It is bad enough seeing a steady stream of cars and SUVs with only one person in them streaming out of the downtown at rush hour. Now we're going to have cars out there that aren't even taking anyone anywhere.
The environmentalists will not be happy with this development!
There are certainly control and privacy issues in automation, as well who is liability in case of an error (which is probably the one thing that won't be overcome - lawyers will never allow it).
But on the other hand, getting killed in an automobile is much too common, especially given that almost everyone has to travel in one at some point, if not very frequently. Getting around shouldn't be so bloody dangerous considering how ubiquitous it is. Imagine not every having to let drunks choose between being responsible vs driving home drunk. And imagine not ever having to be on the road where some random drunk or incompetent driver, can end your life at any instant, where it is just bad luck that puts you in this spot.
Automobiles are an outdated and obsolete technology, or at least should be. The problem is coming up with and implementing the "next step" when the current technology is so ingrained into our society and city planning. It is a very non-trivial problem to come up with something better, and another non-trivial problem to "upgrade" to that something better on a live production world.
11. power stations are big andspew out big clouds of smoke/steam which sure doesnt look pretty
This is true for fossil fuel power plants. Other types aren't so bad, such as hydroelectric (heavily used here in the US) and nuclear. Don't like air pollution and don't have a lot of rivers nearby? Use nuclear! Most environmentalists have a problem with the "use once, throw away radioactive waste for 4,000 years" model as well.
If the concern is only CO2 emissions, then nuclear is a good option, and the nuclear industry is certainly trying to take advantage of the CO2 hype to attempt to look "green" in comparison. The reality is that we still don't know what to do with the relatively small amount of nuclear waste we're creating right now. How do you store radioactive waste for thousands of years without it leaking? How do you put up signage indicating "Danger" to people of the future who come upon this site who may not know of our language or culture? How do we keep this stuff out of dangerous hands if our society goes all to heck?
The problem of storing nuclear waste safely is a problem that spans such a long period of time that the answers are almost impossible. How can you predict thousands of years into the future? It is so many generations ahead that it isn't possible.
But even after saying that, compared to the nearer term problems that global warming could cause, it is possible that nuclear power is something that we need to do a lot more of. The waste problem is real, but it is already one we have to tackle anyhow. A choice of "neither" would be best though. Smaller scale solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc could do wonders, but governments always think large scale and big plants.
There seriously has to be a better way than spewing pollution into the air or creating nuclear waste.
Sun Microsystems and IBM are other names that come to mind.
Heck, even Red Hat and Novell have the money, though Novell could maybe do so already under their MS deal, and it'd be out of character for Red Hat to do a proprietary product.
And thanks to them, the 10.4.9 update was rushed out the door and more complicated than it needed to be.
Many people had problems with their system not booting after appying the update. In my case, the system drive's file system had unrecoverable errors after the update installed. Say goodbye to my data.
Yes, anything really important was backed up, but I still lost a little bit and I still have to spend a bunch of time reinstalling and recovering my system to the point it was before the update.
I'm so glad to hear that the reason may be that a few people were too childish to get along, so they resorted to fighting in the public arena and in court over the security and stability of OUR systems.
It'll be interesting to see how much the RIAA is willing to spend on a single copyright infringement lawsuit. If they are putting huge resources into suing individual customers, it will look very bad on them.
Well, worse than they already look I guess. The public already sees these as David vs Goliath lawsuits. But now we'll be able to put a number on how big and bad Goliath really is.
I don't think the answer is to make our curriculum less well rounded. By that logic, there should be no required electives outside of your major in university. I don't buy that - I think it is better if people are well rounded (and not in the physical shape sense) and exposed to more things, especially when they are younger.
No doubt the delivery of PE could use some work, as it is not a positive experience for some. As someone who has coached water polo for school PE classes, I know how difficult it is to achieve that. I certainly don't have answers there, but then again, some people grow up hating Math and 2nd languages (French, Spanish, whatever) due to the way they are taught in school. I don't think the answer would be to elminate every subject that people don't like from school.
