Re:The Before and after shots look backwards
on
Font HOWTO For Linux
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· Score: 2
Strange, the after (930.png)screenshot looks a lot better to me. All the fonts are at least as good if not better. There's less of those alias pixels evident. The fonts look a little thin, but sharp.
I'm on a Dell Inspiron 7000 running Windows 2000. That adds up to 9000, by the way. Maybe with a different combo of hw and os, I would see something differnet. Such as a big smiling Happy Mac icon.
They should build a "Do you want your fonts to look pretty?" wizard into the Linux installer. Because it's gonna look different on different hardware.
Bill is still a tightwad at heart, or he would have been giving money earlier.
My belief is: Had Bill been more charitable earlier on, the whole anti-trust thing never would have happened. Look at Carnegie, we think of him as some great philanthropist but he was just as much of a monopolist as Gates is.
Basically, if you're really rich you have to be looser with the money in ways that the public will see. Like tipping more at restaurants, donating playgrounds, curing AIDS, that sort of shit. Of course anyone who is that rich is stingy behind closed doors, but that's not the point. The point is to not be so wealthy and give so little back that someone like me can completely rationalize the pirating of Microsoft software because, well, they've got $40 billion in the bank, they really don't need a few hundred from me, and what have they done for me lately?
If Bill really wants me to think he's a philanthropist, make Microsoft software free for K-12 schools. Anything less is just PR.
Think of it: when you exchange files with other businesses, you have two realistic choices of file formats: Office or plaintext
I think PDF is a viable (growing even) third option. Adobe is "evil" just like MS (remeber Sklyarov)... regardless, PDF is nice and it works well, and the files are way smaller than word docs.
There's no mention that it will run on PDAs. In fact it sounds like it's not intended to. I think it should. If it's a really lightweight app, it should run on a PocketPC.
(Yeah, Microsoft, dont' feed the trolls, blah blah blah. Stay with me folks.)
The very last line of The Article says "In the era of the WEB, are PC applications obsolete?" I think, for an "outlook killer" the answer has to be yes. Not having a handheld version of a LIGHTWEIGHT, MULTI-PLATFORM PIM seems to completely miss the point of that whole "market space." Leveraging that portability onto the PDA-space would enhance this product's Outlook-killability.
You can get PDAs with 400 MHz processors and 64MB RAM nowadays, with WiFi those things are capable of playing in realtime. Why ignore that?
I realize that your comment is a jab at Microsoft's Licensing 6.0, which got them a ton of profits, but it should be pointed out that your scheme is actually much worse than what Microsoft is doing.
Here's how the MS deal works: Let's say you buy Office -- you get a license which lets you run whatever versions of Office are available over the next two years.
When the two years are up, you can still run Office, you just don't get any new versions. You could still run the Office XP you have five years from now, three years after your subscription has expires. What Microsoft is counting on is that once you're on this treadmill, you never get off. You just renew your contract every two years, not buy new upgrades every time a new version of Office comes out, which is a less predictable cycle.
I'm really amazed so many people signed up for it, but most of them were probably on Office 97 or 2000. I bet they dont' sign up again in two years, because they'll then be at the bleeding edge with Office 2003 or Office Palladium or whatever and people like me on XP will wait for the release past that to uprgade. (OMG how will I live without XDocs??)
Yeah, I think your fears are valid. Palladium is another step down the road to making sure that no officially-sanctioned information works its way into your brain. This will be sold as making things "less confusing" and "more secure" for the easily-led-astray end user.
For example:
There was that story about the "switcher" which turned out to be an (obvious) Microsoft PR piece. Microsoft pulled the page, but Google has it cached.
Soon, I think Google (or at least the public-facing cache) will be sued out of existence. Why? Consider this: the information on that page was copyright of Microsoft. When Google cached it, they were presenting content they didn't have any rights to, without the copyright holder's permission to rebroadcast or redisplay that content.
I know it's a stretch, but would a google cache of MP3s be acceptable to the RIAA (or even most of Slashdot?) No. Why should it be different with Microsoft's IP as embodied in that "switch" document?
