corporations should be treated the same as foreign govts or private militias. After all, they are collections of private property without being beholden to the Constitution. What "government" should exist in our land outside the "Law of the Land"? They are a govt, and not property rights... the express purpose is that no stockholder can claim ownership of any piece of property. ie computer, car, building owned by the company.... just like a government. As far as the citizens we should be hostile to corporations... by their own bylaws they owe no respect except to money. Why should we trust them with our best interests.
I think M$ did a lot of good in the beginning, and makes products that advance the market. Remember, that Office and Visual C++ were Mac programs before they were PC only. And their OS and programming tools ran on Unix and Alpha as well as Intel. That's what made M$ get all the fans back in the day. Somewhere along the line they choose to put all their eggs in the Windows-only basket to try to get MORE market share after they already dominated the DOS market and wanted more.
Somewhere around Win2000 the "M$" only became too much for me. The constant breaking stuff, the constant knocking off interesting competitors at ANY cost...As I've gotten more into IT, I see the terrible licenses, the ever-increasing costs and lock-in. I'm just one of those people with Oppositional Reactive Disorder that doesn't like following the one group that's most popular "just because". I'm an underdog kind of guy... I'd rather "do it differently" just for the sake of it. But that's what capitalism and free markets are all about!!!
I'm curious about parallels. They created a version that allows you to run from the Boot Camp installed OS while inside OSx... I wonder how that will work as the OS isn't truly "virtual" and it's on the same licensed machine.
those who want to just run a few windows programs. Right now there's no software that I know of that reqires ONLY windows XP pro that isn't network related. Most programs run in some fashion on the basic windows and I'd assume no software maker would be stupid enough to tie their product to ONLY business or ultimate unless they were arm-twisted into it. Most of those wanting to use virtual windows because they want to only use it sometimes, on the side with their chosen OS Mac OS. Why would I want to pay for anything but the minimum version as I'm doing all my "real" work somewhere else. I could get away with Vista Basic on my home laptop after seeing it.. why would I buy more than I need unless they change the rules?
exactly,
Virtual PC has run Windows for years... Microsoft even bought the program and sold it for more years without such silly rules. Now that Apple runs on intel, there's no need for the extra payment and Microsoft want's to change the rules for more cash. Not to mention every mac sold is a software vendor pressured for a mac version.. every virtual OS is a wintel OEM chomping at the bit for something to make their PCs sell better. Of course the Virtual PC purchase had more to do with xbox to 360 conversion to help get away from Intel in Xbox 1.
but according to Microsoft's own OEM rules and the EULA for transfering the PC ownership, you were entitled to the version of the Windows OS on the certificate label.
Microsoft also sells their OS as a seperate product from hardware for you to install assumedly however you would need to. Apple only sells the OS with hardware or as upgrades to versions sold with hardware. I often wonder if part of the Leopard hold up is dealing with selling boxed "upgrades" at large.... no x86 version of OSX is available outside purchase of a machine. That makes Apple's case easier.
Let's also add that Window on Mac has been a commercial product for many years.. since before Windows XP. In fact Microsoft actually BOUGHT one of the companies that provided PPC support and provided that product for several years with no version restrictios. So, now that intel macs don't need TWO Microsoft products to run Windows, Microsoft wants to jack up the prices to preserve their monopoly status in the OEM market. After all, if Apple users can buy Intel hardware AND legally run 3 OSes that puts Microsoft's OEM contracts in serious jepordy.. remember how they fought BeOS back in 99 when BeOS tried to get installed, for free to any OEM that would have them. With all the press about Apple and Linux, OEMS are chompping at the bit for something else they can't have.
correct, they mess with the format of the actual data packets on the disk. The old school DVD hardware based players will intrepet the bad data as "scratches" but drives tuned more finely for data, multimedia, etc expect to do some error-correcting pre-processing so they won't drop the data... most copy protection exploits this behavior to "mess up" PC's trying to make good copies.
