One of the most irritating things about Mozilla is that I can't use it with my bank. Actually, this is probably an irritating thing about Citibank, which assumes that anything other than Netscape 4 or IE 4+ is unsupported. I can use Opera with "Identify as Mozilla 4/IE 5.0" but then Citibank's web site never loads due to some bug in the miles of JavaScript that they use.
Is there a way for Mozilla to tell web sites that it is a different version? Obviously, I'd want this to be a toggle, but it would help me out a lot.
That's still not truly "auto-search." I just changed my search engine, typed some search keywords into the location bar (to see the "Search Google for [keywords]" auto-drop-down) and pressed ENTER. Despite my selection of Google as my search provider, it took me to the ad-laden Netscape search page.
It was at that point that I realized that I had to actually click on the "Search Google for [keywords]" line to actually instantiate a Google search. Not very intuitive.
Opera for Linux does not have Java support, nor does it support Netscape plugins or (and I quote) "Proper help windows." Sounds pretty feature-poor right now.
Microsoft had said that if Smart Tags had been included with IE 6.0, they would be disabled by default. The user, then, would have to choose to have his content augmented with these tags. It's no different than reading wire news sources from Yahoo! News, which offers more information about selected keywords (President Bush, the Taliban, just about any publicly-traded company) right there in the news article. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it. Similarly, if you don't like Smart Tags, you don't have to enable them. Simple as that.
The Smart Tags in Office XP are for Office applications. For example, if I have Bob Smith in my Outlook address book, Word will offer to enter Bob Smith's address when I type his name at the start of a business letter. Similarly, Excel can use MSN MoneyCentral to import stock price data.
The regular Office XP smart tags can be turned off, just like any superfluous MS Office "feature." Think of them as less intrusive versions of "it looks like you're writing a letter."
The linked site has something that Slashdot has never provided: a screen shot of Internet Explorer 6 with Smart Tags enabled. Although the site presumably contains many buzzwords (XML, SOAP, and even "Smart Tags") only one word is actually given the dreaded purple underline. That word? "Microsoft."
The suggested links aren't even as blatantly pro-Microsoft as you might think. It looks like they're the same content you could get about any company from any financial news site (news for MSFT, report for MSFT, chart for MSFT, etc.) and an option to search the web for the company name. In fact, when you search for "Microsoft" on MSN, there are still anti-Microsoft pages linked after the more relevant ones. (Check out link #25. Most people searching for just "Microsoft" aren't looking for MS-bashing, either.)
Please, stop overreacting until you've actually seen what Smart Tags do. The article cautions that Smart Tags are still in Office XP. Those are safer still: the usual company stock-price import facilities, as well as the option to automagically import addresses from your Address Book. That makes life simpler when you're typing a letter.
No, I'm not a Microsoft supporter or shareholder, but the constant MS-bashing is completely uncalled for. (Notice also how I did not use "Micro$oft", "M$", "Microsquish", or any other stupid manglings in my write-up here.)
I don't know about DVD's being sturdier. The other night, I rented a movie on DVD. When it started, t-he m-otio-n w-as ver-y j-er-ky and it was unwatchable. After ejecting it from the drive, I noticed all sorts of scratches on it. I ended up returning to the store and getting the VHS copy. The quality wasn't as good as the DVD, but it played just fine without any cleaning.
DVD's are fine for collections, but I wouldn't trust a rental one now.
Sounds a lot like I do when people tell me about a new "book" that's coming out. I think it's preposterous that publishers intend for me to pay money for a book! It's just printed words arranged using a publishing program. Not worth it, in my book. So here's what I did:
Borrowed the book from a friend
Downloaded a pirated e-book version
Read the book
Returned the book and deleted the pirated e-book
All of which I am allowed to do by fair use laws. Similarly, people are allegedly buying "compact discs," which consist of nothing more than pre-recorded music. That is nothing more than data! Simple, pure, data. I will not pay someone upwards of $10 for the privilege of listening to data that I could download for free.
The thought that you would pay for such things. Ugh. If you can download it for free, you shouldn't pay for it.
You should look at the source for Xtraceroute, a program which plots the location of "hops" in a traceroute on a 3-D globe. Once you mix it with this innovative, free (as in speech!) GIS solution, you should be able to realize the power of Open Source.
On my way from Pittsburgh to New York recently, we stopped at a big truck stop in Carlisle. They had one of these Internet kiosks. The ads really are quite intrusive, and they let you read some documentation on the service before you plunk down your dollar.
I noticed, while reading the documentation, a modem dialing up and connecting at some 28.8 kbps. As mentioned in the article, this is dial-up. The second thing that I noticed was that unless you're an AOL subscriber, don't expect to do much *reading* of e-mail; the service is mainly for outbound messages. That said, it doesn't appear to support IMAP features at all.
