I always though that most major metro areas with well-developed public transit systems had something like this.
Many of them do, but that doesn't mean that their planner doesn't suck. Case in point, many posts in that vein here from people around the country. It doesn't matter how well-developed your system is, if it's nigh impossible to plan how you can use it effectively.
I live in a city that has fairly good public transportation, and it saves me a lot of money and frustration vs. the costs of driving, and the annoyance of other drivers. However, it can be a pain in the ass to plan out how I can get someplace with all the different bus transfers (and in a year or so, light rail as well). The city offers to do this for you by phone or e-mail, but sometimes you just don't have the TIME for a two or three day turnaround on your route plan.
If Google ever comes up with a good route planner for the transit system here, I will kneel before them and worship the Google folks as my pantheon of choice.
B-b-b-but those poor kids won't learn how to use Microsoft Windows! How will they ever succeed in the real world?!
Sarcasm aside, the American education system does have a tendency to emphasize tools and rot memorization rather than generalized knowledge and exploration. You don't learn how to use computers, you learn how to use Word. You don't learn how to interpret history texts, you just regurgitate them. And so on... Maybe if we gave students the capacity to use their brains, we wouldn't need weak arguments based on specific tools for the job. We'd teach them how to do the job, and let them pick and adapt to the tools they use in the future.
Of course, it's not always easy to create a society of sheep when you encourage them to put actual thought into things for themselves...
I mean, really. Everyone at/. has known this for some time that USENET has degenerated into a steaming pile. Hell, if you go to Google Groups and browse around Buddhist newsgroups, you'll find lovely spam for things involving "Clitoral Mound Orgasming Chemicals."
If you want to lament the passing of net tech, pick something geeky sexy like Gopher! It's been a long time since anybody cared about USENET, especially since the advent of web forums and competent WWW searching.
Rest in peace, USENET. We'd miss you, except you have no use anymore, and we've hardly noticed you've gone.
Or at least start charging for features that used to be free but have become addictive to their target demographic. (Hey, little girl/boy, want some streaming video with your chat?)
That's fine with me, especially if their money keeps advertising out of my chat. See the latest AIM client for an example of the kind of abomination a lot of users wouldn't mind paying to avoid.
It's simple - they only want to have to support a given distribution. If you say "Linux" or even just "Red Hat Linux" without a specific version range, God knows what kind of weird rpm/dpkg/whatever problems users will get into that you're not equipped for. Granted, they're only going to "support" a toolbar to a point, but this concept is especially true for larger-scale projects.
Companies just don't want to support 300 distros, or even 3.
For a bookworm like me, e-books suck. You have to read them on tiny screens, with crappy battery life, and you lose the entire feel of an actual printed book.
As someone else stated, if they could make an e-book reader that you could just roll up in your pocket (flexible LCD?), and that had good battery life, it would be much more appealing. Go one step further and give your reader a paper-y texture and look, and you might just attract a book-loving geek like me.:)
Hell, it might not be bad to make an e-book store like Barnes & Noble, where you can have the nice bookstore atmosphere, and shop around for (cheap!) readers, customized for the book(s) that are pre-installed on them. They could have special textures and fonts just like an actual printed book, but they could hold entire libraries worth of text. In theory, they could also slel for a better price than the printed version once the tech got popular enough.
Alas, I doubt the major publishers would go for it. Often they are just as stupid as the RIAA and MPAA when it comes to embracing infinitely reproducable content possibilities...
That makes it much easier in Linux to copy and paste URLS.
It's been a while since I used Firefox on Linux, but last time I did, you could paste a URL by middle clicking anywhere inside the content portion of the browser window. Much simpler than having to clear the address bar and paste it.
I particularly enjoy Slackware Catholic Edition. If you try to configure a firewall, it guilts you about interfering with God's plan for propogating viruses and worms. And don't get me started on what happens if you want to switch web browsers and are unfaithful to your first browser...
It's funny how Microsoft funds a TCO study that shows Windows to be lower in cost, and the Slashbots rise up and flood the comments with "well of COURSE that's what a MICROSOFT funded study will show." Yet when IBM does the same thing, there is a distinct lack of comments of the same sort.
Newsflash: corporation funds a study and the results miraculously serve its interests!