This new encryption started sometime around october/november... I believe it was mentioned here before. I know I had an issue with "Butterfly Effect 2" and did most of the steps you stated... The DVD shut down the player so I took it back to the store as defective; then when it didn't work a second time I dispensed with calling manufactuers because my player was 2+ years old. So I ended up Using DVD-Rip from Automatix and then watching the movie on the PC. An asside is that at Christmas I had to rip and reburn a CD because it wasn't "compatible" with the car's stock CD player. I finally did break down with the latest round of movies and got a new upsampling player just for fun... but it still feels "dirty".
Like you said, these guys are making enemies of the common people... my wife and sister thought DVD/CD ripping was silly up until disc stopped working on the stuff we already had. Now they're getting used to ripped DVD's online video, and iPods to cart stuff around the house or so the kids can watch it later.
I'd agree that HTML and XML was not designed for applications... BUT that ship has sailed, no point in arguing about it now.
That said even Bill Gates suggested directly mapping windows Apis to the browser in 95... OF COURSE nobody wants that because it would tie you into somebody else's software all the time. The web works because it is mostly OS/browser agnostic. I think it's time for a web application URL... say web://web.slashdot.com for example... keep both the protocol and default server name the same.. (or maybe watp:// for web application terminal protocol) the whole http/www thing is silly to repeat if you don't have to. This would be for just web apps. It would look like XHTML and have CSS and such but it would have things like state, sessions, security built right in. It would sacrifice a lot of privacy on your part because you would be actually running an app.. not pretending to pull a page, but it would make development much simpler.
And in the amount of time they spent looking at your site deciding what to order they could have Firefox 1.5 that runs on windows all the way back to 98! The internet is new an evolving... staying behind more than 5 years is a foolish expectation, especially when it's FREE to be up to date.
Even the W3C lost that argument... that's why we've got this article. The founder Tim Berner-Lee wanted documents to be portable and generic. The majority of web designers and users want "magazine" like content tied to databases. Personally I think a new data type is in order. Stop bolting to the old "page" format and create a WEB:// url that looks a lot like HTML and XML but follows application rules directly.
by the way Slashdot is an Excellent example of what CSS can do. if you turn off styling you can see a basic, boring page that is neatly formatted, if you look at the DIV tags you can even figure out what different parts do and turn them off!!! Also the upgrade to CSS pages SAVED several Kb per page download by allowing browsers to properly cache the.JS files and images across many slashdot pages.
what they need to do is to split documents from web applications. I remember in 95 Bill Gates thought the web was stupid because people should just use Windows GUI calls and make real apps instead. From the point of view of THIS article he was partly right.... partly.
The original purpose of HTML was "one document==one idea" policy. Each report would be a document, each birth record, each marriage record, etc. Browsers would just be used to flip the pages. The idea was to have the documents be as plain as possible with markup in text only so the data inside could always be accessed. In the 30 year view it was a great idea and in general it is starting to catch on at least at the govt level where there are now tens of thousands of important documents locked up inside computers that can't be easily read. But we can still get to text or stream files on decades old VAX machines...
Somewhere along the line documents weren't well formed enough to let the "browsers" speed read them, so people developed pages with lots of links to be used as tables of contents... then manual maintenance got to be a bitch so they automated the tasks with scripts. It was easy because the script just had to return a valid page file and any browser could read it!! But that's not what it's meant for. Tim is spinning right now because data is locked up in private towers instead of free and flat like a library. For example WikiPedia is great, but it should be individual files and OUR BROWSERS should be smarter and scanning the archive rather than being database records fed by a script one at a time. It's that philosophical difference that the W3C can't get over.. or at least not soon enough. Google is a closer tool to what he envisioned, but even then it should be OUR PERSONAL machines doing the scanning, not a corporate one. Pretty formating is way down the list of priorities in his model.