Fundamentally, are they not both IP? Doesn't the whole basis of IP come down to having final, ultimate authority over the IP you own? How is Google caching a web page, for the whole world to see, any different from www.mp3z.hax0rs.org providing a million MP3s for download? In both cases, the content is no longer controlled by the owner, and thus it fails the "hey, that's my IP, only I can disseminate it!" sniff test. I suppose one could argue that since Microsoft published the site, they made the information available to whoever wants to look at it. But Microsoft has the right to log your visits, track your navigation through their site, etc. That might even be a basic function of their web site, and by removing that page from the larger context, MS lawyers will argue that users might get "confused" and that the Google cache is actually harming Microsoft's reputation. For example, I would argue that the weird numbers and letters in the Google cache URL make Microsoft products seem confusing, whereas they are actually touted for their ease of use. (I'm thinking of the vivendisucks.com web site that was shut down here...)
Anyway, enough future lawyer speculation. The point is: The google cache, and perhaps search enginges in general, allow users to access information (by which I mean IP) in ways that diminish the content holder's control of the transaction. Big content holders will fight this, since (they will argue) they want to be able to provide you the best possible value by tailoring their message to you.
I'm sure Microsoft is already pissed that when I'm looking for a KB article, I search on Google since it searches the Microsoft site better than Microsoft can. How much longer do we really think that kind of thing will be permitted?
I think Ballmer is talking about Windows Services for UNIX though I have no idea what those are. Maybe cygwin in reverse??
Perhaps http://www.microsoft.com/unix/ can explain it to you, though.
Unfortunately, there isn't much technical content there. My favorite part is this page: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/intero p/unix/ Which proceeds to proclaim
This section of the site is devoted to information about how to integrate Windows and Windows-based applications into UNIX and Linux environments. The resources here include tools from Microsoft and other companies to help ensure smooth interoperability.
You might want to read this KB article. It tells you how to make that annoying "You're running low on disk space" message go away.
In brief, you need to regedit and add this: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\P ol icies\Explorer NoLowDiskSpaceChecks REG_DWORD 1
Re:I'm going to be NMCI'd next month. Some thought
on
Building The Navy Intranet
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I have to wonder how long it takes to log on, if you have the thousands of GPO entries in place and roaming profiles needed to make all that happen.
My girlfriend is in the same situation, and it's ridiculous. If she bookmarks a site in IE, it's gone when she logs back in. But the default bookmark for Hotmail is always there. Hotmail is blocked by the Internet filer. She can't change the screen resolution or background picture.
She spend her own $$ to buy a grade book program so she can enter grades, attendance, etc. on her Palm, and transfer the info to her office computer. Except she can't install any software on the office computer. The IT guys at her school can't install software either. To install software, someone has to get in the taxpayer-purchased car at the District HQ, drive to her school, and install it for her. The in-house IT guys can't even install a printer.
Then there's the BESS internet filter, which prevents her from doing any real research. She wanted a poster of Thomas Jefferson for her classroom; all the websites where you'd buy a poster were blocked because they had "objectionable content: swimsuits." The District's policy states that BESS can be bypassed for educational research needs, but there is no system in place to make such a request. She can search Google, but the google cache is blocked.
These are "new" (less than 1yr old) Dell machines with Win2K. They are completely useless. She does all her computing work on her laptop (PII-266) at home now, because the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Seattle Schools has spent to put a computer on each desk has resulted in a useless, locked-down-to-the-point-of-being-a-kiosk computer on each desk. This is also the same school district that just gave their superintendent a raise to $220,000, who then discovered a $33 million accounting "oops." The superintendent was hired because of his strong financial background and he has never been a school teacher or administrator.
The O rings could have in no way been saved by modern navigation systems.
Modern navigation systems? How 'bout a thermometer and a freakin' phone call to launch control? (Sorry to bother you sir, what with the countdown and all, but the ambient temperature is 29F. The SRBs are only rated down to 32F, and we've never launched before 40F before.)
But noooo, that would have stood in the way of the Great Communicator's PR Machine.
Yes, I'm *still* pissed about Jan 28 1986. I don't plan on getting over it any time soon.
Thank God my XP box is compatible with the Internet. I can tell The Internet is working, because ZoneAlarm keeps telling me when Media Player tries to Phone Home.
Hey, don't forget about your Miranda rights. Miranda was a convicted rapist and a very bad man. The police never informed him of his rights (you have a right to remain silent, etc.) He got off (in more ways than one) and in return for the suffering of his victims we have the right to remain silent. Thanks for taking one for the team, ladies!
