Your have obviously never done any real work with XML files. For starters, I'm not even sure if it's techicaly possable to truly parse an XML document with any Perl script (there was a debate here on Slashdot about it, I think).
Perl simply doesn't have the features to be compared with XSL. They are completely different languages. And if you think that a messy XSL file can be replaced with a nice, elegant Perl script, then you are in for a big suprise.
Sure, you can transform XML with Perl very easly in some cases. But in others, you will find yourself realizing why XSL was created.
XSL is supposed to take in semantic content and transform it into presentation for the web.
The web? For presentation? Not always, and was never designed just for that either.
XSLT stands for Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations. And although it has the word "stylesheet" in it, it has nothing to do with CSS, or should be compared to CSS in it's use.
It's a language specificly designed to transform XML into something else (quite oftern a differently structured XML file). Not nessesarily for the web or presentaion.
I've used XSL files to pull together from several XML files and create one XML file which we use in specific web apps. Some of those apps take that XML file and then transform it (using another XSL file) for part of an HTML webpage, which will be styled using CSS.
Alkaline batteries provice significantly more power for a given size vs. any type of rechargable battery.
I call BS to that. NiCads still provide the most power. NiMH are close (and may infact be better now). Of course, for consumer electronics, NiMH and Li-x are better suited than NiCads.
Removing the IR filter (technicaly, they're an IR blocking filter) will make a big improvment on any digicam--more of a difference than the performace between different models.
Of course, removing the IR filter will void the warrenty and it's hard to tell how easy (or should I say hard) it is for each model. Not for the faint of heart.
So yeah. If you don't mind risking the camera, I'd remove the IR filter (google for details, obviously). Otherwise google around for which ones take the best out of the box. I think Nikon's are usually quite good.
I removed the IR filter on my Fiji 6900 and can now take handheld shots on a nice, sunny day. No more tripods (See the IR section of my gallery below).
I use a XSLT/XML editor to write my XSL files. It makes it much easier. And I never make typos or get syntax errors as a bonus.
Besides. You did of course read the artical, didn't you? Because I'm just a bit confused as to why you're assuming that this new idea would require programmers to write in XML-like syntax all the time.
The fact that your PC's components don't last forever is a very good reason why PCs all have the capacity to be expanded. When the onboard fails, you're pretty-well screwed.
I have had very few components fail. Most that have have been within the warrenty period. Others times, I've already upgraded long before the component failed, so it didn't matter anyway.
Basicly, I've never been in the position of being screwed because of a component failure.
I laugh at people who go on about how PCs are so upgradeable. If I wanted to upgrade the CPU on my current PC, I'd have to upgrade my motherboard first, and also my RAM. And my old ISA card will probably no longer be supported by any new motherboard. It would just be easier to buy a whole new system.
Sure, some people make use of the upgradability of PCs, but most don't. So for most people--and more importantly, the target aduience of the Mac mini--The lack of upgradability doesn't matter, as the whole thing is more likely to need replacing when upgrade time comes.
Ever done multi-column layouts in CSS and gotten them to work in most major browsers? Quite easy once you know what you're doing. But very hard to automate. Harder than using crap HTML/table-based layouts.
Have you even considered that perhaps this guy does not require 100% compatability?
Most people just need to be able to open and save, and get the basic info correct. Infact, I'd say that most Word docs that do find themselves being distributed, moved around the place will be fairly basic in terms of layout (since who the fuck can be bothered to do anything complex using Word's interface anyway?).
Exporting from a word-processor or layout program will always be hideous for a while to come. It's not exactly an easy thing to do, in terms of writing the code for such a thing. It's probably just there out of nessesity, so there is atleast some way to place the doc up on the web as an HTML file.
And since it's not a main feature of the program, then they're probably not going to spend a great deal of time getting it to work perfectly.
Of course, if you mean that the HTML should atleast have a doctype and validate, as opposed to also having nice, symanticly meaningfull HTML, then yes, they should know better.
Don't forget the price for a decent firewall, and for a virus scanner, and an adware/spyware scanner. The later two usually being subscription based, of course. All of a suddern the yearly, non-mandatory, feature-rich, major updates for Mac OS X sound like a good deal.