In the meantime the free market has spoken and they want the web as applications to private databases, not collections of documents. Personally, I think a split is in order. XHTML should be grounded to version 1.0 strict and used in the manner intended, as archives of individual documents. What's needed is a NEW model for Web Applications that is built to tie to databases from the ground up. Actually, how people write and use web scripts like PHP or RoR is very similar to how RPG works on AS400's (and you though those were old fashioned!)... spookily so. The one thing no web companies want is to get proprietary lock-in again... so that makes the easy things like.net or Java or X sessions out, even though those were built for exactly how people make web apps! So step back and look at how AS400's use the standard telnet stream to piggy back all sorts of extra data. The reason I keep brining that up is that IBM also built in session data, determinism, and encryption right into
specs... those are the key hang-ups of most web apps.. a particular downfall of PHP to handle the security issues of making it up from scratch well. Mozilla firefox is already working on remote session support. What's really needed is to create a new internet type rather than bolting on to HTTP. perhaps web:// the server apps can be cleaned up to send streams that are managed for security, state, sessions rather than "pages" all the cool bits used for Ajax and such can be built right in at the browser level. At that point browsers will also be able to talk BACK because the data both ways will be defined and we'll have really cool stuff. But in doing that it will be more locked in, less free but as long as we keep Microsoft and Adobe far away from it, it should be OK.
exactly, but remember IBM was not exactly part of Freescale the Motorola/Apple/IBM venture. IBM was shipping some cool Power5 stuff a full generation ahead of Apple's G5 stuff, but simply didn't want to share with Apple's part of the business. IBM was spending time developing the 3.2 GHZ multicore for Microsoft or the Cell for Sony. It's sad because it pretty much means IBM's server processors will wither away... I'm an iSeries fan, but without some low end Power PC Mac hardware to practice on, they'd have never got Linux for free for big iron POWER5 processors. Xbox and PS3 don't count because those guys don't want their hardware cracked in a manner useful to continuing Linux development.. yellow dog makes a product, but reliance on dev kits from Sony means it will never be community driven. We lost Alpha when DEC went under, we lost MIPS as a serious player when SGI slowed down.. ARM is still viable simply because it's cheap, not to mention the half a dozen other "hobby" CPUs out there. IBM could have had the market sown up to make a comeback on the home desktop... the Java/Power combo on Macs and consoles and Servers would have been a tough nut for even Intel to crack. But they threw it away for a quick buck from some of the most capricious and ignoble companies out there that regularly screw their "business partners" over.
this isn't a NEW law, it's just that the company that processes the red-light cams has LOTS of pictures of police running lights without justification. Legally the city has to do something about it, these pictures are numbered and tagged as evidence so the rest us have to pay our tickets... they can't selectively "lose" pictures of cars running lights or they'll get in serious legal trouble.
This is how more agencies should be policed. Imagine if the FBI had to have their "national security" letters issued by a separate office and faxed over. If your job at that agency was riding on getting that report from the agent later to approve that "secret spying" letter you sent, you could guarantee abuse would go WAY down. Accountability does that, nobody LIKES getting cited, but it's good for everybody and makes you think twice. For all those officers that don't like being "spied" on... NEITHER DO WE!!!! but everybody agrees cops should "spy" on us... get used to it!!
The whole deal is that these cops are caught on the same traffic cameras that monitor normal citizens and the office has a pile of pictures of violations that don't match call times... In other words, the outsourced company that does red-light cams wanted to start ticketing police cars and somebody's trying to decide whether or not to issue the tickets as a matter of course or give them a break. Of course legally, if they DON'T issue the tickets and know the officers are operating illegally they could be held criminally negligent should the officers hurt or kill somebody if that pile of red-light photos ends up in court. The cops WILL be made to follow the law one way or another, it's not really optional for the city to do nothing. They may change the law, but once something happens and somebody gets hurt the city ends up in court explaining why they changed the law to allow cops to run lights outside customary call-outs.
Any serious team should kick IBM, Adobe, and Microsoft out. Period. Those companies are the ones that wrecked the current W3C specs by bloating them up with "good ideas" from their established products, then not doing good implementations. MS was in meetings for CSS2 and XHTML, way back in 1999 and they have yet to properly support it. The mother of all W3C specs is SVG... the committee bit when Macromedia and Adobe wanted everything + kitchen sink, but the spec is so ambiguous and bloated nobody can implement it.. worse browsers don't implement the SAME features so it's even more pointless.
I'd like to see JUST browser makers and web designers in on the next specs. I under stand TBL (father of the web) doesn't like the idea of "web apps" over semantic documents, but the case is lost. The biggest thing is that the W3C doesn't actually make a fully useful browser of their own... they should defer to those that DO make browsers and those who design web pages and create a spec that's 100% useful and implemented rather than "pie in the sky".
