as long as the Clear Channel concert contracts have this stipulated as an option, it will not be an issue
Do you really think this might even be an issue? Don't the recording contracts stipulate everything -- including that the RIAA can hold the artist upside down by the ankles and shake them for loose change, bust open their piggy banks, search their bed matress for hidden money, etc.?
This is how it worked: we created a master tape on the fly during the program. At the conclusion of the program, the master was carried down to a workroom with tape duplication machines. We could have 16 tapes created within 4 minutes of the end of the presentation--with more coming.
This is not even rare. In fact, is very common. Most churches do this routinely. The equipment investment is modest. The convenience is great.
In fact, my boss was asking me questions about technology for doing this with mp3's. In his case, they were interested in making mp3's available on his church's website. They also wanted to make an audio CD. They did end up accomplishing their goal. I might be mis-recalling his final solution. I believe they used a modest PC to simultaneously record audio along with the tape equipment. As long as they were doing a decent job of "mixing" during the live recording, they could immediately start making cassettes or audio CD's after the recording was complete. And have an mp3 file ready almost immediately as well.
20+ years ago, I used to love arcade games. That's why I love MAME. Lots of my old favorite games.
I've been to a couple arcades a few times in the last 10 years. A rare event for me. But I notice something. All of the games seem to be violent. Games involving fighting, shooting, etc.
My question is this: Are all arcade games violent nowdays? Or is it just that the two arcades I've seen are not representative of the arcade games available?
I'm not offended by the fact that violent games exist, nor that people play them. I've played a few myself. I just don't care for them. I liked the games of logic or skill like the old games. Shooting cartoon/imaginary spaceships, enemies, or some kind of graphic token isn't the same thing as shooting people. (And it's not that I wouldn't actually shoot people either, given the need.)
They may not like it, but there really is little they can do about it.
Trying to stop content scraping is a loosing battle.
They can try to restrict it to real browsers. But what is a real browser? After all, Mozilla is open source. It executes JavaScript, or anything else they might care to attempt to detect. In the worse case, Mozilla being open sourced, could be hacked to go to their site, (yes an inefficient Perl module of course), scrape the content, executing JavaScript, etc., and then from Mozilla's menu, pick "Document Structure" and recover the information from there. All automatically and in the background.
They could start using Flash. But if it is text in flash, then the flash file can still be parsed. Its format is documented.
They could start generating a JPEG of the information. That can still be OCR'ed. Efforts to defeat the OCR would just make it harder for the human eyes to recognize. Do you want to look through TV listings in strange fonts, with lines through them, inconsistent or unattractive colors?
Umm...yes. I actually have an old 486 laptop with an 81MB hard drive running MS-DOS. It has a Vi clone for DOS on it. I mainly use it as kind of an electronic diary. No reason to buy a $3,000 TiBook when all you need is a halfway decent text editor.
That's your right of course. I sincerely hope you are happy with it and that it serves you well.
But I would fight if you advocate forcing the rest of us use your choice when we want to move on. I want computers ala Star Trek not how they were in the 1980's.
these features are old technology. But they're also mature technology - they work fine, now leave them alone!
Are you still using EISA slots? MS-DOS? 286's? CP/M? Punch cards? Punch tape?
If not, then WHY not? Or is it just that you would rather upgrade to what you're comfortable with, and then force everyone else to use that so that you have conveinent cheap interchangeble parts with what you choose to use?
Me, I'd like to see a future where you never have to open a computer case. (No more PCI.) No exposed electrical components. No danger to humans. No danger to the machine. No possibility of frying a board by reversing or mis-aligning a connector. Yet, still enjoy the flexibility of cheap interchangeble expansion modules of every possible flavor. And best, everything hot swappable. Computers are often depected this way in sci-fi. Devices connect via. some kind of (A) twisted pair easily hooked up wire or (B) some kind of wireless, like bluetooth or infrared.
We're talking about a consumer version of Linux here. What developers do to scratch their own itch is irrelevant. Nobody is suggesting that there be the One True (tm) version of Linux that developers must be forced to use. I understand why and how OSS is created.