Okay, back to the topic:
If I were the defense, I would argue collusion between the DOJ and INS. They are working more closely in the post 9-11 era, you know.
I thinkt the parent was trying to comment on the general trend, of like when IE decides it's time to open a Word doc from inside IE rather than making you save it and open it with Word. It works pretty well, though how making IE into a front end for Word benefits anyone (except for Microsoft) has never been understood. Adobe is guilty too, now that all those PDFs want to open in my browser. In Mozilla too, which is REALLY ANNOYING when it's a big PDF and you are on dial-up.
It seems that the way to "win" this war is to get the customers to become, uh, accustomed to a "lifestyle" (for lack of a better word.) Hell, they even made a Hollywood MOVIE, with mega-superstar TOM HANKS, called "You've Got Mail." And there was that song "IM Me" which was big in the UK or something. With multiple meme vectorization like that, I don't think AOL is going away any time soon. If it does, something will arise to fill the power vacuum and based on just about everyone's experience with MSN, it ain't gonna be Microsoft.
Changing their browser will be a Big Deal. I have to imagine that it won't work very well at first, but eventually web designers will steer clear of shady Microsoft undocumented Black Box APIs (or whatever you want to call them, I thought.NET applets was good) and get back to programming their web servers.
Honestly I'm amazed that AOL hasn't bailed on IE before now. What were they thinking, giving away "mindshare" to the competition like that? I guess they were just watching their stock bubble grow and not thinking about the future. Of course the only smart thing they've done lately is buy Time Warner, that has probably kept them from having to pull a WorldCom.
NOTE: Internet Explorer 6 is preinstalled by default in all versions of Windows XP. To provide computer manufacturers greater flexibility in configuring desktop versions of Windows XP, Microsoft has made it possible for OEMs, administrators, and users to remove user access to Internet Explorer while leaving the Internet Explorer code intact and fully functional to ensure the functionality of programs and operating system functions that rely on it.
In Windows XP, Internet Explorer is integrated into the operating system so completely that you can't remove it. If that language sounds familiar, it's because that's what Microsoft was claiming in that whole Antitrust thing back in the 90s. Back then you actually could run Win98 without IE if you ran that 98Lite thing, but now forget about it.
You can hide the IE icon from the desktop but IE is still installed. For example, even if you remove IE from the desktop, the Windows Update link from the Start menu will still use IE to connect to the mothership.
All your points are completely valid, Dr. Spork. But IE can't be uninstalled, it can only be "hidden."
My laptop came with 512 MB of RAM, a 15" screen, a DVD player, and Windows XP Home Edition preinstalled, for $450 less than a comparable iBook.
Then, "she" says
My recommendation is to go straight to Windows XP Professional; the extra features for mobile users are worth it.
AppleWorks (previously called ClarisWorks) pales in comparison to Microsoft Office XP.
So, the Upgrade from XP Home to Pro costs $200, and the lowest price I've seen for Office XP Standard (though I'm sure the extra features of Pro are a must for a freelance tech writer) is about $300.
Looks like that $450 "savings" will pay for most of the $500 of Microsoft software you will need to get your laptop up an running!
This "article" is so obviously the work of marketroids. Even the little steps for copying your bookmarks are written in the standard Microsoft command formatting, where the things you have to click are in bold type.
By the way, they forgot to mention that you need to use a PC-formatted zip disk or your new Windows XP laptop won't be able to read it.
An escrow agent should protect you if you don't get the goods you ordered. Though in the case of stamps, it might be a problem if you don't get the stamps appraised immediately upon arrival. If you discover say three months later that the stamp is not what was advertised, then yeah the escrow agent has already released your money. That comes back to caveat emptor.
If the seller is jacking up the selling price of an item with phantom bids, well, you shouldn't have set your limit so high. Look at it this way: You paid more, but you were willing to go that high anyway.
Ebay's conduct with respect to the stamp collectors is completely reprehensible but very understandable in keeping with the time-honored tradition of "shoot the messenger."
I wonder if Ebay could employ some simple technology measures to stop phantom bidding, like making sure that the same IP address can't list an item and bid on it too. You know, as much as we all hate it, the Pentium serial number would be a good way to see if it's the same person listing the item and later placing phantom bids. Of course then the scammers would figure it out, and place their phantom bids from the library or something. Or maybe ebay could look for phantom bidders that always seem to bid on the same real seller's auctions. I don't know. What is obvious is that the fraud is real, but it occurs maybe in.1% of transactions, and it's worth more to ebay to let the fraud happen and generally rely on the honesty of people than to take a more active approach.
