Also shown: tools to test IE compatibility. But with what? Standards or IE 6?
Most probably neither, if we're to judge by history...
You mean, they test for the expected, not the unexpected. I so love going to demos and watching the stuff crash and hearing someone say, "I don't know what happened there."
Most people don't know/realise the holes in IE and just click randomly. Until there is a fundemental change is user education its going to be a very slow battle to get domiance (and the "standards" it implies) from IE
To employ an old quote: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
And there are people out there who never fix the the bugs, never patch, never anything, and they get pwn3d and join the hordes of bots.
As Gomer would say, "Fer shame, fer shame, fer shame!"
There's two ways to get Vista into the hands of schucks:
Have sommat supported by some tool (like IE7) which is so necessary, the user has no choice but the upgrade*.
Cut a deal with PC makers so ONLY Vista on installed on new PCs, further fragmenting and forking** the market.
Vista will be out there, but keep in mind, there's a lot of users still dorking along on Win 95, Win 98, ME, NT, 2000, etc. and they're in no hurry to switch. Why pay an a Technology Tax every few years?
* The term Upgrade is used figuratively. ** Also f__king the market.
Also shown: tools to test IE compatibility. But with what? Standards or IE 6?
Right.
"See? It it renders these pages, full of our own standards, the W3c be damned. What's not to like?"
Wait, wait.. OK, never mind. I thought I was going to be whelmed by word of IE 7.0, not overwhelmed mind you, but only whelmed. But the feeling passed, I'm OK now. Really.
Honestly, I use Firefox for almost everything simply because I prefer the way it behaves, meaning, it behaves.
Mar. 17, 2006, 50th anniversary of Fred Allen'spassing. "As the chinese teapot said to the auctioneer's hammer, I'm going-going-gone!"
The other point that I was thinking about was that it seems that MS does not tend to do too well with trying to break into other markets. I know it's a cliche, but it seems that unless a market is tied directly to Windows or Office, they have a very hard time doing much in it. The only market I've heard about them being noticed in, other than those mentioned, is with the XBox.
I've said it many times, and some people just don't get it, but Microsoft had it easy. They didn't work hard for their initial success. When you look at the billions they made peddling MS-DOS, Windows 95, etc., it's a sure sign there wasn't competition and their prices were far higher then competition would have allowed, thus making them astoundingly rich.
They do have a hard time breaking into other markets, if not just for they are established markets, but because they've had such easy success they believe their own hubris that it will follow them anywhere.
XBox can not be depended upon, simply for the fact that as soon as a better console comes out with a game players must have, they'll abandon XBox like last spring's fashions. They're spending a lot of cash trying to establish a highly fickle market. I don't know why. In a few years they may realize it's a hugh grindstone they've blunted their sword against and XBox games will run on emulators on the PC's of tomorrow.
It has nothing to do with a sense of humor. It's all about free speech. If I want to talk shit on a elected offical then I am going to and big brother shouldn't be able to step in and shut me up.
Imagine if they tried to shut down all the websites that made fun of W?
Have you ever heard Tony Blair speak before the british House of Commons? Americans are such a stiff lot, having the president speak before the House or Senate (or both in the case of State of the Union) from a script where there's all this filthy decorum. Blair has to defend himself, think on his feet, respond immediately to the criticism of peers, whereas Bush can issued BS through a press officer and remain in his ivory tower, safe he's not being laughed at to his face for his folly.
Then there's the Australians, which are the aiming to be most like?
Seems the country everyone left, for political freedoms, is doing a better job of it.
Ok, they threw $20 billion at it and will throw another $500 million at it. But what it is is a mature market, wherein
customers have grown weary of the old business model of turning over buckets of money for
software and support. Many big buyers are moving along on old, unsupported versions of Office, which
they are loathe to upgrade for no reason other than to buy a pile of features they're not convinced they
need. Usually the push for upgrades comes from some brash executive who thinks by the seat of his/her pants
that it's about time they got into the 21st century (whatever the hell that is really supposed to mean) just
before they, themselves pack it in and move along to their next rung up the ladder (with a new line for
their resumee: Modernized infrastructure)
While I was a bit of an IBM hater, back in the 80's, for the attitude their sales people conveyed, I do believe
IBM is now a far better company, much wiser and behind the winning hand -- Open Source. Their time in
the trenches will serve them well as a the cocky crew from Redmond attempt to strut in like they own
the house.