Overall, it's not a bad idea for the person who needs a quick Internet fix, but certainly no replacement for full access.
Re:Maybe nobody is buying because the ungodly pric
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Palm In Trouble?
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Only the high-end models bear those ungodly prices. In response to competition, Palm has low-end models as well. Is US $129 too much for you?
By contrast, I have yet to see a sub-$200 WinCE PDA that's worth owning. Palm can corner the low-end market like teen-agers and college students with such low-priced models. The glut of inventory means that prices will probably be driven lower still soon.
Re:Palm's problem: poor displays!
on
Palm In Trouble?
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· Score: 1
Consider this: some of the color Palm-OS units claim to support 16-bit color depth -- 65,535 colors. But a 160x160 display only has 25,600 pixels -- barely enough to display one third of these colors at any one time!
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this argument is flawed. Here's why.
Consider this: some of the current video cards on the market claim to support 24-bit color depth -- 16,777,216 colors. But even a 1600x1200 display only has 1,920,000 pixels, barely enough to display one tenth of these colors!
Just because you can't see all of the colors on the screen at once doesn't mean that they're not helpful.
Re:part of palm's trouble is people like me...
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Palm In Trouble?
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· Score: 1
The HandEra 330 has a 240x320 display, including a soft Graffiti area. It runs Palm OS 3.5.2, heavily modified to support a higher-resolution screen, as well as the two built-in expansion slots (SD/MMC and CompactFlash). Sounds what you're looking for.
AOL wants, allegedly, OEM's and users not to upgrade to Windows XP. Microsoft's new interface is too.NET-centric, they claim, even though most of the.NET features originally promised have been cut from XP. AOL wants its programs to be positioned as defaults, and to "take control of the desktop."
There's a very simple reason why AOL's programs will not receive certification by Microsoft. It's because they are crap. Pure, unadulterated crap unfit for any Windows operating system.
AOL has had the same dreadful MDI interface for its dial-up service since it premiered on Windows. Why? Because the AOL software was originally developed for the Mac, where a running application has the entire screen to itself with other applications pushed to the background but still visible. Of course, AOL for Windows doesn't use this "visible" concept, instead hiding everything else behind a solid grey background. You have to run AOL maximized to be able to get anything done with it, and AOL knows this. It means that you'll need to expend extra effort to do anything outside the AOL program, and so you won't do it.
POP3 and PPP are standards older than dirt in the Internet world. Yet AOL still doesn't support them, instead using its own mail client and the abhorrent "AOL Adapter" in networking. Why? Because otherwise you could use other dialers, other mail programs, and other ways to get around their control.
The worst part about AOL is that they set a precedent: people are, in fact, stupid enough to willingly pay $22.00 for mediocre-quality on-line services. AT&T Worldnet, among other providers, has been able to raise their unlimited-usage rates without a fight.
Microsoft may "embrace and extend" standards, but that's much better than AOL's process of ignoring them. AOL can make its own damn OS if it wants to exert its own control. (And yes, I already know that they're starting to.)
I have installed Windows 2000 Advanced Datacenter on my computer at home. It was highly optimized, but it was not open-source, so I had to delete it and perform a low-level format of my hard drive.
Five nines reliability? More like nine fives. Microsoft is an evil empire, and their software only runs well 55.5555555% of the time. In fact, I would have to say that I reboot the Microsoft at least 555,555,555 times. Ha ha ha. That's funny.
Having never used this chip, nor having ever owned a Pentium 4 system, I can tell you that this new 1.7 gigahertz chip from Intel isn't worth any money you spend on it. Why?
My 500 MHz G4 processor goes faster than it on floating-point tests. These include rendering spreadsheets in Photoshop, generating animations in Photoshop, and word-processing documents in Photoshop.
No application currently requires a Pentium 4, nor will it ever.
My fundamental right to overclock my computers until they explode is being violated. Intel has probably put in some clock-limiting circuitry. I want this processor to run at 2 GHz. I don't need that power, but I must run my systems as fast as possible.
Not just private high schools can get.edu domains. One friend of mine showed me the web page of Stuyvesant High School, a public (magnet) high school in New York City.
Well, one of the fields on your credit card application is "date of birth," presumably to help verify your credit record before they give you a credit card. They can keep this data on file, and a reputable business could presumably access this data.
