It's also much simpler to implement involving only a few fuel distribution points, rather that millions of individual vehicles.
Not to mention, the fuel tax has already been implemented; all that's required to raise it is just changing some numbers, and magically the government receives more money.
And guess what? Because of Vista, most apps that require admin rights are being redesigned around it, so that they won't trigger Vista's annoying nonconfigurable UAC popups. So, when Windows 7 comes out, it'll be mostly a non-issue anyway.
Copyright applies to the manual, not to the source of the feature and the date where it was inserted into the code...
Of course, but if it was in the manual in 2000, it probably already existed in the software at that point and it would be quite easy to dig up whatever was required to prove it... assuming, of course, that this image preview feature would actually count as prior art for this patent.
I have "Network" listed in my Start menu. Is it not there by default? I don't remember for sure; in any case, it was easy to find how to enable it in the Start menu or on the Desktop (pretty much exactly the way you'd do the same in XP), and accessing it through the Control Panel seems perfectly reasonable for anyone who doesn't use it often enough to want the shortcuts.
...will be the name. By not being called "Vista", users won't associate it with all the horror stories they've heard about Vista, so they'll be willing to give it a chance.
It will have a handful of minor improvements, but otherwise I expect it to be mostly identical. Vista's biggest problem is third-party compatibility, which should mostly be worked out by the time Windows 7 ships.
Personally, I hate Vista a lot less than I hate XP. Most people can't understand how I would say that, but that's because they actually like XP. Blech.
See, you completely miss the point. The innovation with the iPod wasn't the iPod, but iTunes. 99-cents a song for a very large selection, just plug in your iPod and the friendly interface guides people to put music on it. Other companies made you purchase music elsewhere and import it into their syncing software. What Apple saw was a gap--not one in the mp3 player technology, but in the hurdles people had to jump over to get music on them.
While the iTunes Store is great for people who buy music online, and Jobs deserves major kudos for forcing the record labels to accept a customer-friendly pricing structure with... well, a less draconian DRM system than their competition, anyway... the iTunes Store is NOT what makes the iPod successful. A lot of iPod owners don't use the iTunes Store at all.
However, you're definitely on the right track with your line of reasoning. The innovation with the iPod was a lot of things combined. There is no one single killer feature that set it apart from the competition; rather, there are LOTS of minor features that, when added together, really add up.
Let's look at the original first-generation iPod:
It had a 5GB hard drive, when many competitors offered as little as 128MB of Flash, and nobody could touch Apple's price for that (in fact, photographers were buying iPods, ripping them apart, and pulling out the hard drives to use in their digital cameras, because the iPod was cheaper than any 1.8" 5GB hard drive on the market at the time).
It used a 400Mbps Firewire interface, when all the competition used 12Mbps USB 1.1, so loading it up with music was much faster. Also, since 6-pin Firewire has more power than USB, the battery could charge faster without using a separate power cord.
It used a patented scroll wheel to allow scrolling through a large list of stuff with one thumb at any speed - you can spin your thumb quickly to get through a large list, then move slowly to find the specific item you want. The competition has up/down buttons, but you can't control the speed, so navigating a large collection was difficult.
It used a database of metadata (compiled from ID3 tags), so you could browse by categories other than filename, such as by genre, without the device having to search through every single file (draining battery life while wasting time).
Of course this was only possible because they integrated it with iTunes, which is responsible for managing the database, and this happens seamlessly as MP3s are being copied. iTunes already strongly encouraged users to set this metadata correctly (and would fetch it from CDDB automatically when ripping), at a time when most WinAmp users completely ignored ID3. Other devices simply acted as a USB Mass Storage device, and the only browsing you could do was follow whatever directory structure the user copied over, and that's if you were lucky (many MP3 players would just put everything in a flat list, with no hierarchy - which of course is fine when all you have is 128MB of Flash).
Obviously the competition has caught up with most of these, but Apple has made improvements since then as well. Also remember that the original iPod was not Windows-compatible; the second revision added Windows support with MusicMatch Jukebox (iTunes for Windows didn't exist yet).
