Well, I played with it for five minutes and couldn't see much use. It wouldn't let me fine tune the news feed to suit my needs, or at least not in an obvious way, and didn't display the accompanying pictures from news stories.
For whatever reason it won't display the weather for my location (Hamilton ON). I don't particularly like the way it displays my g-mail info, and would like to change the arrangement and width of the blocks.
All in all this one actually looks like a beta - dull, uninspired, and not fully realized.
Until the hard drive crashed last month I was running Win 2K on this old Fujitsu Lifebook D765X Pentium Laptop. My sig other took the "good" laptop to Nova Scotia, so I travelled to San Francisco with this one.
Although slow, the machine actually ran quite OK, even logging into wireless networks and surfing the 'net. Office '97 ran just dandy, as did everything else that I usually have installed.
Pentium 166, 48 megs RAM. Stable as a rock.
I doubt very much that XP would even install on this machine, but 2K was happy as a clam.
How about an OS that can identify conflicts and tell you which program is messing up which other program?
Instead of installing and uninstalling software or shutting down things at random via start up groups, why can't the OS - I am thinking Windows of course - be designed to monitor what each app is doing and track when two programs conflict.
Or how about that holy grail that every new and improved OS promises: that a bad app will be contained and will not crash the whole machine?
In more general terms these days I look at Picassa as an example of a program that does something that I didn't know I needed, does it really, really well, and was easy to learn and easier to install.
I became hooked on on-line shopping while living in the rural US. Since returning to Canada I have almost stopped with the exception of Amazon.ca. Canadian retailers just don't get this whole Internet thing, and the dearth of on-line retailers is sad.
I would happily shop from U.S. retailers, but continue to be amazed by the number of U.S. companies that cannot understand the value in selling to the 30+ million people north of the border.
If a U.S. retailer wants my business they will:
state clearly that they ship outside of the US. Put that information somewhere handy, not on a fourth level web page. Likewise if you only ship within the U.S. say so up front on page one so that I don't waste my time.
Set up forms to accept a postal code that goes X3X 3X3, and don't insist that only a five digit zip code works everywhere.
Be able to estimate shipping to a country outside of the U.S. with some accuracy. If Amazon.com can do it, so can other companies.
have an 800 support number that works from outside of the U.S.
if you insist on sending me to a Canadian seller that handles your product line make sure that I can buy the same products from them as you advertise on your U.S. web site
What has impressed me even more are the handful of companies that will even estimate customs charges on orders shipped to Canada. That helps me to avoid the god awful UPS thievery where you pay $25 in handling and brokerage to buy a $10 item.
Nothing. Utterly nothing. Movies and music will be pirated. They will be distributed on the 'net and on disc. People will download and watch them. And the big corporations will make more or less the same gigantic profits that they do now.
So what was accomplished?
Oh right, millions of teenagers will now stop "stealing" music....
"So next time you purchase a mainboard, think about the guys and gals that put them together, since it's not completely automated... Volume counts and the people are pushed a lot harder that I thought they'd be, to keep that volume up."
Would that be the people who are housed on-site "with ECS providing everything you need to live and work in pretty much the same place" and who apparently never leave the workplace because "work and play are rarely separated, since it's a fair run in to ShenZhen city and you live directly on-site next to the factories"?
Gee Whiz Wally, isn't it nice that they allow their workers an "on-site restaurant and relaxation area, well kept garden for spending free time in, (and an) employee-built library"?
I will admit to being rather conflicted. On one hand, it really irritated me to discover that the app I downloaded (for testing purposes only!) would also install spyware.
On the other hand who could I complain to? Bittorrent? Adobe? Direct Revenue?
Yes, once again Slashdot comes to the rescue! Where else can I gripe about companies that try to exploit my illegal activities!
Despite the whining and complaining this post has generated, I will say that it's a pretty darned useful little cheatsheet, better than Google's own attempt
I've used most of these functions on occasion, but not often enough that I remember each of them. So it helps me greatly to be able to look up quickly some of the query structures.
Really, given how much I use Google in the average day (whether searches, maps, gmail, groups, news) it's good to have concise resources like this.
Best thing that we ever did was take one old Pentium box, stuff it full of drives, and set up Second Copy to back up essential files every couple of days.
