"But even then, for those given a choice, why IE?"
Because until you use the alternatives, you don't realise how bad IE truly is. Of course if you don't know how much better the alternatives are, it's too much effort to go download and install another program.
I usually hook people by demonstrating it as a 'by-the-way' sort of item when I have to show something that requires a web browser anyway. I open a link in another tab with a mouse gesture or something like that and they're enthralled. Once I have their attention, THEN I mention popup blocking and all that goodness. Once they're into it, they're raving about the browser's speed and the ability to block images from certain sites.
The key is to not make the purpose of their watching your computer to see Mozilla - their eyes will glaze over if you tell them that you're showing them an amazing new prgoram. Let them realise for themselves the benefits and they'll be jumping up and down wanting to get it!
"A better question is why do people on Slashdot still hang onto IE? Windows I can understand, because many of us are at work when we are posting, but why IE?"
Because at many companies, installing software not approved by company policy is an offence over which that you can get terminated. Even if you are a guru at fixing computers, big companies often outsource their IT so even if you crack the case that's a breach of contract. If the IT people are called to fix a misbehaving machnie and they find other software on it, you will get in big trouble from your manager.
Furthermore, unless you work in IT, your account probably does not have permission to install new software. You've gotta cater to the lowest common denominator - many well meaning users will wreck their machines and get it infested with bonzi buddy if you give them half a chance.
"Yeehah! I must say that I'm very close to getting new Mac (which one is controversial...I'm tempted to go for a dual 2 GHz. G5, but really the 15" Powerbook makes the most sense for me right now)."
Don't look now, but I expect that 15" PB to be the first Apple notebook to have a G5 processor in it. When that happens, my bank account balance will take a nosedive as I order one of these, and my iBook will probably go to my sister.
""75% of this planet's spam originates on our servers" Bill Gates was quoted as saying today. "By abolishing Hotmail, and moving to a commercial email solution, our users will be able to reduce their spam intake.""
Maybe 75% of the spam has an @hotmail.com string in the FROM address, but that does not necessarily mean it came from a hotmail server.
Remember, you can just go in to to preferences in your e-mail client and change the 'your e-mail adderes' string to bob@hotmail.cmm and then send messages... or buy spam software that does this en masse.
"Microsoft doesn't give a shit about the well being of it's customers, nor are they looking to benefit the internet community in any way. Any comments by their spokes people alluding to such intentions are purely facade."
I believe you are correct:
(article) "We favor the idea of setting up independent email trust authorities to establish and maintain commercial email guidelines, certify senders who follow the guidelines, and resolve customer disputes."
So in their 'favoured' model it would be easy to identify and filter out 'legitimate commercial' messages because they would be signed by a trust authority. It's not so bad, unless the want individuals to sign with the same trust authorities to allow messages into Exchange servers or something.
"Similar authorities already help in protecting people's privacy online, with organizations such as TRUSTe and BBBOnline providing certification for Web sites and companies that follow guidelines on the use of customers' data."
If a site has a TRUSTe logo, all that means is that they depict in very clear language how you will be hosed. Not to mention that TRUSTe has loopholes the size of trucks. I don't know about BBBOnline though.
I agree with the OP - MSFT wants to make it legal for them and their partners to spam you. Remember, MSFT believes that everyone will be behind and exchange server one day so if MSFT gets what it wants, all of its 'commercial messages' will be guaranteed to get to all recipients and will will not be blockable because it's legal.
" All, just remember that the definition of spam is fluid. One person's spam is another's direct marketing.
I don't think Microsoft will eb getting away from direct email marketing to those with whom they have an "established business relationship", but I think they will be working to put in place a process for dealing with UCE - unsolicited commercial email to use the FTC's term."
It also gives them a slick way of keeping their hands clean in terms of Freedom of Speech issues.
"No, we did not block that e-mail and are not censoring you! The user configured their adaptive mail filter to do it for them!"
" My university used I-deas for FEM and 3D stuff - a bit more advanced than the AutoCad stuff that you did in the first year.
