The members of the EU are sovreign entities. They can declare MSFT an outlaw and take all kinds of measures against it, including appropriating its intellectual properties and putting those in the public domain.
MS would be hurting world wide if it became legal for EU businesses to copy, sell, and export CDs of Windows XP or MS Office 2003... After looking at MSFT financials, this could probably be done without serious damage to the world marketplace, since MS has not invested very much into the infrastructure that it sits on.
Perhaps it is going to take that kind of clue-bat to get some people in the software industry to wake up and realize that it isn't nice to play screw-you with the rules of the marketplace.
How so? If they're unwilling or unable to move fromWin98, then the question of what they might move to is entirely academic.
It is sometimes easy to mistake the business concept of appropriate technology for ignorance or inability on the part of the business. Don't do that.
A Win98 standalone computer used to log inventory into a warehouse, with automated batch updating of the corporate network by FTP at 0300 every morning, is not going to be replaced by Vista when it is finally no longer up to the task. It might be replaced by a hand-me-down box running WinXP, but it is also very likely to be replaced by a Linux box that will be less expensive to clean up and maintain than a used XP box. It is not a matter of whether the business has the technical expertise to upgrade these old boxen. It is all about which replacement path will have the lowest long term cost in running specific programs in a fairly simple environment.
From TFA, there may be around 70 million Win98 boxes in the business world that are being used appropriately for mundane tasks ranging from basic data collection to word processing of sermons and beg letters. This is not a potential Vista market, but it is a very likely Linux growth area.
Agree in general with parent post. I think comparing RH with MS or Ubuntu is an apples and oranges thing.
It might be interesting to compare RH with Novell and IBM. All three are offering Linux support services to the same general market, and each is bringing a very different history and orientation to the party. But neither MS nor Ubuntu are directly addressing this market.
I admire people like the parent poster who have the courage of their convictions and are willing to stand up in front of the crowd and tell someone off when they thing that's called for. So let me express my deep admiration to you, err... Mr Anonymous Coward.
I loose my gray hair when I get off work. The ponytail and smoothly coiffed beard are necessary to convey the appropriate image in the office, but in the privacy of my home I let the beard go bushy and the tresses bounce about my shoulders.
But maybe this is more information than you really wanted to know...
Yeah, sometimes I offer them that. When there is a good template or they are revising the content of something that is already in good HTML. So its pretty well "cooked" in the sense that they can copy-paste structures from place to place, etc, but its "raw" in the sense that I want them to work in something like HTML-Kit or HomeSite.
Some refuse to do the HTML, and then I'm bargaining with them from a position of strength on matters of formating and deadlines. They know they would have more "artistic freedom" if they did it in HTML. My boss knows that if he won't support me in this bargaining, then I'll drag my feet until I've got the backing I need.
I haven't kept count, but probably around 70% of those who give the HTML editing a try change their minds after a while. They'd rather put up with my constraints and work in a word processor they know. Many of them end up with a better appreciation of what I do before they quit their HTML efforts, and that doesn't hurt me at all. It's usually easier to talk over format and design problems with them after they've had a taste of the raw.
The ones who actually do work in HTML get my high-priority attention when they ask for help. They tend to be fun to work with, and they tend to say very nice things about me.
I can't imagine turning a bunch of neophytes loose with FrontPage or any other WYSIWG HTML editor and then trying to patch together the results afterward. That sounds like the recipe for a lot of long, gruelling, unrewarding hours. Probably with content writers bitching about how you've mangled their glorious presentation, and the boss bitching about why it is taking so long when the content writers have already done all the work.
Actually it is not just a semantic issue. The Moon is massive enough to significantly shift the Earth's orbit around the Sun: the center of the Earth-Moon system (the baricenter) follows a Kepler elipse, but the center of the Earth itself is up to 2,500 miles outside this elipse every New Moon, and up to 2,500 miles inside this elipse every Full Moon.