Turn on the backup box, fire up Second Copy, and an hour later everything critical on our network has been backed up with no work and no thought.
It even syncs directories between the laptop and desktop machines.
Beyond that we have one PIII/Win2K, 1 P4/XP, 1 PII/Win98, 1 linux box, one laptop, one HP5P, one HP 990 inkjet, scanner....
Even though I default to text e-mail and turn off previews in my mail client, I also accept that HTML e-mail has pretty much become the default.
I would suggest that your best option is to offer a choice of text or HTML, or if that seems unwieldy, to poll your client base for their preferences. If most of them want HTML, then that's what you should deliver to them
Asking them first is a good move. It makes them feel that you care about their needs, and in the event that you do go with a regular HTML format it will reassure them that you are not sending something malicious.
As is so often the case, this is a question of communication and marketing, not technology. Your choice, and how you implement it, should be determined by the needs or preferences of your clients, not by geekish outrage.
Personally I prefer either a URL back to your site or to a PDF.
Yikes! Am I alone in being surprised how few people find this demand unreasonable?
Seriously folks, this for a gym membership, not admittance into NASA or the CIA.
If a non-essential or frivolous business like this demanded that kind of personal information I'd be out of the door in an instant, not because I worry about security, but because it's a wholly unreasonable demand to make of your customers.
Perhaps more importantly, every time that you allow a business to record unnecessary information about you you are hastening the day when every transaction, especially those involving government, will demand the same.
Then again maybe the bulk of the population would see an embedded RFID chip as a reasonable request to go to the gym, or Costco, or to walk into a Post Office or board an airplane.
Lest you think that all I will do is complain, I'll offer a solution that will allow them to monitor gym usage and which will probably also increase business.
Hire intelligent and motivated employees, pay them well, train them well, and encourage them to know your customers on a first name basis. Have them get to know the likes and dislikes of your customers, and greet each one by name witha cheery "Hello!"
They will do a better job of keeping strangers out, and will make your customers feel special and appreciated.
No machine can do that as well as a living breathing person.
But with Windows you still have to download or locate and insert a CD to install the printer's software.... I have since learned that OS X ships with the manufacturer's software for most current printers.
Actually Windows also includes drivers for most printers. It's been ages since I had to track down a driver disc for a printer when installing Windows unless it was very new.
In all seriousness, aren't the aircraft manufacturers more than a bit negligent for not building avionics etc in ways that shield them from unwanted RF?
If every airliner has a couple hundred cel phones on it, and if in all likelihood at least couple will not be turned off, should airlines really be working to design the passenger compartment to keep that RF inside?
Or, if you're a passenger, wouldn't you prefer to know that the plane had been designed to keep cel radiation from interfering? As it stands now you have to trust that bubba two rows back is technically advanced enough to remember to turn of his mobile.
Probably the biggest reason why cel phone makers etc use their own cables, at least the wall wart for charging, is to ensure that the power coming into the phone is exactly right.
By supplying a proprietary charger they can know that you won't accidentally damage the phone.
I've never checked, but I'd wager that the power on a USB port can have a lot of variation, especially if you're using a cheapo $6.99 USB hub from Big Lots.
While it has many nicknames, information-age slang is commonly referred to as leetspeek, or leet for short.
Non-alphanumeric characters may be combined to form letters. For example, using slashes to create "/\/\" can substitute for the letter M, and two pipes combined with a hyphen to form "|-|" is often used in place of the letter H. Thus, the word "ham" could be written as "|-|4/\/\"
Geez, the first link from the article is to a visio problem that really is only obliquely related to Acrobat. The second does make reference to problems in disabling the Toolbar.
But to call this malware is really rather much. Can't posters and editors make a little more effort to do more than whine?
Slashdot Mirror
Revert to 486 machines and Windows 95. NO USB, no problem!
Hmmm... still have those floppy discs to deal with though....
Well, I played with it for five minutes and couldn't see much use. It wouldn't let me fine tune the news feed to suit my needs, or at least not in an obvious way, and didn't display the accompanying pictures from news stories.
For whatever reason it won't display the weather for my location (Hamilton ON). I don't particularly like the way it displays my g-mail info, and would like to change the arrangement and width of the blocks.
