This actually seems perfectly appropriate given that they do not really have millions of consumers as their customers. Their customers are mostly big corporate hardware manufacturers. That is why millions of people complaining to Microsoft won't mean as much as if people stop buying from hardware manufacturers that do not offer what people want.
Re:video DRM is more tolerable than music DRM
on
A Look at Google DRM
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· Score: 1
It seems to that people keep forgetting an important point about Apple's DRM on downloaded music. Once you download the AAC files, you can burn the content to a CD, and then re-import the tracks as MP3s back into iTunes, including ID3 tags. The extra step is a small hassle, but at the end you have a CD (which is a good archive and you might still use it in certain places), and you have a regular MP3 file with no DRM. Personally, I would not use their service without this feature.
Since when does the company with the dominant market share feel compelled to gobble up competitors with trivial market share for a product from which it doesn't make money?
This just makes no sense at all on so many levels. As long as IE has a dominant market share, Microsoft has no incentive to improve anything about the web experience, and they have many incentives to do the opposite.
By his reasoning of "web browsers leading people to search engines", maybe they should also buy Logitech. After all, it's the keyboard and mouse that really take people where they're going.
I can't see how this will be good for MySQL users or the open source community in general. Oracle has done some good things to support open source products, but not open source products that actually compete with any of their products in any way.
I imagine that using Berkeley DB instead as the storage engine could become a more attractive option:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/bdb-storage -engine.html
a) What you're doing.
b) Why you're doing it.
c) How you're doing it.
Sure, all that would be great, but I would be happy to just have part (b) - WHY you're doing it. It might take more time than I would like, but I can eventually stare at code long enough to figure out what/how. But you may never figure out "why" something is done the way it is without comments.
TiVo is really late to market with HD, but even if they had a good HD product today, I just don't see how TiVo can compete with Comcast on price. For an extra $10/month from Comcast, I get DVR and HD programming, with no up front costs.
I've had a TiVo for about 4 years, it has completely changed TV for me, and it still has a better interface than the Comcast box. But it's not enough better.
Sadly, I don't think TiVo has advanced their product much in the last several years. The Series 2 box wasn't enough of an improvement to make me wish I could replace my Series 1 box, and they haven't done anything since then of any significance as far as I can tell.
And the reason for Windows on PPC would be what exactly? There definitely is no business case, and I can't even find much of a technical benefit. Why would hardware manufactures even want to switch or support multiple hardware lines for multiple "Windows PCs"? Makes no sense from any angle I can see.
I believe that Mac OS X is generally a better OS than Windows XP, but it's not really the main reason a mac is better than a windows PC. The main reason is that the full product is controlled and delivered by a single company.
When 900 MHz cordless phones first came out, I was in Best Buy and a sales person tried pushing one on me. I played dumb and started asking...
me: Why is this any better than these other [analog] cordless phones? him: Because this one is 900 MHz. me: So what. What frequency is the other one? him: None. This one is 900 MHz.
He may as well have been saying "this one goes to 11..."
I guess I don't see such a big problem with their policies - at least relatively.
What I am surprised by is this - for people that are so paranoid about google, why aren't they asking similar questions about other conventional POP email providers? Who says they don't keep a copy and read all your email before you download it?
Power management just works ridiculously well on mac laptops. I've never run Linux on a laptop (just desktop), but I've used a lot of laptops running Windows.
My 2 mac laptops just quickly sleep/wakeup when you close/open the lid. There's no thought needed here, and it just works.
My Dell laptop running Windows (at work; not my choice) regularly gets confused about network interfaces when it wakes up, often requiring a reboot just to reaquire an IP address. Plus I have to explicitly invoke these "standby" or "hibernate" options when I decide I don't want to use it for a while. I've tried tweaking some of the power settings, but I could never get it just right.
All these laptops running Windows got me conditioned to expect crap.
When I got my first mac laptop, I was running some long FTP session and I stopped typing for a while. I then looked over a few minutes later and noticed my laptop was seemingly completely asleep - screen off, no hard drive or fan running. My conditioning trained me to assume the FTP session was dead, and I initially got upset. When I pressed a key, I quickly saw that the FTP session was still going just fine, even though everything else had been put to sleep.
Needless to say, I then had an even lower opinion of my Dell/Windows laptop.
I mean, don't get me wrong - he seems like a nice enough guy and I wish him well and all that. He had an undeniably good contribution with Mosaic.
However, after that, he has always struck me as someone who was in way over his head. I remember reading somewhere while he was VP of Engineering at either Netscape or Loudcloud, that the main advice he gave other entrepreneurs was to "never compete with Microsoft". What kind of advice is that?
I never saw how his programming contributions ever qualified him to be VP of Engineering at any company, and I've never heard him say anything particularly insightful in countless interviews he seems to keep getting to this day.
As usual, it depends why you want the laptop
on
Flirting With Mac OS X
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think your perspective will depend on what you're expecting to do with the laptop.
I just switched from a Win98 Dell laptop to an iBook.