The Atkins diet is far from the answer too, though the fact it'd take out pop, juice, and chips would probably help in many cases. Removing the empty calories is a good idea for the most part, but Atkins itself has many negative effects on the body. These problems would be even more pronounced in active young children. Active kids need a lot of carbs - restricting them would actually leave them more tired and lethargic. Active young minds need the carbs almost as much as active bodies do, so you risk hurting their grades if you go too far down the diet path. Getting the carbs from something other than junk food would defintely be a big help though - it is the foods that you can eat a ton of and not get full on that can be a problem as far as energy intake goes.
The backwards compatibility is necessary for them to fit this new XML format into the MS Word application. Word has legacy code that they don't even know how to document, so they just tag the documents to follow that specific code path when necessary.
The file format wasn't designed from scratch to be an XML document format, it was designed to be a format that MS Word could read, write, and render. That is what you get when you design the document format around the application instead of writing code with the aim of reading and writing a standard document format.
I'm sure brand new documents in OOXML format are unlikely to even have these undocumented tags, it is the ones converted to OOXML from older DOC files that will be a problem for programs like OpenOffice. So that'll leave MS as having the only office suite that can cleanly migrate your legacy documents to the new format. From an application standpoint (and vendor lockin standpoint), it actually makes a lot of sense for them to do it that way. A new XML version of.doc that allows easy transition from older formats is something that MS would probably be doing anyhow. It is the standardization of it by ISO that makes no sense at all, and is only a byproduct of politics and marketing. From a technical point of view, that is no way to create a standard document format. Therefore it isn't surprising that OOXML is a poor candidate for ISO standardization, as it probably wasn't designed for that purpose in the first place, but instead was mashed into that role for other reasons.
Yeah, but I think many of us here would prefer our friends and relatives made a choice other than Windows not just to make their own lives easier, but ours as well. Many people on here are stuck with the "support" role for others due to being the "computer guy" (or gal) in the group.
Not to mention the spam epidemic filling our inboxes right now that is being caused by Windows botnets.
So I can see why people here try to sell the "Mac is better" to anyone asking them for an opinion before buying. Other people's preferences and choices can negatively affect the rest of us, not just the person who makes the decision.
For home use on the hostile internet, Windows is just a poor choice for most common people, but they just don't know any better. However this isn't really the place to preach that - most people here that are running Windows know how to keep it safe and don't have to ask their friends and relatives for help. The problem isn't the "computer people" using Windows, it is the people who buy it OEM without knowing anything about the options out there. (You'd think the OEM's would be clamoring for something other than Windows too to keep their support costs down, but I guess OS X isn't an option and Ubuntu/Linspire probably wouldn't help most OEMs either).
Of course for me, most of my friends either know what they're doing or are on the Mac or Linux already. And the family is quite a distance away. So I don't have to do the free tech support thing that much anymore. And I could always just refuse to if it became a problem. I can just see where many people here may be coming from when trying to influence other people's choices of OS.
They may have learned. So far we still haven't been able to prove their ties to the SCOX mess, even though it is pretty much a given that they were behind it all. It'd be nice if there were some nice emails there for IBM to dig up, but I think MS may have been wise enough to cover their tracks this time.
Nowadays they buy adds on places like Slashdot and Linux news sites spreading FUD about Windows Server 2003 being cheaper and more stable than Linux (according to a study paid for by MS of course).
Linux has been a lot harder for them to attack, but some of their vectors appear to be at least a tiny bit effective (patent FUD, "Get the Facts", etc). The SCOX fiasco may not have been as effective as they'd liked though. Too bad we don't have any secret memos about that. Would sure be nice if IBM could somehow prove it was MS pulling the puppet strings.
I know quite a few people that hate Word and much prefer almost any other word processor. Though the same people often say that Excel is the best spreadsheet around. In fact, I know a few people who absolutely hate MS but still admit that Excel is quite good.
And a number of people prefer Gnumeric to Calc, but use Calc a fair amount just because it is bundled with Writer and the rest of the OO.org suite.
Certainly Excel, PowerPoint, and Access probably win on their merits and features at least some of the time. Word wins by being bundled with a good suite and by having everyone locked in to their file format. People use it despite swearing at it constantly for all the stupid things it does. The fact MS beat WordPerfect to having a nice Windows UI back in the day helped Word out a fair bit too.
