Personally, I hope this spurs a call for anti-theft measures to be integrated into the device. GPS reporting, disabling if reported stolen, so on... Sure, they could be bypassed, but antitheft measures work basically on 'I'm more of a pain in the butt to steal(from) than the next guy'.
That's how antitheft devices work on cars (where you have several vehicles to choose from and can take the time to evaluate the antitheft devices), not on cell phones (the theft of which generally requires pickpocketing or mugging). If somebody is considering stealing your phone, it's unlikely he'll decide not to because he recognizes it as a model he doesn't want. Once he's stolen it, he's sure as hell not going to give it back to you (although he may toss it, if it's not worth trying to sell).
For a cell phone, your best bet is to destroy the data and disable the device, making it unusable (and therefore worthless, or nearly so) after it has been stolen.
Unfortunately, we have to wait for the discovery phase of their next trial to get more recent internal emails. In the meantime, is there some reason to believe that their corporate culture has improved in Ballmer's sweaty hands?
Well, for starters, the IE team has been communicating with the web development community, they've been working with the Mozilla foundation (licensing Firefox's RSS logo for use in IE7, and helping to improve Firefox's support for Vista), they cleaned up IE's CSS handling enough to make it pass ACID2 (and added support for various other W3C standards), and they changed Windows Update so it no longer runs in IE. That's definitely non-evil behavior, and there appears to be a non-evil culture behind it.
However, Microsoft is a huge company and is rather famous for the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Just because there's a non-evil culture driving certain parts of the company doesn't mean the rest of the company has a non-evil culture as well. It's also possible that appearances are deceiving, and their good behavior really is stemming from an evil culture. I don't have any internal connections, so I don't know.
If this is true, I'm genuinely impressed. I'll wait and see:-)
The goal is true, although the implementation isn't perfect. IE8 attempts to render pages according to W3C standards[1] by default[2], unless the author has gone out of their way to indicate that the page should be rendered the way IE7 does[3] instead. The user can override this by clicking a toolbar button or adding the site to a list of exceptions, and Microsoft also maintains a list of sites that will be rendered in IE7 compatibility mode by default even if the authors didn't indicate that they should (that's what this article is talking about).
[1] While IE8's standards mode is much better than any previous version of IE, and is good enough to pass ACID2, it's not perfect. Neither is anyone else, of course (no major browser has a currently-shipping release version that passes ACID3 and Firefox won't for some time, although the others have it working in beta), but it can be argued that IE8 is worse than most, and that their goal was specifically passing the ACID2 test rather than generally good CSS support all around.
[2] Like all other browsers, this is only true if the author used a DOCTYPE declaration to indicate their awareness of the standards. If you leave that out, it's assumed that you don't know what you're doing and you probably designed your site for Netscape 4 a decade ago, so browsers will try to guess what you might have meant and render it roughly the way Netscape 4 used to, sort of. All major browsers do this; IE8 is no exception.
[3] While the goal is certainly for pages that IE8 renders in IE7 compatibility mode to look identical to how IE7 would have rendered them, the implementation may not be perfect. It may be possible for a page to render one way in IE7, but render completely differently in IE8 with IE7 compatibility mode turned on. I'm sure if this is a problem for major sites, Microsoft will patch it.
No, they won't. Last I checked, there was no "browser-global" rendering mode in IE8, only per-page. And for all new pages it defaults to standards mode. So for anything new that targets IE8+ (heh), you only need to take care of IE8 standards mode.
Except that:
1) Microsoft maintains a list of sites that should be rendered in IE7 compatibility mode, instead of the default standards mode.
2) Users can add sites to their own list of sites that should be rendered in IE7 compatibility mode.
So, if your site currently works in IE7 but doesn't work in IE8's standards mode, and a user happens to visit it, they may add it to their list, or Microsoft may add it to theirs. Then, after you update your site to work with IE8's standards mode, some users may still be viewing your site in IE7 compatibility mode.
If that really does render everything exactly the same way IE7 does, then you should be OK. What if it doesn't?