Safari security patches on Mac OS X often require a reboot as well, because they're not really Safari patches, they're WebKit patches, and a whole bunch of other apps use WebKit. Similarly, Internet Explorer patches are often really a Trident/MSHTML patch, and a whole bunch of other apps use that library.
Mozilla has been talking about splitting off Gecko into its own package for years now, but unfortunately it hasn't happened yet. If it ever does, it will allow Mozilla-based apps like Thunderbird and Songbird to share a common rendering engine library, instead of each app bundling its own version. If this happens, you can bet some Firefox updates will start requiring reboots too, because they'll really be Gecko patches.
Apple should do this too. When you install an app (or, in the case of Mac OS X it could happen at first launch instead of during installation), you should get the option of registering the app with the system update service (Windows Update or Apple Software Update). The app should then register the URL of an XML file with all the information needed by the updater, as well as metadata like the name of the app's publisher, a link to a product support page, and what version of the app is currently installed.
This isn't rocket science, but Microsoft and Apple have to take the first step by creating an API for it, making sure the implementation is solid, then promoting it to third party developers.
and I wonder what you think a restriction policy does,
How about: complies with the law?
other than fly out the window the first time a kid figures out how to proxy?
Admittedly it's a cat-and-mouse game; unless you're whitelisting allowed sites, there's no way to block all proxy sites from the outset. However, if you monitor what students are doing and notice somebody using something that ought to be blocked, you can block it AND get the student in trouble for violating school policy.
I'm sure IE8 will be broken in slightly different ways from 6 and 7. So all this really means is we will have to implement hacks for three different versions of a shitty, non-standards-compliant browser for the foreseeable future, instead of two.
However, IE8 has an IE7 compatibility mode, so if you have to hack your code, you should be able to just hack it for IE7 and add tags for compatibility mode, and the same hacks should work in IE8.
Of course, it's quite likely that a site you build that works in Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome will also work just fine in IE8 in standards mode (the default, thankfully). Then if it doesn't work in IE7 and IE6, you can just hack it for those, just like you have to today.
Another IE that is not standards compliant, means or a new set of rules I cannot use on my code, or another set of hacks (already ahve one for 5, 5.5, 6 and 7
You can use IE7 compatibility mode so all your IE7 hacks will still work in IE8.
IE8 doesn't pass ACID3, but neither does any other currently-shipping non-beta mainstream browser, so if your site relies on the behavior that ACID3 tests for, you've got issues anyway.
However, IE8 does pass ACID2. If you design your site to work in any browser that can pass ACID2, then you're pretty much set. Yes, you still have to code exceptions for IE6 and IE7, but in a few years, you won't be coding for IE6 anymore, for exactly the same reason you don't code for Netscape 4 anymore, even though it used to be the #1 browser by a very wide margin.
I know I'm oversimplifying; you can't really code for "anything that passes ACID2". Still, the death of IE6 will definitely be something to celebrate.
One lesson is: gather evidence that would demonstrate the dad was okay with it. If he then tries to go after you for the fact that the girl was underage, you can produce evidence that makes him party to the crime since he knew about it and approved.
The lesson is, it doesn't matter if her dad was OK with it or not. The charges were dropped, he was never convicted of a crime. Producing evidence that he was OK with it wouldn't have saved his reputation.
The law itself is just fine. It cautiously defines spam, in a way that makes virtually all current spam clearly illegal, without causing significant free-speech problems. But spammers won't voluntarily obey the law, and the government isn't prosecuting them for violations.
The Washington Post managed to get a huge amount of spam stopped just by making a phone call. The government should have been there first, and they weren't.
I swear to you this really happened a few years ago. The transcript was slightly edited for clarity (a few unrelated comments were removed), but f0rked claimed to have no memory of this.
Note the reference to Ripper, which he thought was funny at the time.
So, you advocate restricting everyone (Google, MS, and yourself) to 56K modems so that everyone has a fair shot at having the same Internet? Because that's essentially what's at stake here. From what you just said, it's anti-competitive for me to have a cable modem with faster upload speeds than your service and I should therefore be limited to the same connection that you have regardless of my financial backing.
