And why would you want an xbox? If it's to play particular games, watch videos etc, your needs may be better suited by a PS3 or Wii, or even a PC... Unless you specifically want to do something only an xbox is capable of, such as playing games exclusive to that platform there is no reason not to consider all the other options.
Most applications currently being developed still support XP, despite its age.
For general day to day use, 7 is not really any more stable than xp was. And other under the hood improvements mean nothing to the average user either.
Windows 7 is significantly different to XP such that users will face a learning curve to use the new interface, this may not have much impact on the average slashdot user but to joe public it can easily put them off. linux and mac have the same problem, a new interface may technically be superior and given a clean slate (ie someone with no prior experience) might be easier to learn, but users are burdened by what they're already familiar with and hate change.
There are also gaps in the driver support in 7, many older peripherals will simply not work, also some applications no longer work.
And finally, while not as much of a pig as vista was, 7 still has significantly higher system requirements than xp, meaning it generally runs slower on the same hardware.
Technet subscriptions are only for "evaluation and testing"... If you are using such software in production then you are breaking the terms of the license.
Personally i'd love to see IE completely die, and for competition between the other browsers continue... IE has done immeasurable harm to the web, and continues to do so to this day, and if they ever gain a dominant market share again you can pretty much guarantee a repeat of history and another 5 year (or longer) period of lock-in and stagnation.
I doubt Google really consider Firefox to be a competitor... Chrome is not a competitive product they make money from, it is an enabler which facilitates access to their other services which they *do* make money from.
The reason for chromes existence is more to target microsoft than mozilla, the lacklustre state of ie was dragging the advancement of web based applications (the very thing google makes its money on) down, not to mention that microsoft also operate the biggest competitor to the part of google that actually makes money and actively use their browser to drive users away from google.
I doubt people at google really care if you access their sites with firefox, chrome, chromium, safari, konqueror etc, so long as you use a fast modern browser that gives you a good experience with web based applications.
Does IE9 let you install the beta while keeping the stable version installed as well? When i try out beta versions of firefox i generally run them from my home directory, but go back to the system wide installation of the stable version if i have any problems (like sites which check the user agent and don't recognise the new version).
I block video ads because the ones that make sound are far too intrusive (and hard to track down if you have lots of tabs open) and pop-up ads...
I don't really mind small graphical or text based ads, and still have ads on slashdot despite being given the option to turn them off.
The more intrusive ads become, the more likely i am to block them and avoid the sites which show them.
I especially hate the video ads that are on failblog these days, they force you to sit through the same advertisement for every video you watch, and the ads are full videos 30 seconds to a minute in length wasting your bandwidth and quite often are for a product not even being sold here.
ISPs have long been decreasing the average intelligence online... Years ago, you typically only had internet access if you were studying/working at a university, or a geek who knew how to configure pppd dialscripts and the like.
The problem is that the small ISPs are pretty much gone, replaced by huge companies... The cost of reading abusemail when you have thousands of customers is huge, so those costs are cut and abuse mails are ignored.
Depending on the broadcast method (eg digital satellite), it might already be encoded and you can upload on the fly. Also if you download the first segments first, you can start watching before the download has completed.
Torrents are usually available immediately after the first airing of the show, so if you live in a region that doesn't get the show immediately then you actually get it *before* it would be shown on tv where you are.
I have never received a virus by downloading a tv show from a torrent, just how would you embed a virus into a video file anyway? And aside from that, i use a linux box to download and an embedded linux box attached to the tv to play the files.
If there was an abc.com downloader app, you can guarantee this app would include a built in player which would prevent you from skipping the commercials, would only allow you to play on certain types of devices and not let you transcode the video to work on other devices either.
Because it's not a purely accidental bug... It's an intentional feature which is designed to screw the end user under certain circumstances, which is being triggered by unintended circumstances. If microsoft designed a system to intentionally short out under certain circumstances people would be equally annoyed.
Yes, this is extremely common too.. Software companies expend huge efforts implementing various drm and license enforcing mechanisms, all that time and added complexity to implement features that at best don't benefit the customer and at worst are extremely detrimental to the paying customers... When instead, all that effort should be focused on improving the product in ways that will benefit those people who actually buy it.
That's effectively blackmail, since there is no reason why network multiplayer would actually require a drm system like that. We were playing quake online for years before anyone even considered schemes like that.