So from Full Moon to New Moon, the mass of the Earth is shifted a total of 5,000 miles, and in month's time, the shift is 10,000 miles. Shifting the earth's tonnage at an average speed of 14 mph is sort of a big deal. Suppose an observer in a nearby star system was able to see the Earth in his telescope, but not the Moon for some reason (maybe he's tuned in on water vapor): he would still be able to recognize that the Earth had to have a massive companion, and he would be able to figure out the Moon's size and orbit just from the Earth's wobble.
So even by celestial mechanics, the Earth - Moon pair should be regarded as a double planet.
Long before there were web designers churning out pages of advertising, there were content providers whose needs are significantly different. My experience as a web developer consists of over a decade of devising ways of presenting procedure manuals, FAQs, help pages, reports, and similar information on the web. My goal is to do this in a way that makes revisions and additions simple. Ideally, so simple that the content developers can do the maintenance and extensions on their own, without needing to study web technology, or bother me ever again.
The techniques of HTML 3 and 3.2 sucked. Preserving the tabular format of a complex document is not something that you can expect of someone who doesn't know HTML, doesn't want to learn HTML, and who you don't want to try to teach HTML to. And believe me, you don't want to try to teach HTML to a surgeon or corporate vice president: he's got other things on his mind and he costs way too much per hour anyway.
The answer lies in splitting out the content from the layout. Surgeons and CEOs can and will understand the use of <H1-6>, <strong>, <div class="sidebar">, and so on. They can and do understand that the web developer can manipulate the CSS independently of what they write, and that while they can make suggestions about how they want the <span class="doItMyWay"> to look, getting it to look that way is something they can delegate to someone with technical expertise in web development.
I can understand web developers who work in advertising and similar graphics presentations having a desire to stay with the tabular layouts of yesteryear. Doing web pages that look like posters or TV images is a lot easier with tables than with CSS. But their job is very different from the web developer who is tasked with presenting reading material that will need to be revised and extended from time to time. CSS— and the split between content and presentation that is its reason for being— rocks!
Any objective observer looking at the solar system from a stellar perspective[see note below] would describe the Earth and Moon as a double planet system. Each of these planets has significant dynamic features that cannot be accounted for without acknowleding the tidal effects of the other.
The taxonomy of astronomy is not going to make any sense until astronomers openly accept this, despite their personal, historical and cultural biases. It is now time for scientists to accept the Moon as a planet in its own right, and take the next significant step in completing the revolution in thought that was started by Copernicus 500 years ago. I mean come on, that's half a millenium! Isn't that enough time to take the next step and recognize that not only does the Earth go around the Sun, but that the Earth and Moon dance a dosido with each other? Gee, it isn't as if we're all Galileos facing a Church Inquisition for having bad thoughts! It is time to wake up and feel the gravities of the situation!
Astronomy has a much more serious problem than deciding what to call small distant objects. Until astronomy acknowledges that the Earth and Moon are a double planet system, the other sciences are not going to acknowledge it. Yet the advances that can be made in meteorology are limited if the tidal distortion of atmospheric envelope is not recognized in the models. Similarly, a full understanding of geology is not possible without recognizing that the Earth-Moon baricenter lies outside the Earth's core-- and that there is a significant amount of stress placed on the lithosphere due to this.
About five hundred years ago, a few astronomers dared to buck traditional thinking and in doing so not only freed astronomy from the limitations of traditional thinking, but also showed the direction to greater truths that the other sciences could take. It would be good if astronomers would again rise to the challenge, and take the next step.
The Moon is a planet. Let's acknowledge that.
note: A stellar perspective is significantly larger than a mere global perspective. From any stellar perspective, it is impossible to resolve the image of the Earth without also resolving the image of the Moon: if you can see one, you can see the other. Our stellar observer would not be able to plot the orbit of either without taking the other into account: the Moon is no mere satellite of the Earth; it is the somewhat smaller partner in a long term marriage.
GP: You can draw a line like C____C++_Java____Python___Ruby_Lisp
P: Doesn't Perl fit in there somewhere?
Yes, it does, and one of the above does not. The ordering needs adjusting, too. Unfortunately, the lameness filter has blocked my efforts to diagram the inheritance chart.