One of our tasks was to construct an object and do some Finite Elephant Modelling (as our tutor so humeously calls it), working out stresses and strains and so on.
My friend got to the part where you define your element size and shape and she selected some rather small values."
Hey, do we go to the same university or something? That sounds exactly like the exercise I had to do. Was this part of a project where you have to model it in I-DEAS and do the same experiment with equipment in the materials lab and then write that 1-page report to compare?
"I guarantee that if your response is anything but "yes" that the rest of your speech will be thought to be weaseling rather than truth.
So, do you give the overly simplified answers to the overly simplified questions, or do you lose the sale to someone who will?"
In that case I would give up the sale to someone else because the PHB would be a support nightmare.
"If I have to chose do I download openoffice or staroffice? Do they bear the same relationship as mozilla and netscape navigator?"
I would choose OpenOffice -- StarOffice is Sun's own blend of OO.org. I find that OpenOffice tends to work more 'smoothly' and it has a better presentation program than StarOffice. Not to mention that you have to pay for StarOffice 6.0.
"If you're talking about this [haxial.com] (section entitled "Apple Copies Ideas From Microsoft") then you'll find that he admits that Microsoft copies stuff from Apple, but that Apple have copied things from Microsoft too."
True. Even in the WWDC keynote speech, Job specifically mentioned that Windows had the 'fast user switching' before OS X.
"Alright, I've been wondering about this for a while. Exactly what kind of programs, and what programs, have a need for more than 2GB of RAM? (I assume that's what you mean by 'data')"
Obviously you have never run CAE/CAM programs. (That being Computer Aided Engineering / Computer Aided Manufacturing.. I-DEAS, Pro Engineer, SolidWorks, Catia, etc.) This is the hard core stuff that Boeing, Ford and Toyota use that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for one license. At my university, the undergrads get to use it on P4 machines and the grad students get to use it on 64 bit HP-UX workstations.
Even if you use a fairly simple FEA (finite element analysis) on something, for example finding the levels of stress in some objects you have modelled when it is bent in different ways, or modelling the flow of water or air through some pipe bends, this amount of RAM is very desireable. Basically the program builds and solves a bunch of 2000x2000 matrices for you. Even a simple one like the pipe bend took something like 3 hours on a P4/512MB and there was a multi-GB swap file needed. I was in the lab very late that night. That is where super-large amounts of RAM are necessary.
"And what's more, when you start running programs that use more than 2GB of data, the 64-bit machine is going to beat the pants off the 32-bit one..."
I already use files larger than 2 GB on my Athlon machine, thank you. I just converted the appropriate partition to NTFS and it was all good. It's very commonplace when you deal with raw DV capture which clocks in at 13 GB/hour. Not that I don't love my iBook or anything.
"
Word is putting my MAC address in every file I save?! Holy shit! What else is it doing?"
Yes, it is doing that. But of course we don't know what else it's doing since the format is proprietary. There was a furor about this some years ago. Supposedly the creator of the 'Melissa virus' was caught because of this. I suggest you look up a program called 'Guideon' which is free and scans through your HDD removing all GUIDs (which contain the MAC address) from your MSOffice documents.
"
Word is putting my MAC address in every file I save?! Holy shit! What else is it doing?"
The GUID patch prevents MSOffice programs from putting the GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) that windows creates which contains the MAC address into MSOffice documents. There is a patch (for Office97, at least) that prevents it from adding the string.
Remember, I have no love of MSOffice either and never said that it was a reasonable piece of software;-)
Now I also have no love of MSWord, but FUD must be combatted:
"It indexes every last damn file on your PC."
So you forgot to turn off FindFast.
"It saves information that you really don't want distributed in every file."
So you forgot to install the GUID patch that causes it to not add your MAC address to all the files you save.
"It has an annoying mascot."
So you forgot to unclick the checkbox for the "office assistant" during the MSOffice installation. Even if you didn't install office, just rename the "actors" directory and clippy will be gone.
