I wonder why they wrote the site in HTML 4 instead of the current recommendation. XHTML has been around since what, early 2000?
Perhaps because XHTML serves no purpose. The
whole reason for its existence it to provide
buzzword compliance and to add a bit of extra
bloat to your pages. I'll stick with HTML 4.01,
which gives you exactly the same features without
the clumsiness of XML.
Use Abiword only if you just need a "rich text editor". I wouldn't even try to use it to write a dissertation.
I take it you haven't looked at abiword in quite some time, then. It's far more than a "rich text
editor", and its one major failing (lack of support for
tables) was remedied with the release of 2.0 a
time ago. I'd pick it over OO.o anytime.
Because it's a slow, fat, bloated pig. It takes
too long to launch, it's too slow once it is running,
and AbiWord is a better product anyway, with a
better user interface.
And for
spreadsheets, gnumeric simply blows OO.o out of
the water.
Ok, the guy really stepped in it here when he plugged Firefox
But he didn't even do that! All he said was that
he needed to upgrade Firefox to fix a security
problem. Not that he used it as his main browser,
and certainly not that he didn't use IE every day
like all good Microsoft employees. Merely that he
had it installed on his machine, and patched it
as appropriate. In his job, I'd expect him to have
a copy of alternative browsers on his system. I'd
be surprised if he doesn't have Opera installed,
too.
Well I can get a cell phone for as much as my monthly landline service. Why would I bother with a fixed line?
Well for a start, I can be reasonably confident
that I can pick up my phone and get a dial tone,
whatever the atmospheric conditions. With my
mobile, reception is patchy at best throughout the
house, and is significantly affected by the
weather. Plus I can't run ADSL over my mobile,
unlike my fixed phone line.
My father, who travels quite frequently has occasionally forgotten about what is prohibited in hand luggage and has had his pocket knife and the like confiscated and mailed back home by the authorities.
Recently? On all the flights I've been on in the
last few years, they've just binned things like
that, rather than posting them back. The closest
I came was remembering about my knife after
checkin, but before going through to the departure
lounge. I
bought a jiffy bag from WHS in the airport, and
posted it home.
I did have the peace of mind to put my New Rocks in my luggage destined for the hold and not to wear them.
Actually, they're not too much of a problem. You
need to remove them and put them through the X-ray
machine with your coat and hand luggage, before
walking through the metal detector. But that's the
only inconvenience.
Possible for 3 small children to make it past the concession stand without "I want this and I want that"? Not likely.
So? Let them ask.
My parents managed to tell me and my sister
that we couldn't have them when we asked for
things like that. Why can't you do the same? It
sets a bad example to give kids everything they
ask for. Sure, do it occasionally. But as a
treat, rather than as the norm. You'll save money,
and they'll end up better for it.
...will simply meet file translation and compression utilities.
I was wondering if anyone else would spot this.
He's right in that they can provide content in
formats that are impractical to transfer over
the net, for at least the next few years. Yes,
bandwidth costs are plummeting, but not as fast
as mass storage costs are, and delivering high
quality content on mass storage seems like a
feasible option. But there's nothing stopping
anyone from encoding high quality content down
to lower quality formats and distributing those
instead.
The real kicker here, is that the public don't care about quality. Yes, I care. Others do, too. But the
general public don't. I work with people that are
quite happy to watch movies they've downloaded
with really visible
compression artifacts rather than buy the DVD.
But DVD quality is deemed good enough for most,
and it's already feasible to download a DVD. So
what if the content is available in higher quality
formats. I'll buy it. But the mass market won't,
when it's available for free at DVD quality. And
without support from the mass market, illegal
copying becomes a real problem for content
providers.
And since that comprises hours and hours of time, it's a lot easier on my eyes than staring into a CRT's radiation field.
See that's one of the reasons why I'm still using
CRT. I find exactly the opposite -- CRTs are a lot
easier on my eyes for prolonged use. Flat screens
tend to be too harsh.
Usually I think "open Openoffice.org", then I click (within the same second) and then I wait 18-20 seconds until I can start typing.
I think I see the flaw in your logic. It starts to
go wrong where you have the thought "open Openoffice.org". Step away from the dark side and
try abiword and gnumeric instead.
Trust me, you won't regret it.
The problem with this is the lifetime of flash memory. Typical flash
memory is only guaranteed for around 10,000 erase/rewrite cycles. A
normal desktop machine with a standard filesystem will reach that
very quickly. In order to ensure you reach even that low target,
you'd need to use a wear levelling filesystem, which is somewhat less efficient than a convention filesystem, and that goes some way
towards reducing the speed benefits you get from flash devices, and
the shorter lifespan rules them out for many uses.
