First off - read the article. In there "the expert says" that consumer demand is driving the move towards phones with more features.
Actually it's the network operators who are demanding the features because they want to sell you data services. Basic phones provide no additional ability to sell you value added services.
My "begging to differ" was arguing exactly that point - and I know I am not unique in wanting a simple phone without bells and whistles.
So buy one with bells and whistles and don't use the features. If you really are averse to all those bits of functionality, you can get a low tier phone for near enough nothing.
So don't go off on a tangent telling me that UKers are all that special
I only added that disclaimer because otherwise I'll get loads of criticism about how thats not the case in the USA. Having never been there, I don't know and can't comment.
Instead, the author claims, (after quoting some 'expert' from this company) that phones with fancy features (cameras, games, etc.) are starting to dominate. I beg to differ - one of the few things stopping me from purchasing a phone is the fact that I do not want to pay for hundreds of features that I will never use. All I want is an address book and a way to make calls."
I beg to differ with you begging to differ.
Maybe in the US, but here in the UK it is almost impossible to buy a plain black and white basic phone.
Phone functionality works in 6 month cycles. What is high tier this year will be middle tier middle of next year and low tier at the end of the year.
6 months ago colour screens and polyphonic was middle tier, now even the most basic phone these days has them both. Next year the most basic phone will have a camera (and the high tier will also have cameras but be capable of pushing 2 megapixels)
Ever tried getting a phone that doesn't have SMS? You can't and in two years it'll be the same with the other bits of functionality you despise.
So yes, they are dominating. Just because you are holding back doesn't mean they aren't. But when yours bites the dust you'll realise that you'll have to move with the times.
Which may or may not be a good thing depending on your point of view.
I have mixed feelings about backwards compatibility. While being able to play current games on the next Xbox would be nice; too often, hardware/software is seriously crippled because of backwards compatibility.
This is something i've also wondered. Although many believe PS2's big selling point was the fact that all your old PS1 games still worked... really, how much was that an issue for the majority of people out there?
After all, if you have 500 pounds worth of PS1 games would you rather save a bit of money on the console and accept you have to have another box (albeit temporarily) if you want to play the old ones - or are you prepared to pay a bit more (and possibly sacrifice some technical advantages) just to get one box that does everything?
This is a good opportunity for Windows users to migrate to a free desktop.
This isn't meant as a troll but don't the Gnome folks lambast KDE for being less "free" than it?
Personally, I use Gnome only because I tried KDE about 3 years ago, didn't think much of it, switched to Gnome and have never been bothered to go back and try it again.
Am I missing something but this story basically boils down to the fact that the crew of LOTR used a portal hard drive to transport content, which, just so happened to be an iPod?
I mean, you could do that with almost any portable hard drive or hard drive based MP3 player.
The specifications are advancing very well indeed (as are some implementations (i.e.: user agents) following closely behind). If you meant that authors will not use the new features, many of the more knowledgeable authors will and already do (see my "This has already happened.." comment in the grandparent).
True, however I'm concerned that although geeky personal homepages may evolve, the big ecommerce outfits will be reluctant to move forward with new specifications whilst over 90% of their clients won't actually experience any of it.
I thought the whole point of your post was that you were arguing that we should consider supporting one "evil" (or immoral anti-competitive practice) against another.
Actually, I looked at the possibility of siding with one evil to give competing browsers the "leg up" that they really could do with (as the Eolas founder did state he wasn't after anyone else but Microsoft), however from about half way down my original post I do explain why this is not something that we can do and gave my reasons why not.
I really do not see this as being an important goal for the W3 community (certainly not in the long term and not IMO even in the short term).
I wish it was. Diversity of browsers would mean that one could not rule the roost and try to dictate or sway progression. When Netscape did it, it was bad (remember all those NS only tags?) and now Microsoft has the same power now.
The unique qualities of the Mac operating system also lead to differentiation. For example, Office for Mac uses Apple's Quartz graphics system, part of OS X, to give charts a degree of transparency that lets users see open windows behind them.
He has specifically stated that he has NO intention to hurt the rest of the community---Just Microsoft.
The biggest problem with this which I noted is that its a very big "if".
Although it would be nice to think that this patent can help boost the alternative browsers, but there is nothing to stop Eolas going after other companies after Microsoft.
If they do this (and lets be honest, if there is money to be made - then all bets are off), then they'll be simply re-levelling the playing field back in Microsoft's favour.