Why is that stupid... that's spec for an average PC about $500 on the shelves everywhere 6 months ago. Why shouldn't somebody pick up a game from across the aisle at the same store and the same tine and expect to play it on their new fast computer? I know WE'RE all gamers and know better, but average guy does not... realize that on most days the "box" stores that sell the latest games don't have a balanced spec machine on the shelves that can actually PLAY the latest games properly.. or those machines are $1000 over priced. Who's fault is that? Certainly not "Linux" or Transgaming!
no to address the slippery slope guys and the MPAA issues Apple needs to find a way to sell 3 quality levels of movie in one file... without duplicating data.
They should work out the codex/ quicktime player so that one downloads the highest quality video and the device/itunes can downmix the file say from a 720p file to iPod keeping the same codex and file signature and as close to real time as possible... bonus points if you could work out the video framing so it was seamless. The final thing, of course is that it has to be playable from physical media (flash, CD, DVD) if nothing more than to make archiving easier. iTunes already "sort of" supports moving stuff around like this, but Apple could make it more "offical" for video, maybe even allow [A]TV to play from a USB DVD drive?
Why waste time on desktop installs? Especially for financial software Web 2.0 offers a great upgrade from AS400s (you can even put web 2.0 ON AS400s but we don't want any heads exploding!) in that you can keep all the important code locked up safely in the server under strict controls.. you're just changing to a new type of "terminal" for the masses.
C# is the new RPG or Java... it will see really big complex installs but not much outside the server room. Microsoft is not leveraging their research division at all... especially with hackers, the early adopters that make up new, cool stuff. Most of the work of Microsoft research was supposed to show up in Vista... and didn't... it seems Microsoft has dismissed their own work while Apple has the "skunkworks" in full "armed and operational" status firing new hit products every 6 months.
But that's the point. The people that want to do something really cool want to do it without Microsoft. That's a big change. The bigger change is that since Google more people think they might actually WIN fighting Microsoft.. sooner or later somebody WILL. Microsoft is being tied to business only use... as they cut out all but professional games from consoles. If you want to hack, windows is not the place. Windows is for selling things. IBM hasn't gone away, they sell more software than before they got taken down, but they don't COMMAND the market, they have to fight for their food like everybody else. Microsoft is on track to the same thing as desperately as Bill and Steve are trying to stop that.. it's death for their business model of selling hype.
the people that ARE making money engineered their businesses around Microsoft's tactics.. they're typically small and agile customer-focused businesses... that personal touch Microsoft simply can't deliver. Or they rely on breaking things Microsoft can't afford to do.. for instance Microsoft can't compete in true Enterprise webmail because that would kill outlook, they can't compete against Google Office because that would kill their Office monopoly, they can't sanction web 2.0 apps because that would kill Windows. Microsoft's business is becoming more limited by protecting their profits and not finding new things to profit from... at least not on the scale of Office and Windows. Remember they burned 5 Billion dollars with Xbox!!! Even a cash pile of 40 Billion can only take so many of those hits.
Remember Microsoft's key tactic was FUD... getting other companies to lose focus on their core business while Microsoft waited them out and out spent them. Lately, It's MICROSOFT spending money on non-returning businesses.. Xbox, MSN search, Vista, etc. They are showing weakness and it's time for the baby sharks to come out to play!
It's one of those things we have to keep repeating... Microsoft is not scary. Microsoft is not scary.... if enough people believe it, then it won't matter how much money they have.
Slashdot Mirror
corporations should be treated the same as foreign govts or private militias. After all, they are collections of private property without being beholden to the Constitution. What "government" should exist in our land outside the "Law of the Land"? They are a govt, and not property rights... the express purpose is that no stockholder can claim ownership of any piece of property. ie computer, car, building owned by the company.... just like a government. As far as the citizens we should be hostile to corporations... by their own bylaws they owe no respect except to money. Why should we trust them with our best interests.
I think M$ did a lot of good in the beginning, and makes products that advance the market. Remember, that Office and Visual C++ were Mac programs before they were PC only. And their OS and programming tools ran on Unix and Alpha as well as Intel. That's what made M$ get all the fans back in the day. Somewhere along the line they choose to put all their eggs in the Windows-only basket to try to get MORE market share after they already dominated the DOS market and wanted more.
