I was unwilling to turn my trusty PC into a Linux box, so he popped in a CD with Knoppix, on it, rebooted, and voila -- instant Linux. Knoppix is a free version of Linux that you can boot directly from a CD, available free for downloading and then burning onto CD.
then... oops...
I was surprised at how simple it was to install and get up to speed on Linux. And the desktop has some nice touches that Windows could learn from. The applications didn't win me over, though. In fact, when it comes to Linux on the desktop, I don't get the point, really. Yes, the desktop is pretty, but I was expecting more than a pretty face. On the desktop, Linux may be more stable than Windows, but with Windows XP, I haven't had problems with Windows crashes. I'm a long-time shareware fan, and there's far more useful and easily available shareware available for Windows than Linux. And given that we live in a Windows-centric world, it just seems like too much labor and work to try and live in desktop Linux.
seems windows users still want to pay for the convenience of MS tools.
In its 158 years, the Tribune failed to publish only at the time the Great Chicago Fire was destroying much of the city.
So the paper can deliver every day for 158 yrs using mechanical printing presses ~ except where natural disasters occur....
The printing problems at the Chicago Tribune were related to efforts to upgrade computer equipment used to produce the newspaper, Malone said. The Tribune acquired customized software for the upgrade from an outside provider, and it contained a "coding error," he said.
but as soon as computers are involved their printing press has morphed into a computer system. I wonder what provisions to *test* the upgrade before use where made?
fail to recognise newspaper as computer system?
it would be easy to blame the developers and company and there should be some recognition of responsibility for technical accuracy. but what about the newspaper. they have made a fundamental mistake in not recognising that printing press + computer = computer and let their newspaper system fail at the mercy of coding mistake.
It seems while the paper can handle *mechanial* failure (158 yrs, 1 non delivery) it has yet to grasp *software* failure.
people are looking for alternative platforms that create new ecosystems that allow them to build.
yes but it's interesting to hear ex-insiders acknowledging it.
We are guided by one thing and that is looking for opportunity to create companies and provide returns to our investors.
meaning money is looking for some other *opportunity* ~ which could be construded as funding competitor companies or companies yet to be created in this space.
this article alluded to evolution I cant help think of microsoft as the archosour postosuchus and the various linuxes/bsd's as coelophysis competing for space in the late triassic (220 million years ago) as shown in the bbc's walking with dinosaurs. The fight for users is hotting up with the nimble carnivorous open source systems eating away at application space and users.
the fact they (MS) dont get it doesn't really surprise anyone. I don't think MS is worried so much about the techno~weenies for example who can download the source to mozilla and add some extra functionality and charge a client... they just miss milking the mum/pop operations and business who are experimenting with the zero cost option (or minimal cost compared to MS) desktop linux. Then trying out the office replacement (open office), the visio replacement (dia), the browser replacement (mozilla flavours) and the other applications that compete in linuxland.
you just have to look at distrowatch rank to guess at the usage patterns (increasing desktop usage?).
one of the greatest threats I've seen to MS is the innovative knoppix, mandrake move (and others) playable CD's that allow users to get a taste for linux without installing. who says linux is not innovating? I've yet to see a comparable windows product to counter this.
Re:Where I live there is a camera on every street
on
1984 Comes To Boston
·
· Score: 1
for these reasons alone I love living in a place where if I'm outside it can be hard to be captured by image because of the size of the country.
the closest we have to cctv in melboure was some cameras put up in sept-oct '81 for CHOGM.
This of course in under review as the 2006 commonwealth games are being planned.
But getting a shirt and some dacks at a local store on the weekend illustates how insidious observation has become. I picked up a buiness card seeing where was an online ordering option and I happened to notice the terms of condition for entry into the store.
If you refuse to have your bag searched the company reserved the right to use video images to refuse entry into *any* store in the future indefinatly.
``For YOUR protection, a video record of you and your establishment is being transmitted and recorded at remote locations.
[insert darkglass here on shirt]
All criminal acts prosecuted.''