Considering Microsoft's track record, particularly in the press with all the vulnerabilites,
I think they've got a tough sell. Some will be low-hanging fruit, easy to pluck, but others will be much
harder to reach. It will be interesting to see how much further.
Personally, I'm already advising our shop to dump Microsoft. We simply can't afford them anymore.
Politicians should grow some thicker skin in Oz. Hard to imagine a more thin skinned bunch, what next, censorship, oh, wait, that's exactly what it is.
50 years ago, March 17th, 1956, Fred Allen, born May 31, 1894 in Cambridge MA to irish catholic parents, famed comedy writer and radio comedian, died of a heart attack while walking his dog.
I'll toast him with a pint of Guinness. Thanks Fred, for all the laughs.
Actually, the "cars as the dominant life form" joke was from the film only, as I don't recall it used in the radios series or the book, and in the television series, the Guide entry showed that Ford chose the name as a variation of known humans whose surname was Ford.
What? Are you 12 years old or sommat? It was definitelty in the book, that's where I'm quoting it from. I hardly remember the film, other than the fact it was like kinda-sorta like the book, but with all the humour removed.
don't forget about all us elite idiots.
we were the first ones!
Sure. I had a bag-phone (still have that thing) which you really pretty much needed all that transmitting power for, because towers were few and far between. It was also a big thing to spend $35/month on fees.
Now? Now people shell over $100/month and are talking about The Bob-knows-what in the pub, on the road, in the store, on the sidewalk, etc. and The Bob-knows-why have to be connected all the time or their lives will come to a halt the same way a cow does after a 10,000 ft plummet.
Douglas Adams made a lot of fun about Dominant Life on earth being Cars (hence the name Ford Prefect) and people's fascination with digital watches. What do you think aliens would think now? Cell phones are the dominent life form and these gangly things are their servants.
Bill, your rose colored glasses are getting all scratched and fogged up. you cant even see what is happening anymore.
They made these to meet specific needs. A concept that Microsoft engineering has yet to grasp.
I keep saying it, but a lot of people don't seem to listen. Microsoft made much of their money too easily. They had (and still do have) a monopoly, which has really had a big negative affect on their understanding and innovation. It peeks out at moments, like when Bill talked like that. They just don't get it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but investment in Africa hasn't stemmed destablizing wars, it's just given them more to fight over.
Yep.
This is why there's considerable effort now to demand results, accountability in developing nations. Show you don't just give it to Big Papa Doo Wop, the President-For-Life, who then absconds to the Riviera with it all tucked away in swiss banks.
Should listen more to the BBC and less to CNN. There have been some terrific discussions, from in the field, where these efforts are taking place. Some nations actually are saying "We don't want a lot of aid!" Because they realize it undermines developing their own economies. Too much aid and people won't farm, water resources won't be developed, conservation won't happen, instead the country finds its economy revolving around getting and distributing aid (and often people in position stealing some of it.)
The World Wide Web was hailed as a big innovation in the late 90's. Initially Bill "The Genius" Gates (III) didn't give it
much thought in his ground-breaking (if you dropped it from a great enough height it could break some very brittle flooring) book, but the bandwagon
was suddenly moving like a conestoga wagon with a super charged 426 hemi under the hood. Problem was
start-ups and pundits alike predicted a massive and sudden revolution. A shame the infrastructure
it would depend upon was like those old wooden wagon wheels when 500 ft-lbs of torque hit them, so the whole
thing flopped. Now, it's actually gaining traction and moving because infrastructure is better and even
old infrastructure was found to support high bandwidth with better technology to support it (this was
actually a BIG THING, but most people didn't even notice it. Boy, I knew people working all over the place
on ways to up the bandwidth of last-mile copper.)