The ASMs gave rise to C which begat C++ (the best of the ASMs, IMHO, was 6502 Assembly)
Lisp arrived spontaneously out of a supergeek's forehead, following a superheadache brought on by a long night of coding, beer, Jolt, and pepperoni pizza. This is the only explanation for Lisp that can account for all the round, square, and curly braces, so it must be true.
Fortran (FORmula TRANslation) and COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) were born of committees (one academic, the other military/industrial). Despite having the usual clarity and insight that we should expect from a committee, both of these have made significant contributions to computer language development.
BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) came out of another supergeek's mind, as a result of indigestion due to a surfeit of pepperoni pizza, Fortran, and Cobol (which were all served up on Hollerith cards-- which is important since Basic was written to escape the limitations of the card punch machines). (Which was good: the bit buckets were beginning to overflow and were it not for Basic we might have drowned in our own chad.)
AWK (Aho, Weinberger and Kerhighan) was an alternative to B which was the precursor of C. Without awk we might not have regular expressions. Don't try to program in awk. It is said that Forth is a write-only language: awk doesn't even approach that.
Pascal began life on a blackboard in Switzerland but was abducted, taken to California, converted from chalk on slate to byte code, and put to work in the fields of secondary education.
Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language / Perfectly Ecletic Rubbish Lister) is the product of Larry Wall who might be a genius or perhaps a madman or perhaps just what we should expect from a natural language linguist. Perl draws on these languages:
ASMs, C, C++ Fortran Cobol (especially wrt to report structuring and formatting) Lisp (the best of list processing is incorporated into Perl) Basic Pascal awk (especially wrt regular expressions and text stream processing)
It also incorporates concepts from natural languages like contextual dependence, "magical" expressions, and idiomatic constructs.
Python, Ruby, PHP, and to a lesser extent Javascript have been influenced by Perl. Python and Ruby can be seen as attempts to tame Perl's wilder ways by decreasing the amount of TIMTOWTDI (There Is More Than One Way To Do It) and DWIMness (Do What I Mean (not what I say) ). In some environments, this removal of parts of Perl's power seem appropriate.
Java may have contributed something to Perl, but I'm not sure what. Perl probably hasn't had much influence on Java, either. I think Sun has been trying to keep Java pure, and won't let it out on the streets where it might pick up bad words.
Perl could be a good first language. A major argument in favor is that Perl allows the student to focus on and learn one concept by forgiving his mistakes with other aspects of programming that he hasn't mastered yet: this is the positive side of DWIMness and TIMTOWDTI. The major argument against Perl as a first language is that these features allow somebody who doesn't know what they are doing to write programs that sort of work (and end up creating huge amounts of work for others later on).
There have been some really bad programs written in Perl, and Perl's reputation is bad because of that. There have been some really bad novels and poems written in english, and it is therefore correct to disdain all english novelists and poets since the english language is obviously such a piece of crap.
Symantic files suit against Microsoft with some kind of anticompetitive or abuse of license beef involving Vista.
A day or so later, Symantic announces a zero-day exploit of Word. The malware in the Word document drops the ginwui worm that opens a backdoor and uses rootkit technology to hide itself and its activities. Symantic says that some companies have been victimized by this perhaps for months.
And now a day or so later, a company with close ties to Microsoft announces that a major Symantic product contains a massive security flaw.
Does anyone else feel that this time line suggests that the last item or two might be part of a hidden agenda? Are we witnessing the start of a FUD throwing contest between two of the industry's major players?
I am so confused. What web news publishers should I now put my faith in?
Others in this discussion have pointed out that PNG has a truecolor mode as well as the 256 color and lower modes. The only differences I've noticed when I've been working with portraits and landscape photos in PNGs rather than JPGs are
Some image manipulation software takes a little longer to open a PNG than a JPG
PNGs do not degrade over multiple editing sessions the way that JPGs do
Yes, I was guilty of oversimplifying. Thanks for correcting that.
Now, two corrections to your corrections:
all versions of MSIE to date distort colors in truecolor PNGs. AFAIK, the reasons for this have never been published. Web developers cannot predict which images might be affected-- so JPGs are used instead since MSIE's behavior with them is more reliable, and consistent with what one sees in other browsers.