This is not entirely the fault of the users, sure they deserve some blame but only for allowing themselves to be suckered by microsoft's lock-in strategies... It is microsoft that chose to ignore standards and build a browse designed to lock people in. Had they built a standards compliant browser, then modern browsers being a superset of the standards available at the time would continue to run these old application just fine. Similarly if these application developers had developed using standard technologies instead of using proprietary microsoft crap this wouldn't be a problem. You would hope that people would learn from these mistakes, but you see people being suckered in by proprietary crap all the time still, and they will be just as screwed in a few years time.
XP supports v6 but it's not turned on by default. iOS only got v6 support in version 4 i believe. I don't think blackberry supports v6 at all.
That said, most ISPs don't support v6, and neither do 99% of consumer grade routers or wireless devices.
It's not XP per se that doesn't support SNI, it's the SSL libraries present in that version and used by some browsers (IE, chrome), and they also don't support the AES cipher... If you run an up to date version of Firefox on XP then you get SNI support.
Not only that but biometric is actually very dangerous... If you need a password, you have to keep someone alive at least until you verify their password is correct... For biometrics, you can kill them and chop off the body part which is required. Even if the scanners require heat or a pulse that can be faked using machines.
It's been best practice for years to use SSL for anything that requires any form of authentication, and plain HTTP for anything which is completely open and anonymous.
You can get a wildcard certificate relatively cheaply which would be valid for any subdomain of slashdot.org, StartSSL charge $50 for 2 years for instance (and they offer normal non wildcard certs for free).
I am on ADSL1 and am relatively close to the exchange.. A couple of years ago i could get a sync rate of 8Mbit (the theoretical maximum)... However over the last year or so i get about 6Mbit except when it rains, when its raining or has rained recently i get under 1Mb and frequent connection drops. I've contacted the telco, who always send an engineer round in good weather who will claim nothing is wrong since it works for him. One engineer even said there couldn't possibly be water ingress because the cables run under the ground.
You might be onto something there, libreoffice isn't a great name but mozilla office might go down well... As someone else pointed out, openoffice largely needs polishing and marketing, pretty much all the core features are there already.
Slashdot Mirror
And why would you want an xbox?
If it's to play particular games, watch videos etc, your needs may be better suited by a PS3 or Wii, or even a PC... Unless you specifically want to do something only an xbox is capable of, such as playing games exclusive to that platform there is no reason not to consider all the other options.
Most applications currently being developed still support XP, despite its age.
For general day to day use, 7 is not really any more stable than xp was. And other under the hood improvements mean nothing to the average user either.
Windows 7 is significantly different to XP such that users will face a learning curve to use the new interface, this may not have much impact on the average slashdot user but to joe public it can easily put them off. linux and mac have the same problem, a new interface may technically be superior and given a clean slate (ie someone with no prior experience) might be easier to learn, but users are burdened by what they're already familiar with and hate change.
There are also gaps in the driver support in 7, many older peripherals will simply not work, also some applications no longer work.
And finally, while not as much of a pig as vista was, 7 still has significantly higher system requirements than xp, meaning it generally runs slower on the same hardware.
Technet subscriptions are only for "evaluation and testing"... If you are using such software in production then you are breaking the terms of the license.
Personally i'd love to see IE completely die, and for competition between the other browsers continue...
IE has done immeasurable harm to the web, and continues to do so to this day, and if they ever gain a dominant market share again you can pretty much guarantee a repeat of history and another 5 year (or longer) period of lock-in and stagnation.
I doubt Google really consider Firefox to be a competitor...
Chrome is not a competitive product they make money from, it is an enabler which facilitates access to their other services which they *do* make money from.
The reason for chromes existence is more to target microsoft than mozilla, the lacklustre state of ie was dragging the advancement of web based applications (the very thing google makes its money on) down, not to mention that microsoft also operate the biggest competitor to the part of google that actually makes money and actively use their browser to drive users away from google.
I doubt people at google really care if you access their sites with firefox, chrome, chromium, safari, konqueror etc, so long as you use a fast modern browser that gives you a good experience with web based applications.
Does IE9 let you install the beta while keeping the stable version installed as well?
When i try out beta versions of firefox i generally run them from my home directory, but go back to the system wide installation of the stable version if i have any problems (like sites which check the user agent and don't recognise the new version).
I block video ads because the ones that make sound are far too intrusive (and hard to track down if you have lots of tabs open) and pop-up ads...
I don't really mind small graphical or text based ads, and still have ads on slashdot despite being given the option to turn them off.
The more intrusive ads become, the more likely i am to block them and avoid the sites which show them.