Of course this is all fairly subjective and just from observing a medium sized circle of people.
Actually, blocking.zip was a valid short term solution to a virus problem where I worked. For a long while there, the vast majority of.zip files in the mail system were virus files from some stupid email worm. Allowing them through meant users would infect their computers, making the problems on the LAN and in the mail system even worse.
Those users who can't figure out how to use another archive format or rename the file are the same users who would just click on a random.zip in their email, or have an email reader that helpfully just opens and executes it without a thought. Unfortunate but not unexpected correlation there.
For a while, the department I'm in was blocking.zip too, but given that everyone here has access to unix, it shouldn't have been too difficult to resort to.tar.gz or bzip, or using the web and ftp space and sending a link (which is a better idea anyhow). When the virus died down, I believe the mailserver once again allowed.zip. Stopping the virus, as well as an open offer to help users who need to sent archives, constitues as "solving the problem" and "doing their job" to me. Especially since it was just a short term measure to weather a storm, not a "do things our way or else" mandate.
However I realize some IT departments are not nearly as nice about it, and tend to take the technology into account before the users. Banning PDF would certainly fall into the category of not taking the users into account. Trying to lock down your users doesn't tend to work out that well - they are pretty good at finding ways around the locks, and tend to start avoiding the IT guys when they have computer issues, which is counterproductive.
The only way to actually do that effectively is to outlaw DRM entirely, because DRM is inherently antithetical to choice. In theory, that isn't true. If there were a "one true DRM", it would be possible to play DRM'd files on any device at all. The DRM would only be enforcing that you payed for the copy, and that you're not distributing it to others.
But in practice, this isn't even possible, let alone what is being achieved by DRM. DRM is a broken idea - I'm not sure if that means it should be illegal or not, but I wouldn't be too sad if it were made so.
According to the above posts, Norway is pissed that iTMS's DRM locks you into Apple hardware, and is therefore illegal (nevermind that iTMS songs do play on any Mac and Windows computer via the iTunes app). And who makes the iTunes app? Whether hardware or software, you require an Apple player to play iTMS songs. And that apparently is against the law in Norway.
It would be interesting to see how that rule would apply to much of the software and electronics world.
You mean like how ISO rubberstamped the half-spec for ODF that OASIS submitted? You don't even have spreadsheet formulas spec'ed for crying out loud! OO.o is the "reference" implementation. Whenever anyone implements ODF and runs into a wall because the spec isn't fully spec'ed, they say, "Just do whatever OO.o does". Some spec. It's a spec based on and written for OO.o, indeed it's derived from OO.o's previous XML format. And OO.o writes lots of stuff in its documents that are NOT in the spec (spreadsheet formulas being the most well known example). No doubt the ODF standard needs some work, but at least the reference implementation is available with source code. The OOXML spec references implementation details in old versions of MS Word and even Corel Wordperfect, but does not document how they work. At least with ODF you can go and look at the code implementing these edge cases, whereas with OOXML, the products being referenced are closed source and likely covered by various patents that wouldn't allow reimplementation anyhow.
Plus OOXML just reinvents the wheel everywhere it has a chance (well actually not quite, it just used the old.doc way of doing things in an XML-ized way), whereas ODF actually uses existing a XML standards in many places. ODF, while maybe not feature complete, is an actual attempt at an XML based document standard. OOXML is an ugly reimplementation of.doc whose sole purpose is to obtain "standard" status for government bids, as well as to confuse the general public (even the name is meant to confuse it with ODF - Office Open XML??? Like nobody around the ODF format uses the initials OO and the words Open Office...)
In the end it may help competing office suites import MS Office documents better, but only versions saved in the new format, which currently excludes about 99% of all existing.doc files. Whereas MS gets to still be the only one with full compliance and backwards compatibility (though they aren't 100% at it either).
It has already been proven how easy it would've been for MS to just support ODF (others have written the plugins). If ODF was missing features is MS's opinion, why didn't they contribute to the standard instead of reinventing the wheel?
You realize there is a much easier counter-example where the socialists win, don't you?
Here's an example: my grandmother, who lives in the USA, had a problem with her hand. It resulted in her being in fairly bad pain every day, and made it impossible for her to use the hand for most things. The problem was easily treatable, but, because she couldn't afford the surgery, she was told she'd she could not have it.