Has no one ever noticed that Microsoft.com had various effects, direct system access, and other features not found anywhere else on the web? Or that Windows Update only worked through Internet Explorer?
I couldn't help but notice that you used the past tense here. Windows Update, for example, no longer runs inside of Internet Explorer. That e-mail from Gates was written a decade ago. Times have changed, and Microsoft is not the same company they were.
That doesn't mean they're not still evil, but come on, complain about the evil things they're doing NOW, not the evil things they did five years ago.
IE8's CSS support is good enough to pass ACID2. If you're judging IE's craptacular CSS support on your experiences with IE6 and IE7, you need to forget all that and try the IE8 beta.
Having said that, I'm sure there's plenty of stuff that ACID2 doesn't cover, that other browsers handle fine, that's still horribly broken in IE8. But this is why the ACID tests exist - to help browser vendors identify where the problems are. I expect IE9 will pass ACID3.
IE8 isn't great, but Microsoft is finally on board, playing by our rules, working to make IE standards-compliant and competitive. They haven't arrived yet, but they've begun to try, and that's something.
iPhones don't need RGB or S-Video, so no, they're connectors don't need to be anything other than USB. Audio input and output do not (or at least should not) use the same plug as power/data (otherwise you can't charge your phone and use the headset at the same time).
Choose Component or Composite A/V cables to connect your iPhone to a TV. Included in the box is a USB charging adapter, so you can charge your iPhone while playing movies if you don't want to connect it to a computer. All of this connects via the single dock connector, which is standardized across both models of iPhone and several recent models of iPod (see the list at the bottom of each page). So, once you get everything hooked up, you can just leave the cable in place, and whenever you want to connect your iPhone (or your friend's iPhone, or your other friend's iPod) it's just one plug to connect it to your TV and charge the battery at the same time.
Remember, the iPhone has a built-in camera. Why wouldn't you want an easy way to plug it into a TV and show your family and friends the pictures you've taken?
A legitimate copy of Photoshop CS4 stopped functioning after we clobbered a nagging registration screen by replacing a DLL with a hacked version.
People keep complaining about how easy it is for viruses and malware to infect Windows PCs. Microsoft and/or Adobe figure out a way to secure Photoshop to prevent the executable code from being modified, and you bitch that they shouldn't have. Not only that, but rather than doing some research to try to find out exactly why it doesn't work with your hacked DLL (and whether this security feature can be easily turned off), you blindly assume it must be some new invasive form of DRM that Microsoft is pushing on the unsuspecting masses.
With regard to media files, the days of capturing an audio program on your PC seem to be over (if the program originated on that PC). The inputs of your sound card are severely degraded in software if the card is also playing an audio program (tested here with Grooveshark). This may be the tip of the iceberg.
Is English your native language? If not, your grammar is definitely excusable. However, I think it's dangerous to confuse DRM itself (which is avoidable simply by refusing to purchase DRM-encumbered media) with attempts to close the analog hole, which are a pain in the ass for everybody.
I don't get it... how can the same commission that calls for doubling copyright to a ridiculous 95 years also recommend a good-for-the-rest-of-us standard like this? It seems like this commission has some rather conflicted or confused goals and motivations.
It's quite simple, really:
1) Nobody has bribed them to keep mobile phone connectors proprietary and incompatible with each other.
2) Politicians use mobile phones themselves. A lot. They're personally annoyed by having to keep track of the different cables and connectors. They're not annoyed by having to pay a bunch of money to buy copies of 90-year-old works, because they have a bunch of money and aren't interested in doing any of the cool things that can only be done with works in the public domain or released under a free license (Creative Commons etc.).
Heh, funny you should mention a new television system. You do realize they're turning off the old one in a few months, right? (It was supposed to have happened already, but the government dropped the ball and Congress extended the deadline again.)
I heard a lot of people complaining in 2002-2003 that it had become difficult to make fun of the French, because whenever they did people kept assuming they supported the invasion of Iraq.
The bandwidth is "lost" in the sense that it cannot be used for other purposes, because it's being used for things like spam (which accounts for something like 90% of all e-mail traffic). We must increase the total bandwidth in order to compensate for what is "lost" to spam.