You've always been free to pay for a faster connection at YOUR end. The anti-neutrality people want to let you ALSO pay them to slow down your competitors' speeds at MY end.
Can you quantify that? What tasks are quicker to perform? What functionality is easier to find?
Hmm, let's see:
1) The installer doesn't suck ass. 2) I like the drop-down menus in Explorer's path bar, where you can browse the hierarchy above the folder you're in. 3) Various file operations now have a "Try Again" button, so you can fix temporary problems and resume the operation without canceling the whole thing - for example, if you're copying a thousand files over the network and somebody unplugs the ethernet cable halfway through the transfer, after you plug it back in instead of having to delete what you'd copied so far and start over from scratch (or try to figure out which individual files were successful and copy the rest one folder at a time), you can just click Try Again. 4) Paths like C:\Users\foo\AppData are way easier to type than C:\Documents and Settings\foo\Application Data. 5) Spotlight-style search from the Start menu doesn't have an animated puppy. 6) When entering a wifi WEP/WPA key, you can choose not to hide it with bullets (since usually the person looking over your shoulder is the person who gave you the key to type in) and you don't have to type it twice. 7) They've dropped the "My" from a bunch of things ("My Documents" is now just "Documents"), which makes them sound significantly less ridiculous in conversation. 8) The default Aero theme doesn't look like a Fisher-Price toy. Admittedly this isn't a functional improvement, but I appreciate it anyway. 9) The "Computer" window shows disk usage of all mounted filesystems at a glance, without having to click on each one to get a pie chart. 10) Windows Update is a stand-alone control panel, and doesn't run inside of Internet Explorer (and only Internet Explorer).
There's 10 UI improvements I can think of off the top of my head. Many of these are small and insignificant, but when you add them all together, it starts to make a difference.
In exchange for higher pay, are you willing to work 8 hours a day doing community service in the summer? The union screamed high holy murder when this was suggested.
That wouldn't be a bad idea, if you could reduce the hours that teachers have to work during the school year. As it is, teachers are severely overworked, and two months off in the summer is the only thing that keeps them from completely losing their minds.
I don't mean that teachers are doing too much work relative to the money they're paid. Raising salaries won't fix the problem. Teachers are getting burned out because they have insufficient time to prepare lessons, insufficient classroom supplies (many teachers choose to pay for supplies out-of-pocket, because the school won't buy them), and insufficient support staff (the original poster mentioned that librarians are gone; custodians have also been replaced by janitors who barely speak English and know nothing about building maintenance).
Often teachers get stuck teaching subjects they know little about; hiring someone who knows what they're doing would cost too much so you end up with the social studies teacher trying to teach a computer class. Many of us have seen how well that works.
I completely agree, throwing more money at the problem is not the answer, but more money is definitely part of the solution. Adding more money without changing how we spend it won't make things better, but we can't fix the problems if there's no money available. So, the problems don't get fixed, because there's no money, because everyone knows if there were more money, the problems wouldn't get fixed.
What will it take for the electorate to become too ashamed (or at least angry) to keep voting for these people?
About a billion dollars. If you can find someone who has an extra billion dollars lying around, who agrees with your political views, and is smart enough to know how to hire people who are smart enough to know how to spend a billion dollars on a campaign, then you've got something.
This just isn't fair. Lisa never ages...after 20 seasons at 8 years old she has to be fair game by now...who hasn't fantasized about Maggie flying in through your bedroom window naked?
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It's also much simpler to implement involving only a few fuel distribution points, rather that millions of individual vehicles.
Not to mention, the fuel tax has already been implemented; all that's required to raise it is just changing some numbers, and magically the government receives more money.
And guess what? Because of Vista, most apps that require admin rights are being redesigned around it, so that they won't trigger Vista's annoying nonconfigurable UAC popups. So, when Windows 7 comes out, it'll be mostly a non-issue anyway.
Copyright applies to the manual, not to the source of the feature and the date where it was inserted into the code...
Of course, but if it was in the manual in 2000, it probably already existed in the software at that point and it would be quite easy to dig up whatever was required to prove it... assuming, of course, that this image preview feature would actually count as prior art for this patent.