So, you see, sometimes the NEXT BIG THING isn't so obvious. It's also, IMHO, heavily dependent upon
social change, like Cell Phone adoption and use (once only for the elite, now any idiot can have one.)
My first computer, a Sinclair ZX-80 was not the most useful machine but it got me writing machine code to so the RF encoder to my television showed "HELLO WORLD".
Precisely.
Many of us in computers for 20+ years didn't have internet. many didn't even have 300 baud modems. We started with Apples, Ataris, Commodores, Sinclairs, etc. and learned. Then when the internet came along, in the earliest fashion, we collaborated. You have to get these people started somewhere and he's discounting all that. Odd, that's where that bugger started, too. Short memory he has. Also the visionary who didn't give much throught to the Internet when he wrote his first famous tome "The Road Ahead"
Bill's worth listening to, but who in their right mind would assume everything he utters is wise?
You seem to be missing the point. You are completely agreeing with Bill. The whole point is you need the infrastructure before "any" computer will be of use and this $100 computer is completely worthless in either case.
No I'm not. Is English a new language to you? I totally disagree with Bill. I don't think Broadband or networks are essential at this poing. Get the tools in the hands of the children and have them use them for practical learning, but don't assume electric and tele have to be in place or it's all a waste. Bill has grandios plans, makes me wonder if he's ever walked barefoot in the mud because he had no shoes. One key to poverty and ignorance is unrest. Settle the bushwars and only then can you put in infrastructure. Try it ahead of time and either people will strip materials away and sell it for scrap, effectively robbing themselves, or some group of bandits or political/military faction will sieze it.
He should know all this, because fighting diseases in developing nations isn't ONLY about innoculations, but about eliminating the destabilisation which enables the the diseases to prosper in the first place. Nothing like a good ghetto or refugee camp to incubate an epidemic.
How did parent get modded insightful?? All this post contains is a series of rants and complaints with no cohesive argument or idea. First it complains about Bill Gates & in doing so invalidates itsself by attacking the man instead of his words. Then the rant continues on to complain about the west. Sounds like flamebait to me.
Didn't read past the subject line, eh? Yeah, I'd post anonymous, too, rather than show my utter pig-headed side connected to my nom-de-plume. There are very solid points in the body of the text, you just need to read past the opening sentence.
After attending SDWest yesterday and listening to Jeff Barr from Amazon Web Services, I expect Google has to be doing something. I don't mean to evangelize Amazon, but to shed some light on what they have been doing, which was brought to light on the 14th, regarding this online storage. They have web services, which you can program and wot and build your own online businesses with, which for a small brick and mortar, could be quite a bonus (Amazon have worked with small booksellers and wot for years, now anyone can.)
'The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk... and with a tiny little screen,' Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington. 'Hardware is a small part of the cost' of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support. 'If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type,' Gates said.'
Fscking rich snob. You know, this git travelled around the world, donates money to fight diseases in 3rd world countries, but seems to have this wild belief that these backwaters are going to have telecommunications to each school and house, let alone broadband.
He SAW the crank handle, what part of "they use this because they don't even have electric" doesn't he understand? It's crap like this that gives the west a worse reputation, never mind invading oil countries, but doing bugger all for poor african nations. Geez, Bill, go back to feeling all warm and fuzzy inside about your Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or maybe you could free up $100B and give people in these developing backwaters with shite infrastructure some electricity, running water and telecommunications. Then maybe the destabilizing wars will settle down, which actually go a long way towards contributing to the diseases you like to fund the fight against, and the people won't be on the move so much and they can all get down to the business of e-commerce.
Cripes... I can just see some kid sitting in an adobe house in a rural village looking at his bright shiny Dell laptop with Windows Vista installed, 2 GB memory, 200G HD, whizzy graphics, and wondering if he could use it as a hard surface to practice his writing on.,
Bill's probably really spiteful because it doesn't spread the market penetration of Microsoft.