Obviously e-mail doesn't consume much bandwidth on a small scale, but I wonder what companies like Yahoo have to deal with...
The city of Ashland in southern Oregon also offers 10mbps fiber to everyone in the city, but they don't run their own ISP - instead, they allow competing ISPs to offer service through their fiber network. Each ISP sets their own pricing, and they pay AFN for the connectivity.
Macs are like Harley Davidson, only a fool buys them new. Get them used and save yourself the expense.
As someone else pointed out, second-hand Macs tend to be expensive. I definitely recommend checking out the available options (the Clearance section on the Apple Store web site is great, and PowerMax is a reliable seller of used Apple products) but buying new is often a better option. I'm typing this on an iBook I bought used from a friend who was upgrading to a MBP, but the other three Macs I've owned were all new, and the older used models that were available at the time would not have been good options for me.
We've finally reached the point where Core2Duo-based Macs are fast enough that even the used ones are quite usable, but CPU speed has long been a frustrating problem.
New Macs ship with the latest OS for no extra charge, which often has vast improvements over the previous version, and consumer-grade Macs ship with iLife as well. Upgrading the OS and installing iLife on a used Mac will add $208 to the price tag. If you don't need those features, then going used may be a better option for you. New hardware features can be nice too - I love the new buttonless trackpad on the new Macbooks.
In any case, this isn't like 1994 when people did not know how to download software. Right now, people download stuff all the time, from chat programs to games and utilities, and wallpapers, songs, and more. None of that is bundled, but people manage fine. Same thing with browsers.
No, users do not know how to download software, any more than they did in 1994. Most of those things you listed are available in a web-based form (e.g. chat, games, virus scan, radio, etc. etc.) and people are accustomed to jumping through the extra hoops you have to jump through to avoid downloading and installing new applications (e.g. using a web-based e-mail service instead of setting up a POP3/IMAP client).
I mean, Paint is bundled with Windows, but that hasn't stopped anyone from making their own paint programs, now has it?
How many can you name, that an average user has heard of? Paint Shop Pro is the only one I can think of, other than Photoshop and GIMP.
IE8 is actually not that bad. It passes ACID2. It doesn't pass ACID3, but neither does Firefox. They've finally added desperately-needed developer tools, and they finally have a proper View Source window with syntax highlighting and line numbers instead of just launching Notepad.
As for security, IE7 and IE8 run in "protected mode" on Windows Vista (not on XP), which should help to prevent sites from exploiting security holes to install malware without user participation.
The biggest problem with IE7 and IE8 for a lot of people is the new UI - they've hidden the menubar by default, and when you turn it on, it's in the wrong place (below the address bar). It's fixable, but this is out of reach for most people and not helpful to IT folks who have to work with other people's computers.
The next problem is that while most Firefox users are very aware of the available extensions, most IE users are not. This isn't due to differences in the browsers themselves - both IE7/IE8 and Firefox provide links to where add-ons can be downloaded. I suspect Firefox users are more likely to look for solutions to problems they encounter while IE users are more likely to just deal with them, and Firefox has had extensions available for a lot longer than IE.
Not only that, but Apple has publicly stated that it took a lot of work to optimize Mac OS X to run on the iPhone, and that they'll be incorporating a lot of those changes into the next version of the desktop OS (10.6, code-named "Snow Leopard"). Indeed, their web page says:
Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X, making it even more efficient for users, and giving them back valuable hard drive space for their music and photos.
and
Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone, Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, a streamlined, next-generation platform that advances modern media and Internet standards. QuickTime X features optimized support for modern codecs and more efficient media playback, making it ideal for any application that needs to play media content.
Tools like these are precisely why many users don't perceive spam to be a problem anymore. If the people running your e-mail servers weren't already using these kinds of spam-fighting tools, then you wouldn't think spam was no longer a problem, because your inbox would be full of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, the user has override control. Besides, standards mode is the default; there is no meta tag to explicitly force standards mode.