What I don't understand is the seeming persistent resistance to necessary things to build an easy to use Linux. It is almost as if some people are happy to keep things difficult to use, to keep a certian segment out of it. We laugh at the "choice" Windows users make to use Windows, but we won't hold out a hand to them.
I don't propose that Windows features should somehow creep down into the bowels of Linux. But I DO argue that the lower level components (i.e. XFree86) must provide suitable API's so that higher level UI's, such as KDE, or others, can provide a Windows like, if you will, easy to use control panel. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it.
As someone in this thread pointed out to me, this work is actually happening in the form of XrandR. I am happy to hear it.
I find it ironically funny (hypocritical?) that Microsoft shills say this, yet ignored this very same criticism leveled against Windows by Mac users. "I could do this on my Mac years before Windows had it."
You've never used Sax2 either. IT allows easy changing of the screen resolution on SuSe.
I am fully aware of SaX2. In fact, that is what I told my friend to do.
init 3
sax2 diddle with configuration
init 5
But this is easy? Compared to what? We're talking about a consumer version of Linux in this discussion. Of course, I, or my friend, can use SaX2. But that is not relevant to my original post.
(I also commend SuSE for their excellent work on SaX2. It's one example of the many reasons I prefer SuSE to colored headwear distributions.)
The other point is, it's not terribly important of a feature. Most people set a resolution once and leave it there.
That is irrelevant. Whether you do it frequently or infrequently, it is difficult. A very good argument is that the infrequently done operations are at least as much in need of being easy to accomplish as the frequently done operations. Another argument is that maybe you don't change it frequently, but this is not reflective of everyone. My original criticism still stands that this is an example of ongoing work to make Linux catch up. I was only too glad to hear about the XrandR extension and KDE's work to use it in their control center.
most of the technical people weren't afraid of editting the config file.
Especially irrelevant. This is a discussion about building a consumer version of Linux.
But I will repeat: I'm glad to see that there is a solution to this problem in the works of which I was unaware.
My reaction 2: This is an example of the ongoing fixes to the type of fundamental problems I pointed out. I sincerely hope to see these types of problems completely disappear so that a Linux distribution is truly easy to use requiring no complex understanding of low level machinery.
I will not gloat about Mac/Windows having had this feature for years as some sibling posts do. This is a mere fact. In the area of UI, Linux is catching up. The Microsoft shills, and indeed, IMHO, Microsoft itself fears this. Hence the reaction "yeah, but Windows has had this feature for 10 years.". So what? What does this matter? Those same Windows uses who say this ignore the same exact cries "Yeah, but Mac has XYZ for years before Windows" that Mac users said for many years. Isn't it ironic that they now cry the same slogan against Linux.:-)
There are still fundamental configuration problems that need to be solved.
I've evangelized a few friends to run SuSE 8.1. It's easy and slick to install. Nice KDE desktop. <list of good things omitted>
Still, I get questions that point out obvious deep problems not solved yet. "How do I change the resolution of my monitor?"
Obviously, you don't just go to the Display control panel, change it, see the change take effect on the screen with your windows and icons automatically adjusting. Not to mention useful help such as if the display doesn't appear just press ESC or wait 15 seconds.
What I'm getting at here is that different high quality software projects such as KDE and X windows are not deeply integrated. While I commend these and other projects, it is still not Mac or Windows easy to use. KDE has done a wonderful job of putting some system configuration features into their control center. But I suspect some additional technical features/api's in X would be necessary in order to achieve the seemless resolution changing ala. Mac or Windows.
This is but one example, although perhaps one of the worst ones. High level gui control panels seem to already do many things well, such as configuring your PPP or other low level things.
Would one or possibly two B2 bombers buy a space shuttle?
Not that I advocate that we should actually buy another shuttle. I'm just trying to put the cost into a certian perspective.
After the Challenger was destroyed, and Regan signed the bill to build another shuttle, I seem to remember the cost as being about $2.4 Billion (probably in some late 1980's dollars). Since we spend about $2 billion on a B2, I was just wondering if two B2's more than buy a shuttle vehicle?
Could this Mitsubishi robot possibly be any worse than comming home to your Microsoft robot in your Microsoft Home Of The Future? Depressing, isn't it.