Market forces: 0, Government managed care: 1.
Letting the market manage your care means your wallet gets to decide whether or not you are valuable enough to be worth treating, and how soon they will get around to treating you.
The purpose of not giving market forces control is to avoid people buying their way to the front of the line. Government managed care is much more fair to everyone. Yes, sometimes there are seemingly arbitrary rules which are frustrating, because there isn't enough health care money to do everything for everyone. But it seems the decisions of a government or health authority are a better way to solve such issues than just giving better care to those with the most money. Even with a safety net in place, do you think those using that safety net would get the quick, high quality treatment that the more wealthy pay for? Or would poor (literaly) grandma be told that she has to wait a year, just like the richer Canadian grandma in your example?
Seems that people aren't really happy with either system though. Neither system is anywhere near perfect. I can't say I blame anyone who buys their care from an "illegal" clinic or in the USA when they are stuck on a waiting list in Canada, as I'd probably consider doing the same (I'm lucky enough to be able to afford that choice).
Which is why I think the new formats are way too soon. We don't need the space yet. DVD9 is quite good as it is. An upgrade to the DVD standard would probably suffice for most things right now, even when it comes to HD content.
DVD (good old red laser), or some sort of close relative to it, could still be the winner in the format war. I sure wouldn't shed a tear to see both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray lose.
Actually, DVD sales have brought back TV series before, so if anything, buying the actual HD-DVD or the regular DVD would be a better move if you want another movie. Showing interest is not enough to help a studio profit.
Though I assume you knew that anyways. The real news was back when the HD-DVD protection was broken. The fact that rips appeared online was inevitable after that point. One might argue the breaking of the DRM was inevitable too, but still possibly newsworthy to report when it actually happened.
You're entitled to your opinion, but I think their touchscreen phone with a full operating system (OS X) is fairly innovative. I'm not sure it is a good phone mind you, but it is certainly different, despite the unoriginal name.
Nintendo's Wii (now there is an original name) has real innovation as well in the WiiMote.
Sure, both systems have fanboys, and always have. However, both companies are selling a lot more units than they used to. That isn't because of fanboys, that is because of innovative and exciting products. Fanboys are the ones buying the crap no matter how good or innovative it is, whereas real consumers are the ones buying from these companies right now.
Hopefully you keep your Karma though. Not everything these companies do is gold. An iPod, while nice, is also just an expensive MP3 player which is trying to push their DRM'd music to the public. They aren't exactly the most open company all the time, as is the case with the phone too.
IV to VI first for sure. A lot of the best parts of the original 3 get spoiled if you watch the prequils first. And the prequils really assume that you've watched IV to VI, otherwise the line "Obi-Wan Kenobi, meet Anikan Skywalker" doesn't really mean a whole lot.
Watching I to VI would be a unique experience, but probably inferior to the watching them in the order they were released.
I've always found working in Windows XP to be frustrating and annoying, but never was able to articulate it as well as this author has (even though he was mostly referring to Vista). Of course any version of Windows is frustrating for someone used to Unix just due to its lack of certain features, but I found XP so much more difficult to adjust to than 98 or 2K.
The fact that Windows XP is so incredibly verbose about what is happening is extremely annoying. Constant bubbles popping up from the system tray talking about hardware, updates, firewalls, unused desktop icons (yes, I know it can be disabled), etc. Dialog boxes popping up for everything. I just want the OS to leave me alone and let me work. But UAC in Vista will make this even worse.
As the author mentioned, they also have the habit of renaming and moving commonly used tools, and making them harder to find for someone who really knows what they're looking for. Probably the worst example in XP was the changes to the control panels regarding network settings, workgroup computers, etc. Things that were easy to find in 98/2K became more difficult to find. Apparently Vista moves the "Add and Remove Programs" feature to "Programs and Features", and "Display" to "Personalization". I don't see how that makes the OS more intuitive to use at all, whether it is for a new user, or a power user with prior Windows experience.