Personally, I hope this spurs a call for anti-theft measures to be integrated into the device. GPS reporting, disabling if reported stolen, so on... Sure, they could be bypassed, but antitheft measures work basically on 'I'm more of a pain in the butt to steal(from) than the next guy'.
That's how antitheft devices work on cars (where you have several vehicles to choose from and can take the time to evaluate the antitheft devices), not on cell phones (the theft of which generally requires pickpocketing or mugging). If somebody is considering stealing your phone, it's unlikely he'll decide not to because he recognizes it as a model he doesn't want. Once he's stolen it, he's sure as hell not going to give it back to you (although he may toss it, if it's not worth trying to sell).
For a cell phone, your best bet is to destroy the data and disable the device, making it unusable (and therefore worthless, or nearly so) after it has been stolen.
Unfortunately, we have to wait for the discovery phase of their next trial to get more recent internal emails. In the meantime, is there some reason to believe that their corporate culture has improved in Ballmer's sweaty hands?
Well, for starters, the IE team has been communicating with the web development community, they've been working with the Mozilla foundation (licensing Firefox's RSS logo for use in IE7, and helping to improve Firefox's support for Vista), they cleaned up IE's CSS handling enough to make it pass ACID2 (and added support for various other W3C standards), and they changed Windows Update so it no longer runs in IE. That's definitely non-evil behavior, and there appears to be a non-evil culture behind it.
However, Microsoft is a huge company and is rather famous for the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Just because there's a non-evil culture driving certain parts of the company doesn't mean the rest of the company has a non-evil culture as well. It's also possible that appearances are deceiving, and their good behavior really is stemming from an evil culture. I don't have any internal connections, so I don't know.
If this is true, I'm genuinely impressed. I'll wait and see :-)
The goal is true, although the implementation isn't perfect. IE8 attempts to render pages according to W3C standards[1] by default[2], unless the author has gone out of their way to indicate that the page should be rendered the way IE7 does[3] instead. The user can override this by clicking a toolbar button or adding the site to a list of exceptions, and Microsoft also maintains a list of sites that will be rendered in IE7 compatibility mode by default even if the authors didn't indicate that they should (that's what this article is talking about).
[1] While IE8's standards mode is much better than any previous version of IE, and is good enough to pass ACID2, it's not perfect. Neither is anyone else, of course (no major browser has a currently-shipping release version that passes ACID3 and Firefox won't for some time, although the others have it working in beta), but it can be argued that IE8 is worse than most, and that their goal was specifically passing the ACID2 test rather than generally good CSS support all around.
[2] Like all other browsers, this is only true if the author used a DOCTYPE declaration to indicate their awareness of the standards. If you leave that out, it's assumed that you don't know what you're doing and you probably designed your site for Netscape 4 a decade ago, so browsers will try to guess what you might have meant and render it roughly the way Netscape 4 used to, sort of. All major browsers do this; IE8 is no exception.
[3] While the goal is certainly for pages that IE8 renders in IE7 compatibility mode to look identical to how IE7 would have rendered them, the implementation may not be perfect. It may be possible for a page to render one way in IE7, but render completely differently in IE8 with IE7 compatibility mode turned on. I'm sure if this is a problem for major sites, Microsoft will patch it.
No, they won't. Last I checked, there was no "browser-global" rendering mode in IE8, only per-page. And for all new pages it defaults to standards mode. So for anything new that targets IE8+ (heh), you only need to take care of IE8 standards mode.
Except that:
1) Microsoft maintains a list of sites that should be rendered in IE7 compatibility mode, instead of the default standards mode.
2) Users can add sites to their own list of sites that should be rendered in IE7 compatibility mode.
So, if your site currently works in IE7 but doesn't work in IE8's standards mode, and a user happens to visit it, they may add it to their list, or Microsoft may add it to theirs. Then, after you update your site to work with IE8's standards mode, some users may still be viewing your site in IE7 compatibility mode.
If that really does render everything exactly the same way IE7 does, then you should be OK. What if it doesn't?
Has no one ever noticed that Microsoft.com had various effects, direct system access, and other features not found anywhere else on the web? Or that Windows Update only worked through Internet Explorer?