Re:We've already got Blipverts!
on
Digital Celebrities
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
If you watch the Discovery Channel or TLC you've no doubt seen blipverts. You know, where an obviously mechanically processed human voice comes on and speaks at very high speed. So fast that it requires a great cognitive effort to decipher what is being said.
Because when I watch TV I want to veg out (otherwise I'd be on my computer, or reading) I find these blipverts to be very annoying. In fact I find them to be the most offensive form of television advertising that I've ever come across. So much so, that I usually turn the channel instantly. I may ordinarily channel surf, but when I see those Discovery blipverts, you've never seen me move so fast for the remote!
They won't, they can't. [lower their prices] Doing so would destroy their current loftly margins and hinder their ability to do R&D.
They could lower their prices/margins significantly and still remain profitable -- albeit not as much so. Therefore, if they are profitable, they are still funding their current R&D efforts. All they would NOT be doing is building their $40 billion pile of excess cash even higher.
So by lowering their prices...
They would still be profitable (not as much so)
They would still maintain current expenditures
They would still spend at current R&D levels
They would NOT make their $40 billion pile of cash get any larger
So they would be stuck with $40 billion of cash that they don't know what to do with, but would still be a profitable business.
It's to notify their owners (shareholders) why the share price may go down.
Yes.
It's a financially and publically responsible thing to do.
I think you could have worded this better. Is this statement meant to somehow imply one or more of the following...
Microsoft is publicly responsible?
Microsoft has a social conscience?
Microsoft actually cares about investors? (or anyone else?)
This is required by the SEC. Pure and simple. If they didn't have to disclose this, they wouldn't. This is nothing but CYA. (CYA is a legal term that means Cover Your Posterior) This way when some investor comes back later to sue because the stock takes a dive and doesn't recover, Microsoft can say "we warned you", and "we warned the SEC".
Do you suppose that Microsoft is happy about having to (publicly) admit to the SEC that Open Source (a) threatens their business model and (b) might force them to lower their prices?
Okay, I can see one way to interpret it the way you said. It is publicly responsible of Microsoft to disclose this information. After all, the alternative would be to try and hide it, bury it deep somewhere, and deny it. As Open Source takes hold more and more, keep the stock price up by licensing the newly patented Creative Accounting techniques. (Thus behavior would reinforce my points above.) Given that they are disclosing rather than hiding, then, I suppose I must agree with your second point; in some sense, it is publicly responsible of them. It is better than this paragraph's alternative behavior. So you're right. I agree.
This is not PR. This is CYA. (Otherwise called "Cover Your Posterior".)
Companies have to disclose anything that might materially affect their business to both the SEC and investors.
IMHO, it is high time that Microsoft started realistically stating how much of a threat Open Source is. It's not like Open Source is going to hurt Microsoft in the next couple of quarters. But it is a long term concern, which means something of interest to investors.
there's not a great deal of point in making icons vector: 128x128x32 with a decent scaling algorithm (and an optional set of pre-scaled images at smaller sizes) seems to cover pretty much everything.
I disagree. Vector graphics, if you have a fast renderer, are always more desirable than a grid of pixels at a certian size. A vector graphic is infinitely scalable.
You mentioned Mac OS X. But you didn't mention is how beautifully it's doc bar works. As you hover the mouse across it, the shape of the bar distorts and icons scale up, sometime to take up a significant fraction of the entire display. The icons always look beautiful. Not some 32x32 chunky pixelated icon scaled up to 500x500 as the mouse hovers over it. (Before non OS X users complain, this is a temporary (like pull down menus) but beautiful effect that happens as you run the mouse across the icons in the doc. Much better design than the Windows taskbar -- if you have, say 25 applications running at the same time.
If I print a directory listing of files, I want the icons to look beautiful on the printout, or in a PDF. The whole point of vector graphics is that they are infinitely scalable.
Now that we live in the day of plenty of power, and fast vector renderers, with standardized representations for vector graphics (SVG), we should strive to eliminate ALL small pixmap graphics from user interfaces. Not just icons on the desktop, but toolbar icons, widgets, etc. Then the entire user interface becomes infinitely scalable. Even for the person with poor vision who runs at 800x600 because "everything is too small when I run at 1920x1600" can run their display at 1920x1600, and scale up the entire UI so that it looks beautiful, making everything easier to see. Everything would be the same size on the tube as at 800x600, but not pixelated as much.
