Microsoft sacrifices security because, in their model, it is often the easiest way (tm) to make something more user friendly. So from a Microsoft point of view, it seems obvious that security and user friendliness are mortal enemies. That doesn't mean the two naturally correlate.
On the other hand, anyone can make a linux box insecure. The question then becomes as simple as whether you trust users to administer their own boxes. This is where you need user friendliness. This is where the OS has a choice to remain secure by staying obfuscated (and thus scaring users away at the expense of functionality) or become more friendly (at the risk of letting users hurt themselves).
Windows, by default, can be (is?) insecure. But that's not where the "(Microsft vs. Linux) vs. (User Friendly vs. Insecure)" debate should begin.
"This does not bode well for those of us who just paid top dollar for the last generation of AGP cards."
Come again? Why do people consider than advances in technology retroactively negate past purchases? If you bought a nice AGP card yesterday, it will continue to be a nice AGP card today.
This could be completely OS dependent, but Opera on Win32 is a dream. (And to be honest, I don't recall it ever having a problem for me on suse or debian either).
Opera is appealing because it's not just a viable replacement for IE or Mozilla, but it's actually an alternative. It's code base is unique in that it has no common ties to the gecko browsers. It's fast. Really fast.
Mouse gestures in Mozilla and IE are (literally) an after thought add-on. Due to Mozilla's design, I'm not sure that a mouse gesture can even register while a page is loading. Little things that destroy the UI if they aren't done right.
This pretty much explains why Microsoft bought Virtual PC. If they are at all interested in backwards compatibility, they are going to need to VPC to run old games on the G5.
I was able to get analog cable last year through Comcast, even though they stopped publically advertising it. Digital TV has completely destroyed the art of channel surfing. The horrid delay in waiting for the next channel to come up really forces you to use their 'preview' screens, which coincidentally also take forever to populate with information.
Lastly, I can do whatever I want with analog -- all my TVs are ready for it and I'm not forced to buy or lease boxes. Sure, you may no longer be able to get HBO-4 through HBO-92 on analog, but it's got nearly everything.
Not necessarily an infeasible price point. Let?s address a few of your assumptions: . a) ?Start throwing in Li-ion cells? Who said Li-on? Everything else in this price range is a old-school AA. . b) ?LCDs? They don?t need to be backlit. They don?t need to be color. They don?t need to be expensive. . c) ?cosmetic frills? Need not be expensive, need not be present. This is the company that sells the ugly-cheap eMac. . d) ?microdrive? This is the expensive part, yes? but consider this is really the only expensive part, it is not impossible. . From a bid-ness perspective, let?s assume Apple sees baby iPods (bipods?) as a stepping stone to their expensive siblings, or yet another insurgence of users for iTMS. Either way, even selling them at cost becomes viable.
Speaking from the experience of being with a company that was working with Russian labor, I can tell you that, language aside, there is one hurdle which simply cannot be easily overcome. When the U.S. is at work, Asia is asleep. And vice-versa. It has something to do with the sun.
Asian programmers become a black-box whereby you provide specs and they provide code, and never the 'twain shall meet. While this works out fine for projects in the beginning, it becomes quickly irritating in the final stages where small tweaks and corrections need to be fired back and forth between developers and managers. Understanding a high-percentage of programmers seem to be nocturnal by nature, it's one thing to be able to pull off some all-nighters and quite another to work 3rd shift for a living.
All in all it's a pretty simple question... If you were a hotdog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself?
I wouldn't be suprosed if this decision wasn't motived from a committee. Publishers need only take one look at the debacle that is the RIAA to decide eBooks can probably wait a few more years. Let the RIAA fight the piracy P2P issues, see how well DRM works out, and then come back if the water temperature suits their tastes. After all, paper has been working fine so far, and lucky for them most of us are still too lazy to type/scan in the books we read.
Tell ya what Microsoft, you can patch my machine automatically as long as I get to sue you the first time an automagic update foos my bar. Yeah, tough call huh?
You may not know this, but there are a lot of people who don't jump on the latest service packs not because they lazy, but because they are scared.