Despite having a much different UI than GNOME/KDE/Windows, I found OS X much easier to adapt to. The Unix underneath certainly helped a bit, but the bigger part was how things just worked. There are still a couple annoyances, 'Finder' being the biggest one (the unix command line somewhat mitigates this), but overall OS X is so much better at not getting in the way of the user.
I think that if I could replace Finder with Windows Explorer or Konqueror (which I could probably do actually), I'd have very little to complain about on my OS X desktop. Add Fink and suddenly you've got something similar to Linux. Add Parallels and Boot Camp, or maybe free tools like DarWine and Qemu, if you need Windows applications. OS X has become the ultimate desktop (can run almost anything but Windows games), and Macs the ultimate hardware (can run OS X, Windows XP/Vista, and Linux on the bare hardware). The fact that Mac OS X has gotten faster every release, and Windows has instead eaten gobs more memory every release, is just icing on the cake.
So if IBM had picked Motorola, then the Mac and PC may have ended up having the same processor a heck of a lot earlier than they did. Could've been interesting.
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It is bad enough seeing a steady stream of cars and SUVs with only one person in them streaming out of the downtown at rush hour. Now we're going to have cars out there that aren't even taking anyone anywhere.
The environmentalists will not be happy with this development!
There are certainly control and privacy issues in automation, as well who is liability in case of an error (which is probably the one thing that won't be overcome - lawyers will never allow it).
But on the other hand, getting killed in an automobile is much too common, especially given that almost everyone has to travel in one at some point, if not very frequently. Getting around shouldn't be so bloody dangerous considering how ubiquitous it is. Imagine not every having to let drunks choose between being responsible vs driving home drunk. And imagine not ever having to be on the road where some random drunk or incompetent driver, can end your life at any instant, where it is just bad luck that puts you in this spot.
Automobiles are an outdated and obsolete technology, or at least should be. The problem is coming up with and implementing the "next step" when the current technology is so ingrained into our society and city planning. It is a very non-trivial problem to come up with something better, and another non-trivial problem to "upgrade" to that something better on a live production world.
This is true for fossil fuel power plants. Other types aren't so bad, such as hydroelectric (heavily used here in the US) and nuclear. Don't like air pollution and don't have a lot of rivers nearby? Use nuclear! Most environmentalists have a problem with the "use once, throw away radioactive waste for 4,000 years" model as well.
If the concern is only CO2 emissions, then nuclear is a good option, and the nuclear industry is certainly trying to take advantage of the CO2 hype to attempt to look "green" in comparison. The reality is that we still don't know what to do with the relatively small amount of nuclear waste we're creating right now. How do you store radioactive waste for thousands of years without it leaking? How do you put up signage indicating "Danger" to people of the future who come upon this site who may not know of our language or culture? How do we keep this stuff out of dangerous hands if our society goes all to heck?
The problem of storing nuclear waste safely is a problem that spans such a long period of time that the answers are almost impossible. How can you predict thousands of years into the future? It is so many generations ahead that it isn't possible.
But even after saying that, compared to the nearer term problems that global warming could cause, it is possible that nuclear power is something that we need to do a lot more of. The waste problem is real, but it is already one we have to tackle anyhow. A choice of "neither" would be best though. Smaller scale solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc could do wonders, but governments always think large scale and big plants.
There seriously has to be a better way than spewing pollution into the air or creating nuclear waste.
Sun Microsystems and IBM are other names that come to mind.
Heck, even Red Hat and Novell have the money, though Novell could maybe do so already under their MS deal, and it'd be out of character for Red Hat to do a proprietary product.
And thanks to them, the 10.4.9 update was rushed out the door and more complicated than it needed to be.
Many people had problems with their system not booting after appying the update. In my case, the system drive's file system had unrecoverable errors after the update installed. Say goodbye to my data.
Yes, anything really important was backed up, but I still lost a little bit and I still have to spend a bunch of time reinstalling and recovering my system to the point it was before the update.
I'm so glad to hear that the reason may be that a few people were too childish to get along, so they resorted to fighting in the public arena and in court over the security and stability of OUR systems.
Grow up for fsck sake.
It'll be interesting to see how much the RIAA is willing to spend on a single copyright infringement lawsuit. If they are putting huge resources into suing individual customers, it will look very bad on them.
