sanitation, food, shelter or an energy network. They are targetted very specifically at countries who have a working sanitation and drinking water system, who have a viable food market, who have a working power infrastructure. Don't be thinking that the countries who are signing up to this are populated by starving Africans who have no electricity and drink from a muddy river. That is not the case. Most of the countries who have joined in are actually not in Africa, and all of them have the necessary basics in place already. Hell, one of the countries on board is the USA (well, a state in the USA, but hey..).
The OLPC project seeks to improve the IT education of children in countries who are providing the basics but cannot (or will not) afford IT equipment. That is a problem, and it's one that is being solved in an innovative and exciting way. There really isn't any downside.
If you feel your money will work better donated to a different cause then spend it elsewhere. You have that choice. I'm glad you're thinking of others. That's more than a lot of people manage. Personally, I'll buy a couple of these computers if it means a couple of kids in Tunisia get a chance to hack some Python. Who knows, they might be the ones who create 2020's version of Google.
The other 3 lied in the survey.
And now I add some more text, ruining the joke, because the lameness filter has no sense of humour.
None. There's never been a fictional movie that features computers as a central theme thats got it right. Coz computers are very dull to watch. As interesting as I find writing code, I really wouldn't want to pay $10 for a ticket to see someone doing it on the silver screen.
Plus, as annecdotal evidence in favour of Hollywood's glossy shine, I was very nearly chucked out of univeristy for 'hacking' an email server, and I'm sure it gave several women the idea I was more interesting since they'd seen Hackers and associated hacking with Johnny Lee Miller. Thank heavens the director of the film used a daft 3D swooshy interface instead of vi I say.
A study on over 1 million drinkers and 94,000 deaths
That's 906,000 people who didn't die! Pretty much 9 out of 10. I like those odds!
Should have made it a bit less powerful and consequently cheaper then I suppose. They'd have sold more and make more money that way.
The summary is basically saying "It's all looks, there's no substance, there's nothing good ... it's a copy of OSX". That's not especially flattering toward OSX.
When your team rolls out an application update that was created by an external company, Microsoft for example, do their coders pop in and lend a hand? No. The dev team should write an application effectively as a third party external to the rest of the company. If they're writing things that the IT dept can't roll out without their help then they're not doing a good enough job.
If good looking people were actually capable of being nice then this sort of thing would never happen. It's a shame that the so-called attractive members of our society are all vacuuous, dull imbeciles who can't compliment anyone who they deem to be less socially acceptable than they are. I hate those people.
PS. I'm being mean because I'm so damn handsome.
Jeb Bush, is that you?
$12.8billion is nothing in the scale of the economies of the countries involved, and much less the combined economies of all parties. That sum represents about 0.5% of the US federal budget for 2006. Why on Earth has it taken so long? Ten years ago it should have been a matter of "How much? $100m a year for fifteen years? Who do I make the check out to?". We'd practically have the thing working by now.
There's a huge flaw in the article. You don't kill the king in chess, you capture him.
How hard can it be? It's not rocket scien.. Ah.
Look at the list of countries that have expressed an interest so far:
* Brazil
* Thailand
* Egypt
* United States (specifically the states of Massachusetts and Maine)
* Cambodia
* Dominican Republic
* Costa Rica
* Tunisia
* Argentina
* Venezuela
* Nigeria
* Libya
Firstly, the minority are african, secondly most of them have basic housing and a working power infrastructure. This laptop idea is something that countries come in on when they want to improve education. It is not, and never has been, an alternative to buying food.
We see through a glass darkly--somewhat like trying to spy on beauty through textured-glass shower doors.
Ok, forget space, I want a laser-telescope-camera at home right now if it can see through next-doors shower door.
Saliva is a painkiller? How come I have toothache then?
This is most distressing.
No it's not. It's brilliant. The only thing putting me off cannabalism was a concern I might not like the taste. Best news ever!
It's a shame. What could have been a fascinating treatment of neuroscience for laypeople, and how it applies to a quizshow, has been written like "the time I went on telly by Ogi Ogas aged 7 and 3/4".
It must be a tough job being such big PS3 fans and being the bud of many passer-by jokes like 'Where is the line for PS4? Is it on the other side?'
I'm not a fan of the PS3, and I'd find it tough to listen to a 'joke' like that.
The point the original poster was making was that installing IE7 breaks standalone applications that use IE controls to render things. Installing FF cannot do that. If you're using web applications that don't work in FF the solution is very simple: fire the developers, there's no excuse.
I'm not sure I agree. There are 4 reasons someone other than Bank of America might purchase bankofameriuca.com:
;)
1. They're phishing.
2. They're typo-squatting in the hope of selling it to Bank of America.
3. They're link farming/click farming hoping for lots of typo hits.
4. Their name happens to be Banko F. Ameriuca.
In all cases there's no legal compulsion for Sedo to keep the domain out of any one person's hands. It's got nothing much to do with them. However, there is an ethical obligation on the part of Bank of America. They should be looking after their customers and making it difficult for phishers to try and sting them. Bank of America should have bought up all likely typos of their primary domain. If I had an account with them I would consider moving it. If they're willing to risk people losing out to phishing attacks to save the few dollars a domain costs to keep then they must be doing pretty damn badly, or they must not care much about my custom.
Google's not in any favorable position except in the most naive of interpretations.
Google are in the very favourable position of being able to buy emerging market leaders/market dominators. They don't need to innovate internally, they can simply wait for others to innovate and then sign a big cheque (check for you Americans). So long as they concentrate on their main goal (selling adverts) they'll stay ahead for a good while yet.
My inner cynic is wondering if this is actually their intention. Perhaps they've realised that home desktop operating systems aren't worth the effort.
They believe in the XBox brand and see that taking PC gamers away from their PCs and over to an XBox. Business users rarely upgrade hardware (except in dev boxes, a fraction of a percent of the total out there). Most security issues come to light through home PC use as corporations tend to run antispam and antivirus at a gateway level, and malware can't get in because most computers are running without admin rights. The only thing this affects is the home user market.
Maybe Gates has actually realised that competing with OSX and Linux will become a waste of Microsoft's resources in the future so they're cutting and running.
It's most likely just corporate incompetence, but...