I was a part of that problem, with $6 per hour billing finally gone we would just leave the connection on. But that locked up all their modems and so they would "goodbye" you after 15 minutes of inactivity. So then we would install programs to keep alive the connection and so on and so forth.
Bandwidth wasn't necessarily being consumed, the issue was modem unavailability, especially at 7pm when everyone got home to check their spam. One modem, one user.
The issue today is different, a small subset of iphone users are hogging all the bandwidth and I can't even make a goddamn phone call sometimes. I don't see a problem with a normal cap of say 4-5 gigs a month, which is "practically" unlimited. If you need more porn than that you have other issues. If you don't think porn is the issue check out all the sites offering iphone compatible video.
Additional reasons are they're closed, and are malware vectors that need to be constantly updated. As if that wasn't enough reason not to use them, there are even phishing scams to update your flash or pdf installs... with the scammers horrible malware.
Unless you play Flash games or view Youtube all day there is no need to run Flash, all it does is deliver ugly ads or someone's horribly botched schoolboy attempt at an edgy webpage. Flash, far from enabling web usage is often used to RESTRICT usage, go to Webshots for an example of that.
Dividends, which is what you are talking about, have not been paid in years. All a stock is today is a percentage of the company, for instance if there are 500m shares of Microsoft and you own a share, you own 1/500,000,000 of Microsoft.
Don't get me wrong, it would be better if it were the way you describe it, the way it was. The dissociation of dividends from share value is in my opinion everything that is wrong with the markets today. It used to be that steady, reliable profits, year after year, providing dividends to the shareholders was enough.
Without dividends, all that is of interest to investors is the stock price increasing, and for that to happen, the company must report increases and logarithmic growth year after year, which is unsustainable in the long or even medium term. These days, half of the stock profits taken by investors of a company's entire lifespan, if any, are received in the IPO stage, at the very beginning. Stock trading is gambling, nothing more.
What are these signs of age? I seriously doubt the code is degenerating. More like being forced out along a mandatory upgrade path, because apps made with.net will only work on newer oses.
Some of these app "upgrades" are completely insane. Let me give you a great example. The popular ZoneAlarm firewall tried to force an upgrade via an expired root certificate last month. Any install prior to v.7 will not start if the system clock is set to after July 15, 2009. They overplayed their hand however because you can't uninstall it either. or upgrade. And versions 8.0 and above work only with oses XPSP2 and newer. The best part is that the download is an installer, so you need to be connected naked to the internet while the setup downloads, along with trojans, worms, etc.
This is not the result of an "aging" os. it is the result of the desire for a continuous income stream from the installed base, by forcing product with dubious improvements. I've pretty much opted out, in the above example there are many software firewalls to choose from that run on Win2K. we use too many apps 12-15 years old that won't even run in XP, and if the day came we had to buy/build new apps it will be on a non-MS os.
XP is slower, uses more system resources, does stupid things with directories (for instance, if any media is present, switches to a media view), autoplays everything, and requires Activation.
I really wish MS would live and let live and stop trying to wean users off 2K by doing things like making.net 2.0 XP compatible only.
Microsoft is the 800# gorilla in the room because it doesn't break backward compatibility.
This is not precisely accurate, at least in my case. I have a lot of 16 bit programs that date back 10 years or more, and with every MS OS "upgrade" fewer and fewer of them work.
Also, a lot of new stuff is written in.NET 2.0 which only installs on XPSP1 and newer. There is no reason for MS to make it not work with for instane 2000, except to force OS upgrades.
It is why I will not proceed past XP. If I have to buy/write new programs, I might as well go with another platform that doesn't force "upgrades" for the sake of revenue.
Me, I just have a 6-yrs-old P4 laptop which, compared to nowadays new models w/ Core Duo, isn't much different.
I once had a P4 laptop, replaced with a Centrino. I definitely do not miss the P4's howling fan & poor battery life, the Centrino (half of a Core Duo) runs much quieter and cooler.
It keeps track of your position to two meters, and is recorded by the phone companies - the same ones given Telecom Immunity. The only difference is it's not real time, but the fact is, most people's movements are already being recorded.
I think Flash takes the hit, and maybe video news delivery as well. But to be honest, what's the great loss? I like CNN and have it bookmarked, but nothing is more irritating than a story that is video only. Unless the story is visually compelling, there is no need to waste so much bandwidth.
Search on pop culture, popular products, controversial subjects, software & shareware. Most shareware products aren't on the first 10 pages of their own results, the suthor buried under torrent listings & crack pages.
Searching on intellectual topics such as mathematic proofs or organic chemistry will return fewer spammy pages.
I think they've gone there because a social network provides much more than just email communication - the networks monitor your friends for you. Also they include the profile posturing that AOL profiles were so good at in the 90s. But it will suck for them when Myspace and any other proprietary setup fails, or is purchased by evil(tm) organizations, or when then evolve past usability (suck as Hotmail, AOL, ebay etc) and believe me they never stop tinkering because they have to make a profit. Remember the AOL outages and dialup access issues, people acted as if the whole Internet was down when in reality they couldn't connect to some company.