Well, worse than they already look I guess. The public already sees these as David vs Goliath lawsuits. But now we'll be able to put a number on how big and bad Goliath really is.
I don't think the answer is to make our curriculum less well rounded. By that logic, there should be no required electives outside of your major in university. I don't buy that - I think it is better if people are well rounded (and not in the physical shape sense) and exposed to more things, especially when they are younger.
No doubt the delivery of PE could use some work, as it is not a positive experience for some. As someone who has coached water polo for school PE classes, I know how difficult it is to achieve that. I certainly don't have answers there, but then again, some people grow up hating Math and 2nd languages (French, Spanish, whatever) due to the way they are taught in school. I don't think the answer would be to elminate every subject that people don't like from school.
The Atkins diet is far from the answer too, though the fact it'd take out pop, juice, and chips would probably help in many cases. Removing the empty calories is a good idea for the most part, but Atkins itself has many negative effects on the body. These problems would be even more pronounced in active young children. Active kids need a lot of carbs - restricting them would actually leave them more tired and lethargic. Active young minds need the carbs almost as much as active bodies do, so you risk hurting their grades if you go too far down the diet path. Getting the carbs from something other than junk food would defintely be a big help though - it is the foods that you can eat a ton of and not get full on that can be a problem as far as energy intake goes.
Wouldn't StarOffice from Sun make a lot more sense in this case? Dell can take a cut of the price, and Sun provides support for the product.
The backwards compatibility is necessary for them to fit this new XML format into the MS Word application. Word has legacy code that they don't even know how to document, so they just tag the documents to follow that specific code path when necessary.
.doc that allows easy transition from older formats is something that MS would probably be doing anyhow. It is the standardization of it by ISO that makes no sense at all, and is only a byproduct of politics and marketing. From a technical point of view, that is no way to create a standard document format. Therefore it isn't surprising that OOXML is a poor candidate for ISO standardization, as it probably wasn't designed for that purpose in the first place, but instead was mashed into that role for other reasons.
The file format wasn't designed from scratch to be an XML document format, it was designed to be a format that MS Word could read, write, and render. That is what you get when you design the document format around the application instead of writing code with the aim of reading and writing a standard document format.
I'm sure brand new documents in OOXML format are unlikely to even have these undocumented tags, it is the ones converted to OOXML from older DOC files that will be a problem for programs like OpenOffice. So that'll leave MS as having the only office suite that can cleanly migrate your legacy documents to the new format. From an application standpoint (and vendor lockin standpoint), it actually makes a lot of sense for them to do it that way. A new XML version of
Yeah, but I think many of us here would prefer our friends and relatives made a choice other than Windows not just to make their own lives easier, but ours as well. Many people on here are stuck with the "support" role for others due to being the "computer guy" (or gal) in the group.
Not to mention the spam epidemic filling our inboxes right now that is being caused by Windows botnets.
So I can see why people here try to sell the "Mac is better" to anyone asking them for an opinion before buying. Other people's preferences and choices can negatively affect the rest of us, not just the person who makes the decision.
For home use on the hostile internet, Windows is just a poor choice for most common people, but they just don't know any better. However this isn't really the place to preach that - most people here that are running Windows know how to keep it safe and don't have to ask their friends and relatives for help. The problem isn't the "computer people" using Windows, it is the people who buy it OEM without knowing anything about the options out there. (You'd think the OEM's would be clamoring for something other than Windows too to keep their support costs down, but I guess OS X isn't an option and Ubuntu/Linspire probably wouldn't help most OEMs either).
Of course for me, most of my friends either know what they're doing or are on the Mac or Linux already. And the family is quite a distance away. So I don't have to do the free tech support thing that much anymore. And I could always just refuse to if it became a problem. I can just see where many people here may be coming from when trying to influence other people's choices of OS.
They may have learned. So far we still haven't been able to prove their ties to the SCOX mess, even though it is pretty much a given that they were behind it all. It'd be nice if there were some nice emails there for IBM to dig up, but I think MS may have been wise enough to cover their tracks this time.
Nowadays they buy adds on places like Slashdot and Linux news sites spreading FUD about Windows Server 2003 being cheaper and more stable than Linux (according to a study paid for by MS of course).