All versions of MSIE to date take longer to render many PNG images than equivalent GIF images, and these delays often outweigh the benefits of the smaller PNG files.
Other browsers have been optimizing their PNG routines in recent years... but MS hasn't released any updates to MSIE for... how many years now? I've lost track.
Why shouldn't MS make a format that can be used front-to-back?
Ah! Now I think I understand.
I thought this was about digital photography and image manipulation tools. But that isn't it, is it?
This is about the sudden emergence of a multi billion dollar market in digital point'n'click cameras over the last couple of years. Microsoft just wants to embrace all these snapshooters and take a piece of the action. The technical merits of WMPhoto vs the formats used today by professionals and serious amateurs doesn't matter. What matters is whether WMPhoto provides the platform for a better sales pitch to Joe Sixpack and the companies that make those mini camera thingies for Joe Sixpack.
Thank you for your contribution to this discussion. Combined with other reading, it helped spark an insight I did not yet have.
So WMPhoto is intended to become the native format of digital cameras? Is that what you are saying?
But I'm curious: why do you think that Microsoft would build alpha channel and other digital darkroom features into WMPhoto if they intended WMPhoto files to be generated in the camera? Doesn't that seem like a waste of engineering talent to you?
There are good reasons why it is very unlikely that you'll ever see a digital camera that generates PNG files. It doesn't make any sense to do that: nothing would be gained from the increased overhead of PNG features that cannot be utilized within a camera body.
The primary reason to favor jpg and gif over png on web pages is that png support in MSIE has not been very good. Go figure.
I mostly use Paint Shop Pro (v8.x) for image development (I started with PSP more than a decade ago). The lossless png format with layers, alpha, etc appears to be a solid format for use during image manipulation and for archiving-- but it is less convenient than PSP's proprietary format so I haven't done much with it. Yet. As I'm in the process of a very slow migration to GIMP, I expect I'll be using png more "in house". Converting my archived development images (that can run to 12 MB or more, what with all the layers, etc) to png will probably be the best way to move them from PSP to GIMP. If I can do all my development in png, then I'll be pretty certain that I can access my archived images from any image manipulation software I'm likely to use in the future (it is unlikely that I'd ever use an MS product... but PhotoShop, or something from Canon or Kodak might be in my future).
But to get back to your question-- I can't think of any reason except poor browser support for not using the png format. And poor browser support is increasingly a thing of the past (Firefox, Opera, etc are continually improving png capabilities and rendering speeds).
My first reaction is "Why are they comparing this WMPhoto format to JPEG and not PNG? Isn't that like comparing the specs of a sleek, new 2007 Ford truck to the performance of a 1950 Chevrolet farm pickup rather than comparing it with a contemporary alternative?"
After RTFM, I am very bothered that there is no comparison made to PNG. In fact PNG isn't even mentioned. Yet PNG has been receiving increasing support by all browser developers (including Microsoft) and PNG already offers all the significant features that MS is claiming for WMPhoto.
I work for the department of a community college that teaches computer skills to adults who are seeking entry level jobs. Our clientelle are generally funded by one of half a dozen different State grants. We've got a proven track record of taking persons off State assistance programs and turning them into taxpayers.
In this milieu, I think "computer literacy" can be regarded as a continuum with definite upper and lower boundaries:
The low boundary is being able to perform common office tasks like email, word processing, and internet searches, and being able to understand and follow general instructions with regard to executing these tasks, and being able to describe specific tasks in these categories in an understandable way. A person who can do these things is going to be an asset to any company who hires them and we teach to this level of performance.
The lower middle part concerns being able to do all of the common office tasks with one brand of software, and being able to confidently learn how to do these tasks on unfamiliar software, and demonstrating a history of on-going acquisition of computer skills. I try to influence our courses so they foster the attitudes, curiosity, and ambition that would cause our students to seek this level of proficiency after they are employed.
The upper middle part concerns being able to contribute meaningfully to risk/benefit discussions about changing office software, policies, or procedures. This kind of work is to common office work as writing novels or poetry is to writing one's diary: it involves much more than technical proficiency with the software tools; it requires a degree of insight into the social and political aspects of software usage.