The problem for me is twofold, double standards and unnecessary data collection. Double standards becuase I bet the store owners and company in question would object if I did a steve man on them and put them under surveillance , secondly the potential for abuse or mistakes made using this approach.
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork."
aww jeez they have a website for jobs! tried it but its all *greek* in firefox.
compete using creativity not just cost & quality
We live in interesting times where the economies can undercut in price and oversupply in key knowledge requirements. Edward deBono was on the National Press club (televised journalist club speech with variety of different quests) talking about this topic. Here's the link to read (Ideas unleash value' - Edward de Bono tells East ~ 13/07/2004) . In summary he reckons that when you have lowered all your costs, raised your quality levels as far as you can sustained creativity will be the differentiator.
Here's another link that pretty much summarises what the talk was about.
"If you've got China on your doorstep, where the average production wage is $100 a month and, I'm told, it can be as high as $3,000 a month here, that's a hell of a difference," he said. "What will happen -- as is already happening -- is that Japanese companies are opening factories in China, initially to serve the Chinese market.
"But once they're there, they are going to be serving the world market. And that's going to have a drastic impact as it means employment here certainly won't be expanding," he said.
As a result, Japan has two ways to compete with China's cheap production costs: It can automate, although this isn't much of a solution as it does not create employment; or it can put a lot of emphasis on creativity.
Simply relying on the quality of products from Japan won't work, he pointed out, as "China is coming on in terms of quality and technology, so it's creativity that is going to be the key."
Its worth installing flash on Linux/BSD/whatever, even if it takes a few extra steps. might just have to install the plugin. It's a bandwidth issue downloading the begger.
it's a hell of a lot easier to get business done with Canadians than Chinese.
Yep your spot on here and I did make that point that when it comes to business I didn't think that working with canadians would matter. What I think I was trying to point out was that despite the geographic closeness the cultures of North America and Canadian are pretty different. I can't help smirking as I eat my Strong & Bitey cheese and vegemite sandwich that if you where from Canada we would be swapping monty python cheese shop sketch jibes:)
To me, despite whatever nationalism prejudice you harbor against me, you are still familiar and easier to relate to or work with than just about anyone else in the world.
more like 'taking the piss' out of the comment americans are like canadians and have a lot in common. ps: read the link carefully to see what I mean.
Take my word for it. I live in China, and though I speak and read Chinese, it's a hell of a lot easier to get business done with Canadians than Chinese. I don't have to deal with lots of attempts to cheat "the ignorant foreigner", guanxi, companies with connections to corrupt officials, or any of that crap.
now for this I'd agree. In Diamond Age there's a line that really rings true here... something about people are the same the whole world over but cultures are totally different.
Ahhh number 2 business as it's called. I'll give you an example of this from and Indian mate who fronted customs in India and was told in no uncertain terms...this is not your face on you pasport as he was to board a plane. The inference being I'll let you board if you pay me. Charming. But guess what it's there culture and if they don't want to play the Marquess of Queensberry of business in their country so be it; Not much you can do about it.
important bit
outsourcing is a serious problem for technical staff this side of the pacific,across the Atlantic in the UK and back in the US. Ff you read tofler for instance you will see that in his powershift ~ knowledge, wealth at the edge of the 21st century you can see that he proposes that less workers will be able to do more. This is a trend is likely to continue. So more to use the ugly phrase *e-workers* (knowledge, meta, creative, digilog workers). Outsourcing could be seen as a way for business to be more efficeint. But why isn't business offshoring to cheap, easy to understand Canada, taking advantage of the stable, legal economy for instance?.... (though I think the revenge of English Raj was the fluency of Indians with english.) The time difference is minimal (maybe whey take advantage of 24 day processing) or is it for some kind of tax minimisation reasons? Have you any opinion on this?
yeah I laughed at the *similiar culture* but. US and Canada are like chalk and cheese. Candians being a commonwealth county have more akin to New Zealanders and Australians than Americans.