So, my response to your questions: This isn't a Windows thing. It's an Acrobat thing. Find a replacement for Acrobat. I love Preview, but there must be something better for Windows too.
Maybe something based on xpdf? I haven't used a UNIX-y PDF viewer in a long time, but I remember from my heavy Linux usage days that xpdf (and I think gpdf) was very fast. Acrobat reader for Linux was fairly efficient too, but clunky even by the Linux GUI standards of the time (this was a couple years ago).
My AOL will work in Firefox, Safari and other browsers
It works, but the layout of http://startpage.aol.com/beta.adp is seriously b0rked in Safari. Text layout is the biggest problem - text overflowing the little graphical boundaries on the page, horrible vertical alignment, etc.
Here's a screen shot. Not pretty at all. Submitting it to Browsershots (screen shots of a site rendered in all major browsers) should be interesting.
One thing I still find odd though - why Intel of all people? Why not AMD?
Two possibilities that come to my mind... Either or both of them could be true.
1) Apple approached AMD as well, and could not strike a deal, or could not strike the one they wanted. This seems fairly likely, as it would be good business sense to court both companies to see who will give you the best partnership.
2) Apple picked Intel because even my 78 year old grandfather knows who Intel is, and knows it's a solid name that's been around for as long as he's used personal computers. Apple, of all companies, knows the sometimes subtle power of marketing and branding.
I (and everyone else) knows that Microsoft has called it Longhorn for who know s how long... its unfair to last minute try to torpedo Microsoft.
Just a nitpick - Longhorn is a codename, and as far as I know Microsoft is not intending to use it as the final product name. Apple is using Tiger as the product name. This doesn't really affect your main argument, but it is worth noting.
Quicktime 7 seems to be a radical & long overdue redesign of Quicktime that wouldn't be possible without some of the architectural changes that OSX 10.4 has delivered
Hmm, well... I'm using QuickTime 7 on 10.3, and the QuickTime web site has a little bit that says... "Use QuickTime Player in Mac OS X Tiger or get QuickTime 7 for Panther to see for yourself.:)
nor does it seem that my linux libquicktime implementation handles this new modified quicktime format (or perhaps it has streaming problems?)
These new features are only available in QuickTime 7, which in turn is only available for OS X at present. Anything that relies on Windows DLLs from QuickTime, such as mplayer, will not yet work with the HD trailers and such.
If you like Spotlight (and a lot of people do), I would strongly advise you to check out QuickSilver. It performs a different but similar task, and is extremely useful.
Another good (and much more polished) utility is LaunchBar. It's shareware, but reasonably priced ($19.95 for home use) and is extremely fast and flexible.
I used QuickSilver for a while, and it does work nicely, but I had enough small gripes with it that I decided to buy LaunchBar instead. QuickSilver is not as easy to configure as LaunchBar, the UI and feel of the app is not as OS X-ish, and all around QuickSilver just doesn't feel as nice or work as smoothly. These are fairly subjective points, obviously, but I recommend giving LaunchBar a genuine try for a few days and then seeing if you can live without it.:)
(No, I don't work for/with/whatever the developers of LaunchBar, I'm just an extremely satisfied customer)
Or if that's too much work, one could also argue that Google ranks IIS down!
The problem with that is that Google (for now?) has zip, zilch, nada, and nil to gain directly by ranking any given server up or down. Google does not distribute or sell web servers, nor have any direct stock in any particular server and its success or failure. Microsoft, on the other hand, makes a web server - and if their search engine adjusts ranking in any way based on the presence or absence of that web server, that is rather fishy.
One could argue, of course, that Google has a stake in certain web servers (i.e. ones not controlled by companies like Microsoft) by virtue of them keeping the WWW open, and thus providing a viable arena for Google's search technology and money-making adverts. That's a bit different, though, and I'm not aware of any indication that Google favors open source web servers (or whatever) in their results.
Slashdot Mirror
... are great, but why the HELL am I STILL unable to search for un-labeled messages? Argh!
I always though that most major metro areas with well-developed public transit systems had something like this.
Many of them do, but that doesn't mean that their planner doesn't suck. Case in point, many posts in that vein here from people around the country. It doesn't matter how well-developed your system is, if it's nigh impossible to plan how you can use it effectively.