One good lawsuit could change all that. If it can be shown that ebay is knowingly letting power sellers rip people off, and the story of "Rich" is true, then that sounds like a Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization to me.
Don't hold your breath waiting for the U.S. Attorney General to stand up for the little guy against the Big Corporation. But maybe that AG for the State of New York will do it.
I kinda thought ebay's whole attitude was Use An Escrow Agent If You Don't Want To Get Ripped Off. Now, if the escrow people are defrauding you, then that's a different story.
I have a bunch of stuff I'd like to sell, like a guitar and a mountain bike and a computer, but I'm not going to bother putting it on ebay because my rating is a big fat zero, and I doubt anyone will want to buy from an unknown quantity such as myself.
Ebay has a profit motive to have as many auctions as possible. They also make more money when the price gets higher. They don't make money when they have to investigate fraud claims, and kick power sellers off the system.
Let's put it another way: Let's say you're a power seller, and you sell a $1000 item. You give ebay their cut ($150 I think) and pocket $850. Ebay is happy, you're happy, the only one unhappy is the "little guy."
Where is ebay's motivation to change the system? Libertarians and free market economic darwinists, start flaming now.
Yeah, I thought about editing out the bad language, but I decided not to. I was trying to express how upset I was (i.e. I entered flamebait mode) because unicron is clever. His plan very subtlely makes the case for a general, blanket form of censorship, an over-arching technological solution that has the potential to go way too far. The censorship (blocking overseas p2p servers) appears to deal with a specific issue but that first step is a very dangerous one, and it should not be taken.
So like, when a meteor hits the earth, that's God touching it? Or like X-rays from a distant star, that's God?
If believing in observable physical phenomena means I believe in God, then I'll take a front-row seat under the big top when the revival comes to town.
I always though God meant something more than that, like believing in am omniscient or omnipresent "being," which to me seems totally retarded to even think about because there's no way that our non-omniscient bounded-by-time brains are going to be able to "understand" this God thing in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Strange, the after (930.png)screenshot looks a lot better to me. All the fonts are at least as good if not better. There's less of those alias pixels evident. The fonts look a little thin, but sharp.
I'm on a Dell Inspiron 7000 running Windows 2000. That adds up to 9000, by the way. Maybe with a different combo of hw and os, I would see something differnet. Such as a big smiling Happy Mac icon.
They should build a "Do you want your fonts to look pretty?" wizard into the Linux installer. Because it's gonna look different on different hardware.
The fact that I now know what this is a reference to pisses me off more than you can possibly believe.
WHAT does it mean? A unit vector in the W direction??
Please explain to n00bs like me or I will TK you with a panzerfaust, then respawn as a lieutenant and never give you ammo.
Bill is still a tightwad at heart, or he would have been giving money earlier.
My belief is: Had Bill been more charitable earlier on, the whole anti-trust thing never would have happened. Look at Carnegie, we think of him as some great philanthropist but he was just as much of a monopolist as Gates is.
Basically, if you're really rich you have to be looser with the money in ways that the public will see. Like tipping more at restaurants, donating playgrounds, curing AIDS, that sort of shit. Of course anyone who is that rich is stingy behind closed doors, but that's not the point. The point is to not be so wealthy and give so little back that someone like me can completely rationalize the pirating of Microsoft software because, well, they've got $40 billion in the bank, they really don't need a few hundred from me, and what have they done for me lately?
If Bill really wants me to think he's a philanthropist, make Microsoft software free for K-12 schools. Anything less is just PR.
Think of it: when you exchange files with other businesses, you have two realistic choices of file formats: Office or plaintext
I think PDF is a viable (growing even) third option. Adobe is "evil" just like MS (remeber Sklyarov)... regardless, PDF is nice and it works well, and the files are way smaller than word docs.
Well if it's not a magical silver bullet, then it won't be able to kill the Microsoft Werewolf Cancer Zombies coding the next version of Outlook.
ALL platforms?
There's no mention that it will run on PDAs. In fact it sounds like it's not intended to. I think it should. If it's a really lightweight app, it should run on a PocketPC.