But when it comes to business I dont think neither the accent nor the culture would really get in the way. Though you may have some fun calling them *bloody wankers* and them calling back *freekin shute*.
Though I do have suspicions outsourcing may not get a foothold in Canada and may explain why outsourcing to cheaper countries is (to use that awful business phrase) gaining traction.
offshoring ~ hidden profit centres?
All through the 90's corporations have looked at ways of minimising taxes (Frontline ~ ~ Tax me if you can ~ feb 19, 2003) through leasing utilities akin to reducing costs as they did through downsizing. The concept relies on paying for recycling/rinsing money through foreign countries by leasing drains, trains and the like. Now the US tax authorities (IRS) have cottened onto these schemes. Could coding (an expensive reoccuring cost) in low wage third world countries be another attempt to avoid such taxes to improve profit?
Your post sums it up right. But look at it this way. Bought up in a world without penicillin, mum/dad who grew up with WWI, lived through the depression, dad probably served WWII, studied engineering hard and joined up themselves.
Here is a generation that was pushed hard, had their country on war footing, given the chance to study engineering (yes everyone had to study compulsory engineering). There was a culture that recognised sacrifice and duty. A culture versed in risk and danger in trying to acheive a goal.
Given this environment where personal and public goals alligned, generations that have followed have been given a hard act to follow.
It was also a time where real leadership was shown. Buty that's another story
Not to mention that every user will have their own opinion about how their interface should optimized. The "complex" interface is a good thing because it gives the users complete freedom over their interactions with the system.
homo logicus, Allan Cooper author of Inmates running the Asylum and creator of Visual Basic calls this. Software developers, coders call them what you like actually are very different to ordinary garden variety software users. Garden variety users run software to achieve goals. Cooper outlines in the book *goal directed* development that prescribes the interaction of the user to achive their goals and alligns user interaction with the software created.
This is not simply interface design ~ the sort normally tacked on the top of a product by graphic designers but a form of user interaction contract between user, user interaction and the underlying software completed before gui design, software engineering, coding etc. Think of it as a form of a user interaction interface (in the coding sense) that allows users to achive goals. Cooper pointed out this part is negotiatable with developers but not to be used as a guideline, but as a specification to be followed.
Having more power does not necessarily allow them to achieve their goals any better. In fact more complexity can actaully increase cognitive friction, a term describing the mental model you must construct to work the software to do something. Think about the cognitive friction the next time you want to create a document in MS Word ~ a product with a complex interface whose goal is essentially to create text documents.
Because ActiveX controls do provide some useful programatic functionality when combined with the browser.
guess you have to make the compromise between functionality and security. is it possible to remove activex access with ie? personally I wouldn't even try. I just don't use IE.
People get into trouble by allowing unsigned ActiveX controlls to run and clicking the OK button whenever the warning dialogs come up
blaming the end user (usually a non computer person) doesn't cut it. SymAdmins know what they are doing (or should) but you cannot expect ordinary users to understand the implications. This is MS not doing their job properly (computer user saftey). Rember Ralph Naders *unsafe at any speed* campaign in the 60's with the American car industry? The same is occuring now with OS's.
wheres the php equiv of CPAN, Pear? One of the reasons that php is superior to perl is running a site on mswindows. Perl on win32 platforms (sans cygwin) is a joke.
Yes, IE has problems, but in all fairness it probably has the dubious distinction of being the most analyzed, probed, and maliciously scrutinized software on the planet
granted that most windows users just want to the do the job TM without having to understanding the consequences, why not turn insecure features like ActiveX off by default?
if you really want to imporve your thinking/decision making skills then do yourself a favour and buy/go to the library and read some Edward deBono. Or try the online daily passage
There's no fancy gimics just thinking skills backed up by phd level psychology, physiology and medicine and thirty years of practice.
it's not my cup of tea. reminds me of those grubby touch screen monitors libraries had back in the mid 80's. more importantly where's the compelling software that is easy to use ~ like my Palm 3 which I got back in '98 for about AUD$600?