Scalable vector fonts help in this regard.
In fact, wouldn't it simplify system configuration a lot if the monitor just naturally ran at the highest possible supported resolution? You just go to the control panel to scale up or down the size of the UI elements, including text of menus, titlebars, buttons, etc.
I've been trying to migrate people _away_ from windows, this only makes it easier for them to stay;-)
I disagree. Take a longer term view. This makes it easier for them to leave Windows. Nothing happens overnight. And won't happen as quickly as I would like.
While so much noise and attention is being focused on Linux, I think the biggest threat to Microsoft is, once again, sneaking in under the radar. (Step 1: First they ignore you.) The biggest threat: cross-over applications. Stuff like OpenOffice. Or the GIMP. (And yes, I understand that GIMP is not a competitor to professional Photoshop users.)
It seems like more and more cross platform tools and toolkits are available. This was once the holy grail, and there were basically NO solutions. Now, a recent slashdot article reveals many ways to develop cross platform applications and gui's.
KDE and Qt are both being ported to Win32 (with GPL license). At some point, expect a flood of KDE applications, including another free KOffice suite, to be available for Windows. Other projects such as The Open CD and GNU Win II only help accellerate the acceptance of not only free, but open source applications by ordinary windows users.
Eventually, users recognize: hey the OS is irrelevant!
In the meantime, Linux on the desktop will have improved a great deal. Or instead, perhaps the recent RelaxOS?
"click here to popup a list"
Change this to
"Open this link in a new window or tab to review list"
Very bad user interface design. I can think of so many problems with this it is not even funny.
There should be no way the user can screw it up. You should never have to say "do it this way in order to do it correctly", and leave the user with an option of doing it the wrong way. And I don't mean mis-filling out something at the application level, I mean the user should not be able to perform a basic operation the wrong way. (Be sure to save your document THIS way, and not accidentially do it the OTHER way.)
Furthermore, you're now expecting a much higher level of operational knowledge from the user. On some platforms (Windows) the user must right-click, pick from a contextual menu. On other platforms (Mac) the user must left-click, and HOLD for a second or so to get the contextual menu to appear. The choice to "open in a new window" is phrased completely differently across various browsers and platforms. No browser is even required to even have a choice to "open in a new window".
In fact, one of the goals of the design is that using the application through the Internet is nearly identical to using the thick-client application. The existing traditional application works a certian way. I want the web based version to be nearly identical. Applications can spontaneously pop up windows. So should the web version. It is not a link you might click, but a button. In the case of a button, even a more experienced net surfer might not think to bring up the contextual menu and pick "Open In New Window" or whatever it might be called on Browser X.
The users of any said application might not be experience net surfers who know how to harness the power of all of the features of their browser. The user might not have any mental model of opening links in the same window vs. different windows. One of the key points of user interface design is that the user should be thinking about their application (accounting, weather forecasting, graphic design, etc.) rather than on how to get the computer to do it or the mechanics of doing it. The mechanics should be totally fluid, natural and never thought of. I don't even want to bring into the user's conciousness the idea of "opening a link in a different window or tab". What if they don't? How should the application be programmed to respond?
I could go on. But my original point is that automatic popup windows are a valid thing that might be desirable to the user. In some cases the user WANTS popup windows. It's a real shame that people with very bad behavior have made popups so loathed. Just as with cookies.
You might now want popup windows when surfing the web. Tabs are a great feature that some browsing software implements as a convenience and that surfers have to learn to effectively use.
I think you way overestimate the capabilities of a 50 year old middle school secretary operating a web based application to accomplish their mission -- which is doesn't have anything to do with computers. The computer is just a tool -- not the purpose of why they are at work today.
And how does this default your browser to goatse.cx everytime you open IE? I wouldn't say anything... except this is modded 5-Informative...
I pointed it out because I mis-parsed your original comment to mean... a java applet, that makes a visitor's IE open to goatse, every time they visit your site. Your reply suggests a different parse of the same comment.
