I just installed Firefox 1.0PR on two of my W2K computers. Now Firefox will not start on either system. Instead I get the error "Java plug-in for Netscape Navigator should not be used in Microsoft Internet Explorer. Please use Java plug-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer instead."
When faced with this argument, somebody always pops up to say that most of Canada's population live within 200 miles of the U.S. border, yada yada yada, so the comparison is invalid.
Well, before that starts to happen, I would like to point out that even if you take that into consideration the population density of Canada is much less than that of the United States.
I have worked with quite a few women in the engineers and software fields, and they have all been brilliant. I think this is part of the problem. In high school, I recall the top females from the class were being strongly encouraged to enter a technical discipline, engineering, science, or comp-sci.
However, for the women who are academically average and are interested in such fields, this can be quite intimidating. Not only are they competing against males, but they are also being compared with the top female students. This is from where the female attitude of having to be a top student or else comes. There is a lot of companionship for academically average male students. There is a lot of respect for the top female students. For the academically average female student it is more like "what are *you* doing here?"
It seems a bit contradictory, but my measure of how much "equality" there is in a field is how many *average* female students there are. I don't know how it is now, but in my day it was not very many.
I most often use desktop searching to find my way through source code that I haven't written myself. Recursive grep is one of my favourite tools. I know, this is not a meanstream use. But I do think that desktop searching has its place.
And I think you are mistaken in what killed push technology. It was not the lack of need (I think the need is huge) but the fact that the so called "push" technologies were not push at all, just scheduled pull.
What is interesting me most about the developing Microsoft vs. Google battle is that I don't think Microsoft is targeting the right market that Google is targeting. Microsoft want to control the desktop. Google wants to *eliminate* the desktop (the local desktop, that is). The message I am hearing from the new Google services, such as GMail, is "Don't store your information at home, store it with us!" In other words, Google wants to move the desktop out of your house and onto their servers.
So what? I can get DSL service at my cottage, which sits on the edge of a lake in a largely undeveloped area in Ontario. (I wouldn't, I go to the cottage to get away from all that --but that's another topic.)
This is a story about when I attempted to sign up for Sympatico DSL service.
After I signed up, over the phone, I was told that I would receive a installation package in the mail (I wanted the install it yourself option) in a few days. I waited, and waited. A week later I called back, and they could find no record of my signing up. I persisted, and they eventually found the record. The guy who signed me up had managed to get almost every single piece of information I told him wrong. My name (both first and last) was mis-spelled, my street number was wrong, and he also spelled the name of the street wrong. He also got my phone number wrong. No wonder I hadn't heard anything.
He also got the option that I wanted to install it myself wrong. So I then started getting phone calls from technician to set up an installation appointment. I'd explain I rather do it myself, and they would say OK, they will mail the package to me (apparently they were not allowed to just come by and give me the package). The next day I would get the same phone call from a different technician, and again and again. It took me 3 weeks to get my hands on an installation package. And when I finally received it, there was no network card. Apparently the guy who took my order checked off the "doesn't need card" option when I specifically told him the opposite.
The funny thing is, since I have got Sympatico set up, I have had absolutely no problems with it.
This is hardly news. It's been said many times before, and will probably be said many time again.
A lot of his rant has to do with all the unnecessary glitz and flash that has been added to what used to be simple software. One of the problems with technology today is that it has become too easy to add stupid unrelated glitz to basic information. This simply obscures the information.
For example, many (most probably) DVDs have these complete stupid animations that have to play when moving from one menu to another. I recently rented a movie (can't remember which) where you had to sit through 15 seconds of animation before the Special Features menu was displayed. It wasn't impressive, it was just annoying.
There is more and more of this every day. It seems that media and product producers do not have any really new features to add to new releases, so they just add some unnecessary glitz and animations and sell it as a new version.
The producers of Scrabble should take a hint. The Scrabble board game hasn't changed in 50 years, and it's still popular. Some things just don't need new features.
You are right in that IE has many good features. One of the reasons MS won the browser war I was because IE worked just as good as and often better than Netscape, so there was no reason to change.
Good browsing habits will not help you with IE. I've been hit more than once by drive by installations of spyware that did not require any clicking 'Yes'. And, yes, I keep my Windows OS up to date.