The way I see it, mac laptops "just work", they have sleek hardware design, and they have familiar unix underneath.
If you're expecting a mac laptop to essentially be just like your linux machine because it's unix underneath, you might be disappointed.
I still use my linux desktop a lot, and I prefer to keep that as my machine to tinker with.
I was looking to do video import/edit using a DV camcorder. This seems possible on linux, but I wasn't too anxious to figure out the details.
With the iBook, I just plugged in the camera, and was I was editing video within seconds. There were no apps or drivers to deal with. I was even spared the annoying "found driver for new hardware" dialog.
I also didn't previously appreciate how smoothly the iBook sleeps and wakes up. I've used a few flavors of windows on a few different laptops, and putting a laptop to sleep, docking it, etc, was never consistently smooth. The iBook is really this simple - close the laptop, it sleeps. Open it back up, it wakes --- within a second or so. It's just great - I essentially never need to reboot, never need to hit the power button, etc.
I think the most value a programmer can provide in comments is details as to why certain code was written the way it was.
Comments can certainly help a lot in terms of figuring out what someone's code is trying to do, but you can always figure that part out eventually.
Sometimes the reasons why a programmer chooses to do something or do it a certain way are very important yet impossible to figure out by only reading the non-commented source.
Problem is, it's not really just "a slightly better VCR". I have one, and it just completely changes the way I watch TV.
Most tech people get it pretty easily. I've explained this to several non-tech people and they often completely miss the point and are just not impressed.
I have sold a few people on it and they're just as hooked as I am.
As for easy of use, I'd say it's much easier to use than a VCR. It even sets the time by itself!
The price could be better, but I don't think that's really holding up sales that much.
I think getting the digital cable set top boxes to include this capability (like the satelite boxes do) would be a big plus.
Also, sales can't be too bad. I tried buying one the first week of December and most places were sold out.
I agree. I think there are still a ton of benefits to Java without it being interpreted.
It seems to me that most discussions of Java lose track of that fact that the key to the "write once run anywhere" idea is that the Java source code is translated to bytecodes and then executed in a non-ambiguous way. In other words, the language definition doesn't have all the "implementation defined" behavior that C/C++ language definitions have.
It takes a lot of discipline to write truly portable C/C++ source code. It seems a lot easier to achieve this source code portability with Java. I think having bytecode portability is a big plus in some cases but not very important in others.
So there's many ways to execute a given set of byte codes - strict interpretation, JIT compilation, native compilation, etc. This flexibility seems pretty good to me.
Slashdot Mirror
This actually seems perfectly appropriate given that they do not really have millions of consumers as their customers. Their customers are mostly big corporate hardware manufacturers. That is why millions of people complaining to Microsoft won't mean as much as if people stop buying from hardware manufacturers that do not offer what people want.
It seems to that people keep forgetting an important point about Apple's DRM on downloaded music. Once you download the AAC files, you can burn the content to a CD, and then re-import the tracks as MP3s back into iTunes, including ID3 tags. The extra step is a small hassle, but at the end you have a CD (which is a good archive and you might still use it in certain places), and you have a regular MP3 file with no DRM. Personally, I would not use their service without this feature.
Since when does the company with the dominant market share feel compelled to gobble up competitors with trivial market share for a product from which it doesn't make money?
This just makes no sense at all on so many levels. As long as IE has a dominant market share, Microsoft has no incentive to improve anything about the web experience, and they have many incentives to do the opposite.
By his reasoning of "web browsers leading people to search engines", maybe they should also buy Logitech. After all, it's the keyboard and mouse that really take people where they're going.
Does anyone know the practical difference in using other storage engines? For example, how does using Berkeley DB (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/bdb-storag e-engine.html) compare?
Also, how typical are non-InnoDB configurations of MySQL?
I can't see how this will be good for MySQL users or the open source community in general. Oracle has done some good things to support open source products, but not open source products that actually compete with any of their products in any way. I imagine that using Berkeley DB instead as the storage engine could become a more attractive option: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/bdb-storage -engine.html
Good comments should explain these areas:
a) What you're doing.
b) Why you're doing it.
c) How you're doing it.
Sure, all that would be great, but I would be happy to just have part (b) - WHY you're doing it. It might take more time than I would like, but I can eventually stare at code long enough to figure out what/how. But you may never figure out "why" something is done the way it is without comments.
TiVo is really late to market with HD, but even if they had a good HD product today, I just don't see how TiVo can compete with Comcast on price. For an extra $10/month from Comcast, I get DVR and HD programming, with no up front costs.
I've had a TiVo for about 4 years, it has completely changed TV for me, and it still has a better interface than the Comcast box. But it's not enough better.
Sadly, I don't think TiVo has advanced their product much in the last several years. The Series 2 box wasn't enough of an improvement to make me wish I could replace my Series 1 box, and they haven't done anything since then of any significance as far as I can tell.
I will be sorry to see them die.
And the reason for Windows on PPC would be what exactly? There definitely is no business case, and I can't even find much of a technical benefit. Why would hardware manufactures even want to switch or support multiple hardware lines for multiple "Windows PCs"? Makes no sense from any angle I can see.