Slashdot Mirror
If the CD is available immediately, then I suspect that the P2P download is available very soon afterwards.
as long as the Clear Channel concert contracts have this stipulated as an option, it will not be an issue
Do you really think this might even be an issue? Don't the recording contracts stipulate everything -- including that the RIAA can hold the artist upside down by the ankles and shake them for loose change, bust open their piggy banks, search their bed matress for hidden money, etc.?
This is how it worked: we created a master tape on the fly during the program. At the conclusion of the program, the master was carried down to a workroom with tape duplication machines. We could have 16 tapes created within 4 minutes of the end of the presentation--with more coming.
This is not even rare. In fact, is very common. Most churches do this routinely. The equipment investment is modest. The convenience is great.
In fact, my boss was asking me questions about technology for doing this with mp3's. In his case, they were interested in making mp3's available on his church's website. They also wanted to make an audio CD. They did end up accomplishing their goal. I might be mis-recalling his final solution. I believe they used a modest PC to simultaneously record audio along with the tape equipment. As long as they were doing a decent job of "mixing" during the live recording, they could immediately start making cassettes or audio CD's after the recording was complete. And have an mp3 file ready almost immediately as well.
20+ years ago, I used to love arcade games. That's why I love MAME. Lots of my old favorite games.
I've been to a couple arcades a few times in the last 10 years. A rare event for me. But I notice something. All of the games seem to be violent. Games involving fighting, shooting, etc.
My question is this: Are all arcade games violent nowdays? Or is it just that the two arcades I've seen are not representative of the arcade games available?
I'm not offended by the fact that violent games exist, nor that people play them. I've played a few myself. I just don't care for them. I liked the games of logic or skill like the old games. Shooting cartoon/imaginary spaceships, enemies, or some kind of graphic token isn't the same thing as shooting people. (And it's not that I wouldn't actually shoot people either, given the need.)
They may not like it, but there really is little they can do about it.
Trying to stop content scraping is a loosing battle.
They can try to restrict it to real browsers. But what is a real browser? After all, Mozilla is open source. It executes JavaScript, or anything else they might care to attempt to detect. In the worse case, Mozilla being open sourced, could be hacked to go to their site, (yes an inefficient Perl module of course), scrape the content, executing JavaScript, etc., and then from Mozilla's menu, pick "Document Structure" and recover the information from there. All automatically and in the background.
They could start using Flash. But if it is text in flash, then the flash file can still be parsed. Its format is documented.
They could start generating a JPEG of the information. That can still be OCR'ed. Efforts to defeat the OCR would just make it harder for the human eyes to recognize. Do you want to look through TV listings in strange fonts, with lines through them, inconsistent or unattractive colors?
Umm...yes. I actually have an old 486 laptop with an 81MB hard drive running MS-DOS. It has a Vi clone for DOS on it. I mainly use it as kind of an electronic diary. No reason to buy a $3,000 TiBook when all you need is a halfway decent text editor.
That's your right of course. I sincerely hope you are happy with it and that it serves you well.
But I would fight if you advocate forcing the rest of us use your choice when we want to move on. I want computers ala Star Trek not how they were in the 1980's.
these features are old technology. But they're also mature technology - they work fine, now leave them alone!
Are you still using EISA slots? MS-DOS? 286's? CP/M? Punch cards? Punch tape?
If not, then WHY not? Or is it just that you would rather upgrade to what you're comfortable with, and then force everyone else to use that so that you have conveinent cheap interchangeble parts with what you choose to use?
Me, I'd like to see a future where you never have to open a computer case. (No more PCI.) No exposed electrical components. No danger to humans. No danger to the machine. No possibility of frying a board by reversing or mis-aligning a connector. Yet, still enjoy the flexibility of cheap interchangeble expansion modules of every possible flavor. And best, everything hot swappable. Computers are often depected this way in sci-fi. Devices connect via. some kind of (A) twisted pair easily hooked up wire or (B) some kind of wireless, like bluetooth or infrared.
We're talking about a consumer version of Linux here. What developers do to scratch their own itch is irrelevant. Nobody is suggesting that there be the One True (tm) version of Linux that developers must be forced to use. I understand why and how OSS is created.