I'll second that. I also have an iRiver flash player, and it is perfect. Small, light, 20 hour battery life, and a lot cheaper than an iPod. And the FM tuner is a big plus. I spend just as much time listening to the radio as I do listening to mp3s.
I think where your analogy falls down is the fact that when a gun is used in a crime, it is fairly obvious that a crime was committed (e.g., dead bodies, stolen goods, eyewitnesses). SOCAN approached the ISPs demanding the names of customers, but couldn't prove that a crime had been committed. Best they could say was that the customers in question had files available for download, which in Canada is not illegal.
Rutan is doing it for less than 5 million (that's including vehicle development)...
I'm curious. Where did this number come from? I looked up and down their web site but couldn't find any numbers as to the cost.
To be honest, I have some trouble believing that this can be done for $5M. Why? Because it seems to me that the manpower cost alone should be more than that. However, I am very willing to be proven wrong:-)
"The bill by Democratic state Sen. Liz Figueroa would require Gmail to work only in real-time and would bar the service from producing records.
The bill also would bar Gmail form collecting personal information from e-mails and giving any information to third parties. "
Doesn't Google state that GMail already works this way? So in effect they are legislating it to do only what it already does. Unless Google turns evil and wants to invade our privacy, they won't mind at all.
My experience with Internet Grocery Shopping was less than successful. I tried using an local grocery store that offered an Internet online shopping service.
On the plus side, their site was well designed and easy to use. The prices were good. You could even choose to pick up the groceries yourself to avoid paying the delivery charge.
One the negative side:
(1) The service was unreliable. Many times, as I unpacked my order, I discovered missing products. They were charged on the bill, but nowhere in my delivery. The hassle involved in correcting this problem ("We'll deliver it to you, are you going to be home for the next little while? No... ummmmm") was not worth it.
(2) The selection was not complete. Often, especially with fresh herbs, the store would be "out of stock". This would force me to go elsewhere to make my order complete.
(3) They staff had a "couldn't care less" attitude. More than once I arrived to pick up my order to find it sitting by the front window in the full sun, with the meat browning and the herbs shrivilling nicely.
In the end, my wife and I found that it took just as much time to do the shopping ourselves as it did to do it online. So why bother?
I love Google as much as the next person, but to me the problem is not that there are any privacy concerns with Google today, but what about tomorrow, next week, or 10 years from now?
If you were offered the ability to store all your personal files on a central server operated by Google, for free, would you do it?
If you were offered the ability to store all your personal files on a central server operated by Microsoft, for free, would you do it?
Did you answer these two questions differently? I bet lots of people would because they trust Google, but not Microsoft. But why is that? Just because Google has been "not evil" in the past does not mean they will always be "not evil".
What is the difference between SuSE Professional and Personal, besides US$60? Can the differences be "fixed" by downloading free software from other sources.
I really don't get it. Why is it better to write an application that works on linux than to try and make a platform that can utilize both linux and windoze apps?
Windows compatibility is a double edged sword.
IMHO, Windows compatibility is one of the things that killed OS/2 (not the only thing, but a big factor). There were very few applications written natively for OS/2 because OS/2 was able to run most Windows application. If you continue down this road, you can never win. Consumers look at the OSs side by side and think "This OS says it will run *most* of the application I want to run, but this will (Windows) will run them all. I might as well get Windows."
Most companies, unlike Microsoft, do not have the luxury of releasing broken version after broken version until they get it right. This is just another example of Microsoft leveraging it's success in the OS market to gain a hold on another market.
I'm not saying that Microsoft was wrong or they were using a bad business model. They made some very good strategic decisions. But IMHO the business model only worked so well because they are Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
I just installed Firefox 1.0PR on two of my W2K computers. Now Firefox will not start on either system. Instead I get the error "Java plug-in for Netscape Navigator should not be used in Microsoft Internet Explorer. Please use Java plug-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer instead."
WTF?
When faced with this argument, somebody always pops up to say that most of Canada's population live within 200 miles of the U.S. border, yada yada yada, so the comparison is invalid.
Well, before that starts to happen, I would like to point out that even if you take that into consideration the population density of Canada is much less than that of the United States.
Well, if I am buying it to play Doom 3 (where Hell literally breaks loose) that would probably be fine.