And the high boundary of computer literacy in this milieu is being able to develop and implement office policies and procedures that effectively exploit available software and computer resources. Certainly there are many technical skills like programming or database construction that might feed into this, but those skills are also clearly separate from shaping software tasks and job descriptions in useful ways. (This may sound like systems analyst work-- but in practice it is more like a merger of choreography and marriage counseling).
Note that it is entirely possible for someone with extensive programming or sysadmin skills to score pretty low on this continuum. I have met such people. It almost seems as though some people can learn to shoe a horse without ever learning the basics about how to ride one.
Why does it seem Microsoft is running out of good ideas?
So if my cousin, Jose Gonzalez, upgrades to this, he will be paying Microsoft when he uses the Firefox or the OpenOffice? And he will be paying Microsoft when SETI@home is running during his lunch break and siesta?
And he will also be paying Microsoft when he dual boots to Linux (which he has to do to participate in his classes in System Architecture at University)?
I do think that Jose will be using this "pay as you go" method of "ownership". I do not think he will be recommending it to his neighbors.
I think he may see it as being like the old land usage laws that his father and uncles shed their blood to reform.
I do not think this will be seen as such a good idea by many University students. I think if Microsoft sees this as a good idea, then there will be many countries where the people will see that Microsoft is like the bad old ways that they have fought so hard to get rid of.
Several statements in TFA only make sense when one recognizes that the MS mouthpiece is using "reliability" and "dependability" to describe states of perception, that, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. Not intrinsic to the product.
I work with a network administrator who perceives MS software to be reliable and dependable. I don't understand his world view at all. I think he may have so much time and effort invested in mastering MS OS and network products (about 25 years) that he can no longer allow himself to think about any other possibility... his ignorance about what I see as current major issues in IT, such as FOSS, GPL, ODF, strikes me as incredible. He has no desire to talk about such things, he dismisses such talk in the same manner as he dismisses discussions about the social affects of Grand Theft Auto... as having no meaning wrt to the Important Work of keeping the campus infrastructure running. He doesn't even know the meaning of those acronyms.
Letting anything other than MS products into his domain is a direct threat to the way he makes his living. So in his perceptions, in his world, MS products are the only ones that have the reliability and dependability that he needs to stay on top of things.
Microsoft is betting that there are enough IT managers out there who are like this guy that a backhand appeal to their fear of having to learn something new will be an effective marketing ploy. By associating the words "reliability" and "dependability" with commercial software, this MS mouthpiece is preaching to his choir (and hoping that his choir will then sing loud enough to make some parts of the rational debate hard to hear).
So that's how this type of FUD works. Neener, neener, nyah-nyah.
IIRC, the general plan before it got modified by politicians was to place the ISS at a higher orbit and use a never-constructed Space Tug to transfer cargo from the low orbit that is all the Shuttle can manage to the ISS itself. Combined with fully recoverable/reuseable Shuttle boosters, this could have been an effective system (provided the technology of the day was up to constructing it without going too far over budget).
Too many cost overruns in the Shuttle's development, and too many careers that became too dependent on doing something that could be described as a success in some way did the whole thing in. But now that nearly everyone who made a career out of building the Shuttle and ISS is retired, maybe it will be possible to take another run at the problem and get things more nearly right.
The Apple II was arguably the micro with the greatest historical impact.
The first flight simulator was written for the Apple II, which triggered the imagination of a lot of people. But more importantly, the first electronic spreadsheet was written for the Apple II, and became an instant hit with accounting firms. Suddenly these micro computers were no longer just toys for guys who spent too much time with Popular Science; there might be money to be made with them, somehow...
Speaking of the venerable Trash Eighty, another home-made tool of the times was a keycap popper, so you could clean the dang keyboard and get the frickin "S" key to work again.
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The members of the EU are sovreign entities. They can declare MSFT an outlaw and take all kinds of measures against it, including appropriating its intellectual properties and putting those in the public domain.
MS would be hurting world wide if it became legal for EU businesses to copy, sell, and export CDs of Windows XP or MS Office 2003... After looking at MSFT financials, this could probably be done without serious damage to the world marketplace, since MS has not invested very much into the infrastructure that it sits on.