What I don't understand is the seeming persistent resistance to necessary things to build an easy to use Linux. It is almost as if some people are happy to keep things difficult to use, to keep a certian segment out of it. We laugh at the "choice" Windows users make to use Windows, but we won't hold out a hand to them.
I don't propose that Windows features should somehow creep down into the bowels of Linux. But I DO argue that the lower level components (i.e. XFree86) must provide suitable API's so that higher level UI's, such as KDE, or others, can provide a Windows like, if you will, easy to use control panel. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it.
As someone in this thread pointed out to me, this work is actually happening in the form of XrandR. I am happy to hear it.
I could do that with my Windows box 10 years ago.
I find it ironically funny (hypocritical?) that Microsoft shills say this, yet ignored this very same criticism leveled against Windows by Mac users. "I could do this on my Mac years before Windows had it."
You've never used Sax2 either. IT allows easy changing of the screen resolution on SuSe.
I am fully aware of SaX2. In fact, that is what I told my friend to do.
init 3
sax2
diddle with configuration
init 5
But this is easy? Compared to what? We're talking about a consumer version of Linux in this discussion. Of course, I, or my friend, can use SaX2. But that is not relevant to my original post.
(I also commend SuSE for their excellent work on SaX2. It's one example of the many reasons I prefer SuSE to colored headwear distributions.)
The other point is, it's not terribly important of a feature. Most people set a resolution once and leave it there.
That is irrelevant. Whether you do it frequently or infrequently, it is difficult. A very good argument is that the infrequently done operations are at least as much in need of being easy to accomplish as the frequently done operations. Another argument is that maybe you don't change it frequently, but this is not reflective of everyone. My original criticism still stands that this is an example of ongoing work to make Linux catch up. I was only too glad to hear about the XrandR extension and KDE's work to use it in their control center.
most of the technical people weren't afraid of editting the config file.
Especially irrelevant. This is a discussion about building a consumer version of Linux.
But I will repeat: I'm glad to see that there is a solution to this problem in the works of which I was unaware.
I guess you've never heard of XRandR.
:-)
No I have not. Thanks.
My reaction 1: excellent! (Mr. Burns voice)
My reaction 2: This is an example of the ongoing fixes to the type of fundamental problems I pointed out. I sincerely hope to see these types of problems completely disappear so that a Linux distribution is truly easy to use requiring no complex understanding of low level machinery.
I will not gloat about Mac/Windows having had this feature for years as some sibling posts do. This is a mere fact. In the area of UI, Linux is catching up. The Microsoft shills, and indeed, IMHO, Microsoft itself fears this. Hence the reaction "yeah, but Windows has had this feature for 10 years.". So what? What does this matter? Those same Windows uses who say this ignore the same exact cries "Yeah, but Mac has XYZ for years before Windows" that Mac users said for many years. Isn't it ironic that they now cry the same slogan against Linux.
There are still fundamental configuration problems that need to be solved.
I've evangelized a few friends to run SuSE 8.1. It's easy and slick to install. Nice KDE desktop. <list of good things omitted>
Still, I get questions that point out obvious deep problems not solved yet. "How do I change the resolution of my monitor?"
Obviously, you don't just go to the Display control panel, change it, see the change take effect on the screen with your windows and icons automatically adjusting. Not to mention useful help such as if the display doesn't appear just press ESC or wait 15 seconds.
What I'm getting at here is that different high quality software projects such as KDE and X windows are not deeply integrated. While I commend these and other projects, it is still not Mac or Windows easy to use. KDE has done a wonderful job of putting some system configuration features into their control center. But I suspect some additional technical features/api's in X would be necessary in order to achieve the seemless resolution changing ala. Mac or Windows.
This is but one example, although perhaps one of the worst ones. High level gui control panels seem to already do many things well, such as configuring your PPP or other low level things.
Would one or possibly two B2 bombers buy a space shuttle?
Not that I advocate that we should actually buy another shuttle. I'm just trying to put the cost into a certian perspective.
After the Challenger was destroyed, and Regan signed the bill to build another shuttle, I seem to remember the cost as being about $2.4 Billion (probably in some late 1980's dollars). Since we spend about $2 billion on a B2, I was just wondering if two B2's more than buy a shuttle vehicle?
