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Seems rigged to me
Never attribute to malace what could be equally explained by stupidity.
It is only beta after all. If the results are the same when it goes life then I would be suspicious.
ps. My search for "linux" gets more than none, although it does seem to have too much bias towards domain names that contain that term.
The article talks about the MDA III yet the photos show an MDA I and II which have been out for ages and a reasonable amount of time respectivily. The most noticable thing about the MDA III is that it has an integrated sliding keyboard.
I have one in my desk drawer and although I haven't had a proper play with it, it's rather heavy, thick and the back is made of cheap feeling black plastic. The OS is Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition.
However it does come with an impressive line up of software - fonix voice apps, album, clearvue pdf, enroller, clearvue ppt, kse truefax, midlet manager, photo contacts, video mms and xBackup to name a few.
I've asked them many times, and even gone to the point of deleting IE, but their resillence to use anything else forced me to put it back on (amongst other reasons).
I'm a long time IE (then myIE2) user and have just moved to Firefox. Some of the things as a long term IE user I dont like is:
The default theme is horrible. After some digging I found Qute which is far nicer on apparantly used to be default. Why they changed it is silly.
The installer has a checkbox for recommended plugins, but it isn't active. Probably due to it being less than version 1.0. I think that when it does become active it should be on by default. It is worth noting that although geeks love plugins, the normal user is somewhat slightly less ameniable to the idea (especially when the plugin is considered "essential").
The settings aren't very newbie friendly. I found i had to take a lot of time setting it up. There are settings hidden away that I have to use "about:config". I should never have to do that - especially not for the ones which aren't completely obscure. It kind of reminds me of Linux (firefox) vs Windows (ie). One is more powerful and customisable, but you have to work a lot at it to get it the way you like. The other isn't, but comes with basic settings that 80% of users are happy with.
Error messages in browswer is not on by default. Why not? Why is the setting hidden away? 1995 is not calling. Lets move on.
The button bar has about 4 buttons. I don't think it's too much to have, by default, new tab, back, forward, stop, reload, home, bookmarks, history, print and downloads. Power users can remove them, beginners will be fine.
Google search by default takes you to the "I feel lucky" page. What was wrong with the normal search?
No good support for IE favourites. No wizard, for importing, no ability to automatically detect them (I had to export then from IE and import), no ability to use the IE method of storing bookmarks and retain compatibility with other parts of the OS that show my bookmarks. Hell, if you want people to migrate, make it easy for their bookmarks!
Still can't work out how to make shift-click open into a new tab. One extension will allow this - but it doesn't work with the (practically essential) tabbrowser extensions.
Loading times are slow. A splash screen that indicates it's loading would be nicer than sitting looking at my desktop wondering if I really did click the icon. Or faster loading times. But there is no option in the config for that. Looks like i'll have to dig again.
Having said all that though:
There is some neat functionality both with and without all the plugins. Although having said that I have no idea what the neat plugins are. It's often a case of pick what looks good and go for it.
The adblock extension is very good.
I like the way I can put folders into the links bar and they drop down with my websites. Especially the open all in tabs.
Now I'm sure I'll get 50+ posts of people telling me that I'm dumb, if I do x, y and z then I can get this, I just need to edit a file, I need to install this plugin, etc.etc. but the point is that I shouldn't need to post complaints to slashdot to get the answers, nor should i need to surf the web, use google or anything else.
Nothing I've asked for is particulary difficult, it just makes migrating less painful.
But yes, Firefox is very good. Got a few rough edges in the userbility department, but very good.
E.g., there are computers in a lot of gadgets. Take my CD-based MP3 player, for example. Whenever I power it up, it takes a couple of seconds to basically boot and read the track list. If all that could stay in MRAM, and have it start playing the millisecond I hit that button, it would be a much more convenient gadget.
A good example is mobile phones. My Nokia 7610 takes about 40 seconds from power on to being usable. Similar start up times exist for the SonyEricsson P800 and P900.
Personally, I would prefer it to be no more than 5 seconds, although I don't really have a particulary compelling reason why the extra 35 seconds means so much, other than it's a little annoying.