It's too much of a risk and hence why I said we should support Microsoft.
The browser war will be won by a non-MS entity one day, but it's not today and it won't be in this way.
I'm sorry but this is a ludicrous point of view to hold. Are you saying that Eolas be allowed to use the law in a clearly immoral (and illegal) way?
If you'd read the entire comment you would have seen that I didn't suggest that.
Why would they only go after M$?
If you'd read the entire comment you would have seen that I said that this line of reasoning would only work if Eolas didn't go after other companies. The founder has claimed that he won't - but it's a very big "if".
As someone who never uses MSIE, I fail to see what the point in increasing the share of real (non-MSIE) WWW browsers is.
If you'd read the entire comment you would have seen that I said that with IE stagnating on IE 6, you're not going to see any great advances in WWW specifications until we move away from the fact that 95% of people use a browser that can't cope with these new standard.
If they go so low as to sue M$ over this totally spurious patent, why would they not sue everyone else they can think of to maximise their profits from their patent (using lawsuits)?
If you'd read the entire comment you would have seen that I said that whilst they may not (and the head of Eolas did say that), it's a very big if and something that cannot be easily discounted.
In all cases, the best course of action to follow who you think is in the right.
Which if you'd read the entire comment you would have seen that I said we should support Microsoft in getting this patent overturned and accept that the best way to get non-IE browsers to dominate the market is not going to be this way.
You selectivily cut out all the bits that appeared pro-eolas and missed out all the bits that noted the problems with that line of thinking. That is assume you actually read them, because all your other comments were stuff I'd already covered.
And when they decide to go after Mozilla or Opera because they didn't get enough money from suing Microsoft...by then those other browsers will have a bigger market share, according to your bizarre world anyway. What's bad for one company is bad for all of them.
Had you continued reading past the first paragraph, you'll have seen that I make references to the very big caveat of that bizzare world.
Whilst I agree that the patent is absurd and should never happen - it is worth noting that if Eolas go only after Microsoft, then this could get the other non-IE browsers a significant leg up in market share.
Right now the internet standard have been set. It doesn't matter what new proposals come out of the W3C or how well other browsers will perfect their implementations, the internet will always be suspended at the greats common denominator (which is, in this case, the functionality of IE 6). No-one in their right mind is going to abandon support for the browser that 90% of potential customers use.
By levelling the playing field a bit more, this would mean that webmasters and designers would not be afraid to move on and leave IE behind. By doing so, Microsoft would be forced to keep up to maintain market share.
However, there is one big caveat - and that is the Eolas doesn't use their win against Microsoft to go after everyone else. This is a pretty big if and definely one that cannot be easily discounted.
If Eolas do decide to follow suit with other browser manufacturers then any "leg up" that has been gained will be lost, IE will still be dominant and the WWW standards will stop. However if Eolas doesn't go after anyone else then this is quite some benifit.
Unfortunately, banking on Eolas winning and not sueing anyone else is just too much of a risk. Which means that, in this case, the best course of action to is come to Microsofts defence, get it overturned and accept that for WWW standard to move on (which will necessitate the removal of IE from the top spot), it must happen in a different way.
Why risk using the Web at all? Just e-mail the webmaster and ask him to fax the webpages to you!
I followed Microsoft's advice and typed in your address but all I got was the MSN search engine telling me that the domain "fax the webpages" doesn't exist.
Too many times companies want to start a "GPL" project and think that the programmers doing the work would also be free. GPL programmers either are paid to program, have a personal interest and are making their own contributions, or are naive. I'm not naive, and they weren't interested in paying. So, if I do the work (once my NDA/NCA expires next year) it will be on my own as long as I can itch and scratch.
Thanks for the comments! Maybe I should change it slightly. It's a personal project which will provide eVB programmers a framework for writing Today plugins (which they can't currently do). The major problem is that it needs some eVC++ coding too and I've had a hack and it would take me the best part of a year to come up with something workable.
My biggest problem is finding people - I don't really know where to look and postings to newsgroups only got people who were looking to make some money, which was something I'm reluctant to do (given the complete lack of GPL code for the PocketPC).
This is very cool, however I don't understand why the paint can appears to "hover" around the start point for drawing.
Had I written the algorithm, I would have just made it move directly to the point and then start drawing - but this looks like it goes to the start point, waves around the immediate area for a bit and then starts.