Linux has been a lot harder for them to attack, but some of their vectors appear to be at least a tiny bit effective (patent FUD, "Get the Facts", etc). The SCOX fiasco may not have been as effective as they'd liked though. Too bad we don't have any secret memos about that. Would sure be nice if IBM could somehow prove it was MS pulling the puppet strings.
I know quite a few people that hate Word and much prefer almost any other word processor. Though the same people often say that Excel is the best spreadsheet around. In fact, I know a few people who absolutely hate MS but still admit that Excel is quite good.
And a number of people prefer Gnumeric to Calc, but use Calc a fair amount just because it is bundled with Writer and the rest of the OO.org suite.
Certainly Excel, PowerPoint, and Access probably win on their merits and features at least some of the time. Word wins by being bundled with a good suite and by having everyone locked in to their file format. People use it despite swearing at it constantly for all the stupid things it does. The fact MS beat WordPerfect to having a nice Windows UI back in the day helped Word out a fair bit too.
Of course this is all fairly subjective and just from observing a medium sized circle of people.
Actually, blocking .zip was a valid short term solution to a virus problem where I worked. For a long while there, the vast majority of .zip files in the mail system were virus files from some stupid email worm. Allowing them through meant users would infect their computers, making the problems on the LAN and in the mail system even worse.
.zip in their email, or have an email reader that helpfully just opens and executes it without a thought. Unfortunate but not unexpected correlation there.
.zip too, but given that everyone here has access to unix, it shouldn't have been too difficult to resort to .tar.gz or bzip, or using the web and ftp space and sending a link (which is a better idea anyhow). When the virus died down, I believe the mailserver once again allowed .zip. Stopping the virus, as well as an open offer to help users who need to sent archives, constitues as "solving the problem" and "doing their job" to me. Especially since it was just a short term measure to weather a storm, not a "do things our way or else" mandate.
Those users who can't figure out how to use another archive format or rename the file are the same users who would just click on a random
For a while, the department I'm in was blocking
However I realize some IT departments are not nearly as nice about it, and tend to take the technology into account before the users. Banning PDF would certainly fall into the category of not taking the users into account. Trying to lock down your users doesn't tend to work out that well - they are pretty good at finding ways around the locks, and tend to start avoiding the IT guys when they have computer issues, which is counterproductive.
But in practice, this isn't even possible, let alone what is being achieved by DRM. DRM is a broken idea - I'm not sure if that means it should be illegal or not, but I wouldn't be too sad if it were made so.
It would be interesting to see how that rule would apply to much of the software and electronics world.
Plus OOXML just reinvents the wheel everywhere it has a chance (well actually not quite, it just used the old
In the end it may help competing office suites import MS Office documents better, but only versions saved in the new format, which currently excludes about 99% of all existing
It has already been proven how easy it would've been for MS to just support ODF (others have written the plugins). If ODF was missing features is MS's opinion, why didn't they contribute to the standard instead of reinventing the wheel?
You realize there is a much easier counter-example where the socialists win, don't you?
Here's an example: my grandmother, who lives in the USA, had a problem with her hand. It resulted in her being in fairly bad pain every day, and made it impossible for her to use the hand for most things. The problem was easily treatable, but, because she couldn't afford the surgery, she was told she'd she could not have it.
Market forces: 0, Government managed care: 1.
Letting the market manage your care means your wallet gets to decide whether or not you are valuable enough to be worth treating, and how soon they will get around to treating you.
The purpose of not giving market forces control is to avoid people buying their way to the front of the line. Government managed care is much more fair to everyone. Yes, sometimes there are seemingly arbitrary rules which are frustrating, because there isn't enough health care money to do everything for everyone. But it seems the decisions of a government or health authority are a better way to solve such issues than just giving better care to those with the most money. Even with a safety net in place, do you think those using that safety net would get the quick, high quality treatment that the more wealthy pay for? Or would poor (literaly) grandma be told that she has to wait a year, just like the richer Canadian grandma in your example?
Seems that people aren't really happy with either system though. Neither system is anywhere near perfect. I can't say I blame anyone who buys their care from an "illegal" clinic or in the USA when they are stuck on a waiting list in Canada, as I'd probably consider doing the same (I'm lucky enough to be able to afford that choice).