I couldn't help but notice that you used the past tense here. Windows Update, for example, no longer runs inside of Internet Explorer. That e-mail from Gates was written a decade ago. Times have changed, and Microsoft is not the same company they were.
That doesn't mean they're not still evil, but come on, complain about the evil things they're doing NOW, not the evil things they did five years ago.
IE8's CSS support is good enough to pass ACID2. If you're judging IE's craptacular CSS support on your experiences with IE6 and IE7, you need to forget all that and try the IE8 beta.
Having said that, I'm sure there's plenty of stuff that ACID2 doesn't cover, that other browsers handle fine, that's still horribly broken in IE8. But this is why the ACID tests exist - to help browser vendors identify where the problems are. I expect IE9 will pass ACID3.
IE8 isn't great, but Microsoft is finally on board, playing by our rules, working to make IE standards-compliant and competitive. They haven't arrived yet, but they've begun to try, and that's something.
Microsoft has decided that labeling everything "Windows Live" is more important than having anybody understand what the hell you're talking about.
iPhones don't need RGB or S-Video, so no, they're connectors don't need to be anything other than USB. Audio input and output do not (or at least should not) use the same plug as power/data (otherwise you can't charge your phone and use the headset at the same time).
Choose Component or Composite A/V cables to connect your iPhone to a TV. Included in the box is a USB charging adapter, so you can charge your iPhone while playing movies if you don't want to connect it to a computer. All of this connects via the single dock connector, which is standardized across both models of iPhone and several recent models of iPod (see the list at the bottom of each page). So, once you get everything hooked up, you can just leave the cable in place, and whenever you want to connect your iPhone (or your friend's iPhone, or your other friend's iPod) it's just one plug to connect it to your TV and charge the battery at the same time.
Remember, the iPhone has a built-in camera. Why wouldn't you want an easy way to plug it into a TV and show your family and friends the pictures you've taken?
Is DRM really what we're talking about here?
A legitimate copy of Photoshop CS4 stopped functioning after we clobbered a nagging registration screen by replacing a DLL with a hacked version.
People keep complaining about how easy it is for viruses and malware to infect Windows PCs. Microsoft and/or Adobe figure out a way to secure Photoshop to prevent the executable code from being modified, and you bitch that they shouldn't have. Not only that, but rather than doing some research to try to find out exactly why it doesn't work with your hacked DLL (and whether this security feature can be easily turned off), you blindly assume it must be some new invasive form of DRM that Microsoft is pushing on the unsuspecting masses.
With regard to media files, the days of capturing an audio program on your PC seem to be over (if the program originated on that PC). The inputs of your sound card are severely degraded in software if the card is also playing an audio program (tested here with Grooveshark). This may be the tip of the iceberg.
Is English your native language? If not, your grammar is definitely excusable. However, I think it's dangerous to confuse DRM itself (which is avoidable simply by refusing to purchase DRM-encumbered media) with attempts to close the analog hole, which are a pain in the ass for everybody.
I don't get it... how can the same commission that calls for doubling copyright to a ridiculous 95 years also recommend a good-for-the-rest-of-us standard like this? It seems like this commission has some rather conflicted or confused goals and motivations.
It's quite simple, really:
1) Nobody has bribed them to keep mobile phone connectors proprietary and incompatible with each other.
2) Politicians use mobile phones themselves. A lot. They're personally annoyed by having to keep track of the different cables and connectors. They're not annoyed by having to pay a bunch of money to buy copies of 90-year-old works, because they have a bunch of money and aren't interested in doing any of the cool things that can only be done with works in the public domain or released under a free license (Creative Commons etc.).
Heh, funny you should mention a new television system. You do realize they're turning off the old one in a few months, right? (It was supposed to have happened already, but the government dropped the ball and Congress extended the deadline again.)
I heard a lot of people complaining in 2002-2003 that it had become difficult to make fun of the French, because whenever they did people kept assuming they supported the invasion of Iraq.
The bandwidth is "lost" in the sense that it cannot be used for other purposes, because it's being used for things like spam (which accounts for something like 90% of all e-mail traffic). We must increase the total bandwidth in order to compensate for what is "lost" to spam.