Joe and Jane Consumer do not have more than a few gigs of MP3s, at most. Once you hit a certain point, they aren't looking at the capacity anymore - they are looking at style and price. With the mini-iPod, they are saving $50 and getting better style.
Except that if Apple had priced their product competitivily against their own models, rather than again the solid state devices (which themselves are equally over-priced) then Joe and Jane could have saved 100-125 bucks.
I'm sorry but the excuse "but we're pitching this product at this market" isn't a valid excuse for the fact that their profit margins on the iPod Mini are excessivily high.
Jo and Jane may not need or spend the extra 50 bucks, but at the same time, that isn't a reason to screw them with the lower end model.
I don't care what type of the market they're going for with the iPod Mini. The fact is that for $50 more you can get 11 gig more disk space.
Which means that the only logical conclusion is that the iPod Mini is heavily over-priced for its specifications.
If they actually set it to a price that didn't have such a high profit margin, they'd not only compete with the flash based players, but actually thrash them to the point that anyone who did buy a flash one would either be wasting their money or have a very specific need.
This has nothing to do with trying to set a price point in line with another market. It's about getting a massive margin on a new product. Nothing more.
Usually I get the best coding results after 16 hours of constant work without sleep. In the end I suddenly see new options which came never into my mind before. The same holds for my coworkers. So from personal experience I strongly doubt their result.
Personally I'd say you're a unique case.
I've done what you do several times in the past. However my experiences show that the next day when you or your co-workers look at the code, it's a complete mess and no-one can understand what on earth you were trying to do or how you were going about it. It generally ends up being a complete waste of a late night coding session.
Many times I've gone to sleep after looking at a problem and then come back the next day and spotted a better way of doing it that I simply missed the day before. Quite often this is after one of those late night mamoth coding session - which means I have to hack my 2am cruft out and replace it with something that really does work.
Really cool. The problem I have now is that the code runs on a port and my firewall won't allow access to it.
Is there any way you can have a port 80 based script that will act as a proxy so that requests are passed from my browser to it and then onto the program?
Whats the best UNIX command line based p2p application out there? In an ideal world if there was a web interface for it too then that would be much better.
I can't run a windows or a Linux GUI application, hence the question.
I worked for a company who make hydraulics for tractors. My job involved "clipping" (adding a rubber ring to a socket) and capping (sticking a yellow cap on top of it) and that was it.
One day the team leader said to me and this bloke Tom, "listen I don't want you to both go to lunch at the same time because it's really busy, go seperately".
Me: Why
Her: Because i need more work done
Me: Yes but if, say we do 100 an hour...
Her: You'll do more than that!
Me: Yes, okay, but assume we do. Then if we both go for an hours lunch and then come back, by 2pm you'll have 200 done. If go for lunch for an hour, when I come back there will be a 100. Then Tom goes to lunch and when he's back at 2pm there will be 200. No difference.
[long pause]
Her: No sorry. Doesn't work. By 1pm I'll have 100 more than if you went together. So you're going to lunch seperately.
She wasn't the brightest spark in that factory I can tell you.
Sorry, but games are a trap too. You're lured into them for the purposes of 'entertainment and fun', and end up wasting countless, countless hours playing them. And when you are finished, you have nothing to show for it except memories. Of a completely artificial reality.
My apologies, my conclusion was badly worded. I meant to say:
So whilst i agree with you that there is a treadmill in Windows upgrades, it's not really as much of a trap as you make it out to be when you compare it to the treadmill for hardware upgrades for games.
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Actually it's the network operators who are demanding the features because they want to sell you data services. Basic phones provide no additional ability to sell you value added services.
My "begging to differ" was arguing exactly that point - and I know I am not unique in wanting a simple phone without bells and whistles.
So buy one with bells and whistles and don't use the features. If you really are averse to all those bits of functionality, you can get a low tier phone for near enough nothing.
So don't go off on a tangent telling me that UKers are all that special
I only added that disclaimer because otherwise I'll get loads of criticism about how thats not the case in the USA. Having never been there, I don't know and can't comment.
I beg to differ with you begging to differ.
Maybe in the US, but here in the UK it is almost impossible to buy a plain black and white basic phone.
Phone functionality works in 6 month cycles. What is high tier this year will be middle tier middle of next year and low tier at the end of the year.