I have "Network" listed in my Start menu. Is it not there by default? I don't remember for sure; in any case, it was easy to find how to enable it in the Start menu or on the Desktop (pretty much exactly the way you'd do the same in XP), and accessing it through the Control Panel seems perfectly reasonable for anyone who doesn't use it often enough to want the shortcuts.
...will be the name. By not being called "Vista", users won't associate it with all the horror stories they've heard about Vista, so they'll be willing to give it a chance.
It will have a handful of minor improvements, but otherwise I expect it to be mostly identical. Vista's biggest problem is third-party compatibility, which should mostly be worked out by the time Windows 7 ships.
Personally, I hate Vista a lot less than I hate XP. Most people can't understand how I would say that, but that's because they actually like XP. Blech.
The grandparent had it right. The starting position in security should be an assumption of insecurity.
Yes, but you can't prove that it's secure, only that it's not.
See, you completely miss the point. The innovation with the iPod wasn't the iPod, but iTunes. 99-cents a song for a very large selection, just plug in your iPod and the friendly interface guides people to put music on it. Other companies made you purchase music elsewhere and import it into their syncing software. What Apple saw was a gap--not one in the mp3 player technology, but in the hurdles people had to jump over to get music on them.
While the iTunes Store is great for people who buy music online, and Jobs deserves major kudos for forcing the record labels to accept a customer-friendly pricing structure with... well, a less draconian DRM system than their competition, anyway... the iTunes Store is NOT what makes the iPod successful. A lot of iPod owners don't use the iTunes Store at all.
However, you're definitely on the right track with your line of reasoning. The innovation with the iPod was a lot of things combined. There is no one single killer feature that set it apart from the competition; rather, there are LOTS of minor features that, when added together, really add up.
Let's look at the original first-generation iPod:
It had a 5GB hard drive, when many competitors offered as little as 128MB of Flash, and nobody could touch Apple's price for that (in fact, photographers were buying iPods, ripping them apart, and pulling out the hard drives to use in their digital cameras, because the iPod was cheaper than any 1.8" 5GB hard drive on the market at the time).
It used a 400Mbps Firewire interface, when all the competition used 12Mbps USB 1.1, so loading it up with music was much faster. Also, since 6-pin Firewire has more power than USB, the battery could charge faster without using a separate power cord.
It used a patented scroll wheel to allow scrolling through a large list of stuff with one thumb at any speed - you can spin your thumb quickly to get through a large list, then move slowly to find the specific item you want. The competition has up/down buttons, but you can't control the speed, so navigating a large collection was difficult.
It used a database of metadata (compiled from ID3 tags), so you could browse by categories other than filename, such as by genre, without the device having to search through every single file (draining battery life while wasting time).
Of course this was only possible because they integrated it with iTunes, which is responsible for managing the database, and this happens seamlessly as MP3s are being copied. iTunes already strongly encouraged users to set this metadata correctly (and would fetch it from CDDB automatically when ripping), at a time when most WinAmp users completely ignored ID3. Other devices simply acted as a USB Mass Storage device, and the only browsing you could do was follow whatever directory structure the user copied over, and that's if you were lucky (many MP3 players would just put everything in a flat list, with no hierarchy - which of course is fine when all you have is 128MB of Flash).
Obviously the competition has caught up with most of these, but Apple has made improvements since then as well. Also remember that the original iPod was not Windows-compatible; the second revision added Windows support with MusicMatch Jukebox (iTunes for Windows didn't exist yet).
Safari security patches on Mac OS X often require a reboot as well, because they're not really Safari patches, they're WebKit patches, and a whole bunch of other apps use WebKit. Similarly, Internet Explorer patches are often really a Trident/MSHTML patch, and a whole bunch of other apps use that library.
Mozilla has been talking about splitting off Gecko into its own package for years now, but unfortunately it hasn't happened yet. If it ever does, it will allow Mozilla-based apps like Thunderbird and Songbird to share a common rendering engine library, instead of each app bundling its own version. If this happens, you can bet some Firefox updates will start requiring reboots too, because they'll really be Gecko patches.