They're also forcing all their users that DO use the Yahoo! approved clients to upgrade to their new client.
Of course. It wouldn't make any business sense at all to upgrade the protocol with no changes at the client and then try (miserably) to get people to upgrade their client when most people can't be bothered to download and re-install something.
Any good product manager would tell you to integrate the two. Which is exactly what they've done. Anything else would be silly.
The main people who won't switch away from Hotmail are the home users who like Hotmail.
No, the main people who won't switch away from Hotmail are those users that don't want all the hassle of telling all their friends their new email address, changing their profile on all the websites they are registered to, maintain two seperate inboxes for 6 months whilst they catch all the people/websites they missed and then finally dump the old one and pray that you've not missed anyone.
Personally, I'd rather Hotmail sorted out their abysmal spam filtering than the extra storage space because, most of the time, that space is wasted because of all the spam.
The defections are mounting at previously captive customers; good recent examples include the French and Brazilian governments.
Whilst these are good examples, it would be very naive to ignore the fact that a lot of companies used the threat of moving to Linux solely to get a cheaper discount from Microsoft.
In other words, they never were intending to use something else, it was always going to be Microsoft, they just they wanted a better price.
To me, being used to leverage a better discount from your competitor, isn't much of a "win" for the adoption of Linux.
In addition, the real wins aren't when Governments move to Linux, but when big Fortune 100/FTSE 100 companies do and mandate that those that work with them must move to open formats. These organisations (sadly, sometimes) have far more power over others than Governments do. When that happens, companies that work with them will be forced to change or find that a competitor will happily step into their shoes.
Then people will find that their OS at work is not Microsoft and will start to use that at home because that is what they are more comfortable with... and so on... and so on...
Some phones (Sony Ericsson P800 / P900 for example) have 'airplane mode' alongside normal, silent, etc. This turns off the mobile phone part of the phone and just gives you the all the other bits.
Unfortunately you'll still get asked to turn it off on an aeroplane because the cabin crew aren't trained to spot these kind of phones or verify that they really are in flight mode.
I own one of their cd based mp3 players, and that thing is the best portable cd player I've ever used. Its user friendliness, firmware updates and general quality of construction is unbeatable.
So do I (imp-400 in silver) and it looks really good (although sometimes a little bit too much like a toilet seat). However, it's not as user friendly as it could be because the controls are somewhat complicated.
The only problem with the unit in question here, apparently, is that it doesn't look like an iPod. Duh.
I didn't say that. Duh.
What I actually said it looks really really ugly and, unsurprisingly, I still stand by my opinion.
I never said that the iPod is the panacea of design, but I just feel that iRiver could have put slightly more effort into the look of the thing, especially when they're asking people to pony up a lot of money for something which they will carry around when them all the time.
The simple fact is that as soon as you start marketing products that people are going to wear on themselves on a daily basis, you have to accept that how something looks becomes significant.
No. That's what the "attach" button is for. I've always found cut & paste into an email to be quite dodgy.
Why is this 4, Insightful? I've never used "attach" because once I've browsed to the location of the picture which i want to send the last thing I want to do is hit "attach" and re-browse for it again.
Therefore, being the lazy sod I am, I've always dragged and dropped it into the email and never had any issues.
Mind you, i've only ever used Microsoft mail applications - so maybe Microsoft is the only one that can get it right. But that doesn't seem right to me...
Whilst this is good news, it would be nice if in addition to the iTunes store, Apple also sped up their time to market for new iPods in the UK.
We still have no sight of the iPod Mini and when Jobs announces a new iPod (which the rumour sites seem to think will happen - anyone got any further information?) then it'll be another six months before we can get our grubby mits on them.
Personally, I'm going to see what the new iPod will be like before deciding whether or not to wait...
I am of course assuming they are going to announce one that is, however the last update was October 16th 2003, which was a fair while back now - especially in light of all the other entrants to the HD MP3 player market who are all vying for top spot.