6 months ago colour screens and polyphonic was middle tier, now even the most basic phone these days has them both. Next year the most basic phone will have a camera (and the high tier will also have cameras but be capable of pushing 2 megapixels)
Ever tried getting a phone that doesn't have SMS? You can't and in two years it'll be the same with the other bits of functionality you despise.
So yes, they are dominating. Just because you are holding back doesn't mean they aren't. But when yours bites the dust you'll realise that you'll have to move with the times.
Which may or may not be a good thing depending on your point of view.
This is something i've also wondered. Although many believe PS2's big selling point was the fact that all your old PS1 games still worked ... really, how much was that an issue for the majority of people out there?
After all, if you have 500 pounds worth of PS1 games would you rather save a bit of money on the console and accept you have to have another box (albeit temporarily) if you want to play the old ones - or are you prepared to pay a bit more (and possibly sacrifice some technical advantages) just to get one box that does everything?
This isn't meant as a troll but don't the Gnome folks lambast KDE for being less "free" than it?
Personally, I use Gnome only because I tried KDE about 3 years ago, didn't think much of it, switched to Gnome and have never been bothered to go back and try it again.
Hey ... at least I'm honest about it.
I mean, you could do that with almost any portable hard drive or hard drive based MP3 player.
True, however I'm concerned that although geeky personal homepages may evolve, the big ecommerce outfits will be reluctant to move forward with new specifications whilst over 90% of their clients won't actually experience any of it.
I thought the whole point of your post was that you were arguing that we should consider supporting one "evil" (or immoral anti-competitive practice) against another.
Actually, I looked at the possibility of siding with one evil to give competing browsers the "leg up" that they really could do with (as the Eolas founder did state he wasn't after anyone else but Microsoft), however from about half way down my original post I do explain why this is not something that we can do and gave my reasons why not.
I really do not see this as being an important goal for the W3 community (certainly not in the long term and not IMO even in the short term).
I wish it was. Diversity of browsers would mean that one could not rule the roost and try to dictate or sway progression. When Netscape did it, it was bad (remember all those NS only tags?) and now Microsoft has the same power now.
It's nice to see that Microsoft adhere to the OSX styleguides, yet Apple see fit to ignore the Windows one completely.
A) More bloated than a binary format
I know very little about XML, but couldn't you compress it up in some way (like you would zip up a file)?
If you can, then this would mean you can eliminate one of the big disadvantages of XML.
The biggest problem with this which I noted is that its a very big "if".
Although it would be nice to think that this patent can help boost the alternative browsers, but there is nothing to stop Eolas going after other companies after Microsoft.
If they do this (and lets be honest, if there is money to be made - then all bets are off), then they'll be simply re-levelling the playing field back in Microsoft's favour.
It's too much of a risk and hence why I said we should support Microsoft.
The browser war will be won by a non-MS entity one day, but it's not today and it won't be in this way.
If you'd read the entire comment you would have seen that I didn't suggest that.
Why would they only go after M$?
If you'd read the entire comment you would have seen that I said that this line of reasoning would only work if Eolas didn't go after other companies. The founder has claimed that he won't - but it's a very big "if".
As someone who never uses MSIE, I fail to see what the point in increasing the share of real (non-MSIE) WWW browsers is.
If you'd read the entire comment you would have seen that I said that with IE stagnating on IE 6, you're not going to see any great advances in WWW specifications until we move away from the fact that 95% of people use a browser that can't cope with these new standard.
If they go so low as to sue M$ over this totally spurious patent, why would they not sue everyone else they can think of to maximise their profits from their patent (using lawsuits)?
If you'd read the entire comment you would have seen that I said that whilst they may not (and the head of Eolas did say that), it's a very big if and something that cannot be easily discounted.
In all cases, the best course of action to follow who you think is in the right.
Which if you'd read the entire comment you would have seen that I said we should support Microsoft in getting this patent overturned and accept that the best way to get non-IE browsers to dominate the market is not going to be this way.
You selectivily cut out all the bits that appeared pro-eolas and missed out all the bits that noted the problems with that line of thinking. That is assume you actually read them, because all your other comments were stuff I'd already covered.
Had you continued reading past the first paragraph, you'll have seen that I make references to the very big caveat of that bizzare world.
Right now the internet standard have been set. It doesn't matter what new proposals come out of the W3C or how well other browsers will perfect their implementations, the internet will always be suspended at the greats common denominator (which is, in this case, the functionality of IE 6). No-one in their right mind is going to abandon support for the browser that 90% of potential customers use.