And using that logic... I recently purchased an HP laptop with a 14" XGA screen for $599 after rebates! You have to understand that when laptops get _smaller_ they sometimes get more expensive. Knowing this, you won't say strange things like "laptop X is cheaper AND bigger!"
It looks like someone took a crap or a dump on my screen.
First of all, it sucks. Second, it blows. Turd, it really doesn't follow a coherent structure or make any points. It just bounces around between conspiricy theory and common sense... yet often managing to contradict itself in the process. (How can Mozilla be both in danger of dying off, -AND- a major player that will make Opera the third wheel?)
The article doesn't even do a good job at bashing Microsoft, and that ain't computer science folks.
I remember dialing uphill, in the snow, to my local BBS. I also remember when people thought Caldera was a good group of lawyers because they were suing Microsoft over DR-DOS. Funny how perspectives can change.
There is one oft-overlooked advantage to these 'big' PDA phones... the batteries. (Except for the inexplicable negative-charge the original Treo's had.)
I've been using the Kyocera 6035 for about a year and half. It was $19 after rebates and with a service plan. Make no mistake... This thing is big. It is also tough. And -- the battery is amazing! I charge this thing maybe once week. I think it actually gets better battery life than is advertised.
Sure, you all take your small, sexy 'portable' phones. But understand that there is a select group of people out there whose minds don't register the phrase 'I have to go, my phone is almost dead'.
Privacy? "If the government / police are able to track illegal transactions then what is stopping them looking at my normal transactions?"
Cash is the property of the Government. Why would you think you've got privacy rights with something that isn't your's to begin with?
If you want privacy, you'll have to move off a governmental currency to something a little more primative. Carry around some vials of exotic spices and salts and whatnot.
I believe transitioning a major city for public transportation is possible, with minor exceptions. For example: Take a four-lane interstate. Make it three-lanes. Add a light rail track in the now-empty lane and whalla! Why? The interstate already goes places people need to go. And now - more importantly - you've created a visible change. Traffic jams get worse with fewer lanes for the cars to inhabit, all the while trains fly past them with increased frequency and passengers. This is the first step to transitioning the suburban-downtown commute. (For this example, I use Chicago, since that's where I park my bike).
Chicago has, by all accounts, a modest public transportation system. Light rail (the 'L') is feasible, but only takes you to the center of the city or away from it. Same thing happens with the medium rail (the 'Metra'). The only option for peripheral commuting is the bus. Buses are plentiful, but abhorrently choked in movement by automobiles.
However, Chicago has a bike-friendly mayor, and several key steps have been happening to promote the usage of bikes. The most important is the addition of 'bike lanes' on main thoroughfares. This echoes my sentiments of the interstate transition. What you see now are city streets clogged as far as the eye can see with cars, while bikers zip happily down in their little 3' lane right past them all. The lane also provides a small level of safety, or comfort zone for bikers. Don't get me wrong, buses/cabs/squirrels, they are still hell bent on killing me every day... but this year, I've seen a marked increase in bikers, which I attribute to these bike lanes.
It's a start, which often can be the hardest thing to do.
In December we purchased an original Nomad Jukebox (10GB for $100 after Mail-in-Rebate). Exactly 96 days after purchase, the unit failed to boot. Creative's warranty, of course, was an impressive 90 days. Thinking back to the knee-jerk reaction of declining the Best Buy extended warranty, I felt like quoting some Khan from Star Trek II.
Anywho, I take care of my devices. The Jukebox still has the plastic covering the LCD. Ghetto, ya dig?
I engaged in an epic duel with Creative's tech support via e-mail. Sending extremely detailed reports to them, and met in return with extremely canned responses. Most often, the responses asked questions that I had already answered in the previous mail. Obviously, this wasn't going anywhere.
To make matters worse, it had been over the '6 to 8 week' waiting period and I still had no rebate check. Customer Service said 'sorry' and acknowledged the irony that the unit was out of warranty and broken before Creative could even be bothered to mail my rebate. And by that I mean they didn't acknowledge the irony. At all. They just didn't care.
Instead of pursuing the matter further with Creative's customer service, I used the 'protection' feature of my credit card to reimburse me for the unit, and swore off Creative for future products.
I don't doubt the Nomads have gotten better through the revisions. However, I try to judge a company equally between the good products they make and how they handle thier failures.