Don't get me wrong, flash based drives like this certainly have their
place, but (at least for now), they're not ready to replace conventional
hard drives for mainstream use.
Within the decade the spinning hard disk may go the way of the floppy
and CRT
As an aside, my CRT is still firmly wedded to my desktop, and won't
budge until flat screen technology has caught up. It's come a long
way, and may be good enough for less demanding applications, but it's
got a way to go before I have a flat screen on my desk...
I rang a 0845 number (UK) and got hold of a very nice girl in a call center.
Just curious... what are you going to do when MS
drop support for XP in a few years,
and that 0845 number doesn't
get you an activation code? Your only option at
that point is to upgrade (or crack the activation
mechanism, if you have the skills to do so,
although big business has now made that illegal
in most first world countries).
That's why I won't ever buy a piece of subscription
software. I like the control of my computing
environment to be in my hands, not in
the hands of a corporation that doesn't have
my best interests at heart.
Who on the world has 3GHz processor in his desktop computer?
isengard:~% egrep '(processor|GHz)'/proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz processor : 1 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz processor : 2 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz processor : 3 model name : Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz
That'd be me, then! Or at least very nearly,
although I freely admit I'm not a typical user.
But the point is, by the time this is ready for
prime time, that level of CPU power will be
commonplace.
Actually, vim implements readline-like functionality
when you do file management, for example
with:r or:e. I think
it does this using its own internal routines rather
than using libreadline, but the priciple's the same.
Overall, though, I agree with your sentiments. When
I type a tab in my text editor, I expect it to
insert 0x09 into my file. Any other behaviour is
simply wrong.
I think that all right-thinking people use emacs, not vi.
That's funny. I think precisiely the opposite.
Seriously. I wonder what disease of the brain
convinces people that using emacs is a good idea.
All right-thinking people use vi[1].
But that just goes to show how pointless holy wars
like that are. People have different viewpoints.
Just let them get on with it. If pepole want to
cripple themselves by using emacs, who am I to
try and stop them?:-)
[1] Which makes for a nice soundbite, but isn't
strictly true. Brian Kernighan is "right-thinking"
by pretty much any definition, and his editor of
choice is Rob Pike's
sam. But he uses vi
rather than emacs when sam isn't
available. Thus my point is proved:-)
it does NOT send SMS to premium numbers, only regular SMS messages, and that it does no other damage. So explain to me how this is so very "Destructive"?
Regular SMS messages still cost money. OK, so it's
not "destructive", but it's definitely harmful.
For many of the uses the GIF file was much smaller than an equal looking PNG file, even when using tools like pngcrush.
Ahem. You mean "in virtually no cases will GIF
result in a smaller filesize than the equivalent
PNG". The one common case[1] where it does is for a
1x1 transparent image, but there are only two
uses for that anyway:
Spacing
Web bugs
Transparent images for spacing are a nasty hack,
and CSS gives you much better control over
positioning anyway, and web bugs are no great
loss. So essentially there's no reason to use
GIF any more.
[1] Another is a few web images that have a 5 or 6 bit
colour palette. PNG only supports powers of two,
so would use an 8-bit palette for the same image.
The size increase is generally compensated for by
the better compression rates, so PNG still
produces comparable image sizes. But I wish
they'd thought more about common uses for the
format when designing the spec, and then PNG
would have been able to make substantially smaller
images.
Oracle competes on excellence and through continuous improvement and customer satisfaction.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. You've never used Oracle,
have you?
The day that they call for protectionism is the day that they've started resting on their laurels and deserve to die.
They've been resting on their laurels for a long
time now. Oh, the core database product is good
enough. But the little bits around the edges
that make a polished product are just completely
absent with Oracle. It comes across as an
amateurish and half finished program. And given
that they've had 20 years and billions of dollars
to get it right, there really is no excuse for
that.
If they didn't use flash, they couldn't do the stuff they do, active games, totally interactive menus, etc. with html
Actually, they could do pretty much everything.
Interactive menus? Not desirable in the first place,
but easy enough to do with CSS if you really want to. Strongbad could be done with any movie format,
and needn't be in Flash. The only part of the site
that doesn't really have an option at the moment is
the interactive games. Yes, there are alternatives
to Flash for that (Java, SVG, etc.) but none of
them are ubiquitous enough to be a valid choice
at the moment. Maybe in a few years, but not now.
Is it really worth it to have 35 new phone models?