I'm sick of hearing this shit. DiVX asked for this confusion when they decided to name their company knowing full well the failed DVD system used the same name. Newsflash: IT IS THE SAME NAME!
Of course if capitalization mattered when registering domains, it opens up a lot of possibilities:
Don't support apps that REQUIRE xp. Especially skip lame-ass.net 3.0 apps -- MS only introduced that to try to force OS upgrades (similar to DX10)
The only reason to move beyond 2000 is if some fantastic piece of hardware ends up unsupported. For instance, it was the introduction of USB that made Win95 obsolete, until then, 2K is the best Windows option.
He got confused by Microsoft's renaming of ASP to.NET.
For whatever reason nobody has been able to explain, Microsoft decided to hijack an existing term for a top-level domain (thus the conflation with web development) and call their language that.
Apparently at the renaming meeting, Microsoft didn't have a Scotty to tell Dr Evil or whoever the project head is, that the name already was taken and had been so for many many years.
Wait till you plug in an HP All In One printer. You'll get 15 desktop icons and a bunch of Taskbar quick launch icons. With 30 new high priority processes using half your CPU and all your memory, your battery life will drop to minutes, assuming your machine even meets the OS requirements.
I would not recommend HP to write power mamagement software.
I' pretty sure it opts out by IP addresses - none of my machines came up with that junk after I opted out on one of them.
Even in Firefox, all domains are intercepted and the search page is delivered if you just type the name (good or not)without http:/// and hit enter. IE users won't notice this as IE already delivers MSN Search if you try that.
Sony hasn't won a thing until they defeat DVD. They picked up 7,000 sales? whoopee. In any manufatured goods tallies that would be failure, but for some reason Sony gets a pass & is now the "winner." Winner of what? I'll bet DVD players still outsell Blu-Ray by 1000:1.
Slashdot Mirror
I was a part of that problem, with $6 per hour billing finally gone we would just leave the connection on. But that locked up all their modems and so they would "goodbye" you after 15 minutes of inactivity. So then we would install programs to keep alive the connection and so on and so forth.
Bandwidth wasn't necessarily being consumed, the issue was modem unavailability, especially at 7pm when everyone got home to check their spam. One modem, one user.
The issue today is different, a small subset of iphone users are hogging all the bandwidth and I can't even make a goddamn phone call sometimes. I don't see a problem with a normal cap of say 4-5 gigs a month, which is "practically" unlimited. If you need more porn than that you have other issues. If you don't think porn is the issue check out all the sites offering iphone compatible video.
Additional reasons are they're closed, and are malware vectors that need to be constantly updated. As if that wasn't enough reason not to use them, there are even phishing scams to update your flash or pdf installs... with the scammers horrible malware.
Unless you play Flash games or view Youtube all day there is no need to run Flash, all it does is deliver ugly ads or someone's horribly botched schoolboy attempt at an edgy webpage. Flash, far from enabling web usage is often used to RESTRICT usage, go to Webshots for an example of that.
Dividends, which is what you are talking about, have not been paid in years. All a stock is today is a percentage of the company, for instance if there are 500m shares of Microsoft and you own a share, you own 1/500,000,000 of Microsoft.
Don't get me wrong, it would be better if it were the way you describe it, the way it was. The dissociation of dividends from share value is in my opinion everything that is wrong with the markets today. It used to be that steady, reliable profits, year after year, providing dividends to the shareholders was enough.
Without dividends, all that is of interest to investors is the stock price increasing, and for that to happen, the company must report increases and logarithmic growth year after year, which is unsustainable in the long or even medium term. These days, half of the stock profits taken by investors of a company's entire lifespan, if any, are received in the IPO stage, at the very beginning. Stock trading is gambling, nothing more.
What are these signs of age? I seriously doubt the code is degenerating. More like being forced out along a mandatory upgrade path, because apps made with .net will only work on newer oses.
Some of these app "upgrades" are completely insane. Let me give you a great example. The popular ZoneAlarm firewall tried to force an upgrade via an expired root certificate last month. Any install prior to v.7 will not start if the system clock is set to after July 15, 2009. They overplayed their hand however because you can't uninstall it either. or upgrade. And versions 8.0 and above work only with oses XPSP2 and newer. The best part is that the download is an installer, so you need to be connected naked to the internet while the setup downloads, along with trojans, worms, etc.
This is not the result of an "aging" os. it is the result of the desire for a continuous income stream from the installed base, by forcing product with dubious improvements. I've pretty much opted out, in the above example there are many software firewalls to choose from that run on Win2K. we use too many apps 12-15 years old that won't even run in XP, and if the day came we had to buy/build new apps it will be on a non-MS os.
Every gmail account I've opened has been flooded with spam. One I never sent a single message from.