I don't like Word either!! But I have to use it at the office and frankly I don't think that OpenOffice is mature enough yet, so I make sure I learn ways to make Word less annoying.
"Unfortunately (and I've seen this happen up-close-and-personal) the sparkly new features are quite often the thing that'll sell your package to the PHB sitting opposite you in the demonstration room.
It's very easy to run your demo and say - lookit the pretty colours! This is what our software does that our competitors doesn't!"
True. IMHO, this is where a line is drawn by ethics. Do you lower yourself to the point where you are writing the flashy but crappy stuff that will sell your product to the PHB or not?
It's possible that I am a person who is too burdened by 'ethics' but I would rather get out of the industry than participate in such a disgrace to the trade. That is one reason why I stopped selling computers -- most people don't understand the evils of Windows XP and frankly I'm not willing to sell their souls to Microsoft for them, even if it nicely balances my finances. So I stopped my activities in a job and industry that were paying me decent money.
Razzle dazzle? Yeah, it will sell your product and make you money. But I don't want to 'sell my soul' or sell someone else's either. You have to draw the line somewhere.
" Hey, you know what? At least we have a written language. I'm not so impressed that the Incas used a complicated system of tying colored knots on string that *kinda* resembles binary when you consider how much easier it would've been to just write the information down."
Open your mind.
Consider that the tying-knots type of information storage might have been used only for actual record keeping. A string with a bunch of knots is a lot more durable than a piece of parchment with ink on in. Don't the rainforests of central america have periodic flooding? Those stings can sit under water for a while an survive nicely while pieces of paper would not survive.
And besides, how do you know it would have been easier to write things down? Did they have a decent supply of paper back then? A decent supply of writing instruments? Maybe the string method *was* easier.
"7-bit though, that's what I find interesting. Wonder where 7 bits comes from. 10 or 5 --that I'd understand. 7, perhaps someone who'd been in a terrible accident?!"
Perhaps 7-bit was the best balance between encoding a lot of data and not having strings that were too long and cumbersome. I wouldn't be surprised if they found older ones that were 9 bit or 5 bit before a '7-bit standard' was agreed upon. </speculation>
" The day your sites are legible at 1600x1200 I may pay attention to your "usablilty" articles."
Are you using mozilla? Just hit ctrl+= and the text will get bigger. Use ctrl+- to make the text smaller. I love it.
Note, I'm not a mad C programmer. Ctrl+= referrs to the control key and the 'equals' key which is above the square brackets. You can also use the + and - keys on the num pad as well.
"Basically, all I want is their damned OS, they can shove their supposedly superior hardware."
One of the reasons that the OS actually works is because of the hardware. Apple controls the hardware configs quite strongly and as such, it is easier to make the OS actually work properly than with Windows. If you shove the 'superior' hardware then you shove many of the benefits of using MacOS as well.
"And I'll tell you why they should give a damn - they make big talk about being accessible, and not being elitist, but their price points put them outside either A) the rich, or B) ideologues that eat raman noodles 3 meals a day for 6 months so they can afford one."
I am a poor university student and I managed to spend CDN$2300 on an iBook. Smart budgeting, good grades for scholarships and good spending habits are all it takes.
Slashdot Mirror
Because until you use the alternatives, you don't realise how bad IE truly is. Of course if you don't know how much better the alternatives are, it's too much effort to go download and install another program.
I usually hook people by demonstrating it as a 'by-the-way' sort of item when I have to show something that requires a web browser anyway. I open a link in another tab with a mouse gesture or something like that and they're enthralled. Once I have their attention, THEN I mention popup blocking and all that goodness. Once they're into it, they're raving about the browser's speed and the ability to block images from certain sites.
The key is to not make the purpose of their watching your computer to see Mozilla - their eyes will glaze over if you tell them that you're showing them an amazing new prgoram. Let them realise for themselves the benefits and they'll be jumping up and down wanting to get it!