Oh yeah... What are these features that come with the service packs? I'm on Win2000. I've had 4 service packs. I don't recall any decent new features after installing any of them.
My Matrox G450 is quite old now. It has 32MBs of RAM. It can drive 2 monitors at much heigher resolutions than the max stated in the Mac mini specs. It sure does suck for the latest games, but it's otherwise more than adequate.
...and they will likely act sluggish if the touted features of Tiger are actually as power/graphics hungry as the ZDNet article kinda mentions...
Someone had better tell Apple! They must have forgotten to make sure that their own latest hardware can run their latest software!
And of course. Surely if you are smart enough to know that ordering RAM from the Apple store is a rip-off, then you are smart enough to find a solution to that problem.
Hopefully. I've had a great deal of fustration trying to help my mum sometimes when it comes to MS Word. Simply because it really is word-processor at the core that has been enchanted with some page-layout-like functionality. Which means many little qwirks and annoyances.
Of course, she can't really use FreeHand/InDesign/etc instead, because they're generally over-kill in terms of providing some flexability, and they're just generally not suited to doing word-processing type stuff.
Given that she recently complained about the speed of her computer (new camera, bigger images, computer chokes on them), and the release of this new Mac mini. It might be good time to try and convince her to switch.
Pretty much everyone I know has bought a mouse to go with their laptop. And many who use a laptop as a desktop replacment also end up getting a keyboard as well, and less commonly, a seperate monitor (mainly the power users, for desktop spanning).
So the only main price advantage for a laptop will probably just end up being the LCD (which is the most expensive, though). When you take into account the target audience, most will already have a monitor which they'd probably prefer to use over a laptop LCD anyway.
Really? How will it teach them to abuse any resource they have? Now you're just talking nonsense.
It's called taking steps. You're giving them a small amount of responsibility. Once they've proven they can do that, then you give them more freedom, and with it, more responsibility.
It is. But it depends how often you use it. There are also different pre-paid plans aswell, charging different rates at different times etc. You might not have been on the ideal plan.
Most are probably signed up by their parents, who probably have no idea what SMS is, let alone think to tell the child to go easy on it etc. The child is probably either not aware of the charges, since they're not the ones who are dealing with the finance side, or they assume the parent must have it covered or not mind, since they never set any limits or warned them.
Also, when would sending a text message on a portable device that is itself a phone *EVER* be more convenient than just hitting the autodial button and fucking TELLING them something?
Cheaper. More discrete. Atleast that's what they think (because it's generally true if you don't go insane like these kids ).
And 8,000 messages?! That's 267 per day, 17 per waking hour - or one message every 3.5 minutes.
Of course, that 8000 number is obviously an extreme example of the problem. Doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. Plus half of those messages may be for receving, not just sending. It's also more likely to be one small conversation per half-hour or something, than one message every 3.5 minutes. Don't forget to add voice time onto that either, because the artical never said anything about $800 worth of SMS charges.
When you take all that into account, it's not so dramatic. It seems as if you failed highschool yourself. Not that they teach you to think logically in highschool, mind you.
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Perl simply doesn't have the features to be compared with XSL. They are completely different languages. And if you think that a messy XSL file can be replaced with a nice, elegant Perl script, then you are in for a big suprise.
Sure, you can transform XML with Perl very easly in some cases. But in others, you will find yourself realizing why XSL was created.
The web? For presentation? Not always, and was never designed just for that either.
XSLT stands for Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations. And although it has the word "stylesheet" in it, it has nothing to do with CSS, or should be compared to CSS in it's use.
It's a language specificly designed to transform XML into something else (quite oftern a differently structured XML file). Not nessesarily for the web or presentaion.
I've used XSL files to pull together from several XML files and create one XML file which we use in specific web apps. Some of those apps take that XML file and then transform it (using another XSL file) for part of an HTML webpage, which will be styled using CSS.
I call BS to that. NiCads still provide the most power. NiMH are close (and may infact be better now). Of course, for consumer electronics, NiMH and Li-x are better suited than NiCads.
Of course, removing the IR filter will void the warrenty and it's hard to tell how easy (or should I say hard) it is for each model. Not for the faint of heart.