XP is slower, uses more system resources, does stupid things with directories (for instance, if any media is present, switches to a media view), autoplays everything, and requires Activation.
I really wish MS would live and let live and stop trying to wean users off 2K by doing things like making .net 2.0 XP compatible only.
Microsoft is the 800# gorilla in the room because it doesn't break backward compatibility.
This is not precisely accurate, at least in my case. I have a lot of 16 bit programs that date back 10 years or more, and with every MS OS "upgrade" fewer and fewer of them work.
Also, a lot of new stuff is written in .NET 2.0 which only installs on XPSP1 and newer. There is no reason for MS to make it not work with for instane 2000, except to force OS upgrades.
It is why I will not proceed past XP. If I have to buy/write new programs, I might as well go with another platform that doesn't force "upgrades" for the sake of revenue.
They looked at all their combined radio stations, separated the wheat from the chaff, and gave us the goddamn chaff
Precisely why I terminated my subscription.
Me, I just have a 6-yrs-old P4 laptop which, compared to nowadays new models w/ Core Duo, isn't much different.
I once had a P4 laptop, replaced with a Centrino. I definitely do not miss the P4's howling fan & poor battery life, the Centrino (half of a Core Duo) runs much quieter and cooler.
I'm wondering what other people are seeing. I've gotten almost no spam for te last couple days, down from 300 to ~35 day.
Although there was one set of phishing spam supposedly from ftc.gov and irs.gov, the balls on those guys.
It keeps track of your position to two meters, and is recorded by the phone companies - the same ones given Telecom Immunity. The only difference is it's not real time, but the fact is, most people's movements are already being recorded.
I think Flash takes the hit, and maybe video news delivery as well. But to be honest, what's the great loss? I like CNN and have it bookmarked, but nothing is more irritating than a story that is video only. Unless the story is visually compelling, there is no need to waste so much bandwidth.
If you're worried about a specific machine (windows), rightclick your desktop, go to Properties, Settings and see what adapters are listed
Search on pop culture, popular products, controversial subjects, software & shareware. Most shareware products aren't on the first 10 pages of their own results, the suthor buried under torrent listings & crack pages.
Searching on intellectual topics such as mathematic proofs or organic chemistry will return fewer spammy pages.
I think they've gone there because a social network provides much more than just email communication - the networks monitor your friends for you. Also they include the profile posturing that AOL profiles were so good at in the 90s. But it will suck for them when Myspace and any other proprietary setup fails, or is purchased by evil(tm) organizations, or when then evolve past usability (suck as Hotmail, AOL, ebay etc) and believe me they never stop tinkering because they have to make a profit. Remember the AOL outages and dialup access issues, people acted as if the whole Internet was down when in reality they couldn't connect to some company.
Open is stil the best way.
If it can be done remotely, better to wipe the BIOS or change the password on the security chip
Any issues with ports and connectors wearing out? On my 2003-era R40 I have lost the rear USB port, the side one is flaky, the LAN port is non-op.
Also, the case is experiencing cracking.
Other than that, it's been great. The Centrino is actually half a Core2Duo and this one has SXGA.
Of course if capitalization mattered when registering domains, it opens up a lot of possibilities:
I don't see trains competing with air craft because they just don't go the same places at the same speeds as aircraft do.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080525/bs_afp/spaintransportairlinerailtravelcompanyiberia_080525044649
Don't support apps that REQUIRE xp. Especially skip lame-ass .net 3.0 apps -- MS only introduced that to try to force OS upgrades (similar to DX10)
The only reason to move beyond 2000 is if some fantastic piece of hardware ends up unsupported. For instance, it was the introduction of USB that made Win95 obsolete, until then, 2K is the best Windows option.
He got confused by Microsoft's renaming of ASP to .NET.
For whatever reason nobody has been able to explain, Microsoft decided to hijack an existing term for a top-level domain (thus the conflation with web development) and call their language that.
Apparently at the renaming meeting, Microsoft didn't have a Scotty to tell Dr Evil or whoever the project head is, that the name already was taken and had been so for many many years.
vimeo.com has had hi-def for a long time, in fact I don't think you can even upload lo-def there.
Wait till you plug in an HP All In One printer. You'll get 15 desktop icons and a bunch of Taskbar quick launch icons. With 30 new high priority processes using half your CPU and all your memory, your battery life will drop to minutes, assuming your machine even meets the OS requirements.
I would not recommend HP to write power mamagement software.
I' pretty sure it opts out by IP addresses - none of my machines came up with that junk after I opted out on one of them.
Even in Firefox, all domains are intercepted and the search page is delivered if you just type the name (good or not)without http:/// and hit enter. IE users won't notice this as IE already delivers MSN Search if you try that.
Sony hasn't won a thing until they defeat DVD. They picked up 7,000 sales? whoopee. In any manufatured goods tallies that would be failure, but for some reason Sony gets a pass & is now the "winner." Winner of what? I'll bet DVD players still outsell Blu-Ray by 1000:1.