So where's his effort? If he hasn't got one, he shouldn't be spitting on others.
we give money to underprivileged congressmen to help develping strategies for them to look the other way.
if you read the article you would notice that google does not oppose the extremely limited amount of info requested. and if the govt would have asked in the first place they wouldnt have gone to court.
Only thing is, at first the Just-Us Dept wanted far more -- but have back-pedaled to a position the judge is more favourable to.
You overlook that during this battle the Just-Us Dept. was hungrily viewing online records as a whole new avenue to take their investigations down. Some ISP's have fought hard against opening records for RIAA/MPAA/DMCA proceedings, while others have been more than willing to help investigators track down those who prey on children. Google, et al, do have a heart, but this was simply another battle in an ongoing war between privacy and giving investigators information which may find its way out of the primary objective and being used to drum up unrelated investigations, if you get my drift.
At least the judge is favouring less than the gorvernment originally requested, still... I feel this is again the over-eager government wiping its feet on the flag and blowing its nose in the Constitution.
Slashdot Mirror
Most probably neither, if we're to judge by history...
You mean, they test for the expected, not the unexpected. I so love going to demos and watching the stuff crash and hearing someone say, "I don't know what happened there."
it's a selling point!
To employ an old quote: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
And there are people out there who never fix the the bugs, never patch, never anything, and they get pwn3d and join the hordes of bots.
As Gomer would say, "Fer shame, fer shame, fer shame!"
There's two ways to get Vista into the hands of schucks:
Vista will be out there, but keep in mind, there's a lot of users still dorking along on Win 95, Win 98, ME, NT, 2000, etc. and they're in no hurry to switch. Why pay an a Technology Tax every few years?
* The term Upgrade is used figuratively.
** Also f__king the market.
Also shown: tools to test IE compatibility. But with what? Standards or IE 6?
Right.
"See? It it renders these pages, full of our own standards, the W3c be damned. What's not to like?"
Wait, wait.. OK, never mind. I thought I was going to be whelmed by word of IE 7.0, not overwhelmed mind you, but only whelmed. But the feeling passed, I'm OK now. Really.
Honestly, I use Firefox for almost everything simply because I prefer the way it behaves, meaning, it behaves.
Mar. 17, 2006, 50th anniversary of Fred Allen's passing. "As the chinese teapot said to the auctioneer's hammer, I'm going-going-gone!"
I've said it many times, and some people just don't get it, but Microsoft had it easy. They didn't work hard for their initial success. When you look at the billions they made peddling MS-DOS, Windows 95, etc., it's a sure sign there wasn't competition and their prices were far higher then competition would have allowed, thus making them astoundingly rich.
They do have a hard time breaking into other markets, if not just for they are established markets, but because they've had such easy success they believe their own hubris that it will follow them anywhere.
XBox can not be depended upon, simply for the fact that as soon as a better console comes out with a game players must have, they'll abandon XBox like last spring's fashions. They're spending a lot of cash trying to establish a highly fickle market. I don't know why. In a few years they may realize it's a hugh grindstone they've blunted their sword against and XBox games will run on emulators on the PC's of tomorrow.
Have you ever heard Tony Blair speak before the british House of Commons? Americans are such a stiff lot, having the president speak before the House or Senate (or both in the case of State of the Union) from a script where there's all this filthy decorum. Blair has to defend himself, think on his feet, respond immediately to the criticism of peers, whereas Bush can issued BS through a press officer and remain in his ivory tower, safe he's not being laughed at to his face for his folly.
Then there's the Australians, which are the aiming to be most like?
Seems the country everyone left, for political freedoms, is doing a better job of it.
Reversing those figures sounds like Windows development.