All in all this one actually looks like a beta - dull, uninspired, and not fully realized.
Until the hard drive crashed last month I was running Win 2K on this old Fujitsu Lifebook D765X Pentium Laptop. My sig other took the "good" laptop to Nova Scotia, so I travelled to San Francisco with this one.
Although slow, the machine actually ran quite OK, even logging into wireless networks and surfing the 'net. Office '97 ran just dandy, as did everything else that I usually have installed.
Pentium 166, 48 megs RAM. Stable as a rock.
I doubt very much that XP would even install on this machine, but 2K was happy as a clam.
I swear that this should be possible:
How about an OS that can identify conflicts and tell you which program is messing up which other program?
Instead of installing and uninstalling software or shutting down things at random via start up groups, why can't the OS - I am thinking Windows of course - be designed to monitor what each app is doing and track when two programs conflict.
Or how about that holy grail that every new and improved OS promises: that a bad app will be contained and will not crash the whole machine?
In more general terms these days I look at Picassa as an example of a program that does something that I didn't know I needed, does it really, really well, and was easy to learn and easier to install.
MS Office should be so easy to use.
Let's not forget Mosaic, upon which Netscape was built.
Still, I havea great fondness for the big, pulsing, waiting for 56K dial up N that was Netscape in the early days.
I would happily shop from U.S. retailers, but continue to be amazed by the number of U.S. companies that cannot understand the value in selling to the 30+ million people north of the border.
If a U.S. retailer wants my business they will:
What has impressed me even more are the handful of companies that will even estimate customs charges on orders shipped to Canada. That helps me to avoid the god awful UPS thievery where you pay $25 in handling and brokerage to buy a $10 item.
Nothing. Utterly nothing. Movies and music will be pirated. They will be distributed on the 'net and on disc. People will download and watch them. And the big corporations will make more or less the same gigantic profits that they do now.
So what was accomplished?
Oh right, millions of teenagers will now stop "stealing" music....
Drat! Obviously there are better legal minds than mine out there! Good thing that IANAL....
Liberace has a bowtie in both pictures. That's enough to convince me!
Then again I also voted to acquit Michael Jackson...
From TFA:
"So next time you purchase a mainboard, think about the guys and gals that put them together, since it's not completely automated... Volume counts and the people are pushed a lot harder that I thought they'd be, to keep that volume up."
Would that be the people who are housed on-site "with ECS providing everything you need to live and work in pretty much the same place" and who apparently never leave the workplace because "work and play are rarely separated, since it's a fair run in to ShenZhen city and you live directly on-site next to the factories"?
Gee Whiz Wally, isn't it nice that they allow their workers an "on-site restaurant and relaxation area, well kept garden for spending free time in, (and an) employee-built library"?
How grand.
I will admit to being rather conflicted. On one hand, it really irritated me to discover that the app I downloaded (for testing purposes only!) would also install spyware.
On the other hand who could I complain to? Bittorrent? Adobe? Direct Revenue?
Yes, once again Slashdot comes to the rescue! Where else can I gripe about companies that try to exploit my illegal activities!
Then again, my only copy of Bruce McDonald's Highway 61 is on VHS, with no sign of a DVD any time soon....
VHS will disappear for the same reason that cassette and reel to reel tape are disappearing - fewer and fewer manufacturers are making blank stock.
Aside from that tape is inherently less reliable than digital technology, big thumbprints on the back side of a DVD notwithstanding.
Despite the whining and complaining this post has generated, I will say that it's a pretty darned useful little cheatsheet, better than Google's own attempt
I've used most of these functions on occasion, but not often enough that I remember each of them. So it helps me greatly to be able to look up quickly some of the query structures.
Really, given how much I use Google in the average day (whether searches, maps, gmail, groups, news) it's good to have concise resources like this.
Well, having just experienced my very first colonoscopy I must say this development leaves me with mixed feelings.
One one hand this "bug" is way smaller than what explored my nether regions.
On the other hand the drugs that they gave me at the clinic while doing the procedure were very good!
Best thing that we ever did was take one old Pentium box, stuff it full of drives, and set up Second Copy to back up essential files every couple of days.