Technology looking for a solution that's already been partially solved? Makes me appreciate Palm (as a company when it originally released) a whole lot more
why is this insightful? could the high tax rate in canada be due to the low population and the low relative cost of living from a combination of subsidised farming and efficient (cost cutting) production and distribution to a larger population in the US?
You cannot deduce that high taxes (or even higher taxes) in Canada are the direct result of *universal* health care through cause and effect.
Right up until the 1960s, you could buy one of a broad range of British bikes, or little scooters from Italy. When the Japanese motorcycles started to be imported, people realised that they could own a motorbike that was fun, cheap, went round corners, stopped, didn't piss oil everywhere and didn't need near-continuous maintenance.
the analogy sort of holds true. couldn't help but notice you can buy an Enfield Bullet straight off the line from India. where cost was an issue (importing) India just kept manufacturing them. Now exporting them ~ oil leaks and all:)
All this requires some code changes in client apps so this could work.
So the applications you interact with have to be able to interact with dashboard. Assuming you go MS the whole hog (only use MS apps)...maybe you could get MSOffice to do something via COM but what Outlook Express (or Outlook) or other commercial apps?
I believe they're offering packages without any of the Microsoft-specific bits now (to make e.g. Debian happy).
Miguel mentioned this in his weblog about placing all the code that was MS tainted into a separate branch with the intention of dropping the code in case of MS intervention or in the case of Debian. I'd add the link but monologue disappeared in domain name change over.
It would be nice if there were an easy install package for Win32
It has been a binary install for win32 since about 0.3, but are you referring to a *runtime* install? If so ~ there are no such offerings. But I can report mono installs (and uninstalls) on my win2k box fine.
when I read this I think *outlook express*. think of all those outlook express users that switched to the commercial version of outlook. VWD Express Ed., lets everyone use a polished app, but the catch is, nothing you develop works with the *real developer* tools.
the tools are good news for those who want low cost tools to play with. but lets not kid ourselves that express is anything but a try it, like it, but must buy it MSVS pro, enterprise. right in time for Mono v1.0, the free alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
I was unwilling to turn my trusty PC into a Linux box, so he popped in a CD with Knoppix, on it, rebooted, and voila -- instant Linux. Knoppix is a free version of Linux that you can boot directly from a CD, available free for downloading and then burning onto CD.
then
I was surprised at how simple it was to install and get up to speed on Linux. And the desktop has some nice touches that Windows could learn from. The applications didn't win me over, though. In fact, when it comes to Linux on the desktop, I don't get the point, really. Yes, the desktop is pretty, but I was expecting more than a pretty face. On the desktop, Linux may be more stable than Windows, but with Windows XP, I haven't had problems with Windows crashes. I'm a long-time shareware fan, and there's far more useful and easily available shareware available for Windows than Linux. And given that we live in a Windows-centric world, it just seems like too much labor and work to try and live in desktop Linux.
seems windows users still want to pay for the convenience of MS tools.
So the paper can deliver every day for 158 yrs using mechanical printing presses ~ except where natural disasters occur ....
The printing problems at the Chicago Tribune were related to efforts to upgrade computer equipment used to produce the newspaper, Malone said. The Tribune acquired customized software for the upgrade from an outside provider, and it contained a "coding error," he said.but as soon as computers are involved their printing press has morphed into a computer system. I wonder what provisions to *test* the upgrade before use where made?
fail to recognise newspaper as computer system?it would be easy to blame the developers and company and there should be some recognition of responsibility for technical accuracy. but what about the newspaper. they have made a fundamental mistake in not recognising that printing press + computer = computer and let their newspaper system fail at the mercy of coding mistake.
It seems while the paper can handle *mechanial* failure (158 yrs, 1 non delivery) it has yet to grasp *software* failure.
yes but it's interesting to hear ex-insiders acknowledging it.