Somewhere around Win2000 the "M$" only became too much for me. The constant breaking stuff, the constant knocking off interesting competitors at ANY cost...As I've gotten more into IT, I see the terrible licenses, the ever-increasing costs and lock-in. I'm just one of those people with Oppositional Reactive Disorder that doesn't like following the one group that's most popular "just because". I'm an underdog kind of guy... I'd rather "do it differently" just for the sake of it. But that's what capitalism and free markets are all about!!!
I'm curious about parallels. They created a version that allows you to run from the Boot Camp installed OS while inside OSx... I wonder how that will work as the OS isn't truly "virtual" and it's on the same licensed machine.
those who want to just run a few windows programs. Right now there's no software that I know of that reqires ONLY windows XP pro that isn't network related. Most programs run in some fashion on the basic windows and I'd assume no software maker would be stupid enough to tie their product to ONLY business or ultimate unless they were arm-twisted into it. Most of those wanting to use virtual windows because they want to only use it sometimes, on the side with their chosen OS Mac OS. Why would I want to pay for anything but the minimum version as I'm doing all my "real" work somewhere else. I could get away with Vista Basic on my home laptop after seeing it.. why would I buy more than I need unless they change the rules?
exactly, Virtual PC has run Windows for years... Microsoft even bought the program and sold it for more years without such silly rules. Now that Apple runs on intel, there's no need for the extra payment and Microsoft want's to change the rules for more cash. Not to mention every mac sold is a software vendor pressured for a mac version.. every virtual OS is a wintel OEM chomping at the bit for something to make their PCs sell better. Of course the Virtual PC purchase had more to do with xbox to 360 conversion to help get away from Intel in Xbox 1.
but according to Microsoft's own OEM rules and the EULA for transfering the PC ownership, you were entitled to the version of the Windows OS on the certificate label.
Let's also add that Window on Mac has been a commercial product for many years.. since before Windows XP. In fact Microsoft actually BOUGHT one of the companies that provided PPC support and provided that product for several years with no version restrictios. So, now that intel macs don't need TWO Microsoft products to run Windows, Microsoft wants to jack up the prices to preserve their monopoly status in the OEM market. After all, if Apple users can buy Intel hardware AND legally run 3 OSes that puts Microsoft's OEM contracts in serious jepordy.. remember how they fought BeOS back in 99 when BeOS tried to get installed, for free to any OEM that would have them. With all the press about Apple and Linux, OEMS are chompping at the bit for something else they can't have.
correct, they mess with the format of the actual data packets on the disk. The old school DVD hardware based players will intrepet the bad data as "scratches" but drives tuned more finely for data, multimedia, etc expect to do some error-correcting pre-processing so they won't drop the data... most copy protection exploits this behavior to "mess up" PC's trying to make good copies.
This new encryption started sometime around october/november... I believe it was mentioned here before. I know I had an issue with "Butterfly Effect 2" and did most of the steps you stated... The DVD shut down the player so I took it back to the store as defective; then when it didn't work a second time I dispensed with calling manufactuers because my player was 2+ years old. So I ended up Using DVD-Rip from Automatix and then watching the movie on the PC. An asside is that at Christmas I had to rip and reburn a CD because it wasn't "compatible" with the car's stock CD player. I finally did break down with the latest round of movies and got a new upsampling player just for fun... but it still feels "dirty".
Like you said, these guys are making enemies of the common people... my wife and sister thought DVD/CD ripping was silly up until disc stopped working on the stuff we already had. Now they're getting used to ripped DVD's online video, and iPods to cart stuff around the house or so the kids can watch it later.
That said even Bill Gates suggested directly mapping windows Apis to the browser in 95... OF COURSE nobody wants that because it would tie you into somebody else's software all the time. The web works because it is mostly OS/browser agnostic. I think it's time for a web application URL... say web://web.slashdot.com for example... keep both the protocol and default server name the same.. (or maybe watp:// for web application terminal protocol) the whole http/www thing is silly to repeat if you don't have to. This would be for just web apps. It would look like XHTML and have CSS and such but it would have things like state, sessions, security built right in. It would sacrifice a lot of privacy on your part because you would be actually running an app.. not pretending to pull a page, but it would make development much simpler.