Apple should do this too. When you install an app (or, in the case of Mac OS X it could happen at first launch instead of during installation), you should get the option of registering the app with the system update service (Windows Update or Apple Software Update). The app should then register the URL of an XML file with all the information needed by the updater, as well as metadata like the name of the app's publisher, a link to a product support page, and what version of the app is currently installed.
This isn't rocket science, but Microsoft and Apple have to take the first step by creating an API for it, making sure the implementation is solid, then promoting it to third party developers.
and I wonder what you think a restriction policy does,
How about: complies with the law?
other than fly out the window the first time a kid figures out how to proxy?
Admittedly it's a cat-and-mouse game; unless you're whitelisting allowed sites, there's no way to block all proxy sites from the outset. However, if you monitor what students are doing and notice somebody using something that ought to be blocked, you can block it AND get the student in trouble for violating school policy.
I put standards compliance much higher than any gimmick like XSS.
Could you please tell me what sites you have designed so I never do anything important with them?
Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be able to tell. ;-)
(PS, look up what XSS means, I don't think you really know)
No kidding.
About IE8 and ACID2. Define how much it pass ACID2. As much as IE7? If so, not good enough unfortunately :(
No, I mean IE8 actually passes ACID2, while IE7 does not. Here's their blog post about it.
And you said about IE7 compatibility mode, can I force it? If not, I cannot rely on that.
Yes, you (the web developer) can force it, by adding a meta tag to your code (which IE6/7 and all other browsers will ignore):
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />
The user can also force IE7 compatibility mode for specific sites (if the developer hasn't already added this tag). More info here.
I'm sure IE8 will be broken in slightly different ways from 6 and 7. So all this really means is we will have to implement hacks for three different versions of a shitty, non-standards-compliant browser for the foreseeable future, instead of two.
However, IE8 has an IE7 compatibility mode, so if you have to hack your code, you should be able to just hack it for IE7 and add tags for compatibility mode, and the same hacks should work in IE8.
Of course, it's quite likely that a site you build that works in Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome will also work just fine in IE8 in standards mode (the default, thankfully). Then if it doesn't work in IE7 and IE6, you can just hack it for those, just like you have to today.
Another IE that is not standards compliant, means or a new set of rules I cannot use on my code, or another set of hacks (already ahve one for 5, 5.5, 6 and 7
You can use IE7 compatibility mode so all your IE7 hacks will still work in IE8.
IE8 doesn't pass ACID3, but neither does any other currently-shipping non-beta mainstream browser, so if your site relies on the behavior that ACID3 tests for, you've got issues anyway.
However, IE8 does pass ACID2. If you design your site to work in any browser that can pass ACID2, then you're pretty much set. Yes, you still have to code exceptions for IE6 and IE7, but in a few years, you won't be coding for IE6 anymore, for exactly the same reason you don't code for Netscape 4 anymore, even though it used to be the #1 browser by a very wide margin.
I know I'm oversimplifying; you can't really code for "anything that passes ACID2". Still, the death of IE6 will definitely be something to celebrate.
One lesson is: gather evidence that would demonstrate the dad was okay with it. If he then tries to go after you for the fact that the girl was underage, you can produce evidence that makes him party to the crime since he knew about it and approved.
The lesson is, it doesn't matter if her dad was OK with it or not. The charges were dropped, he was never convicted of a crime. Producing evidence that he was OK with it wouldn't have saved his reputation.
Enforcement.
The law itself is just fine. It cautiously defines spam, in a way that makes virtually all current spam clearly illegal, without causing significant free-speech problems. But spammers won't voluntarily obey the law, and the government isn't prosecuting them for violations.
The Washington Post managed to get a huge amount of spam stopped just by making a phone call. The government should have been there first, and they weren't.
I swear to you this really happened a few years ago. The transcript was slightly edited for clarity (a few unrelated comments were removed), but f0rked claimed to have no memory of this.
Note the reference to Ripper, which he thought was funny at the time.