Because at many companies, installing software not approved by company policy is an offence over which that you can get terminated. Even if you are a guru at fixing computers, big companies often outsource their IT so even if you crack the case that's a breach of contract. If the IT people are called to fix a misbehaving machnie and they find other software on it, you will get in big trouble from your manager.
Furthermore, unless you work in IT, your account probably does not have permission to install new software. You've gotta cater to the lowest common denominator - many well meaning users will wreck their machines and get it infested with bonzi buddy if you give them half a chance.
Don't look now, but I expect that 15" PB to be the first Apple notebook to have a G5 processor in it. When that happens, my bank account balance will take a nosedive as I order one of these, and my iBook will probably go to my sister.
Maybe 75% of the spam has an @hotmail.com string in the FROM address, but that does not necessarily mean it came from a hotmail server.
Remember, you can just go in to to preferences in your e-mail client and change the 'your e-mail adderes' string to bob@hotmail.cmm and then send messages ... or buy spam software that does this en masse.
I believe you are correct:
(article) "We favor the idea of setting up independent email trust authorities to establish and maintain commercial email guidelines, certify senders who follow the guidelines, and resolve customer disputes."
So in their 'favoured' model it would be easy to identify and filter out 'legitimate commercial' messages because they would be signed by a trust authority. It's not so bad, unless the want individuals to sign with the same trust authorities to allow messages into Exchange servers or something.
"Similar authorities already help in protecting people's privacy online, with organizations such as TRUSTe and BBBOnline providing certification for Web sites and companies that follow guidelines on the use of customers' data."
If a site has a TRUSTe logo, all that means is that they depict in very clear language how you will be hosed. Not to mention that TRUSTe has loopholes the size of trucks. I don't know about BBBOnline though.
I agree with the OP - MSFT wants to make it legal for them and their partners to spam you. Remember, MSFT believes that everyone will be behind and exchange server one day so if MSFT gets what it wants, all of its 'commercial messages' will be guaranteed to get to all recipients and will will not be blockable because it's legal.
It also gives them a slick way of keeping their hands clean in terms of Freedom of Speech issues.
"No, we did not block that e-mail and are not censoring you! The user configured their adaptive mail filter to do it for them!"
(insert joke here about his micro being soft)
;-)
Hey, do we go to the same university or something? That sounds exactly like the exercise I had to do. Was this part of a project where you have to model it in I-DEAS and do the same experiment with equipment in the materials lab and then write that 1-page report to compare?
In that case I would give up the sale to someone else because the PHB would be a support nightmare.
I would choose OpenOffice -- StarOffice is Sun's own blend of OO.org. I find that OpenOffice tends to work more 'smoothly' and it has a better presentation program than StarOffice. Not to mention that you have to pay for StarOffice 6.0.
HTTPS uses a different port than HTTP. Are you sure you have set up Safari's proxy settings to use the appropriate proxy for HTTPS?
True. Even in the WWDC keynote speech, Job specifically mentioned that Windows had the 'fast user switching' before OS X.
Obviously you have never run CAE/CAM programs. (That being Computer Aided Engineering / Computer Aided Manufacturing.. I-DEAS, Pro Engineer, SolidWorks, Catia, etc.) This is the hard core stuff that Boeing, Ford and Toyota use that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for one license. At my university, the undergrads get to use it on P4 machines and the grad students get to use it on 64 bit HP-UX workstations.
Even if you use a fairly simple FEA (finite element analysis) on something, for example finding the levels of stress in some objects you have modelled when it is bent in different ways, or modelling the flow of water or air through some pipe bends, this amount of RAM is very desireable. Basically the program builds and solves a bunch of 2000x2000 matrices for you. Even a simple one like the pipe bend took something like 3 hours on a P4/512MB and there was a multi-GB swap file needed. I was in the lab very late that night. That is where super-large amounts of RAM are necessary.
I already use files larger than 2 GB on my Athlon machine, thank you. I just converted the appropriate partition to NTFS and it was all good. It's very commonplace when you deal with raw DV capture which clocks in at 13 GB/hour. Not that I don't love my iBook or anything.