Looking to draw Windows users away from Apple's wildly popular iPod, Creative has released a mammoth update to its NOMAD Jukebox Zen portable audio player. The hard drive based Zen boasts an immense storage capacity of 60GB - twice that of largest iPod.
The NOMAD Jukebox Zen sports a sleek aluminum case and USB 2.0 connectivity for fast song transfers. Creative has priced the Zen at $400, $100 cheaper than Apple's new 30GB iPod.
"We've heard from our users that they would love to see a huge capacity NOMAD Jukebox Zen to take their entire music library and their digital files wherever they go," said Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo. "And of course they demanded a great price. With the NOMAD Jukebox Zen with 60GB we've delivered a breakthrough capacity in a portable player."
Creative claims a battery life of 14 hours in the NOMAD Jukebox Zen, slightly higher than that of the iPod. The Zen offers the ability to edit playlists directly on the device, and a "Find" function to quality search thousands of songs. An optional FM Wired Remote is also available featuring an FM tuner and microphone.
But despite Creative's superior capacity and lower price, Apple has leapfrogged its competitors in terms of dollar market share. According to NPDTechworld, Apple held 27 percent of the market in the fourth quarter of last year, followed by S3's Rio unit with 10 percent.
Apple's third generation iPods debut May 2, while Creative expects to ship the 60GB NOMAD Jukebox Zen later this month.
I have one major concern on these wireless freenets... what happens when the freak who lives in a van down by the river pulls up outside of my pad, taps into my wireless access point, and starts threatening the big Dubbaya, or maybe arranges for some kiddie porn or something. Isn't there a fear of being the last identifiable link in the chain, and assuming liability for letting people use your connection?
Re:trying to be objective
on
Mac Rants
·
· Score: 1
"I bought my first one at a time when you still had to pay M$ for the Windows license whether you had Windows or not. I'm a capitalist, but that struck me as being closer to Naziism"
As if you didn't have to pay the Apple tax for a Mac? How is this better than Windows?
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft sacrifices security because, in their model, it is often the easiest way (tm) to make something more user friendly. So from a Microsoft point of view, it seems obvious that security and user friendliness are mortal enemies. That doesn't mean the two naturally correlate.
On the other hand, anyone can make a linux box insecure. The question then becomes as simple as whether you trust users to administer their own boxes. This is where you need user friendliness. This is where the OS has a choice to remain secure by staying obfuscated (and thus scaring users away at the expense of functionality) or become more friendly (at the risk of letting users hurt themselves).
Windows, by default, can be (is?) insecure. But that's not where the "(Microsft vs. Linux) vs. (User Friendly vs. Insecure)" debate should begin.
"This does not bode well for those of us who just paid top dollar for the last generation of AGP cards."
Come again? Why do people consider than advances in technology retroactively negate past purchases? If you bought a nice AGP card yesterday, it will continue to be a nice AGP card today.
This could be completely OS dependent, but Opera on Win32 is a dream. (And to be honest, I don't recall it ever having a problem for me on suse or debian either).
Opera is appealing because it's not just a viable replacement for IE or Mozilla, but it's actually an alternative. It's code base is unique in that it has no common ties to the gecko browsers. It's fast. Really fast.
Mouse gestures in Mozilla and IE are (literally) an after thought add-on. Due to Mozilla's design, I'm not sure that a mouse gesture can even register while a page is loading. Little things that destroy the UI if they aren't done right.
This pretty much explains why Microsoft bought Virtual PC. If they are at all interested in backwards compatibility, they are going to need to VPC to run old games on the G5.
I was able to get analog cable last year through Comcast, even though they stopped publically advertising it. Digital TV has completely destroyed the art of channel surfing. The horrid delay in waiting for the next channel to come up really forces you to use their 'preview' screens, which coincidentally also take forever to populate with information.
Lastly, I can do whatever I want with analog -- all my TVs are ready for it and I'm not forced to buy or lease boxes. Sure, you may no longer be able to get HBO-4 through HBO-92 on analog, but it's got nearly everything.
Hey, it's not *our* fault. We thought it was Seti Alpha 6.
Not necessarily an infeasible price point. Let?s address a few of your assumptions:
.
a) ?Start throwing in Li-ion cells?