I especially hate the video ads that are on failblog these days, they force you to sit through the same advertisement for every video you watch, and the ads are full videos 30 seconds to a minute in length wasting your bandwidth and quite often are for a product not even being sold here.
ISPs have long been decreasing the average intelligence online...
Years ago, you typically only had internet access if you were studying/working at a university, or a geek who knew how to configure pppd dialscripts and the like.
The problem is that the small ISPs are pretty much gone, replaced by huge companies...
The cost of reading abusemail when you have thousands of customers is huge, so those costs are cut and abuse mails are ignored.
Depending on the broadcast method (eg digital satellite), it might already be encoded and you can upload on the fly.
Also if you download the first segments first, you can start watching before the download has completed.
Torrents are usually available immediately after the first airing of the show, so if you live in a region that doesn't get the show immediately then you actually get it *before* it would be shown on tv where you are.
I have never received a virus by downloading a tv show from a torrent, just how would you embed a virus into a video file anyway? And aside from that, i use a linux box to download and an embedded linux box attached to the tv to play the files.
If there was an abc.com downloader app, you can guarantee this app would include a built in player which would prevent you from skipping the commercials, would only allow you to play on certain types of devices and not let you transcode the video to work on other devices either.
Or 22kbps, burstable to 14mbit...
Most of these isps consider traffic in both directions to count towards your cap too.
Because it's not a purely accidental bug...
It's an intentional feature which is designed to screw the end user under certain circumstances, which is being triggered by unintended circumstances. If microsoft designed a system to intentionally short out under certain circumstances people would be equally annoyed.
Yes, this is extremely common too.. Software companies expend huge efforts implementing various drm and license enforcing mechanisms, all that time and added complexity to implement features that at best don't benefit the customer and at worst are extremely detrimental to the paying customers... When instead, all that effort should be focused on improving the product in ways that will benefit those people who actually buy it.
That's effectively blackmail, since there is no reason why network multiplayer would actually require a drm system like that. We were playing quake online for years before anyone even considered schemes like that.
This is not entirely the fault of the users, sure they deserve some blame but only for allowing themselves to be suckered by microsoft's lock-in strategies...
It is microsoft that chose to ignore standards and build a browse designed to lock people in.
Had they built a standards compliant browser, then modern browsers being a superset of the standards available at the time would continue to run these old application just fine.
Similarly if these application developers had developed using standard technologies instead of using proprietary microsoft crap this wouldn't be a problem.
You would hope that people would learn from these mistakes, but you see people being suckered in by proprietary crap all the time still, and they will be just as screwed in a few years time.
XP supports v6 but it's not turned on by default.
iOS only got v6 support in version 4 i believe.
I don't think blackberry supports v6 at all.
That said, most ISPs don't support v6, and neither do 99% of consumer grade routers or wireless devices.
It's not XP per se that doesn't support SNI, it's the SSL libraries present in that version and used by some browsers (IE, chrome), and they also don't support the AES cipher... If you run an up to date version of Firefox on XP then you get SNI support.
Not only that but biometric is actually very dangerous...
If you need a password, you have to keep someone alive at least until you verify their password is correct... For biometrics, you can kill them and chop off the body part which is required. Even if the scanners require heat or a pulse that can be faked using machines.
It's been best practice for years to use SSL for anything that requires any form of authentication, and plain HTTP for anything which is completely open and anonymous.
Put SSL accelerator appliances in front of the webservers, use dedicated hardware which is designed to handle ssl.
You can get a wildcard certificate relatively cheaply which would be valid for any subdomain of slashdot.org, StartSSL charge $50 for 2 years for instance (and they offer normal non wildcard certs for free).
I am on ADSL1 and am relatively close to the exchange..
A couple of years ago i could get a sync rate of 8Mbit (the theoretical maximum)... However over the last year or so i get about 6Mbit except when it rains, when its raining or has rained recently i get under 1Mb and frequent connection drops.
I've contacted the telco, who always send an engineer round in good weather who will claim nothing is wrong since it works for him. One engineer even said there couldn't possibly be water ingress because the cables run under the ground.
Was win98 even able to address 1gb of ram? i thought it maxed out at 512mb or something...
You might be onto something there, libreoffice isn't a great name but mozilla office might go down well...
As someone else pointed out, openoffice largely needs polishing and marketing, pretty much all the core features are there already.
Actually, the nexus one is considerably more powerful than the earlier maemo based devices like the n700 and n800 tablets.