Could this Mitsubishi robot possibly be any worse than comming home to your Microsoft robot in your Microsoft Home Of The Future? Depressing, isn't it.
If you watch the Discovery Channel or TLC you've no doubt seen blipverts. You know, where an obviously mechanically processed human voice comes on and speaks at very high speed. So fast that it requires a great cognitive effort to decipher what is being said.
Because when I watch TV I want to veg out (otherwise I'd be on my computer, or reading) I find these blipverts to be very annoying. In fact I find them to be the most offensive form of television advertising that I've ever come across. So much so, that I usually turn the channel instantly. I may ordinarily channel surf, but when I see those Discovery blipverts, you've never seen me move so fast for the remote!
The same story HOURS apart.
Didn't you ever read the Star Trek Faster Than Light FAQ? This kind of thing is bound to happen.
I totally fail to understand your comment in the context of my comment?
They could lower their prices/margins significantly and still remain profitable -- albeit not as much so. Therefore, if they are profitable, they are still funding their current R&D efforts. All they would NOT be doing is building their $40 billion pile of excess cash even higher.
So by lowering their prices...
- They would still be profitable (not as much so)
- They would still maintain current expenditures
- They would still spend at current R&D levels
- They would NOT make their $40 billion pile of cash get any larger
So they would be stuck with $40 billion of cash that they don't know what to do with, but would still be a profitable business.Yes.
It's a financially and publically responsible thing to do.
I think you could have worded this better. Is this statement meant to somehow imply one or more of the following...
- Microsoft is publicly responsible?
- Microsoft has a social conscience?
- Microsoft actually cares about investors? (or anyone else?)
This is required by the SEC. Pure and simple. If they didn't have to disclose this, they wouldn't. This is nothing but CYA. (CYA is a legal term that means Cover Your Posterior) This way when some investor comes back later to sue because the stock takes a dive and doesn't recover, Microsoft can say "we warned you", and "we warned the SEC".Do you suppose that Microsoft is happy about having to (publicly) admit to the SEC that Open Source (a) threatens their business model and (b) might force them to lower their prices?
Okay, I can see one way to interpret it the way you said. It is publicly responsible of Microsoft to disclose this information. After all, the alternative would be to try and hide it, bury it deep somewhere, and deny it. As Open Source takes hold more and more, keep the stock price up by licensing the newly patented Creative Accounting techniques. (Thus behavior would reinforce my points above.) Given that they are disclosing rather than hiding, then, I suppose I must agree with your second point; in some sense, it is publicly responsible of them. It is better than this paragraph's alternative behavior. So you're right. I agree.
This is not PR. This is CYA. (Otherwise called "Cover Your Posterior".)
Companies have to disclose anything that might materially affect their business to both the SEC and investors.
IMHO, it is high time that Microsoft started realistically stating how much of a threat Open Source is. It's not like Open Source is going to hurt Microsoft in the next couple of quarters. But it is a long term concern, which means something of interest to investors.
there's not a great deal of point in making icons vector: 128x128x32 with a decent scaling algorithm (and an optional set of pre-scaled images at smaller sizes) seems to cover pretty much everything.
I disagree. Vector graphics, if you have a fast renderer, are always more desirable than a grid of pixels at a certian size. A vector graphic is infinitely scalable.
You mentioned Mac OS X. But you didn't mention is how beautifully it's doc bar works. As you hover the mouse across it, the shape of the bar distorts and icons scale up, sometime to take up a significant fraction of the entire display. The icons always look beautiful. Not some 32x32 chunky pixelated icon scaled up to 500x500 as the mouse hovers over it. (Before non OS X users complain, this is a temporary (like pull down menus) but beautiful effect that happens as you run the mouse across the icons in the doc. Much better design than the Windows taskbar -- if you have, say 25 applications running at the same time.
If I print a directory listing of files, I want the icons to look beautiful on the printout, or in a PDF. The whole point of vector graphics is that they are infinitely scalable.
Now that we live in the day of plenty of power, and fast vector renderers, with standardized representations for vector graphics (SVG), we should strive to eliminate ALL small pixmap graphics from user interfaces. Not just icons on the desktop, but toolbar icons, widgets, etc. Then the entire user interface becomes infinitely scalable. Even for the person with poor vision who runs at 800x600 because "everything is too small when I run at 1920x1600" can run their display at 1920x1600, and scale up the entire UI so that it looks beautiful, making everything easier to see. Everything would be the same size on the tube as at 800x600, but not pixelated as much.