"If you want to know what is wrong with transport in this country it is that over decades successive governments did not spend enough on the infrastructure and air traffic control is no different," Darling told BBC radio."
A dutch friend of mine once remarked that she didn't understand the mentality of the British. "You" she said, "have an amazing tendency to run things into the ground and then get around to fixing them rather than spending money on continually maintaining them so they never fall apart."
Technology is my hobby as well as my job, so I regularly ponder why software giant Microsoft Corp., which has more than $56 billion in cash, hasn't solved more of these problems.
Because time and time again (and not just in IT), if you have someone with a significant market lead, they have a tendency to procrastinate because of the lack of threatening competition.
Microsoft doesn't need to fix these issues because there is no viable enough competitor which is affecting their market share enough to make them worry.
Shouldn't we have some sort of mandate similar to Usenet signatures?
There is no mandate on Usenet signatures. Same as there is no mandate on top-posting and quoting.
It's all voluntary. If the poster doesn't follow the guidelines (which is what they are) the worst that can happen is that they don't potentially get all the possible responses they could (or they get a couple of extra rude ones they didn't expect).
In short, newsgroup etiquette on signatures, quoting and top-posting doesn't work and it wouldn't work with disclaimers either. If one company decides to ignore it (and it'll be more than one) then there isn't much people can do about it.
There are far bigger problems to worry about than an overly zealous disclaimer on an email which is generally legally unenforcable anyway.
Tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking? And your last line is what is causing a lot of these anti-monopolistic lawsuits against MS.
My office is full of non-techincal people. Looking around most people only have 1 (yes, one) IE window open. When I mention tabbed browsing, most people confirm my observations - that is, they only have one (and occasionally two) windows open. With cases like this, tabbed browsing could be seen as overkill to a problem that doesn't really exist (for them).
With regards to pop-up windows, the next service pack will contain a pop-up blocker for windows, but most of the clueful people have google toolbar already installed which does that for you.
Mozilla and it's tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, pop up blockers, type ahead find and the raft of other nifty features is great for the "power surfer" but I swear that based on the people in my office, it's not something they particulary need or feel the need to have enough to even go out and try.
Note that i'm not saying these features are bad, they're very good, but the problem with adoption here is that a lot of people don't realise that the average Joe doesn't surf the web in a way that Mozilla would benifit him. If he only goes to a few websites then there is a chance he'll never see unwanted pop up adverts.
I asked my mother about pop up adverts last month and she'd only ever come across one in the two years she'd been surfing the web. Granted, she wasn't surfing a very large number of sites - but it was difficult to sell a feature to her when she didn't really know why she needed it.
Is it my imagination, or is there actually a reasonable migration to linux underway ?
Honestly? Not really.
If Slashdot reported every company that migrated from Windows 9x/NT to Windows 2000/XP then you'd find that the stories of Linux migrations will be submerged under the huge volume of Windows migrations.
Thats not to say that migrations aren't happening (they are) but lets just not get ahead of ourselves. A small number of companies are migrating, the average working Joe is still no more likely to see Linux on his desktop when he joins a new company.
As I said about, it is happening, but it'll take a very long time to build up momentum. As soon as it hits critical peak (30%-40% penetration? I'm guessing) then you'll get an avalanche of migrations as companies will be directly affected because their competitors are spending money that would normally go on the IT budget elsewhere (such as marketing).
But you can fix it with sfdisk, writing out a new partition table with a different geometry.
*shudder* No thanks. I don't care how easy it is to do, I'll wait for them to produce a fix.
I don't care whose fault it is, but speaking as an average joe user, if you want to crowbar that copy of Windows XP from me, then I want to be able to install Linux without having to faff around repairing/rebuilding stuff that I know very little about in the first place.
When you're the underdog, or up against something which is established, in any industry, you have to accept that sometimes you may need to "fix" something that wasn't really your fault in the first place.
yes, windows did say "This is unsigned, on your head be it", but I still don't expect the whole OS to crash and die when a driver is dodgy. Sure, stop the device working, but the OS ought to be robust enough that the rest keeps going.