Turn on the backup box, fire up Second Copy, and an hour later everything critical on our network has been backed up with no work and no thought.
It even syncs directories between the laptop and desktop machines.
Beyond that we have one PIII/Win2K, 1 P4/XP, 1 PII/Win98, 1 linux box, one laptop, one HP5P, one HP 990 inkjet, scanner....
Even though I default to text e-mail and turn off previews in my mail client, I also accept that HTML e-mail has pretty much become the default.
I would suggest that your best option is to offer a choice of text or HTML, or if that seems unwieldy, to poll your client base for their preferences. If most of them want HTML, then that's what you should deliver to them
Asking them first is a good move. It makes them feel that you care about their needs, and in the event that you do go with a regular HTML format it will reassure them that you are not sending something malicious.
As is so often the case, this is a question of communication and marketing, not technology. Your choice, and how you implement it, should be determined by the needs or preferences of your clients, not by geekish outrage.
Personally I prefer either a URL back to your site or to a PDF.
Yikes! Am I alone in being surprised how few people find this demand unreasonable?
Seriously folks, this for a gym membership, not admittance into NASA or the CIA.
If a non-essential or frivolous business like this demanded that kind of personal information I'd be out of the door in an instant, not because I worry about security, but because it's a wholly unreasonable demand to make of your customers.
Perhaps more importantly, every time that you allow a business to record unnecessary information about you you are hastening the day when every transaction, especially those involving government, will demand the same.
Then again maybe the bulk of the population would see an embedded RFID chip as a reasonable request to go to the gym, or Costco, or to walk into a Post Office or board an airplane.
Lest you think that all I will do is complain, I'll offer a solution that will allow them to monitor gym usage and which will probably also increase business.
Hire intelligent and motivated employees, pay them well, train them well, and encourage them to know your customers on a first name basis. Have them get to know the likes and dislikes of your customers, and greet each one by name witha cheery "Hello!"
They will do a better job of keeping strangers out, and will make your customers feel special and appreciated.
No machine can do that as well as a living breathing person.
But with Windows you still have to download or locate and insert a CD to install the printer's software. ...
I have since learned that OS X ships with the manufacturer's software for most current printers.
Actually Windows also includes drivers for most printers. It's been ages since I had to track down a driver disc for a printer when installing Windows unless it was very new.
In all seriousness, aren't the aircraft manufacturers more than a bit negligent for not building avionics etc in ways that shield them from unwanted RF?
If every airliner has a couple hundred cel phones on it, and if in all likelihood at least couple will not be turned off, should airlines really be working to design the passenger compartment to keep that RF inside?
Or, if you're a passenger, wouldn't you prefer to know that the plane had been designed to keep cel radiation from interfering? As it stands now you have to trust that bubba two rows back is technically advanced enough to remember to turn of his mobile.
Probably the biggest reason why cel phone makers etc use their own cables, at least the wall wart for charging, is to ensure that the power coming into the phone is exactly right.
By supplying a proprietary charger they can know that you won't accidentally damage the phone.
I've never checked, but I'd wager that the power on a USB port can have a lot of variation, especially if you're using a cheapo $6.99 USB hub from Big Lots.
Thank God Microsoft is here to help newbies understand all that computer talk with their parent's primer to computer slang
While it has many nicknames, information-age slang is commonly referred to as leetspeek, or leet for short.
Non-alphanumeric characters may be combined to form letters. For example, using slashes to create "/\/\" can substitute for the letter M, and two pipes combined with a hyphen to form "|-|" is often used in place of the letter H. Thus, the word "ham" could be written as "|-|4/\/\"
Ah, just yesterday I was getting annoyed because I had seen three or four pop-under ads in less than a week.
Then I borrowed a friends machine with Internet Explorer. Wow! I had no idea how much crap Firefox was blocking!
How do people live with all of this garbage?
I am astonished that no-one has provided a link to the original thousand year old beacon.
I mean really, are we still living back in 2001 or something?
Geez, the first link from the article is to a visio problem that really is only obliquely related to Acrobat. The second does make reference to problems in disabling the Toolbar.
But to call this malware is really rather much. Can't posters and editors make a little more effort to do more than whine?