We are guided by one thing and that is looking for opportunity to create companies and provide returns to our investors.
meaning money is looking for some other *opportunity* ~ which could be construded as funding competitor companies or companies yet to be created in this space.
this article alluded to evolution I cant help think of microsoft as the archosour postosuchus and the various linuxes/bsd's as coelophysis competing for space in the late triassic (220 million years ago) as shown in the bbc's walking with dinosaurs. The fight for users is hotting up with the nimble carnivorous open source systems eating away at application space and users.
the fact they (MS) dont get it doesn't really surprise anyone. I don't think MS is worried so much about the techno~weenies for example who can download the source to mozilla and add some extra functionality and charge a client... they just miss milking the mum/pop operations and business who are experimenting with the zero cost option (or minimal cost compared to MS) desktop linux. Then trying out the office replacement (open office), the visio replacement (dia), the browser replacement (mozilla flavours) and the other applications that compete in linuxland.
you just have to look at distrowatch rank to guess at the usage patterns (increasing desktop usage?).
one of the greatest threats I've seen to MS is the innovative knoppix, mandrake move (and others) playable CD's that allow users to get a taste for linux without installing. who says linux is not innovating? I've yet to see a comparable windows product to counter this.
for these reasons alone I love living in a place where if I'm outside it can be hard to be captured by image because of the size of the country.
the closest we have to cctv in melboure was some cameras put up in sept-oct '81 for CHOGM. This of course in under review as the 2006 commonwealth games are being planned.
But getting a shirt and some dacks at a local store on the weekend illustates how insidious observation has become. I picked up a buiness card seeing where was an online ordering option and I happened to notice the terms of condition for entry into the store.
If you refuse to have your bag searched the company reserved the right to use video images to refuse entry into *any* store in the future indefinatly.
Steve Mann, Shooting back.
The problem for me is twofold, double standards and unnecessary data collection. Double standards becuase I bet the store owners and company in question would object if I did a steve man on them and put them under surveillance , secondly the potential for abuse or mistakes made using this approach.
In a country where noise is made about *free speach*, *innocence before guilt* and *privacy* I'll make less of a noise when pollies allow visual transmission of 100% of parliamentary procedure and not cut transmission due to parliamentary standing procedure to avoid honourary members falling into disrepute.
[todays wikiquote]
aww jeez they have a website for jobs! tried it but its all *greek* in firefox.
compete using creativity not just cost & qualityWe live in interesting times where the economies can undercut in price and oversupply in key knowledge requirements. Edward deBono was on the National Press club (televised journalist club speech with variety of different quests) talking about this topic. Here's the link to read (Ideas unleash value' - Edward de Bono tells East ~ 13/07/2004) . In summary he reckons that when you have lowered all your costs, raised your quality levels as far as you can sustained creativity will be the differentiator.
Here's another link that pretty much summarises what the talk was about.
"If you've got China on your doorstep, where the average production wage is $100 a month and, I'm told, it can be as high as $3,000 a month here, that's a hell of a difference," he said. "What will happen -- as is already happening -- is that Japanese companies are opening factories in China, initially to serve the Chinese market.
"But once they're there, they are going to be serving the world market. And that's going to have a drastic impact as it means employment here certainly won't be expanding," he said. As a result, Japan has two ways to compete with China's cheap production costs: It can automate, although this isn't much of a solution as it does not create employment; or it can put a lot of emphasis on creativity.
Simply relying on the quality of products from Japan won't work, he pointed out, as "China is coming on in terms of quality and technology, so it's creativity that is going to be the key."
[Edward deBono ~ Japan must think outside the box if it hopes toThis is certainly a (but not the only) path I'm following.
Its worth installing flash on Linux/BSD/whatever, even if it takes a few extra steps.
might just have to install the plugin. It's a bandwidth issue downloading the begger.