So, you advocate restricting everyone (Google, MS, and yourself) to 56K modems so that everyone has a fair shot at having the same Internet? Because that's essentially what's at stake here. From what you just said, it's anti-competitive for me to have a cable modem with faster upload speeds than your service and I should therefore be limited to the same connection that you have regardless of my financial backing.
You've always been free to pay for a faster connection at YOUR end. The anti-neutrality people want to let you ALSO pay them to slow down your competitors' speeds at MY end.
Can you quantify that? What tasks are quicker to perform? What functionality is easier to find?
Hmm, let's see:
1) The installer doesn't suck ass.
2) I like the drop-down menus in Explorer's path bar, where you can browse the hierarchy above the folder you're in.
3) Various file operations now have a "Try Again" button, so you can fix temporary problems and resume the operation without canceling the whole thing - for example, if you're copying a thousand files over the network and somebody unplugs the ethernet cable halfway through the transfer, after you plug it back in instead of having to delete what you'd copied so far and start over from scratch (or try to figure out which individual files were successful and copy the rest one folder at a time), you can just click Try Again.
4) Paths like C:\Users\foo\AppData are way easier to type than C:\Documents and Settings\foo\Application Data.
5) Spotlight-style search from the Start menu doesn't have an animated puppy.
6) When entering a wifi WEP/WPA key, you can choose not to hide it with bullets (since usually the person looking over your shoulder is the person who gave you the key to type in) and you don't have to type it twice.
7) They've dropped the "My" from a bunch of things ("My Documents" is now just "Documents"), which makes them sound significantly less ridiculous in conversation.
8) The default Aero theme doesn't look like a Fisher-Price toy. Admittedly this isn't a functional improvement, but I appreciate it anyway.
9) The "Computer" window shows disk usage of all mounted filesystems at a glance, without having to click on each one to get a pie chart.
10) Windows Update is a stand-alone control panel, and doesn't run inside of Internet Explorer (and only Internet Explorer).
There's 10 UI improvements I can think of off the top of my head. Many of these are small and insignificant, but when you add them all together, it starts to make a difference.
Is it really that hard to keep up with a thread for 30 seconds?
You must be new here. ;-)
Or the size if she'd been tall.
In exchange for higher pay, are you willing to work 8 hours a day doing community service in the summer? The union screamed high holy murder when this was suggested.
That wouldn't be a bad idea, if you could reduce the hours that teachers have to work during the school year. As it is, teachers are severely overworked, and two months off in the summer is the only thing that keeps them from completely losing their minds.
I don't mean that teachers are doing too much work relative to the money they're paid. Raising salaries won't fix the problem. Teachers are getting burned out because they have insufficient time to prepare lessons, insufficient classroom supplies (many teachers choose to pay for supplies out-of-pocket, because the school won't buy them), and insufficient support staff (the original poster mentioned that librarians are gone; custodians have also been replaced by janitors who barely speak English and know nothing about building maintenance).
Often teachers get stuck teaching subjects they know little about; hiring someone who knows what they're doing would cost too much so you end up with the social studies teacher trying to teach a computer class. Many of us have seen how well that works.
I completely agree, throwing more money at the problem is not the answer, but more money is definitely part of the solution. Adding more money without changing how we spend it won't make things better, but we can't fix the problems if there's no money available. So, the problems don't get fixed, because there's no money, because everyone knows if there were more money, the problems wouldn't get fixed.
What will it take for the electorate to become too ashamed (or at least angry) to keep voting for these people?
About a billion dollars. If you can find someone who has an extra billion dollars lying around, who agrees with your political views, and is smart enough to know how to hire people who are smart enough to know how to spend a billion dollars on a campaign, then you've got something.
This just isn't fair. Lisa never ages...after 20 seasons at 8 years old she has to be fair game by now...who hasn't fantasized about Maggie flying in through your bedroom window naked?
Uhh..
*raises hand*
According to Wikipedia:
In 2008-06-13, The author has announced he quit developing the program, leaving v0.6.6 incompatible with Windows XP Service Pack 3.
And various other things that suggest it's probably not suitable for corporate use.