No, particularly when the article is complete crap anyway. Unless you have hugely different models
in the US, then most Nokia phones already come with
a camera (in fact, most phones come with a camera,
Nokia or otherwise). Not only that, but the camera
is significantly better quality than those found on
phones from rival manufacturers. Couldn't comment
about clam shell phones. I can't understand why
anyone would want one, so it's not something I've
looked at.
My 6600 is pretty
much perfect for a phone. I briefly had an Ericsson T610, but I hated it so much, I traded it in for the 6600. I considered the P900, but I'm
glad I decided on the Nokia. Not only that, but
my experiences with other phones mean that my
next phone will be a Nokia too.
If the reviewers had been serious they would have used an optimised distributions such as Gentoo, which would have taken far fuller advantage of the extra 32bits in each register to provide a much fuller experience, more than any current Linux distribution possibly could.
Really? Explain to me how an app compiled for x86_64
under Gentoo will be so much faster than the
same app compiled for x86_64 under Fedora or
SuSE.
Rather than the yearly model updates that people have come to expect
Have we? I'm more surprised that anyone expected model updates once
a year. I expect them whenever the manufacturer believes that bringing
out a new model is economically viable. I certainly don't see a new
model 6 months after the last one as being particularly noteworthy.
Is this just an American thing? I mean, the rest of the world has never
had things like cars being different from one year to the next, yet
in the US, you seem to have a new version of each car model each
year, being arbitrarily different to the last, apparently just for
the sake of being different and new for that particular year.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps because XHTML serves no purpose. The whole reason for its existence it to provide buzzword compliance and to add a bit of extra bloat to your pages. I'll stick with HTML 4.01, which gives you exactly the same features without the clumsiness of XML.
I take it you haven't looked at abiword in quite some time, then. It's far more than a "rich text editor", and its one major failing (lack of support for tables) was remedied with the release of 2.0 a time ago. I'd pick it over OO.o anytime.
Because it's a slow, fat, bloated pig. It takes too long to launch, it's too slow once it is running, and AbiWord is a better product anyway, with a better user interface. And for spreadsheets, gnumeric simply blows OO.o out of the water.
But he didn't even do that! All he said was that he needed to upgrade Firefox to fix a security problem. Not that he used it as his main browser, and certainly not that he didn't use IE every day like all good Microsoft employees. Merely that he had it installed on his machine, and patched it as appropriate. In his job, I'd expect him to have a copy of alternative browsers on his system. I'd be surprised if he doesn't have Opera installed, too.
Well for a start, I can be reasonably confident that I can pick up my phone and get a dial tone, whatever the atmospheric conditions. With my mobile, reception is patchy at best throughout the house, and is significantly affected by the weather. Plus I can't run ADSL over my mobile, unlike my fixed phone line.
Recently? On all the flights I've been on in the last few years, they've just binned things like that, rather than posting them back. The closest I came was remembering about my knife after checkin, but before going through to the departure lounge. I bought a jiffy bag from WHS in the airport, and posted it home.
I did have the peace of mind to put my New Rocks in my luggage destined for the hold and not to wear them.
Actually, they're not too much of a problem. You need to remove them and put them through the X-ray machine with your coat and hand luggage, before walking through the metal detector. But that's the only inconvenience.
So? Let them ask. My parents managed to tell me and my sister that we couldn't have them when we asked for things like that. Why can't you do the same? It sets a bad example to give kids everything they ask for. Sure, do it occasionally. But as a treat, rather than as the norm. You'll save money, and they'll end up better for it.
I was wondering if anyone else would spot this. He's right in that they can provide content in formats that are impractical to transfer over the net, for at least the next few years. Yes, bandwidth costs are plummeting, but not as fast as mass storage costs are, and delivering high quality content on mass storage seems like a feasible option. But there's nothing stopping anyone from encoding high quality content down to lower quality formats and distributing those instead.
The real kicker here, is that the public don't care about quality. Yes, I care. Others do, too. But the general public don't. I work with people that are quite happy to watch movies they've downloaded with really visible compression artifacts rather than buy the DVD. But DVD quality is deemed good enough for most, and it's already feasible to download a DVD. So what if the content is available in higher quality formats. I'll buy it. But the mass market won't, when it's available for free at DVD quality. And without support from the mass market, illegal copying becomes a real problem for content providers.
See that's one of the reasons why I'm still using CRT. I find exactly the opposite -- CRTs are a lot easier on my eyes for prolonged use. Flat screens tend to be too harsh.
I think I see the flaw in your logic. It starts to go wrong where you have the thought "open Openoffice.org". Step away from the dark side and try abiword and gnumeric instead. Trust me, you won't regret it.