Ok, they threw $20 billion at it and will throw another $500 million at it. But what it is is a mature market, wherein customers have grown weary of the old business model of turning over buckets of money for software and support. Many big buyers are moving along on old, unsupported versions of Office, which they are loathe to upgrade for no reason other than to buy a pile of features they're not convinced they need. Usually the push for upgrades comes from some brash executive who thinks by the seat of his/her pants that it's about time they got into the 21st century (whatever the hell that is really supposed to mean) just before they, themselves pack it in and move along to their next rung up the ladder (with a new line for their resumee: Modernized infrastructure)
While I was a bit of an IBM hater, back in the 80's, for the attitude their sales people conveyed, I do believe IBM is now a far better company, much wiser and behind the winning hand -- Open Source. Their time in the trenches will serve them well as a the cocky crew from Redmond attempt to strut in like they own the house.
Considering Microsoft's track record, particularly in the press with all the vulnerabilites, I think they've got a tough sell. Some will be low-hanging fruit, easy to pluck, but others will be much harder to reach. It will be interesting to see how much further.
Personally, I'm already advising our shop to dump Microsoft. We simply can't afford them anymore.
You're too literal. I suggest getting pissed on Guiness or Harp tonight with all the other faux irish.
Politicians should grow some thicker skin in Oz. Hard to imagine a more thin skinned bunch, what next, censorship, oh, wait, that's exactly what it is.
50 years ago, March 17th, 1956, Fred Allen, born May 31, 1894 in Cambridge MA to irish catholic parents, famed comedy writer and radio comedian, died of a heart attack while walking his dog.
I'll toast him with a pint of Guinness. Thanks Fred, for all the laughs.
What? Are you 12 years old or sommat? It was definitelty in the book, that's where I'm quoting it from. I hardly remember the film, other than the fact it was like kinda-sorta like the book, but with all the humour removed.
The TV series probably mentions it, too.
Sure. I had a bag-phone (still have that thing) which you really pretty much needed all that transmitting power for, because towers were few and far between. It was also a big thing to spend $35/month on fees.
Now? Now people shell over $100/month and are talking about The Bob-knows-what in the pub, on the road, in the store, on the sidewalk, etc. and The Bob-knows-why have to be connected all the time or their lives will come to a halt the same way a cow does after a 10,000 ft plummet.
Douglas Adams made a lot of fun about Dominant Life on earth being Cars (hence the name Ford Prefect) and people's fascination with digital watches. What do you think aliens would think now? Cell phones are the dominent life form and these gangly things are their servants.
I keep saying it, but a lot of people don't seem to listen. Microsoft made much of their money too easily. They had (and still do have) a monopoly, which has really had a big negative affect on their understanding and innovation. It peeks out at moments, like when Bill talked like that. They just don't get it.
Yep.
This is why there's considerable effort now to demand results, accountability in developing nations. Show you don't just give it to Big Papa Doo Wop, the President-For-Life, who then absconds to the Riviera with it all tucked away in swiss banks.
Should listen more to the BBC and less to CNN. There have been some terrific discussions, from in the field, where these efforts are taking place. Some nations actually are saying "We don't want a lot of aid!" Because they realize it undermines developing their own economies. Too much aid and people won't farm, water resources won't be developed, conservation won't happen, instead the country finds its economy revolving around getting and distributing aid (and often people in position stealing some of it.)
Is tech innovation dead?
Let's examine that.
The World Wide Web was hailed as a big innovation in the late 90's. Initially Bill "The Genius" Gates (III) didn't give it much thought in his ground-breaking (if you dropped it from a great enough height it could break some very brittle flooring) book, but the bandwagon was suddenly moving like a conestoga wagon with a super charged 426 hemi under the hood. Problem was start-ups and pundits alike predicted a massive and sudden revolution. A shame the infrastructure it would depend upon was like those old wooden wagon wheels when 500 ft-lbs of torque hit them, so the whole thing flopped. Now, it's actually gaining traction and moving because infrastructure is better and even old infrastructure was found to support high bandwidth with better technology to support it (this was actually a BIG THING, but most people didn't even notice it. Boy, I knew people working all over the place on ways to up the bandwidth of last-mile copper.)