So yeah. If you don't mind risking the camera, I'd remove the IR filter (google for details, obviously). Otherwise google around for which ones take the best out of the box. I think Nikon's are usually quite good.
I removed the IR filter on my Fiji 6900 and can now take handheld shots on a nice, sunny day. No more tripods (See the IR section of my gallery below).
Exercise for the poster: Read the article.
Besides. You did of course read the artical, didn't you? Because I'm just a bit confused as to why you're assuming that this new idea would require programmers to write in XML-like syntax all the time.
Perhaps you need to read the artical?
How about reading the fucken artical next time?
I have had very few components fail. Most that have have been within the warrenty period. Others times, I've already upgraded long before the component failed, so it didn't matter anyway.
Basicly, I've never been in the position of being screwed because of a component failure.
I laugh at people who go on about how PCs are so upgradeable. If I wanted to upgrade the CPU on my current PC, I'd have to upgrade my motherboard first, and also my RAM. And my old ISA card will probably no longer be supported by any new motherboard. It would just be easier to buy a whole new system.
Sure, some people make use of the upgradability of PCs, but most don't. So for most people--and more importantly, the target aduience of the Mac mini--The lack of upgradability doesn't matter, as the whole thing is more likely to need replacing when upgrade time comes.
Have you seen the templates for Pages? Many are multi-column.
Ever done multi-column layouts in CSS and gotten them to work in most major browsers? Quite easy once you know what you're doing. But very hard to automate. Harder than using crap HTML/table-based layouts.
Most people just need to be able to open and save, and get the basic info correct. Infact, I'd say that most Word docs that do find themselves being distributed, moved around the place will be fairly basic in terms of layout (since who the fuck can be bothered to do anything complex using Word's interface anyway?).
And since it's not a main feature of the program, then they're probably not going to spend a great deal of time getting it to work perfectly.
Of course, if you mean that the HTML should atleast have a doctype and validate, as opposed to also having nice, symanticly meaningfull HTML, then yes, they should know better.
Err... Don't many meeting with clients take place in cafes? Where do you think they get most of their week-day, day-time business from?
A true idiot.
If a women wears a short skirt, then it's their own fault if they get raped.
Oh yeah... What are these features that come with the service packs? I'm on Win2000. I've had 4 service packs. I don't recall any decent new features after installing any of them.
32MBs will be perfectly fine for the Mac mini.
Someone had better tell Apple! They must have forgotten to make sure that their own latest hardware can run their latest software!
And of course. Surely if you are smart enough to know that ordering RAM from the Apple store is a rip-off, then you are smart enough to find a solution to that problem.
Of course, she can't really use FreeHand/InDesign/etc instead, because they're generally over-kill in terms of providing some flexability, and they're just generally not suited to doing word-processing type stuff.
Given that she recently complained about the speed of her computer (new camera, bigger images, computer chokes on them), and the release of this new Mac mini. It might be good time to try and convince her to switch.
So the only main price advantage for a laptop will probably just end up being the LCD (which is the most expensive, though). When you take into account the target audience, most will already have a monitor which they'd probably prefer to use over a laptop LCD anyway.
It's called taking steps. You're giving them a small amount of responsibility. Once they've proven they can do that, then you give them more freedom, and with it, more responsibility.
It is. But it depends how often you use it. There are also different pre-paid plans aswell, charging different rates at different times etc. You might not have been on the ideal plan.
Also, when would sending a text message on a portable device that is itself a phone *EVER* be more convenient than just hitting the autodial button and fucking TELLING them something?
Cheaper. More discrete. Atleast that's what they think (because it's generally true if you don't go insane like these kids ).
And 8,000 messages?! That's 267 per day, 17 per waking hour - or one message every 3.5 minutes.
Of course, that 8000 number is obviously an extreme example of the problem. Doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. Plus half of those messages may be for receving, not just sending. It's also more likely to be one small conversation per half-hour or something, than one message every 3.5 minutes. Don't forget to add voice time onto that either, because the artical never said anything about $800 worth of SMS charges.
When you take all that into account, it's not so dramatic. It seems as if you failed highschool yourself. Not that they teach you to think logically in highschool, mind you.
Why are you comparing the price of a certain type of cellphone traffic with the price of storage for a HHD? That doesn't really make much sense.