I have worked with quite a few women in the engineers and software fields, and they have all been brilliant. I think this is part of the problem. In high school, I recall the top females from the class were being strongly encouraged to enter a technical discipline, engineering, science, or comp-sci.
However, for the women who are academically average and are interested in such fields, this can be quite intimidating. Not only are they competing against males, but they are also being compared with the top female students. This is from where the female attitude of having to be a top student or else comes. There is a lot of companionship for academically average male students. There is a lot of respect for the top female students. For the academically average female student it is more like "what are *you* doing here?"
It seems a bit contradictory, but my measure of how much "equality" there is in a field is how many *average* female students there are. I don't know how it is now, but in my day it was not very many.
I most often use desktop searching to find my way through source code that I haven't written myself. Recursive grep is one of my favourite tools. I know, this is not a meanstream use. But I do think that desktop searching has its place.
And I think you are mistaken in what killed push technology. It was not the lack of need (I think the need is huge) but the fact that the so called "push" technologies were not push at all, just scheduled pull.
What is interesting me most about the developing Microsoft vs. Google battle is that I don't think Microsoft is targeting the right market that Google is targeting. Microsoft want to control the desktop. Google wants to *eliminate* the desktop (the local desktop, that is). The message I am hearing from the new Google services, such as GMail, is "Don't store your information at home, store it with us!" In other words, Google wants to move the desktop out of your house and onto their servers.
This should prove interesting.
So what? I can get DSL service at my cottage, which sits on the edge of a lake in a largely undeveloped area in Ontario. (I wouldn't, I go to the cottage to get away from all that --but that's another topic.)
This is a story about when I attempted to sign up for Sympatico DSL service.
After I signed up, over the phone, I was told that I would receive a installation package in the mail (I wanted the install it yourself option) in a few days. I waited, and waited. A week later I called back, and they could find no record of my signing up. I persisted, and they eventually found the record. The guy who signed me up had managed to get almost every single piece of information I told him wrong. My name (both first and last) was mis-spelled, my street number was wrong, and he also spelled the name of the street wrong. He also got my phone number wrong. No wonder I hadn't heard anything.
He also got the option that I wanted to install it myself wrong. So I then started getting phone calls from technician to set up an installation appointment. I'd explain I rather do it myself, and they would say OK, they will mail the package to me (apparently they were not allowed to just come by and give me the package). The next day I would get the same phone call from a different technician, and again and again. It took me 3 weeks to get my hands on an installation package. And when I finally received it, there was no network card. Apparently the guy who took my order checked off the "doesn't need card" option when I specifically told him the opposite.
The funny thing is, since I have got Sympatico set up, I have had absolutely no problems with it.
Sounds like smilies for cars to me ;-)
This is hardly news. It's been said many times before, and will probably be said many time again.
A lot of his rant has to do with all the unnecessary glitz and flash that has been added to what used to be simple software. One of the problems with technology today is that it has become too easy to add stupid unrelated glitz to basic information. This simply obscures the information.
For example, many (most probably) DVDs have these complete stupid animations that have to play when moving from one menu to another. I recently rented a movie (can't remember which) where you had to sit through 15 seconds of animation before the Special Features menu was displayed. It wasn't impressive, it was just annoying.
There is more and more of this every day. It seems that media and product producers do not have any really new features to add to new releases, so they just add some unnecessary glitz and animations and sell it as a new version.
The producers of Scrabble should take a hint. The Scrabble board game hasn't changed in 50 years, and it's still popular. Some things just don't need new features.
The browser isn't perfect, however. Firefox does not render nonstandard DHTML properly...
So it is bad that the browser does not render bad source correctly?
Granted, the article does go on to mention that this is not Firefox's fault, but they way it is cast as a problem really rubs the wrong way.
I have used IE my entire life...
:-).
Let's see, that makes you 9 years old
You are right in that IE has many good features. One of the reasons MS won the browser war I was because IE worked just as good as and often better than Netscape, so there was no reason to change.
Good browsing habits will not help you with IE. I've been hit more than once by drive by installations of spyware that did not require any clicking 'Yes'. And, yes, I keep my Windows OS up to date.
So things might be different for browser war II.