And in the amount of time they spent looking at your site deciding what to order they could have Firefox 1.5 that runs on windows all the way back to 98! The internet is new an evolving... staying behind more than 5 years is a foolish expectation, especially when it's FREE to be up to date.
by the way Slashdot is an Excellent example of what CSS can do. if you turn off styling you can see a basic, boring page that is neatly formatted, if you look at the DIV tags you can even figure out what different parts do and turn them off!!! Also the upgrade to CSS pages SAVED several Kb per page download by allowing browsers to properly cache the .JS files and images across many slashdot pages.
The original purpose of HTML was "one document==one idea" policy. Each report would be a document, each birth record, each marriage record, etc. Browsers would just be used to flip the pages. The idea was to have the documents be as plain as possible with markup in text only so the data inside could always be accessed. In the 30 year view it was a great idea and in general it is starting to catch on at least at the govt level where there are now tens of thousands of important documents locked up inside computers that can't be easily read. But we can still get to text or stream files on decades old VAX machines...
Somewhere along the line documents weren't well formed enough to let the "browsers" speed read them, so people developed pages with lots of links to be used as tables of contents... then manual maintenance got to be a bitch so they automated the tasks with scripts. It was easy because the script just had to return a valid page file and any browser could read it!! But that's not what it's meant for. Tim is spinning right now because data is locked up in private towers instead of free and flat like a library. For example WikiPedia is great, but it should be individual files and OUR BROWSERS should be smarter and scanning the archive rather than being database records fed by a script one at a time. It's that philosophical difference that the W3C can't get over.. or at least not soon enough. Google is a closer tool to what he envisioned, but even then it should be OUR PERSONAL machines doing the scanning, not a corporate one. Pretty formating is way down the list of priorities in his model.
In the meantime the free market has spoken and they want the web as applications to private databases, not collections of documents. Personally, I think a split is in order. XHTML should be grounded to version 1.0 strict and used in the manner intended, as archives of individual documents. What's needed is a NEW model for Web Applications that is built to tie to databases from the ground up. Actually, how people write and use web scripts like PHP or RoR is very similar to how RPG works on AS400's (and you though those were old fashioned!)... spookily so. The one thing no web companies want is to get proprietary lock-in again... so that makes the easy things like .net or Java or X sessions out, even though those were built for exactly how people make web apps! So step back and look at how AS400's use the standard telnet stream to piggy back all sorts of extra data. The reason I keep brining that up is that IBM also built in session data, determinism, and encryption right into
specs... those are the key hang-ups of most web apps.. a particular downfall of PHP to handle the security issues of making it up from scratch well. Mozilla firefox is already working on remote session support. What's really needed is to create a new internet type rather than bolting on to HTTP. perhaps web:// the server apps can be cleaned up to send streams that are managed for security, state, sessions rather than "pages" all the cool bits used for Ajax and such can be built right in at the browser level. At that point browsers will also be able to talk BACK because the data both ways will be defined and we'll have really cool stuff. But in doing that it will be more locked in, less free but as long as we keep Microsoft and Adobe far away from it, it should be OK.
and you wouldn't need Javascript at all.
exactly, but remember IBM was not exactly part of Freescale the Motorola/Apple/IBM venture. IBM was shipping some cool Power5 stuff a full generation ahead of Apple's G5 stuff, but simply didn't want to share with Apple's part of the business. IBM was spending time developing the 3.2 GHZ multicore for Microsoft or the Cell for Sony. It's sad because it pretty much means IBM's server processors will wither away... I'm an iSeries fan, but without some low end Power PC Mac hardware to practice on, they'd have never got Linux for free for big iron POWER5 processors. Xbox and PS3 don't count because those guys don't want their hardware cracked in a manner useful to continuing Linux development.. yellow dog makes a product, but reliance on dev kits from Sony means it will never be community driven. We lost Alpha when DEC went under, we lost MIPS as a serious player when SGI slowed down.. ARM is still viable simply because it's cheap, not to mention the half a dozen other "hobby" CPUs out there. IBM could have had the market sown up to make a comeback on the home desktop... the Java/Power combo on Macs and consoles and Servers would have been a tough nut for even Intel to crack. But they threw it away for a quick buck from some of the most capricious and ignoble companies out there that regularly screw their "business partners" over.