(Yeah, Microsoft, dont' feed the trolls, blah blah blah. Stay with me folks.)
The very last line of The Article says "In the era of the WEB, are PC applications obsolete?" I think, for an "outlook killer" the answer has to be yes. Not having a handheld version of a LIGHTWEIGHT, MULTI-PLATFORM PIM seems to completely miss the point of that whole "market space." Leveraging that portability onto the PDA-space would enhance this product's Outlook-killability.
You can get PDAs with 400 MHz processors and 64MB RAM nowadays, with WiFi those things are capable of playing in realtime. Why ignore that?
I realize that your comment is a jab at Microsoft's Licensing 6.0, which got them a ton of profits, but it should be pointed out that your scheme is actually much worse than what Microsoft is doing.
Here's how the MS deal works: Let's say you buy Office -- you get a license which lets you run whatever versions of Office are available over the next two years.
When the two years are up, you can still run Office, you just don't get any new versions. You could still run the Office XP you have five years from now, three years after your subscription has expires. What Microsoft is counting on is that once you're on this treadmill, you never get off. You just renew your contract every two years, not buy new upgrades every time a new version of Office comes out, which is a less predictable cycle.
I'm really amazed so many people signed up for it, but most of them were probably on Office 97 or 2000. I bet they dont' sign up again in two years, because they'll then be at the bleeding edge with Office 2003 or Office Palladium or whatever and people like me on XP will wait for the release past that to uprgade. (OMG how will I live without XDocs??)
Doesn't the fact that the guy's name is Lucky Green sort of tip you off that he's playing Patent Lottery?
Microsoft will make him An Offer He Can't Refuse, and they will buy his patent (if they even need to.)
Yeah, I think your fears are valid. Palladium is another step down the road to making sure that no officially-sanctioned information works its way into your brain. This will be sold as making things "less confusing" and "more secure" for the easily-led-astray end user.
For example:
There was that story about the "switcher" which turned out to be an (obvious) Microsoft PR piece. Microsoft pulled the page, but Google has it cached.
Soon, I think Google (or at least the public-facing cache) will be sued out of existence. Why? Consider this: the information on that page was copyright of Microsoft. When Google cached it, they were presenting content they didn't have any rights to, without the copyright holder's permission to rebroadcast or redisplay that content.
I know it's a stretch, but would a google cache of MP3s be acceptable to the RIAA (or even most of Slashdot?) No. Why should it be different with Microsoft's IP as embodied in that "switch" document?
Fundamentally, are they not both IP? Doesn't the whole basis of IP come down to having final, ultimate authority over the IP you own? How is Google caching a web page, for the whole world to see, any different from www.mp3z.hax0rs.org providing a million MP3s for download? In both cases, the content is no longer controlled by the owner, and thus it fails the "hey, that's my IP, only I can disseminate it!" sniff test. I suppose one could argue that since Microsoft published the site, they made the information available to whoever wants to look at it. But Microsoft has the right to log your visits, track your navigation through their site, etc. That might even be a basic function of their web site, and by removing that page from the larger context, MS lawyers will argue that users might get "confused" and that the Google cache is actually harming Microsoft's reputation. For example, I would argue that the weird numbers and letters in the Google cache URL make Microsoft products seem confusing, whereas they are actually touted for their ease of use. (I'm thinking of the vivendisucks.com web site that was shut down here...)
Anyway, enough future lawyer speculation. The point is: The google cache, and perhaps search enginges in general, allow users to access information (by which I mean IP) in ways that diminish the content holder's control of the transaction. Big content holders will fight this, since (they will argue) they want to be able to provide you the best possible value by tailoring their message to you.
I'm sure Microsoft is already pissed that when I'm looking for a KB article, I search on Google since it searches the Microsoft site better than Microsoft can. How much longer do we really think that kind of thing will be permitted?
Perhaps http://www.microsoft.com/unix/ can explain it to you, though.
Unfortunately, there isn't much technical content there. My favorite part is this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/inter
Which proceeds to proclaim
There are no links to any tools on that page! LOL
You might want to read this KB article. It tells you how to make that annoying "You're running low on disk space" message go away.
P ol icies\Explorer NoLowDiskSpaceChecks
In brief, you need to regedit and add this:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
REG_DWORD 1
I have to wonder how long it takes to log on, if you have the thousands of GPO entries in place and roaming profiles needed to make all that happen.