I'll second that. I also have an iRiver flash player, and it is perfect. Small, light, 20 hour battery life, and a lot cheaper than an iPod. And the FM tuner is a big plus. I spend just as much time listening to the radio as I do listening to mp3s.
I think where your analogy falls down is the fact that when a gun is used in a crime, it is fairly obvious that a crime was committed (e.g., dead bodies, stolen goods, eyewitnesses). SOCAN approached the ISPs demanding the names of customers, but couldn't prove that a crime had been committed. Best they could say was that the customers in question had files available for download, which in Canada is not illegal.
Where I come from, it would be called version 0.9RC.
To each their own, I guess.
You're wrong. The about box says it's version 0.8.0+ :-)
Yes, it looks like they forgot to update the installer and about box. I guess they are having some troubles with release management.
Here's a quote from Judi Levita, a Royal Bank media-relations officer, explaining what went wrong:
"I honestly don't know. As I say, I mean, it's one of those tech things."
Source
Rutan is doing it for less than 5 million (that's including vehicle development)...
:-)
I'm curious. Where did this number come from? I looked up and down their web site but couldn't find any numbers as to the cost.
To be honest, I have some trouble believing that this can be done for $5M. Why? Because it seems to me that the manpower cost alone should be more than that. However, I am very willing to be proven wrong
"The bill by Democratic state Sen. Liz Figueroa would require Gmail to work only in real-time and would bar the service from producing records.
The bill also would bar Gmail form collecting personal information from e-mails and giving any information to third parties. "
Doesn't Google state that GMail already works this way? So in effect they are legislating it to do only what it already does. Unless Google turns evil and wants to invade our privacy, they won't mind at all.
My experience with Internet Grocery Shopping was less than successful. I tried using an local grocery store that offered an Internet online shopping service.
On the plus side, their site was well designed and easy to use. The prices were good. You could even choose to pick up the groceries yourself to avoid paying the delivery charge.
One the negative side:
(1) The service was unreliable. Many times, as I unpacked my order, I discovered missing products. They were charged on the bill, but nowhere in my delivery. The hassle involved in correcting this problem ("We'll deliver it to you, are you going to be home for the next little while? No... ummmmm") was not worth it.
(2) The selection was not complete. Often, especially with fresh herbs, the store would be "out of stock". This would force me to go elsewhere to make my order complete.
(3) They staff had a "couldn't care less" attitude. More than once I arrived to pick up my order to find it sitting by the front window in the full sun, with the meat browning and the herbs shrivilling nicely.
In the end, my wife and I found that it took just as much time to do the shopping ourselves as it did to do it online. So why bother?
I love Google as much as the next person, but to me the problem is not that there are any privacy concerns with Google today, but what about tomorrow, next week, or 10 years from now?
If you were offered the ability to store all your personal files on a central server operated by Google, for free, would you do it?
If you were offered the ability to store all your personal files on a central server operated by Microsoft, for free, would you do it?
Did you answer these two questions differently? I bet lots of people would because they trust Google, but not Microsoft. But why is that? Just because Google has been "not evil" in the past does not mean they will always be "not evil".
What is the difference between SuSE Professional and Personal, besides US$60? Can the differences be "fixed" by downloading free software from other sources.
I really don't get it. Why is it better to write an application that works on linux than to try and make a platform that can utilize both linux and windoze apps?
Windows compatibility is a double edged sword.
IMHO, Windows compatibility is one of the things that killed OS/2 (not the only thing, but a big factor). There were very few applications written natively for OS/2 because OS/2 was able to run most Windows application. If you continue down this road, you can never win. Consumers look at the OSs side by side and think "This OS says it will run *most* of the application I want to run, but this will (Windows) will run them all. I might as well get Windows."
Most companies, unlike Microsoft, do not have the luxury of releasing broken version after broken version until they get it right. This is just another example of Microsoft leveraging it's success in the OS market to gain a hold on another market.
I'm not saying that Microsoft was wrong or they were using a bad business model. They made some very good strategic decisions. But IMHO the business model only worked so well because they are Microsoft.
I think you have an over-idealized view of human nature if you think discoving life on Mars will make a huge difference here on Earth.
On my W2K computer at work.
It took me quite a while to convince myself that it was not spam and safe to open. This, I think, shows that Microsoft has a long long way to go.