Drivers have to run in ring 0 irrespective of the operating system. This includes Linux.
So, in short, that means that even Linux will give you a kernel panic with a crappy driver.
It's something you can't get away from I'm afriad and has nothing to do with the operating system's robustness.
Geeks want small, lean, light and easily expandable via plugins to have a customisable experience.
Users want all the nifty features in there ready to go. They don't want to faff around with plugins, often they don't even know about them (or care). They want something that works well.
Therefore if you want to appease both (and personally, I can cope with some extra download to have the plugins rather than waste time hunting for them) then the installer should give you the option to install some of the more common ones. It should be labelled as "recommended" and be the default option. Geeks can select "minimal".
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Seems rigged to me
Never attribute to malace what could be equally explained by stupidity.
It is only beta after all. If the results are the same when it goes life then I would be suspicious.
ps. My search for "linux" gets more than none, although it does seem to have too much bias towards domain names that contain that term.
Given that my main OS is Windows (sorry), is there anything like this for it?
The only way this could be 3G compatible is via some additional plug in device (and even then I'm not sure how feasible this is).
3G devices need special hardware which the MDA III doesn't have I'm afriad.
The article talks about the MDA III yet the photos show an MDA I and II which have been out for ages and a reasonable amount of time respectivily. The most noticable thing about the MDA III is that it has an integrated sliding keyboard.
Photos of the MDA III can be found here.
I have one in my desk drawer and although I haven't had a proper play with it, it's rather heavy, thick and the back is made of cheap feeling black plastic. The OS is Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition.
However it does come with an impressive line up of software - fonix voice apps, album, clearvue pdf, enroller, clearvue ppt, kse truefax, midlet manager, photo contacts, video mms and xBackup to name a few.
I'm a long time IE (then myIE2) user and have just moved to Firefox. Some of the things as a long term IE user I dont like is:
- The default theme is horrible. After some digging I found Qute which is far nicer on apparantly used to be default. Why they changed it is silly.
- The installer has a checkbox for recommended plugins, but it isn't active. Probably due to it being less than version 1.0. I think that when it does become active it should be on by default. It is worth noting that although geeks love plugins, the normal user is somewhat slightly less ameniable to the idea (especially when the plugin is considered "essential").
- The settings aren't very newbie friendly. I found i had to take a lot of time setting it up. There are settings hidden away that I have to use "about:config". I should never have to do that - especially not for the ones which aren't completely obscure. It kind of reminds me of Linux (firefox) vs Windows (ie). One is more powerful and customisable, but you have to work a lot at it to get it the way you like. The other isn't, but comes with basic settings that 80% of users are happy with.
- Error messages in browswer is not on by default. Why not? Why is the setting hidden away? 1995 is not calling. Lets move on.
- The button bar has about 4 buttons. I don't think it's too much to have, by default, new tab, back, forward, stop, reload, home, bookmarks, history, print and downloads. Power users can remove them, beginners will be fine.
- Google search by default takes you to the "I feel lucky" page. What was wrong with the normal search?
- No good support for IE favourites. No wizard, for importing, no ability to automatically detect them (I had to export then from IE and import), no ability to use the IE method of storing bookmarks and retain compatibility with other parts of the OS that show my bookmarks. Hell, if you want people to migrate, make it easy for their bookmarks!
- Still can't work out how to make shift-click open into a new tab. One extension will allow this - but it doesn't work with the (practically essential) tabbrowser extensions.
- Loading times are slow. A splash screen that indicates it's loading would be nicer than sitting looking at my desktop wondering if I really did click the icon. Or faster loading times. But there is no option in the config for that. Looks like i'll have to dig again.
Having said all that though:- There is some neat functionality both with and without all the plugins. Although having said that I have no idea what the neat plugins are. It's often a case of pick what looks good and go for it.
- The adblock extension is very good.
- I like the way I can put folders into the links bar and they drop down with my websites. Especially the open all in tabs.