So, you see, sometimes the NEXT BIG THING isn't so obvious. It's also, IMHO, heavily dependent upon social change, like Cell Phone adoption and use (once only for the elite, now any idiot can have one.)
Wot approximates to 'whatever' or 'whatnot' it's old.
Avast, ye swab perhaps you'd rather read about Arrrrs Technica's review of a keyboard
Precisely.
Many of us in computers for 20+ years didn't have internet. many didn't even have 300 baud modems. We started with Apples, Ataris, Commodores, Sinclairs, etc. and learned. Then when the internet came along, in the earliest fashion, we collaborated. You have to get these people started somewhere and he's discounting all that. Odd, that's where that bugger started, too. Short memory he has. Also the visionary who didn't give much throught to the Internet when he wrote his first famous tome "The Road Ahead"
Bill's worth listening to, but who in their right mind would assume everything he utters is wise?
No I'm not. Is English a new language to you? I totally disagree with Bill. I don't think Broadband or networks are essential at this poing. Get the tools in the hands of the children and have them use them for practical learning, but don't assume electric and tele have to be in place or it's all a waste. Bill has grandios plans, makes me wonder if he's ever walked barefoot in the mud because he had no shoes. One key to poverty and ignorance is unrest. Settle the bushwars and only then can you put in infrastructure. Try it ahead of time and either people will strip materials away and sell it for scrap, effectively robbing themselves, or some group of bandits or political/military faction will sieze it.
He should know all this, because fighting diseases in developing nations isn't ONLY about innoculations, but about eliminating the destabilisation which enables the the diseases to prosper in the first place. Nothing like a good ghetto or refugee camp to incubate an epidemic.
Didn't read past the subject line, eh? Yeah, I'd post anonymous, too, rather than show my utter pig-headed side connected to my nom-de-plume. There are very solid points in the body of the text, you just need to read past the opening sentence.
Yeah. Their strength to strength has always been software. So why are they dinking around so much with hardware now?
Check it out, at least, at aws.typepad.com
'The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk
Fscking rich snob. You know, this git travelled around the world, donates money to fight diseases in 3rd world countries, but seems to have this wild belief that these backwaters are going to have telecommunications to each school and house, let alone broadband.
He SAW the crank handle, what part of "they use this because they don't even have electric" doesn't he understand? It's crap like this that gives the west a worse reputation, never mind invading oil countries, but doing bugger all for poor african nations. Geez, Bill, go back to feeling all warm and fuzzy inside about your Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or maybe you could free up $100B and give people in these developing backwaters with shite infrastructure some electricity, running water and telecommunications. Then maybe the destabilizing wars will settle down, which actually go a long way towards contributing to the diseases you like to fund the fight against, and the people won't be on the move so much and they can all get down to the business of e-commerce.
Cripes... I can just see some kid sitting in an adobe house in a rural village looking at his bright shiny Dell laptop with Windows Vista installed, 2 GB memory, 200G HD, whizzy graphics, and wondering if he could use it as a hard surface to practice his writing on.,
Bill's probably really spiteful because it doesn't spread the market penetration of Microsoft. So where's his effort? If he hasn't got one, he shouldn't be spitting on others.
we give money to underprivileged congressmen to help develping strategies for them to look the other way.
Only thing is, at first the Just-Us Dept wanted far more -- but have back-pedaled to a position the judge is more favourable to.
You overlook that during this battle the Just-Us Dept. was hungrily viewing online records as a whole new avenue to take their investigations down. Some ISP's have fought hard against opening records for RIAA/MPAA/DMCA proceedings, while others have been more than willing to help investigators track down those who prey on children. Google, et al, do have a heart, but this was simply another battle in an ongoing war between privacy and giving investigators information which may find its way out of the primary objective and being used to drum up unrelated investigations, if you get my drift.
At least the judge is favouring less than the gorvernment originally requested, still... I feel this is again the over-eager government wiping its feet on the flag and blowing its nose in the Constitution.