However, it has been more common recently for pr0n sites to take the credit card, check whether it's a valid card, and then bill the user fraudulently. YMMV.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the most irritating things about Mozilla is that I can't use it with my bank. Actually, this is probably an irritating thing about Citibank, which assumes that anything other than Netscape 4 or IE 4+ is unsupported. I can use Opera with "Identify as Mozilla 4/IE 5.0" but then Citibank's web site never loads due to some bug in the miles of JavaScript that they use.
Is there a way for Mozilla to tell web sites that it is a different version? Obviously, I'd want this to be a toggle, but it would help me out a lot.
That's still not truly "auto-search." I just changed my search engine, typed some search keywords into the location bar (to see the "Search Google for [keywords]" auto-drop-down) and pressed ENTER. Despite my selection of Google as my search provider, it took me to the ad-laden Netscape search page.
It was at that point that I realized that I had to actually click on the "Search Google for [keywords]" line to actually instantiate a Google search. Not very intuitive.
Opera for Linux does not have Java support, nor does it support Netscape plugins or (and I quote) "Proper help windows." Sounds pretty feature-poor right now.
I'm afraid not. It's a bad idea to use dictionary words as passwords.
Sure -- pick up a Power Mac G5 Sphere when you get a chance.
Microsoft had said that if Smart Tags had been included with IE 6.0, they would be disabled by default. The user, then, would have to choose to have his content augmented with these tags. It's no different than reading wire news sources from Yahoo! News, which offers more information about selected keywords (President Bush, the Taliban, just about any publicly-traded company) right there in the news article. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it. Similarly, if you don't like Smart Tags, you don't have to enable them. Simple as that.
The Smart Tags in Office XP are for Office applications. For example, if I have Bob Smith in my Outlook address book, Word will offer to enter Bob Smith's address when I type his name at the start of a business letter. Similarly, Excel can use MSN MoneyCentral to import stock price data.
The regular Office XP smart tags can be turned off, just like any superfluous MS Office "feature." Think of them as less intrusive versions of "it looks like you're writing a letter."
The linked site has something that Slashdot has never provided: a screen shot of Internet Explorer 6 with Smart Tags enabled. Although the site presumably contains many buzzwords (XML, SOAP, and even "Smart Tags") only one word is actually given the dreaded purple underline. That word? "Microsoft."
The suggested links aren't even as blatantly pro-Microsoft as you might think. It looks like they're the same content you could get about any company from any financial news site (news for MSFT, report for MSFT, chart for MSFT, etc.) and an option to search the web for the company name. In fact, when you search for "Microsoft" on MSN, there are still anti-Microsoft pages linked after the more relevant ones. (Check out link #25. Most people searching for just "Microsoft" aren't looking for MS-bashing, either.)
Please, stop overreacting until you've actually seen what Smart Tags do. The article cautions that Smart Tags are still in Office XP. Those are safer still: the usual company stock-price import facilities, as well as the option to automagically import addresses from your Address Book. That makes life simpler when you're typing a letter.
No, I'm not a Microsoft supporter or shareholder, but the constant MS-bashing is completely uncalled for. (Notice also how I did not use "Micro$oft", "M$", "Microsquish", or any other stupid manglings in my write-up here.)
I don't know about DVD's being sturdier. The other night, I rented a movie on DVD. When it started, t-he m-otio-n w-as ver-y j-er-ky and it was unwatchable. After ejecting it from the drive, I noticed all sorts of scratches on it. I ended up returning to the store and getting the VHS copy. The quality wasn't as good as the DVD, but it played just fine without any cleaning.
DVD's are fine for collections, but I wouldn't trust a rental one now.
All of which I am allowed to do by fair use laws. Similarly, people are allegedly buying "compact discs," which consist of nothing more than pre-recorded music. That is nothing more than data! Simple, pure, data. I will not pay someone upwards of $10 for the privilege of listening to data that I could download for free.
The thought that you would pay for such things. Ugh. If you can download it for free, you shouldn't pay for it.Well, GPS has been a topic of frequent discussion here on Slashdot. Of note, the degredation of civilian users was turned off last year.
You should look at the source for Xtraceroute, a program which plots the location of "hops" in a traceroute on a 3-D globe. Once you mix it with this innovative, free (as in speech!) GIS solution, you should be able to realize the power of Open Source.
What the hell is that language doing in michael's write-up? Has he "forgotten that he lives in the U.S."?
Michael, speak American. It's the way you would have wanted it.
On my way from Pittsburgh to New York recently, we stopped at a big truck stop in Carlisle. They had one of these Internet kiosks. The ads really are quite intrusive, and they let you read some documentation on the service before you plunk down your dollar.
I noticed, while reading the documentation, a modem dialing up and connecting at some 28.8 kbps. As mentioned in the article, this is dial-up. The second thing that I noticed was that unless you're an AOL subscriber, don't expect to do much *reading* of e-mail; the service is mainly for outbound messages. That said, it doesn't appear to support IMAP features at all.