Yep your spot on here and I did make that point that when it comes to business I didn't think that working with canadians would matter. What I think I was trying to point out was that despite the geographic closeness the cultures of North America and Canadian are pretty different. I can't help smirking as I eat my Strong & Bitey cheese and vegemite sandwich that if you where from Canada we would be swapping monty python cheese shop sketch jibes :)
To me, despite whatever nationalism prejudice you harbor against me, you are still familiar and easier to relate to or work with than just about anyone else in the world.more like 'taking the piss' out of the comment americans are like canadians and have a lot in common. ps: read the link carefully to see what I mean.
Take my word for it. I live in China, and though I speak and read Chinese, it's a hell of a lot easier to get business done with Canadians than Chinese. I don't have to deal with lots of attempts to cheat "the ignorant foreigner", guanxi, companies with connections to corrupt officials, or any of that crap.now for this I'd agree. In Diamond Age there's a line that really rings true here ... something about people are the same the whole world over but cultures are totally different.
Ahhh number 2 business as it's called. I'll give you an example of this from and Indian mate who fronted customs in India and was told in no uncertain terms ...this is not your face on you pasport as he was to board a plane. The inference being I'll let you board if you pay me. Charming. But guess what it's there culture and if they don't want to play the Marquess of Queensberry of business in their country so be it; Not much you can do about it.
important bitoutsourcing is a serious problem for technical staff this side of the pacific,across the Atlantic in the UK and back in the US. Ff you read tofler for instance you will see that in his powershift ~ knowledge, wealth at the edge of the 21st century you can see that he proposes that less workers will be able to do more. This is a trend is likely to continue. So more to use the ugly phrase *e-workers* (knowledge, meta, creative, digilog workers). Outsourcing could be seen as a way for business to be more efficeint. But why isn't business offshoring to cheap, easy to understand Canada, taking advantage of the stable, legal economy for instance? .... (though I think the revenge of English Raj was the fluency of Indians with english.) The time difference is minimal (maybe whey take advantage of 24 day processing) or is it for some kind of tax minimisation reasons? Have you any opinion on this?
damn plugins ... (requires shock) :(
yeah I laughed at the *similiar culture* but. US and Canada are like chalk and cheese. Candians being a commonwealth county have more akin to New Zealanders and Australians than Americans.
But when it comes to business I dont think neither the accent nor the culture would really get in the way. Though you may have some fun calling them *bloody wankers* and them calling back *freekin shute*.
Though I do have suspicions outsourcing may not get a foothold in Canada and may explain why outsourcing to cheaper countries is (to use that awful business phrase) gaining traction.
offshoring ~ hidden profit centres?All through the 90's corporations have looked at ways of minimising taxes (Frontline ~ ~ Tax me if you can ~ feb 19, 2003) through leasing utilities akin to reducing costs as they did through downsizing. The concept relies on paying for recycling/rinsing money through foreign countries by leasing drains, trains and the like. Now the US tax authorities (IRS) have cottened onto these schemes. Could coding (an expensive reoccuring cost) in low wage third world countries be another attempt to avoid such taxes to improve profit?
Your post sums it up right. But look at it this way. Bought up in a world without penicillin, mum/dad who grew up with WWI, lived through the depression, dad probably served WWII, studied engineering hard and joined up themselves.
Here is a generation that was pushed hard, had their country on war footing, given the chance to study engineering (yes everyone had to study compulsory engineering). There was a culture that recognised sacrifice and duty. A culture versed in risk and danger in trying to acheive a goal.
Given this environment where personal and public goals alligned, generations that have followed have been given a hard act to follow.It was also a time where real leadership was shown. Buty that's another story
homo logicus, Allan Cooper author of Inmates running the Asylum and creator of Visual Basic calls this. Software developers, coders call them what you like actually are very different to ordinary garden variety software users. Garden variety users run software to achieve goals. Cooper outlines in the book *goal directed* development that prescribes the interaction of the user to achive their goals and alligns user interaction with the software created.