I live in a city that has fairly good public transportation, and it saves me a lot of money and frustration vs. the costs of driving, and the annoyance of other drivers. However, it can be a pain in the ass to plan out how I can get someplace with all the different bus transfers (and in a year or so, light rail as well). The city offers to do this for you by phone or e-mail, but sometimes you just don't have the TIME for a two or three day turnaround on your route plan.
If Google ever comes up with a good route planner for the transit system here, I will kneel before them and worship the Google folks as my pantheon of choice.
...you support malaria, riots, and car-torching.
Finally, a cause worth supporting!
B-b-b-but those poor kids won't learn how to use Microsoft Windows! How will they ever succeed in the real world?!
Sarcasm aside, the American education system does have a tendency to emphasize tools and rot memorization rather than generalized knowledge and exploration. You don't learn how to use computers, you learn how to use Word. You don't learn how to interpret history texts, you just regurgitate them. And so on... Maybe if we gave students the capacity to use their brains, we wouldn't need weak arguments based on specific tools for the job. We'd teach them how to do the job, and let them pick and adapt to the tools they use in the future.
Of course, it's not always easy to create a society of sheep when you encourage them to put actual thought into things for themselves...
</soapbox>
I mean, really. Everyone at /. has known this for some time that USENET has degenerated into a steaming pile. Hell, if you go to Google Groups and browse around Buddhist newsgroups, you'll find lovely spam for things involving "Clitoral Mound Orgasming Chemicals."
If you want to lament the passing of net tech, pick something geeky sexy like Gopher! It's been a long time since anybody cared about USENET, especially since the advent of web forums and competent WWW searching. Rest in peace, USENET. We'd miss you, except you have no use anymore, and we've hardly noticed you've gone.
Or at least start charging for features that used to be free but have become addictive to their target demographic. (Hey, little girl/boy, want some streaming video with your chat?)
That's fine with me, especially if their money keeps advertising out of my chat. See the latest AIM client for an example of the kind of abomination a lot of users wouldn't mind paying to avoid.
It's simple - they only want to have to support a given distribution. If you say "Linux" or even just "Red Hat Linux" without a specific version range, God knows what kind of weird rpm/dpkg/whatever problems users will get into that you're not equipped for. Granted, they're only going to "support" a toolbar to a point, but this concept is especially true for larger-scale projects.
Companies just don't want to support 300 distros, or even 3.
For a bookworm like me, e-books suck. You have to read them on tiny screens, with crappy battery life, and you lose the entire feel of an actual printed book.
:)
As someone else stated, if they could make an e-book reader that you could just roll up in your pocket (flexible LCD?), and that had good battery life, it would be much more appealing. Go one step further and give your reader a paper-y texture and look, and you might just attract a book-loving geek like me.
Hell, it might not be bad to make an e-book store like Barnes & Noble, where you can have the nice bookstore atmosphere, and shop around for (cheap!) readers, customized for the book(s) that are pre-installed on them. They could have special textures and fonts just like an actual printed book, but they could hold entire libraries worth of text. In theory, they could also slel for a better price than the printed version once the tech got popular enough.
Alas, I doubt the major publishers would go for it. Often they are just as stupid as the RIAA and MPAA when it comes to embracing infinitely reproducable content possibilities...
That makes it much easier in Linux to copy and paste URLS.
It's been a while since I used Firefox on Linux, but last time I did, you could paste a URL by middle clicking anywhere inside the content portion of the browser window. Much simpler than having to clear the address bar and paste it.
Slackware Linux 10.0 Christian Edition
I particularly enjoy Slackware Catholic Edition. If you try to configure a firewall, it guilts you about interfering with God's plan for propogating viruses and worms. And don't get me started on what happens if you want to switch web browsers and are unfaithful to your first browser...
It's funny how Microsoft funds a TCO study that shows Windows to be lower in cost, and the Slashbots rise up and flood the comments with "well of COURSE that's what a MICROSOFT funded study will show." Yet when IBM does the same thing, there is a distinct lack of comments of the same sort. Newsflash: corporation funds a study and the results miraculously serve its interests!
So, my response to your questions: This isn't a Windows thing. It's an Acrobat thing. Find a replacement for Acrobat. I love Preview, but there must be something better for Windows too.