Who said Li-on? Everything else in this price range is a old-school AA.
.
b) ?LCDs?
They don?t need to be backlit. They don?t need to be color. They don?t need to be expensive.
.
c) ?cosmetic frills?
Need not be expensive, need not be present. This is the company that sells the ugly-cheap eMac.
.
d) ?microdrive?
This is the expensive part, yes? but consider this is really the only expensive part, it is not impossible.
.
From a bid-ness perspective, let?s assume Apple sees baby iPods (bipods?) as a stepping stone to their expensive siblings, or yet another insurgence of users for iTMS. Either way, even selling them at cost becomes viable.
Speaking from the experience of being with a company that was working with Russian labor, I can tell you that, language aside, there is one hurdle which simply cannot be easily overcome. When the U.S. is at work, Asia is asleep. And vice-versa. It has something to do with the sun.
Asian programmers become a black-box whereby you provide specs and they provide code, and never the 'twain shall meet. While this works out fine for projects in the beginning, it becomes quickly irritating in the final stages where small tweaks and corrections need to be fired back and forth between developers and managers. Understanding a high-percentage of programmers seem to be nocturnal by nature, it's one thing to be able to pull off some all-nighters and quite another to work 3rd shift for a living.
All in all it's a pretty simple question
Even after no one sued them or did anything but send a mean letter on geek letterhead? That's crazy!
I wouldn't be suprosed if this decision wasn't motived from a committee. Publishers need only take one look at the debacle that is the RIAA to decide eBooks can probably wait a few more years. Let the RIAA fight the piracy P2P issues, see how well DRM works out, and then come back if the water temperature suits their tastes. After all, paper has been working fine so far, and lucky for them most of us are still too lazy to type/scan in the books we read.
Tell ya what Microsoft, you can patch my machine automatically as long as I get to sue you the first time an automagic update foos my bar. Yeah, tough call huh?
You may not know this, but there are a lot of people who don't jump on the latest service packs not because they lazy, but because they are scared.
And using that logic... I recently purchased an HP laptop with a 14" XGA screen for $599 after rebates! You have to understand that when laptops get _smaller_ they sometimes get more expensive. Knowing this, you won't say strange things like "laptop X is cheaper AND bigger!"
It looks like someone took a crap or a dump on my screen.
First of all, it sucks. Second, it blows. Turd, it really doesn't follow a coherent structure or make any points. It just bounces around between conspiricy theory and common sense... yet often managing to contradict itself in the process. (How can Mozilla be both in danger of dying off, -AND- a major player that will make Opera the third wheel?)
The article doesn't even do a good job at bashing Microsoft, and that ain't computer science folks.
I remember dialing uphill, in the snow, to my local BBS. I also remember when people thought Caldera was a good group of lawyers because they were suing Microsoft over DR-DOS. Funny how perspectives can change.
There is one oft-overlooked advantage to these 'big' PDA phones... the batteries. (Except for the inexplicable negative-charge the original Treo's had.)
I've been using the Kyocera 6035 for about a year and half. It was $19 after rebates and with a service plan. Make no mistake... This thing is big. It is also tough. And -- the battery is amazing! I charge this thing maybe once week. I think it actually gets better battery life than is advertised.
Sure, you all take your small, sexy 'portable' phones. But understand that there is a select group of people out there whose minds don't register the phrase 'I have to go, my phone is almost dead'.
Privacy? "If the government / police are able to track illegal transactions then what is stopping them looking at my normal transactions?"
Cash is the property of the Government. Why would you think you've got privacy rights with something that isn't your's to begin with?
If you want privacy, you'll have to move off a governmental currency to something a little more primative. Carry around some vials of exotic spices and salts and whatnot.
Boobies
I believe transitioning a major city for public transportation is possible, with minor exceptions. For example: Take a four-lane interstate. Make it three-lanes. Add a light rail track in the now-empty lane and whalla! Why? The interstate already goes places people need to go. And now - more importantly - you've created a visible change. Traffic jams get worse with fewer lanes for the cars to inhabit, all the while trains fly past them with increased frequency and passengers. This is the first step to transitioning the suburban-downtown commute. (For this example, I use Chicago, since that's where I park my bike).