This is not simply interface design ~ the sort normally tacked on the top of a product by graphic designers but a form of user interaction contract between user, user interaction and the underlying software completed before gui design, software engineering, coding etc. Think of it as a form of a user interaction interface (in the coding sense) that allows users to achive goals. Cooper pointed out this part is negotiatable with developers but not to be used as a guideline, but as a specification to be followed.
Having more power does not necessarily allow them to achieve their goals any better. In fact more complexity can actaully increase cognitive friction, a term describing the mental model you must construct to work the software to do something. Think about the cognitive friction the next time you want to create a document in MS Word ~ a product with a complex interface whose goal is essentially to create text documents.
guess you have to make the compromise between functionality and security. is it possible to remove activex access with ie? personally I wouldn't even try. I just don't use IE.
People get into trouble by allowing unsigned ActiveX controlls to run and clicking the OK button whenever the warning dialogs come up
blaming the end user (usually a non computer person) doesn't cut it. SymAdmins know what they are doing (or should) but you cannot expect ordinary users to understand the implications. This is MS not doing their job properly (computer user saftey). Rember Ralph Naders *unsafe at any speed* campaign in the 60's with the American car industry? The same is occuring now with OS's.
wheres the php equiv of CPAN, Pear? One of the reasons that php is superior to perl is running a site on mswindows. Perl on win32 platforms (sans cygwin) is a joke.
granted that most windows users just want to the do the job TM without having to understanding the consequences, why not turn insecure features like ActiveX off by default?
if you really want to imporve your thinking/decision making skills then do yourself a favour and buy/go to the library and read some Edward deBono. Or try the online daily passage
There's no fancy gimics just thinking skills backed up by phd level psychology, physiology and medicine and thirty years of practice.
it's not my cup of tea. reminds me of those grubby touch screen monitors libraries had back in the mid 80's. more importantly where's the compelling software that is easy to use ~ like my Palm 3 which I got back in '98 for about AUD$600?
Technology looking for a solution that's already been partially solved? Makes me appreciate Palm (as a company when it originally released) a whole lot more
why is this insightful? could the high tax rate in canada be due to the low population and the low relative cost of living from a combination of subsidised farming and efficient (cost cutting) production and distribution to a larger population in the US?
You cannot deduce that high taxes (or even higher taxes) in Canada are the direct result of *universal* health care through cause and effect.
the analogy sort of holds true. couldn't help but notice you can buy an Enfield Bullet straight off the line from India. where cost was an issue (importing) India just kept manufacturing them. Now exporting them ~ oil leaks and all :)
there was some commercial app being developed similiar to dashboard but how useful it would be use debatable.
dashboard relies on having data input from the currently focused form/app of an application (for front-ends). So if you have say Evolution (email client) open or gaim information is sent to dashboard which tries to match this information with existing information and graphically summarise it in dashboard.
All this requires some code changes in client apps so this could work.
So the applications you interact with have to be able to interact with dashboard. Assuming you go MS the whole hog (only use MS apps) ...maybe you could get MSOffice to do something via COM but what Outlook Express (or Outlook) or other commercial apps?
Miguel mentioned this in his weblog about placing all the code that was MS tainted into a separate branch with the intention of dropping the code in case of MS intervention or in the case of Debian. I'd add the link but monologue disappeared in domain name change over.
It has been a binary install for win32 since about 0.3, but are you referring to a *runtime* install? If so ~ there are no such offerings. But I can report mono installs (and uninstalls) on my win2k box fine.
not if Joel is any indication of the MS mindset.
1. Joel on Software - In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome
2. The Joel on Software Forum - In Defense of Not-Invented-Here
Now if they started a new team like they have with .NET and get an outsider to lead it, then I'd believe it.
when I read this I think *outlook express*. think of all those outlook express users that switched to the commercial version of outlook. VWD Express Ed., lets everyone use a polished app, but the catch is, nothing you develop works with the *real developer* tools.
the tools are good news for those who want low cost tools to play with. but lets not kid ourselves that express is anything but a try it, like it, but must buy it MSVS pro, enterprise. right in time for Mono v1.0, the free alternative.