Overall, it's not a bad idea for the person who needs a quick Internet fix, but certainly no replacement for full access.
Only the high-end models bear those ungodly prices. In response to competition, Palm has low-end models as well. Is US $129 too much for you?
By contrast, I have yet to see a sub-$200 WinCE PDA that's worth owning. Palm can corner the low-end market like teen-agers and college students with such low-priced models. The glut of inventory means that prices will probably be driven lower still soon.
Consider this: some of the color Palm-OS units claim to support 16-bit color depth -- 65,535 colors. But a 160x160 display only has 25,600 pixels -- barely enough to display one third of these colors at any one time!
Sorry to burst your bubble, but this argument is flawed. Here's why.
Consider this: some of the current video cards on the market claim to support 24-bit color depth -- 16,777,216 colors. But even a 1600x1200 display only has 1,920,000 pixels, barely enough to display one tenth of these colors!
Just because you can't see all of the colors on the screen at once doesn't mean that they're not helpful.
The HandEra 330 has a 240x320 display, including a soft Graffiti area. It runs Palm OS 3.5.2, heavily modified to support a higher-resolution screen, as well as the two built-in expansion slots (SD/MMC and CompactFlash). Sounds what you're looking for.
AOL wants, allegedly, OEM's and users not to upgrade to Windows XP. Microsoft's new interface is too .NET-centric, they claim, even though most of the .NET features originally promised have been cut from XP. AOL wants its programs to be positioned as defaults, and to "take control of the desktop."
There's a very simple reason why AOL's programs will not receive certification by Microsoft. It's because they are crap. Pure, unadulterated crap unfit for any Windows operating system.
AOL has had the same dreadful MDI interface for its dial-up service since it premiered on Windows. Why? Because the AOL software was originally developed for the Mac, where a running application has the entire screen to itself with other applications pushed to the background but still visible. Of course, AOL for Windows doesn't use this "visible" concept, instead hiding everything else behind a solid grey background. You have to run AOL maximized to be able to get anything done with it, and AOL knows this. It means that you'll need to expend extra effort to do anything outside the AOL program, and so you won't do it.
POP3 and PPP are standards older than dirt in the Internet world. Yet AOL still doesn't support them, instead using its own mail client and the abhorrent "AOL Adapter" in networking. Why? Because otherwise you could use other dialers, other mail programs, and other ways to get around their control.
The worst part about AOL is that they set a precedent: people are, in fact, stupid enough to willingly pay $22.00 for mediocre-quality on-line services. AT&T Worldnet, among other providers, has been able to raise their unlimited-usage rates without a fight.
Microsoft may "embrace and extend" standards, but that's much better than AOL's process of ignoring them. AOL can make its own damn OS if it wants to exert its own control. (And yes, I already know that they're starting to.)
Dear Joe,
I have installed Windows 2000 Advanced Datacenter on my computer at home. It was highly optimized, but it was not open-source, so I had to delete it and perform a low-level format of my hard drive.
Five nines reliability? More like nine fives. Microsoft is an evil empire, and their software only runs well 55.5555555% of the time. In fact, I would have to say that I reboot the Microsoft at least 555,555,555 times. Ha ha ha. That's funny.
- My 500 MHz G4 processor goes faster than it on floating-point tests. These include rendering spreadsheets in Photoshop, generating animations in Photoshop, and word-processing documents in Photoshop.
- No application currently requires a Pentium 4, nor will it ever.
- My fundamental right to overclock my computers until they explode is being violated. Intel has probably put in some clock-limiting circuitry. I want this processor to run at 2 GHz. I don't need that power, but I must run my systems as fast as possible.
- Linux is not optimized for it. Yet.
That is all.Not just private high schools can get .edu domains. One friend of mine showed me the web page of Stuyvesant High School, a public (magnet) high school in New York City.
Well, one of the fields on your credit card application is "date of birth," presumably to help verify your credit record before they give you a credit card. They can keep this data on file, and a reputable business could presumably access this data.
However, it has been more common recently for pr0n sites to take the credit card, check whether it's a valid card, and then bill the user fraudulently. YMMV.
The name of the university which I attend is "Carnegie Mellon." Please be sure to follow proper hyphenation and capitalization rules in the future.
You may, if you wish, refer to such orthographical conventions as "hyphecap." This will save some typing in the future.
It's so weird to load Slashdot, look at the top article, and think, "Hey, that's my professor for 213."
Take that, MIT!
I wouldn't pay for this. Paying to listen to radio? I can do that for free right now. I wouldn't pay for this. This should be free.