My girlfriend is in the same situation, and it's ridiculous. If she bookmarks a site in IE, it's gone when she logs back in. But the default bookmark for Hotmail is always there. Hotmail is blocked by the Internet filer. She can't change the screen resolution or background picture.
She spend her own $$ to buy a grade book program so she can enter grades, attendance, etc. on her Palm, and transfer the info to her office computer. Except she can't install any software on the office computer. The IT guys at her school can't install software either. To install software, someone has to get in the taxpayer-purchased car at the District HQ, drive to her school, and install it for her. The in-house IT guys can't even install a printer.
Then there's the BESS internet filter, which prevents her from doing any real research. She wanted a poster of Thomas Jefferson for her classroom; all the websites where you'd buy a poster were blocked because they had "objectionable content: swimsuits." The District's policy states that BESS can be bypassed for educational research needs, but there is no system in place to make such a request. She can search Google, but the google cache is blocked.
These are "new" (less than 1yr old) Dell machines with Win2K. They are completely useless. She does all her computing work on her laptop (PII-266) at home now, because the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Seattle Schools has spent to put a computer on each desk has resulted in a useless, locked-down-to-the-point-of-being-a-kiosk computer on each desk. This is also the same school district that just gave their superintendent a raise to $220,000, who then discovered a $33 million accounting "oops." The superintendent was hired because of his strong financial background and he has never been a school teacher or administrator.
Okay, I feel better now.
The O rings could have in no way been saved by modern navigation systems.
Modern navigation systems? How 'bout a thermometer and a freakin' phone call to launch control? (Sorry to bother you sir, what with the countdown and all, but the ambient temperature is 29F. The SRBs are only rated down to 32F, and we've never launched before 40F before.)
But noooo, that would have stood in the way of the Great Communicator's PR Machine.
Yes, I'm *still* pissed about Jan 28 1986. I don't plan on getting over it any time soon.
hey, I wanted to read your book but the link was not working. hevanet not found or something. Wanna email me a better link?
ian_loves_you@homtail.com
Are you astroturfing for fun, or profit?
Thank God my XP box is compatible with the Internet. I can tell The Internet is working, because ZoneAlarm keeps telling me when Media Player tries to Phone Home.
Hey, don't forget about your Miranda rights. Miranda was a convicted rapist and a very bad man. The police never informed him of his rights (you have a right to remain silent, etc.) He got off (in more ways than one) and in return for the suffering of his victims we have the right to remain silent. Thanks for taking one for the team, ladies!
Okay, back to the topic:
If I were the defense, I would argue collusion between the DOJ and INS. They are working more closely in the post 9-11 era, you know.
If it doesn't have applets, it's CRAP!!!
.NET applets was good) and get back to programming their web servers.
I thinkt the parent was trying to comment on the general trend, of like when IE decides it's time to open a Word doc from inside IE rather than making you save it and open it with Word. It works pretty well, though how making IE into a front end for Word benefits anyone (except for Microsoft) has never been understood. Adobe is guilty too, now that all those PDFs want to open in my browser. In Mozilla too, which is REALLY ANNOYING when it's a big PDF and you are on dial-up.
It seems that the way to "win" this war is to get the customers to become, uh, accustomed to a "lifestyle" (for lack of a better word.) Hell, they even made a Hollywood MOVIE, with mega-superstar TOM HANKS, called "You've Got Mail." And there was that song "IM Me" which was big in the UK or something. With multiple meme vectorization like that, I don't think AOL is going away any time soon. If it does, something will arise to fill the power vacuum and based on just about everyone's experience with MSN, it ain't gonna be Microsoft.
Changing their browser will be a Big Deal. I have to imagine that it won't work very well at first, but eventually web designers will steer clear of shady Microsoft undocumented Black Box APIs (or whatever you want to call them, I thought
Honestly I'm amazed that AOL hasn't bailed on IE before now. What were they thinking, giving away "mindshare" to the competition like that? I guess they were just watching their stock bubble grow and not thinking about the future. Of course the only smart thing they've done lately is buy Time Warner, that has probably kept them from having to pull a WorldCom.
I've never found a site that doesn't work with Mozilla.