Which is why I think the new formats are way too soon. We don't need the space yet. DVD9 is quite good as it is. An upgrade to the DVD standard would probably suffice for most things right now, even when it comes to HD content.
DVD (good old red laser), or some sort of close relative to it, could still be the winner in the format war. I sure wouldn't shed a tear to see both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray lose.
Actually, DVD sales have brought back TV series before, so if anything, buying the actual HD-DVD or the regular DVD would be a better move if you want another movie. Showing interest is not enough to help a studio profit.
Though I assume you knew that anyways. The real news was back when the HD-DVD protection was broken. The fact that rips appeared online was inevitable after that point. One might argue the breaking of the DRM was inevitable too, but still possibly newsworthy to report when it actually happened.
You're entitled to your opinion, but I think their touchscreen phone with a full operating system (OS X) is fairly innovative. I'm not sure it is a good phone mind you, but it is certainly different, despite the unoriginal name.
Nintendo's Wii (now there is an original name) has real innovation as well in the WiiMote.
Sure, both systems have fanboys, and always have. However, both companies are selling a lot more units than they used to. That isn't because of fanboys, that is because of innovative and exciting products. Fanboys are the ones buying the crap no matter how good or innovative it is, whereas real consumers are the ones buying from these companies right now.
Hopefully you keep your Karma though. Not everything these companies do is gold. An iPod, while nice, is also just an expensive MP3 player which is trying to push their DRM'd music to the public. They aren't exactly the most open company all the time, as is the case with the phone too.
Mark Cuban maybe? Not sure if he's actually be effective at leading Apple, but he's a rockstar tech guy for sure.
Not too many of those around though.
IV to VI first for sure. A lot of the best parts of the original 3 get spoiled if you watch the prequils first. And the prequils really assume that you've watched IV to VI, otherwise the line "Obi-Wan Kenobi, meet Anikan Skywalker" doesn't really mean a whole lot.
Watching I to VI would be a unique experience, but probably inferior to the watching them in the order they were released.
I've always found working in Windows XP to be frustrating and annoying, but never was able to articulate it as well as this author has (even though he was mostly referring to Vista). Of course any version of Windows is frustrating for someone used to Unix just due to its lack of certain features, but I found XP so much more difficult to adjust to than 98 or 2K.
The fact that Windows XP is so incredibly verbose about what is happening is extremely annoying. Constant bubbles popping up from the system tray talking about hardware, updates, firewalls, unused desktop icons (yes, I know it can be disabled), etc. Dialog boxes popping up for everything. I just want the OS to leave me alone and let me work. But UAC in Vista will make this even worse.
As the author mentioned, they also have the habit of renaming and moving commonly used tools, and making them harder to find for someone who really knows what they're looking for. Probably the worst example in XP was the changes to the control panels regarding network settings, workgroup computers, etc. Things that were easy to find in 98/2K became more difficult to find. Apparently Vista moves the "Add and Remove Programs" feature to "Programs and Features", and "Display" to "Personalization". I don't see how that makes the OS more intuitive to use at all, whether it is for a new user, or a power user with prior Windows experience.
Despite having a much different UI than GNOME/KDE/Windows, I found OS X much easier to adapt to. The Unix underneath certainly helped a bit, but the bigger part was how things just worked. There are still a couple annoyances, 'Finder' being the biggest one (the unix command line somewhat mitigates this), but overall OS X is so much better at not getting in the way of the user.
I think that if I could replace Finder with Windows Explorer or Konqueror (which I could probably do actually), I'd have very little to complain about on my OS X desktop. Add Fink and suddenly you've got something similar to Linux. Add Parallels and Boot Camp, or maybe free tools like DarWine and Qemu, if you need Windows applications. OS X has become the ultimate desktop (can run almost anything but Windows games), and Macs the ultimate hardware (can run OS X, Windows XP/Vista, and Linux on the bare hardware). The fact that Mac OS X has gotten faster every release, and Windows has instead eaten gobs more memory every release, is just icing on the cake.
So if IBM had picked Motorola, then the Mac and PC may have ended up having the same processor a heck of a lot earlier than they did. Could've been interesting.