Scalable vector fonts help in this regard.
In fact, wouldn't it simplify system configuration a lot if the monitor just naturally ran at the highest possible supported resolution? You just go to the control panel to scale up or down the size of the UI elements, including text of menus, titlebars, buttons, etc.
I've been trying to migrate people _away_ from windows, this only makes it easier for them to stay ;-)
I disagree. Take a longer term view. This makes it easier for them to leave Windows. Nothing happens overnight. And won't happen as quickly as I would like.
While so much noise and attention is being focused on Linux, I think the biggest threat to Microsoft is, once again, sneaking in under the radar. (Step 1: First they ignore you.) The biggest threat: cross-over applications. Stuff like OpenOffice. Or the GIMP. (And yes, I understand that GIMP is not a competitor to professional Photoshop users.)
It seems like more and more cross platform tools and toolkits are available. This was once the holy grail, and there were basically NO solutions. Now, a recent slashdot article reveals many ways to develop cross platform applications and gui's.
KDE and Qt are both being ported to Win32 (with GPL license). At some point, expect a flood of KDE applications, including another free KOffice suite, to be available for Windows. Other projects such as The Open CD and GNU Win II only help accellerate the acceptance of not only free, but open source applications by ordinary windows users.
Eventually, users recognize: hey the OS is irrelevant!
In the meantime, Linux on the desktop will have improved a great deal. Or instead, perhaps the recent RelaxOS?
"click here to popup a list"
Change this to
"Open this link in a new window or tab to review list"
Very bad user interface design. I can think of so many problems with this it is not even funny.
There should be no way the user can screw it up. You should never have to say "do it this way in order to do it correctly", and leave the user with an option of doing it the wrong way. And I don't mean mis-filling out something at the application level, I mean the user should not be able to perform a basic operation the wrong way. (Be sure to save your document THIS way, and not accidentially do it the OTHER way.)
Furthermore, you're now expecting a much higher level of operational knowledge from the user. On some platforms (Windows) the user must right-click, pick from a contextual menu. On other platforms (Mac) the user must left-click, and HOLD for a second or so to get the contextual menu to appear. The choice to "open in a new window" is phrased completely differently across various browsers and platforms. No browser is even required to even have a choice to "open in a new window".
In fact, one of the goals of the design is that using the application through the Internet is nearly identical to using the thick-client application. The existing traditional application works a certian way. I want the web based version to be nearly identical. Applications can spontaneously pop up windows. So should the web version. It is not a link you might click, but a button. In the case of a button, even a more experienced net surfer might not think to bring up the contextual menu and pick "Open In New Window" or whatever it might be called on Browser X.
The users of any said application might not be experience net surfers who know how to harness the power of all of the features of their browser. The user might not have any mental model of opening links in the same window vs. different windows. One of the key points of user interface design is that the user should be thinking about their application (accounting, weather forecasting, graphic design, etc.) rather than on how to get the computer to do it or the mechanics of doing it. The mechanics should be totally fluid, natural and never thought of. I don't even want to bring into the user's conciousness the idea of "opening a link in a different window or tab". What if they don't? How should the application be programmed to respond?
I could go on. But my original point is that automatic popup windows are a valid thing that might be desirable to the user. In some cases the user WANTS popup windows. It's a real shame that people with very bad behavior have made popups so loathed. Just as with cookies.
You might now want popup windows when surfing the web. Tabs are a great feature that some browsing software implements as a convenience and that surfers have to learn to effectively use.
I think you way overestimate the capabilities of a 50 year old middle school secretary operating a web based application to accomplish their mission -- which is doesn't have anything to do with computers. The computer is just a tool -- not the purpose of why they are at work today.
And how does this default your browser to goatse.cx everytime you open IE? I wouldn't say anything... except this is modded 5-Informative...
I pointed it out because I mis-parsed your original comment to mean... a java applet, that makes a visitor's IE open to goatse, every time they visit your site. Your reply suggests a different parse of the same comment.