I believe that Mac OS X is generally a better OS than Windows XP, but it's not really the main reason a mac is better than a windows PC. The main reason is that the full product is controlled and delivered by a single company.
When 900 MHz cordless phones first came out, I was in Best Buy and a sales person tried pushing one on me. I played dumb and started asking...
me: Why is this any better than these other [analog] cordless phones?
him: Because this one is 900 MHz.
me: So what. What frequency is the other one?
him: None. This one is 900 MHz.
He may as well have been saying "this one goes to 11..."
I guess I don't see such a big problem with their policies - at least relatively.
What I am surprised by is this - for people that are so paranoid about google, why aren't they asking similar questions about other conventional POP email providers? Who says they don't keep a copy and read all your email before you download it?
Power management just works ridiculously well on mac laptops. I've never run Linux on a laptop (just desktop), but I've used a lot of laptops running Windows.
My 2 mac laptops just quickly sleep/wakeup when you close/open the lid. There's no thought needed here, and it just works.
My Dell laptop running Windows (at work; not my choice) regularly gets confused about network interfaces when it wakes up, often requiring a reboot just to reaquire an IP address. Plus I have to explicitly invoke these "standby" or "hibernate" options when I decide I don't want to use it for a while. I've tried tweaking some of the power settings, but I could never get it just right.
All these laptops running Windows got me conditioned to expect crap.
When I got my first mac laptop, I was running some long FTP session and I stopped typing for a while. I then looked over a few minutes later and noticed my laptop was seemingly completely asleep - screen off, no hard drive or fan running. My conditioning trained me to assume the FTP session was dead, and I initially got upset. When I pressed a key, I quickly saw that the FTP session was still going just fine, even though everything else had been put to sleep.
Needless to say, I then had an even lower opinion of my Dell/Windows laptop.
I mean, don't get me wrong - he seems like a nice enough guy and I wish him well and all that. He had an undeniably good contribution with Mosaic. However, after that, he has always struck me as someone who was in way over his head. I remember reading somewhere while he was VP of Engineering at either Netscape or Loudcloud, that the main advice he gave other entrepreneurs was to "never compete with Microsoft". What kind of advice is that? I never saw how his programming contributions ever qualified him to be VP of Engineering at any company, and I've never heard him say anything particularly insightful in countless interviews he seems to keep getting to this day.
I think your perspective will depend on what you're expecting to do with the laptop. I just switched from a Win98 Dell laptop to an iBook. The way I see it, mac laptops "just work", they have sleek hardware design, and they have familiar unix underneath. If you're expecting a mac laptop to essentially be just like your linux machine because it's unix underneath, you might be disappointed. I still use my linux desktop a lot, and I prefer to keep that as my machine to tinker with. I was looking to do video import/edit using a DV camcorder. This seems possible on linux, but I wasn't too anxious to figure out the details. With the iBook, I just plugged in the camera, and was I was editing video within seconds. There were no apps or drivers to deal with. I was even spared the annoying "found driver for new hardware" dialog. I also didn't previously appreciate how smoothly the iBook sleeps and wakes up. I've used a few flavors of windows on a few different laptops, and putting a laptop to sleep, docking it, etc, was never consistently smooth. The iBook is really this simple - close the laptop, it sleeps. Open it back up, it wakes --- within a second or so. It's just great - I essentially never need to reboot, never need to hit the power button, etc.
I think the most value a programmer can provide in comments is details as to why certain code was written the way it was.
Comments can certainly help a lot in terms of figuring out what someone's code is trying to do, but you can always figure that part out eventually.
Sometimes the reasons why a programmer chooses to do something or do it a certain way are very important yet impossible to figure out by only reading the non-commented source.
Problem is, it's not really just "a slightly better VCR". I have one, and it just completely changes the way I watch TV.
Most tech people get it pretty easily. I've explained this to several non-tech people and they often completely miss the point and are just not impressed.
I have sold a few people on it and they're just as hooked as I am.
As for easy of use, I'd say it's much easier to use than a VCR. It even sets the time by itself!
The price could be better, but I don't think that's really holding up sales that much.
I think getting the digital cable set top boxes to include this capability (like the satelite boxes do) would be a big plus.
Also, sales can't be too bad. I tried buying one the first week of December and most places were sold out.
I agree. I think there are still a ton of benefits to Java without it being interpreted.
It seems to me that most discussions of Java lose track of that fact that the key to the "write once run anywhere" idea is that the Java source code is translated to bytecodes and then executed in a non-ambiguous way. In other words, the language definition doesn't have all the "implementation defined" behavior that C/C++ language definitions have.
It takes a lot of discipline to write truly portable C/C++ source code. It seems a lot easier to achieve this source code portability with Java. I think having bytecode portability is a big plus in some cases but not very important in others.
So there's many ways to execute a given set of byte codes - strict interpretation, JIT compilation, native compilation, etc. This flexibility seems pretty good to me.