Now I'm sure I'll get 50+ posts of people telling me that I'm dumb, if I do x, y and z then I can get this, I just need to edit a file, I need to install this plugin, etc.etc. but the point is that I shouldn't need to post complaints to slashdot to get the answers, nor should i need to surf the web, use google or anything else.Nothing I've asked for is particulary difficult, it just makes migrating less painful.
But yes, Firefox is very good. Got a few rough edges in the userbility department, but very good.
A good example is mobile phones. My Nokia 7610 takes about 40 seconds from power on to being usable. Similar start up times exist for the SonyEricsson P800 and P900.
Personally, I would prefer it to be no more than 5 seconds, although I don't really have a particulary compelling reason why the extra 35 seconds means so much, other than it's a little annoying.
Of course. It wouldn't make any business sense at all to upgrade the protocol with no changes at the client and then try (miserably) to get people to upgrade their client when most people can't be bothered to download and re-install something.
Any good product manager would tell you to integrate the two. Which is exactly what they've done. Anything else would be silly.
No, the main people who won't switch away from Hotmail are those users that don't want all the hassle of telling all their friends their new email address, changing their profile on all the websites they are registered to, maintain two seperate inboxes for 6 months whilst they catch all the people/websites they missed and then finally dump the old one and pray that you've not missed anyone.
Personally, I'd rather Hotmail sorted out their abysmal spam filtering than the extra storage space because, most of the time, that space is wasted because of all the spam.
A few things although I agree with you that predicting the future is not his strong point.
Whilst these are good examples, it would be very naive to ignore the fact that a lot of companies used the threat of moving to Linux solely to get a cheaper discount from Microsoft.
In other words, they never were intending to use something else, it was always going to be Microsoft, they just they wanted a better price.
To me, being used to leverage a better discount from your competitor, isn't much of a "win" for the adoption of Linux.
In addition, the real wins aren't when Governments move to Linux, but when big Fortune 100/FTSE 100 companies do and mandate that those that work with them must move to open formats. These organisations (sadly, sometimes) have far more power over others than Governments do. When that happens, companies that work with them will be forced to change or find that a competitor will happily step into their shoes.
Then people will find that their OS at work is not Microsoft and will start to use that at home because that is what they are more comfortable with ... and so on ... and so on ...
Unfortunately you'll still get asked to turn it off on an aeroplane because the cabin crew aren't trained to spot these kind of phones or verify that they really are in flight mode.
So do I (imp-400 in silver) and it looks really good (although sometimes a little bit too much like a toilet seat). However, it's not as user friendly as it could be because the controls are somewhat complicated.
The only problem with the unit in question here, apparently, is that it doesn't look like an iPod. Duh.
I didn't say that. Duh.
What I actually said it looks really really ugly and, unsurprisingly, I still stand by my opinion.
I never said that the iPod is the panacea of design, but I just feel that iRiver could have put slightly more effort into the look of the thing, especially when they're asking people to pony up a lot of money for something which they will carry around when them all the time.
The simple fact is that as soon as you start marketing products that people are going to wear on themselves on a daily basis, you have to accept that how something looks becomes significant.
Why is this 4, Insightful? I've never used "attach" because once I've browsed to the location of the picture which i want to send the last thing I want to do is hit "attach" and re-browse for it again.
Therefore, being the lazy sod I am, I've always dragged and dropped it into the email and never had any issues.
Mind you, i've only ever used Microsoft mail applications - so maybe Microsoft is the only one that can get it right. But that doesn't seem right to me ...
We still have no sight of the iPod Mini and when Jobs announces a new iPod (which the rumour sites seem to think will happen - anyone got any further information?) then it'll be another six months before we can get our grubby mits on them.
Personally, I'm going to see what the new iPod will be like before deciding whether or not to wait ...
I am of course assuming they are going to announce one that is, however the last update was October 16th 2003, which was a fair while back now - especially in light of all the other entrants to the HD MP3 player market who are all vying for top spot.
A dutch friend of mine once remarked that she didn't understand the mentality of the British. "You" she said, "have an amazing tendency to run things into the ground and then get around to fixing them rather than spending money on continually maintaining them so they never fall apart."