... but this year, I've seen a marked increase in bikers, which I attribute to these bike lanes.
Chicago has, by all accounts, a modest public transportation system. Light rail (the 'L') is feasible, but only takes you to the center of the city or away from it. Same thing happens with the medium rail (the 'Metra'). The only option for peripheral commuting is the bus. Buses are plentiful, but abhorrently choked in movement by automobiles.
However, Chicago has a bike-friendly mayor, and several key steps have been happening to promote the usage of bikes. The most important is the addition of 'bike lanes' on main thoroughfares. This echoes my sentiments of the interstate transition. What you see now are city streets clogged as far as the eye can see with cars, while bikers zip happily down in their little 3' lane right past them all. The lane also provides a small level of safety, or comfort zone for bikers. Don't get me wrong, buses/cabs/squirrels, they are still hell bent on killing me every day
It's a start, which often can be the hardest thing to do.
In December we purchased an original Nomad Jukebox (10GB for $100 after Mail-in-Rebate). Exactly 96 days after purchase, the unit failed to boot. Creative's warranty, of course, was an impressive 90 days. Thinking back to the knee-jerk reaction of declining the Best Buy extended warranty, I felt like quoting some Khan from Star Trek II.
Anywho, I take care of my devices. The Jukebox still has the plastic covering the LCD. Ghetto, ya dig?
I engaged in an epic duel with Creative's tech support via e-mail. Sending extremely detailed reports to them, and met in return with extremely canned responses. Most often, the responses asked questions that I had already answered in the previous mail. Obviously, this wasn't going anywhere.
To make matters worse, it had been over the '6 to 8 week' waiting period and I still had no rebate check. Customer Service said 'sorry' and acknowledged the irony that the unit was out of warranty and broken before Creative could even be bothered to mail my rebate. And by that I mean they didn't acknowledge the irony. At all. They just didn't care.
Instead of pursuing the matter further with Creative's customer service, I used the 'protection' feature of my credit card to reimburse me for the unit, and swore off Creative for future products.
I don't doubt the Nomads have gotten better through the revisions. However, I try to judge a company equally between the good products they make and how they handle thier failures.
Buyer beware.
Looking to draw Windows users away from Apple's wildly popular iPod, Creative has released a mammoth update to its NOMAD Jukebox Zen portable audio player. The hard drive based Zen boasts an immense storage capacity of 60GB - twice that of largest iPod.
The NOMAD Jukebox Zen sports a sleek aluminum case and USB 2.0 connectivity for fast song transfers. Creative has priced the Zen at $400, $100 cheaper than Apple's new 30GB iPod.
"We've heard from our users that they would love to see a huge capacity NOMAD Jukebox Zen to take their entire music library and their digital files wherever they go," said Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo. "And of course they demanded a great price. With the NOMAD Jukebox Zen with 60GB we've delivered a breakthrough capacity in a portable player."
Creative claims a battery life of 14 hours in the NOMAD Jukebox Zen, slightly higher than that of the iPod. The Zen offers the ability to edit playlists directly on the device, and a "Find" function to quality search thousands of songs. An optional FM Wired Remote is also available featuring an FM tuner and microphone.
But despite Creative's superior capacity and lower price, Apple has leapfrogged its competitors in terms of dollar market share. According to NPDTechworld, Apple held 27 percent of the market in the fourth quarter of last year, followed by S3's Rio unit with 10 percent.
Apple's third generation iPods debut May 2, while Creative expects to ship the 60GB NOMAD Jukebox Zen later this month.
And those poor WorldCom stockholders thought all they had to lose was their investments. Suckers.
Bling Bling!
I have one major concern on these wireless freenets... what happens when the freak who lives in a van down by the river pulls up outside of my pad, taps into my wireless access point, and starts threatening the big Dubbaya, or maybe arranges for some kiddie porn or something. Isn't there a fear of being the last identifiable link in the chain, and assuming liability for letting people use your connection?
"I bought my first one at a time when you still had to pay M$ for the Windows license whether you had Windows or not. I'm a capitalist, but that struck me as being closer to Naziism" As if you didn't have to pay the Apple tax for a Mac? How is this better than Windows?