You've obviously never been to www.microsoft.com
Actually, that's not true at all. From the Microsoft KB aritcle Q293907
In Windows XP, Internet Explorer is integrated into the operating system so completely that you can't remove it. If that language sounds familiar, it's because that's what Microsoft was claiming in that whole Antitrust thing back in the 90s. Back then you actually could run Win98 without IE if you ran that 98Lite thing, but now forget about it.
You can hide the IE icon from the desktop but IE is still installed. For example, even if you remove IE from the desktop, the Windows Update link from the Start menu will still use IE to connect to the mothership.
All your points are completely valid, Dr. Spork. But IE can't be uninstalled, it can only be "hidden."
Then, "she" says
So, the Upgrade from XP Home to Pro costs $200, and the lowest price I've seen for Office XP Standard (though I'm sure the extra features of Pro are a must for a freelance tech writer) is about $300.
Looks like that $450 "savings" will pay for most of the $500 of Microsoft software you will need to get your laptop up an running!
This "article" is so obviously the work of marketroids. Even the little steps for copying your bookmarks are written in the standard Microsoft command formatting, where the things you have to click are in bold type.
By the way, they forgot to mention that you need to use a PC-formatted zip disk or your new Windows XP laptop won't be able to read it.
I don't know of any democracies that were attacked on that day.... only a Republic called the United States of America.
There is a difference, you know.
An escrow agent should protect you if you don't get the goods you ordered. Though in the case of stamps, it might be a problem if you don't get the stamps appraised immediately upon arrival. If you discover say three months later that the stamp is not what was advertised, then yeah the escrow agent has already released your money. That comes back to caveat emptor.
.1% of transactions, and it's worth more to ebay to let the fraud happen and generally rely on the honesty of people than to take a more active approach.
If the seller is jacking up the selling price of an item with phantom bids, well, you shouldn't have set your limit so high. Look at it this way: You paid more, but you were willing to go that high anyway.
Ebay's conduct with respect to the stamp collectors is completely reprehensible but very understandable in keeping with the time-honored tradition of "shoot the messenger."
I wonder if Ebay could employ some simple technology measures to stop phantom bidding, like making sure that the same IP address can't list an item and bid on it too. You know, as much as we all hate it, the Pentium serial number would be a good way to see if it's the same person listing the item and later placing phantom bids. Of course then the scammers would figure it out, and place their phantom bids from the library or something. Or maybe ebay could look for phantom bidders that always seem to bid on the same real seller's auctions. I don't know. What is obvious is that the fraud is real, but it occurs maybe in
One good lawsuit could change all that. If it can be shown that ebay is knowingly letting power sellers rip people off, and the story of "Rich" is true, then that sounds like a Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization to me.
Don't hold your breath waiting for the U.S. Attorney General to stand up for the little guy against the Big Corporation. But maybe that AG for the State of New York will do it.
I kinda thought ebay's whole attitude was Use An Escrow Agent If You Don't Want To Get Ripped Off. Now, if the escrow people are defrauding you, then that's a different story.
I have a bunch of stuff I'd like to sell, like a guitar and a mountain bike and a computer, but I'm not going to bother putting it on ebay because my rating is a big fat zero, and I doubt anyone will want to buy from an unknown quantity such as myself.
Ebay has a profit motive to have as many auctions as possible. They also make more money when the price gets higher. They don't make money when they have to investigate fraud claims, and kick power sellers off the system.
Let's put it another way: Let's say you're a power seller, and you sell a $1000 item. You give ebay their cut ($150 I think) and pocket $850. Ebay is happy, you're happy, the only one unhappy is the "little guy."
Where is ebay's motivation to change the system? Libertarians and free market economic darwinists, start flaming now.
Yeah, I thought about editing out the bad language, but I decided not to. I was trying to express how upset I was (i.e. I entered flamebait mode) because unicron is clever. His plan very subtlely makes the case for a general, blanket form of censorship, an over-arching technological solution that has the potential to go way too far. The censorship (blocking overseas p2p servers) appears to deal with a specific issue but that first step is a very dangerous one, and it should not be taken.
So like, when a meteor hits the earth, that's God touching it? Or like X-rays from a distant star, that's God?
If believing in observable physical phenomena means I believe in God, then I'll take a front-row seat under the big top when the revival comes to town.
I always though God meant something more than that, like believing in am omniscient or omnipresent "being," which to me seems totally retarded to even think about because there's no way that our non-omniscient bounded-by-time brains are going to be able to "understand" this God thing in the first place.