This is how more agencies should be policed. Imagine if the FBI had to have their "national security" letters issued by a separate office and faxed over. If your job at that agency was riding on getting that report from the agent later to approve that "secret spying" letter you sent, you could guarantee abuse would go WAY down. Accountability does that, nobody LIKES getting cited, but it's good for everybody and makes you think twice. For all those officers that don't like being "spied" on... NEITHER DO WE!!!! but everybody agrees cops should "spy" on us... get used to it!!
The whole deal is that these cops are caught on the same traffic cameras that monitor normal citizens and the office has a pile of pictures of violations that don't match call times... In other words, the outsourced company that does red-light cams wanted to start ticketing police cars and somebody's trying to decide whether or not to issue the tickets as a matter of course or give them a break. Of course legally, if they DON'T issue the tickets and know the officers are operating illegally they could be held criminally negligent should the officers hurt or kill somebody if that pile of red-light photos ends up in court. The cops WILL be made to follow the law one way or another, it's not really optional for the city to do nothing. They may change the law, but once something happens and somebody gets hurt the city ends up in court explaining why they changed the law to allow cops to run lights outside customary call-outs.
I'd like to see JUST browser makers and web designers in on the next specs. I under stand TBL (father of the web) doesn't like the idea of "web apps" over semantic documents, but the case is lost. The biggest thing is that the W3C doesn't actually make a fully useful browser of their own... they should defer to those that DO make browsers and those who design web pages and create a spec that's 100% useful and implemented rather than "pie in the sky".
you mean like IETab that lets firefox open individual pages with IE if you need to!!!
Why is that stupid... that's spec for an average PC about $500 on the shelves everywhere 6 months ago. Why shouldn't somebody pick up a game from across the aisle at the same store and the same tine and expect to play it on their new fast computer? I know WE'RE all gamers and know better, but average guy does not... realize that on most days the "box" stores that sell the latest games don't have a balanced spec machine on the shelves that can actually PLAY the latest games properly.. or those machines are $1000 over priced. Who's fault is that? Certainly not "Linux" or Transgaming!
They should work out the codex/ quicktime player so that one downloads the highest quality video and the device/itunes can downmix the file say from a 720p file to iPod keeping the same codex and file signature and as close to real time as possible... bonus points if you could work out the video framing so it was seamless. The final thing, of course is that it has to be playable from physical media (flash, CD, DVD) if nothing more than to make archiving easier. iTunes already "sort of" supports moving stuff around like this, but Apple could make it more "offical" for video, maybe even allow [A]TV to play from a USB DVD drive?
Why waste time on desktop installs? Especially for financial software Web 2.0 offers a great upgrade from AS400s (you can even put web 2.0 ON AS400s but we don't want any heads exploding!) in that you can keep all the important code locked up safely in the server under strict controls.. you're just changing to a new type of "terminal" for the masses.
C# is the new RPG or Java... it will see really big complex installs but not much outside the server room. Microsoft is not leveraging their research division at all... especially with hackers, the early adopters that make up new, cool stuff. Most of the work of Microsoft research was supposed to show up in Vista... and didn't... it seems Microsoft has dismissed their own work while Apple has the "skunkworks" in full "armed and operational" status firing new hit products every 6 months.
But that's the point. The people that want to do something really cool want to do it without Microsoft. That's a big change. The bigger change is that since Google more people think they might actually WIN fighting Microsoft.. sooner or later somebody WILL. Microsoft is being tied to business only use... as they cut out all but professional games from consoles. If you want to hack, windows is not the place. Windows is for selling things. IBM hasn't gone away, they sell more software than before they got taken down, but they don't COMMAND the market, they have to fight for their food like everybody else. Microsoft is on track to the same thing as desperately as Bill and Steve are trying to stop that.. it's death for their business model of selling hype.
It's one of those things we have to keep repeating... Microsoft is not scary. Microsoft is not scary. ... if enough people believe it, then it won't matter how much money they have.