Yes, it is doing that. But of course we don't know what else it's doing since the format is proprietary. There was a furor about this some years ago. Supposedly the creator of the 'Melissa virus' was caught because of this. I suggest you look up a program called 'Guideon' which is free and scans through your HDD removing all GUIDs (which contain the MAC address) from your MSOffice documents.
" Word is putting my MAC address in every file I save?! Holy shit! What else is it doing?"
The GUID patch prevents MSOffice programs from putting the GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) that windows creates which contains the MAC address into MSOffice documents. There is a patch (for Office97, at least) that prevents it from adding the string.
Remember, I have no love of MSOffice either and never said that it was a reasonable piece of software ;-)
Now I also have no love of MSWord, but FUD must be combatted:
"It indexes every last damn file on your PC."
So you forgot to turn off FindFast.
"It saves information that you really don't want distributed in every file."
So you forgot to install the GUID patch that causes it to not add your MAC address to all the files you save.
"It has an annoying mascot."
So you forgot to unclick the checkbox for the "office assistant" during the MSOffice installation. Even if you didn't install office, just rename the "actors" directory and clippy will be gone.
I don't like Word either!! But I have to use it at the office and frankly I don't think that OpenOffice is mature enough yet, so I make sure I learn ways to make Word less annoying.
True. IMHO, this is where a line is drawn by ethics. Do you lower yourself to the point where you are writing the flashy but crappy stuff that will sell your product to the PHB or not?
It's possible that I am a person who is too burdened by 'ethics' but I would rather get out of the industry than participate in such a disgrace to the trade. That is one reason why I stopped selling computers -- most people don't understand the evils of Windows XP and frankly I'm not willing to sell their souls to Microsoft for them, even if it nicely balances my finances. So I stopped my activities in a job and industry that were paying me decent money.
Razzle dazzle? Yeah, it will sell your product and make you money. But I don't want to 'sell my soul' or sell someone else's either. You have to draw the line somewhere.
Some of the files were big so they counted for extra points. Pr0n videos count as 20 and TV shows count as 50. Movies count as 200.
Open your mind.
Consider that the tying-knots type of information storage might have been used only for actual record keeping. A string with a bunch of knots is a lot more durable than a piece of parchment with ink on in. Don't the rainforests of central america have periodic flooding? Those stings can sit under water for a while an survive nicely while pieces of paper would not survive.
And besides, how do you know it would have been easier to write things down? Did they have a decent supply of paper back then? A decent supply of writing instruments? Maybe the string method *was* easier.
Perhaps 7-bit was the best balance between encoding a lot of data and not having strings that were too long and cumbersome. I wouldn't be surprised if they found older ones that were 9 bit or 5 bit before a '7-bit standard' was agreed upon. </speculation>
This book is not about hardware -- it's about software.
Are you using mozilla? Just hit ctrl+= and the text will get bigger. Use ctrl+- to make the text smaller. I love it.
Note, I'm not a mad C programmer. Ctrl+= referrs to the control key and the 'equals' key which is above the square brackets. You can also use the + and - keys on the num pad as well.
One of the reasons that the OS actually works is because of the hardware. Apple controls the hardware configs quite strongly and as such, it is easier to make the OS actually work properly than with Windows. If you shove the 'superior' hardware then you shove many of the benefits of using MacOS as well.
"And I'll tell you why they should give a damn - they make big talk about being accessible, and not being elitist, but their price points put them outside either A) the rich, or B) ideologues that eat raman noodles 3 meals a day for 6 months so they can afford one."
I am a poor university student and I managed to spend CDN$2300 on an iBook. Smart budgeting, good grades for scholarships and good spending habits are all it takes.
Agreed. But honestly, my reasons for buying an Apple instead of a PC notebook 3 months ago had more to do with Microsoft than they did with Apple.
Now I'm starting to get concerned about my iBook's resale value after smelling what may be cooking in Apple's Powerbook kitchen ;-)
After this leak, I expect that there might be an opening at Apple... ;-)