By levelling the playing field a bit more, this would mean that webmasters and designers would not be afraid to move on and leave IE behind. By doing so, Microsoft would be forced to keep up to maintain market share.
However, there is one big caveat - and that is the Eolas doesn't use their win against Microsoft to go after everyone else. This is a pretty big if and definely one that cannot be easily discounted.
If Eolas do decide to follow suit with other browser manufacturers then any "leg up" that has been gained will be lost, IE will still be dominant and the WWW standards will stop. However if Eolas doesn't go after anyone else then this is quite some benifit.
Unfortunately, banking on Eolas winning and not sueing anyone else is just too much of a risk. Which means that, in this case, the best course of action to is come to Microsofts defence, get it overturned and accept that for WWW standard to move on (which will necessitate the removal of IE from the top spot), it must happen in a different way.
I followed Microsoft's advice and typed in your address but all I got was the MSN search engine telling me that the domain "fax the webpages" doesn't exist.
Thanks for the comments! Maybe I should change it slightly. It's a personal project which will provide eVB programmers a framework for writing Today plugins (which they can't currently do). The major problem is that it needs some eVC++ coding too and I've had a hack and it would take me the best part of a year to come up with something workable.
My biggest problem is finding people - I don't really know where to look and postings to newsgroups only got people who were looking to make some money, which was something I'm reluctant to do (given the complete lack of GPL code for the PocketPC).
Any suggestions appreciated.
The best way to make a small fortune .. is to start with a large one.
Had I written the algorithm, I would have just made it move directly to the point and then start drawing - but this looks like it goes to the start point, waves around the immediate area for a bit and then starts.
(Answer may be in PDF, I can't open it though)
Except that if Apple had priced their product competitivily against their own models, rather than again the solid state devices (which themselves are equally over-priced) then Joe and Jane could have saved 100-125 bucks.
I'm sorry but the excuse "but we're pitching this product at this market" isn't a valid excuse for the fact that their profit margins on the iPod Mini are excessivily high.
Jo and Jane may not need or spend the extra 50 bucks, but at the same time, that isn't a reason to screw them with the lower end model.
Which means that the only logical conclusion is that the iPod Mini is heavily over-priced for its specifications.
If they actually set it to a price that didn't have such a high profit margin, they'd not only compete with the flash based players, but actually thrash them to the point that anyone who did buy a flash one would either be wasting their money or have a very specific need.
This has nothing to do with trying to set a price point in line with another market. It's about getting a massive margin on a new product. Nothing more.
Now thats finished, what other mods are there out there for Half-life that I can give a go? What do you recommend?
FWIW, I don't have access to the internet on my home PC so multi-player/internet games are completely out.
Thanks!
Personally I'd say you're a unique case.
I've done what you do several times in the past. However my experiences show that the next day when you or your co-workers look at the code, it's a complete mess and no-one can understand what on earth you were trying to do or how you were going about it. It generally ends up being a complete waste of a late night coding session.
Many times I've gone to sleep after looking at a problem and then come back the next day and spotted a better way of doing it that I simply missed the day before. Quite often this is after one of those late night mamoth coding session - which means I have to hack my 2am cruft out and replace it with something that really does work.
Really cool. The problem I have now is that the code runs on a port and my firewall won't allow access to it.
Is there any way you can have a port 80 based script that will act as a proxy so that requests are passed from my browser to it and then onto the program?
I can't run a windows or a Linux GUI application, hence the question.
Can anyone suggest anything?
Many thanks
One day the team leader said to me and this bloke Tom, "listen I don't want you to both go to lunch at the same time because it's really busy, go seperately".
Me: Why
Her: Because i need more work done
Me: Yes but if, say we do 100 an hour ...
Her: You'll do more than that!
Me: Yes, okay, but assume we do. Then if we both go for an hours lunch and then come back, by 2pm you'll have 200 done. If go for lunch for an hour, when I come back there will be a 100. Then Tom goes to lunch and when he's back at 2pm there will be 200. No difference.
[long pause]
Her: No sorry. Doesn't work. By 1pm I'll have 100 more than if you went together. So you're going to lunch seperately.
She wasn't the brightest spark in that factory I can tell you.
My apologies, my conclusion was badly worded. I meant to say:
So whilst i agree with you that there is a treadmill in Windows upgrades, it's not really as much of a trap as you make it out to be when you compare it to the treadmill for hardware upgrades for games.
Hope that now makes sense.