Obviously e-mail doesn't consume much bandwidth on a small scale, but I wonder what companies like Yahoo have to deal with...
It must be a really failed meme then. As you can see from my UID, I'm not new here, and I don't remember ever hearing this one before.
Obligatory xkcd
Actually, Mac OS X 10.1 was a free upgrade. The other major releases of Mac OS X have added significant new features; they're not just service packs.
In case anyone missed the reference
Yeah, with a brief Google search, I couldn't find updated numbers.
The city of Ashland in southern Oregon also offers 10mbps fiber to everyone in the city, but they don't run their own ISP - instead, they allow competing ISPs to offer service through their fiber network. Each ISP sets their own pricing, and they pay AFN for the connectivity.
Here was a price comparison from 2005.
Macs are like Harley Davidson, only a fool buys them new. Get them used and save yourself the expense.
As someone else pointed out, second-hand Macs tend to be expensive. I definitely recommend checking out the available options (the Clearance section on the Apple Store web site is great, and PowerMax is a reliable seller of used Apple products) but buying new is often a better option. I'm typing this on an iBook I bought used from a friend who was upgrading to a MBP, but the other three Macs I've owned were all new, and the older used models that were available at the time would not have been good options for me.
We've finally reached the point where Core2Duo-based Macs are fast enough that even the used ones are quite usable, but CPU speed has long been a frustrating problem.
New Macs ship with the latest OS for no extra charge, which often has vast improvements over the previous version, and consumer-grade Macs ship with iLife as well. Upgrading the OS and installing iLife on a used Mac will add $208 to the price tag. If you don't need those features, then going used may be a better option for you. New hardware features can be nice too - I love the new buttonless trackpad on the new Macbooks.
In any case, this isn't like 1994 when people did not know how to download software. Right now, people download stuff all the time, from chat programs to games and utilities, and wallpapers, songs, and more. None of that is bundled, but people manage fine. Same thing with browsers.
No, users do not know how to download software, any more than they did in 1994. Most of those things you listed are available in a web-based form (e.g. chat, games, virus scan, radio, etc. etc.) and people are accustomed to jumping through the extra hoops you have to jump through to avoid downloading and installing new applications (e.g. using a web-based e-mail service instead of setting up a POP3/IMAP client).
I mean, Paint is bundled with Windows, but that hasn't stopped anyone from making their own paint programs, now has it?
How many can you name, that an average user has heard of? Paint Shop Pro is the only one I can think of, other than Photoshop and GIMP.
IE8 is actually not that bad. It passes ACID2. It doesn't pass ACID3, but neither does Firefox. They've finally added desperately-needed developer tools, and they finally have a proper View Source window with syntax highlighting and line numbers instead of just launching Notepad.
As for security, IE7 and IE8 run in "protected mode" on Windows Vista (not on XP), which should help to prevent sites from exploiting security holes to install malware without user participation.
The biggest problem with IE7 and IE8 for a lot of people is the new UI - they've hidden the menubar by default, and when you turn it on, it's in the wrong place (below the address bar). It's fixable, but this is out of reach for most people and not helpful to IT folks who have to work with other people's computers.
The next problem is that while most Firefox users are very aware of the available extensions, most IE users are not. This isn't due to differences in the browsers themselves - both IE7/IE8 and Firefox provide links to where add-ons can be downloaded. I suspect Firefox users are more likely to look for solutions to problems they encounter while IE users are more likely to just deal with them, and Firefox has had extensions available for a lot longer than IE.
Not only that, but Apple has publicly stated that it took a lot of work to optimize Mac OS X to run on the iPhone, and that they'll be incorporating a lot of those changes into the next version of the desktop OS (10.6, code-named "Snow Leopard"). Indeed, their web page says:
and
Tools like these are precisely why many users don't perceive spam to be a problem anymore. If the people running your e-mail servers weren't already using these kinds of spam-fighting tools, then you wouldn't think spam was no longer a problem, because your inbox would be full of it.