It's a very good point.
Because time and time again (and not just in IT), if you have someone with a significant market lead, they have a tendency to procrastinate because of the lack of threatening competition.
Microsoft doesn't need to fix these issues because there is no viable enough competitor which is affecting their market share enough to make them worry.
There is no mandate on Usenet signatures. Same as there is no mandate on top-posting and quoting.
It's all voluntary. If the poster doesn't follow the guidelines (which is what they are) the worst that can happen is that they don't potentially get all the possible responses they could (or they get a couple of extra rude ones they didn't expect).
In short, newsgroup etiquette on signatures, quoting and top-posting doesn't work and it wouldn't work with disclaimers either. If one company decides to ignore it (and it'll be more than one) then there isn't much people can do about it.
There are far bigger problems to worry about than an overly zealous disclaimer on an email which is generally legally unenforcable anyway.
My office is full of non-techincal people. Looking around most people only have 1 (yes, one) IE window open. When I mention tabbed browsing, most people confirm my observations - that is, they only have one (and occasionally two) windows open. With cases like this, tabbed browsing could be seen as overkill to a problem that doesn't really exist (for them).
With regards to pop-up windows, the next service pack will contain a pop-up blocker for windows, but most of the clueful people have google toolbar already installed which does that for you.
Mozilla and it's tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, pop up blockers, type ahead find and the raft of other nifty features is great for the "power surfer" but I swear that based on the people in my office, it's not something they particulary need or feel the need to have enough to even go out and try.
Note that i'm not saying these features are bad, they're very good, but the problem with adoption here is that a lot of people don't realise that the average Joe doesn't surf the web in a way that Mozilla would benifit him. If he only goes to a few websites then there is a chance he'll never see unwanted pop up adverts.
I asked my mother about pop up adverts last month and she'd only ever come across one in the two years she'd been surfing the web. Granted, she wasn't surfing a very large number of sites - but it was difficult to sell a feature to her when she didn't really know why she needed it.
Honestly? Not really.
If Slashdot reported every company that migrated from Windows 9x/NT to Windows 2000/XP then you'd find that the stories of Linux migrations will be submerged under the huge volume of Windows migrations.
Thats not to say that migrations aren't happening (they are) but lets just not get ahead of ourselves. A small number of companies are migrating, the average working Joe is still no more likely to see Linux on his desktop when he joins a new company.
As I said about, it is happening, but it'll take a very long time to build up momentum. As soon as it hits critical peak (30%-40% penetration? I'm guessing) then you'll get an avalanche of migrations as companies will be directly affected because their competitors are spending money that would normally go on the IT budget elsewhere (such as marketing).
*shudder* No thanks. I don't care how easy it is to do, I'll wait for them to produce a fix.
I don't care whose fault it is, but speaking as an average joe user, if you want to crowbar that copy of Windows XP from me, then I want to be able to install Linux without having to faff around repairing/rebuilding stuff that I know very little about in the first place.
When you're the underdog, or up against something which is established, in any industry, you have to accept that sometimes you may need to "fix" something that wasn't really your fault in the first place.
Drivers have to run in ring 0 irrespective of the operating system. This includes Linux.
So, in short, that means that even Linux will give you a kernel panic with a crappy driver.
It's something you can't get away from I'm afriad and has nothing to do with the operating system's robustness.
For extremely large values of a "bit" that is.
All we need now is a BSOD joke and I'd swear that everytime I read Slashdot it induces a timewarp back to 1998.
Of course it is a bad idea.
However, blame that on the other competing services who haven't become cheaper, faster or better at whatever it is that makes Akamai so popular.
Geeks want small, lean, light and easily expandable via plugins to have a customisable experience.
Users want all the nifty features in there ready to go. They don't want to faff around with plugins, often they don't even know about them (or care). They want something that works well.
Therefore if you want to appease both (and personally, I can cope with some extra download to have the plugins rather than waste time hunting for them) then the installer should give you the option to install some of the more common ones. It should be labelled as "recommended" and be the default option. Geeks can select "minimal".