Within the decade the spinning hard disk may go the way of the floppy and CRT
As an aside, my CRT is still firmly wedded to my desktop, and won't budge until flat screen technology has caught up. It's come a long way, and may be good enough for less demanding applications, but it's got a way to go before I have a flat screen on my desk...
Just curious... what are you going to do when MS drop support for XP in a few years, and that 0845 number doesn't get you an activation code? Your only option at that point is to upgrade (or crack the activation mechanism, if you have the skills to do so, although big business has now made that illegal in most first world countries). That's why I won't ever buy a piece of subscription software. I like the control of my computing environment to be in my hands, not in the hands of a corporation that doesn't have my best interests at heart.
That'd be me, then! Or at least very nearly, although I freely admit I'm not a typical user. But the point is, by the time this is ready for prime time, that level of CPU power will be commonplace.
I think you mean "2 channels of television". Although the others are made by the BBC, IIRC their funding doesn't come from the license fee.
Actually, vim implements readline-like functionality when you do file management, for example with :r or :e. I think
it does this using its own internal routines rather
than using libreadline, but the priciple's the same.
Overall, though, I agree with your sentiments. When
I type a tab in my text editor, I expect it to
insert 0x09 into my file. Any other behaviour is
simply wrong.
That's funny. I think precisiely the opposite. Seriously. I wonder what disease of the brain convinces people that using emacs is a good idea. All right-thinking people use vi[1]. But that just goes to show how pointless holy wars like that are. People have different viewpoints. Just let them get on with it. If pepole want to cripple themselves by using emacs, who am I to try and stop them? :-)
[1] Which makes for a nice soundbite, but isn't strictly true. Brian Kernighan is "right-thinking" by pretty much any definition, and his editor of choice is Rob Pike's sam . But he uses vi rather than emacs when sam isn't available. Thus my point is proved :-)
Regular SMS messages still cost money. OK, so it's not "destructive", but it's definitely harmful.
I think you misspelled "perl" there...
Ahem. You mean "in virtually no cases will GIF result in a smaller filesize than the equivalent PNG". The one common case[1] where it does is for a 1x1 transparent image, but there are only two uses for that anyway:
- Spacing
- Web bugs
Transparent images for spacing are a nasty hack, and CSS gives you much better control over positioning anyway, and web bugs are no great loss. So essentially there's no reason to use GIF any more.[1] Another is a few web images that have a 5 or 6 bit colour palette. PNG only supports powers of two, so would use an 8-bit palette for the same image. The size increase is generally compensated for by the better compression rates, so PNG still produces comparable image sizes. But I wish they'd thought more about common uses for the format when designing the spec, and then PNG would have been able to make substantially smaller images.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. You've never used Oracle, have you?
The day that they call for protectionism is the day that they've started resting on their laurels and deserve to die.
They've been resting on their laurels for a long time now. Oh, the core database product is good enough. But the little bits around the edges that make a polished product are just completely absent with Oracle. It comes across as an amateurish and half finished program. And given that they've had 20 years and billions of dollars to get it right, there really is no excuse for that.
Actually, they could do pretty much everything. Interactive menus? Not desirable in the first place, but easy enough to do with CSS if you really want to. Strongbad could be done with any movie format, and needn't be in Flash. The only part of the site that doesn't really have an option at the moment is the interactive games. Yes, there are alternatives to Flash for that (Java, SVG, etc.) but none of them are ubiquitous enough to be a valid choice at the moment. Maybe in a few years, but not now.
No, particularly when the article is complete crap anyway. Unless you have hugely different models in the US, then most Nokia phones already come with a camera (in fact, most phones come with a camera, Nokia or otherwise). Not only that, but the camera is significantly better quality than those found on phones from rival manufacturers. Couldn't comment about clam shell phones. I can't understand why anyone would want one, so it's not something I've looked at. My 6600 is pretty much perfect for a phone. I briefly had an Ericsson T610, but I hated it so much, I traded it in for the 6600. I considered the P900, but I'm glad I decided on the Nokia. Not only that, but my experiences with other phones mean that my next phone will be a Nokia too.
Really? Explain to me how an app compiled for x86_64 under Gentoo will be so much faster than the same app compiled for x86_64 under Fedora or SuSE.
Surely (particularly in Soviet Russia):
Have we? I'm more surprised that anyone expected model updates once a year. I expect them whenever the manufacturer believes that bringing out a new model is economically viable. I certainly don't see a new model 6 months after the last one as being particularly noteworthy.
Is this just an American thing? I mean, the rest of the world has never had things like cars being different from one year to the next, yet in the US, you seem to have a new version of each car model each year, being arbitrarily different to the last, apparently just for the sake of being different and new for that particular year.