Maybe something based on xpdf? I haven't used a UNIX-y PDF viewer in a long time, but I remember from my heavy Linux usage days that xpdf (and I think gpdf) was very fast. Acrobat reader for Linux was fairly efficient too, but clunky even by the Linux GUI standards of the time (this was a couple years ago).
My AOL will work in Firefox, Safari and other browsers
It works, but the layout of http://startpage.aol.com/beta.adp is seriously b0rked in Safari. Text layout is the biggest problem - text overflowing the little graphical boundaries on the page, horrible vertical alignment, etc.
Here's a screen shot. Not pretty at all. Submitting it to Browsershots (screen shots of a site rendered in all major browsers) should be interesting.
One thing I still find odd though - why Intel of all people? Why not AMD?
Two possibilities that come to my mind... Either or both of them could be true.
1) Apple approached AMD as well, and could not strike a deal, or could not strike the one they wanted. This seems fairly likely, as it would be good business sense to court both companies to see who will give you the best partnership.
2) Apple picked Intel because even my 78 year old grandfather knows who Intel is, and knows it's a solid name that's been around for as long as he's used personal computers. Apple, of all companies, knows the sometimes subtle power of marketing and branding.
Umm, the transition kit INCLUDES an Intel-based Mac. Not in June, but today. Well... A couple weeks from today, when the kit is actually available.
Is apple going to sell prototypes of Apple Intel systems to any developer who wants to test their app?
Yes.
The kit will include a 3.6GHz, Pentium-based Mac. (Probably similar to the one Jobs used for the entire keynote leading up to the announcement)
Why is that Christianity is the only religion it is still ok to hate?
Because it's not the underdog here in the West?
I (and everyone else) knows that Microsoft has called it Longhorn for who know s how long... its unfair to last minute try to torpedo Microsoft.
Just a nitpick - Longhorn is a codename, and as far as I know Microsoft is not intending to use it as the final product name. Apple is using Tiger as the product name. This doesn't really affect your main argument, but it is worth noting.
Quicktime 7 seems to be a radical & long overdue redesign of Quicktime that wouldn't be possible without some of the architectural changes that OSX 10.4 has delivered
Hmm, well... I'm using QuickTime 7 on 10.3, and the QuickTime web site has a little bit that says... "Use QuickTime Player in Mac OS X Tiger or get QuickTime 7 for Panther to see for yourself. :)
nor does it seem that my linux libquicktime implementation handles this new modified quicktime format (or perhaps it has streaming problems?)
These new features are only available in QuickTime 7, which in turn is only available for OS X at present. Anything that relies on Windows DLLs from QuickTime, such as mplayer, will not yet work with the HD trailers and such.
If you like Spotlight (and a lot of people do), I would strongly advise you to check out QuickSilver. It performs a different but similar task, and is extremely useful.
Another good (and much more polished) utility is LaunchBar. It's shareware, but reasonably priced ($19.95 for home use) and is extremely fast and flexible.
I used QuickSilver for a while, and it does work nicely, but I had enough small gripes with it that I decided to buy LaunchBar instead. QuickSilver is not as easy to configure as LaunchBar, the UI and feel of the app is not as OS X-ish, and all around QuickSilver just doesn't feel as nice or work as smoothly. These are fairly subjective points, obviously, but I recommend giving LaunchBar a genuine try for a few days and then seeing if you can live without it. :)
(No, I don't work for/with/whatever the developers of LaunchBar, I'm just an extremely satisfied customer)
Or if that's too much work, one could also argue that Google ranks IIS down!
The problem with that is that Google (for now?) has zip, zilch, nada, and nil to gain directly by ranking any given server up or down. Google does not distribute or sell web servers, nor have any direct stock in any particular server and its success or failure. Microsoft, on the other hand, makes a web server - and if their search engine adjusts ranking in any way based on the presence or absence of that web server, that is rather fishy.
One could argue, of course, that Google has a stake in certain web servers (i.e. ones not controlled by companies like Microsoft) by virtue of them keeping the WWW open, and thus providing a viable arena for Google's search technology and money-making adverts. That's a bit different, though, and I'm not aware of any indication that Google favors open source web servers (or whatever) in their results.
That's EMBER, not Amber. ;)
Krusty wants out!