Perhaps it is going to take that kind of clue-bat to get some people in the software industry to wake up and realize that it isn't nice to play screw-you with the rules of the marketplace.
How so? If they're unwilling or unable to move fromWin98, then the question of what they might move to is entirely academic.
It is sometimes easy to mistake the business concept of appropriate technology for ignorance or inability on the part of the business. Don't do that.
A Win98 standalone computer used to log inventory into a warehouse, with automated batch updating of the corporate network by FTP at 0300 every morning, is not going to be replaced by Vista when it is finally no longer up to the task. It might be replaced by a hand-me-down box running WinXP, but it is also very likely to be replaced by a Linux box that will be less expensive to clean up and maintain than a used XP box. It is not a matter of whether the business has the technical expertise to upgrade these old boxen. It is all about which replacement path will have the lowest long term cost in running specific programs in a fairly simple environment.
From TFA, there may be around 70 million Win98 boxes in the business world that are being used appropriately for mundane tasks ranging from basic data collection to word processing of sermons and beg letters. This is not a potential Vista market, but it is a very likely Linux growth area.
Agree in general with parent post. I think comparing RH with MS or Ubuntu is an apples and oranges thing.
It might be interesting to compare RH with Novell and IBM. All three are offering Linux support services to the same general market, and each is bringing a very different history and orientation to the party. But neither MS nor Ubuntu are directly addressing this market.
I admire people like the parent poster who have the courage of their convictions and are willing to stand up in front of the crowd and tell someone off when they thing that's called for. So let me express my deep admiration to you, err... Mr Anonymous Coward.
It's starting annoy me...
Grammar nazis who don't proofread their posts are starting [to] annoy me...
I loose my gray hair when I get off work. The ponytail and smoothly coiffed beard are necessary to convey the appropriate image in the office, but in the privacy of my home I let the beard go bushy and the tresses bounce about my shoulders.
But maybe this is more information than you really wanted to know...
Hmm, you've given me something to think about, wrt a separate development style sheet that would highlight problem tags...
Thanks!
Really? So you let them edit raw html?
Yeah, sometimes I offer them that. When there is a good template or they are revising the content of something that is already in good HTML. So its pretty well "cooked" in the sense that they can copy-paste structures from place to place, etc, but its "raw" in the sense that I want them to work in something like HTML-Kit or HomeSite.
Some refuse to do the HTML, and then I'm bargaining with them from a position of strength on matters of formating and deadlines. They know they would have more "artistic freedom" if they did it in HTML. My boss knows that if he won't support me in this bargaining, then I'll drag my feet until I've got the backing I need.
I haven't kept count, but probably around 70% of those who give the HTML editing a try change their minds after a while. They'd rather put up with my constraints and work in a word processor they know. Many of them end up with a better appreciation of what I do before they quit their HTML efforts, and that doesn't hurt me at all. It's usually easier to talk over format and design problems with them after they've had a taste of the raw.
The ones who actually do work in HTML get my high-priority attention when they ask for help. They tend to be fun to work with, and they tend to say very nice things about me.
I can't imagine turning a bunch of neophytes loose with FrontPage or any other WYSIWG HTML editor and then trying to patch together the results afterward. That sounds like the recipe for a lot of long, gruelling, unrewarding hours. Probably with content writers bitching about how you've mangled their glorious presentation, and the boss bitching about why it is taking so long when the content writers have already done all the work.
How did you ever get that to work out?
Actually it is not just a semantic issue. The Moon is massive enough to significantly shift the Earth's orbit around the Sun: the center of the Earth-Moon system (the baricenter) follows a Kepler elipse, but the center of the Earth itself is up to 2,500 miles outside this elipse every New Moon, and up to 2,500 miles inside this elipse every Full Moon.
So from Full Moon to New Moon, the mass of the Earth is shifted a total of 5,000 miles, and in month's time, the shift is 10,000 miles. Shifting the earth's tonnage at an average speed of 14 mph is sort of a big deal. Suppose an observer in a nearby star system was able to see the Earth in his telescope, but not the Moon for some reason (maybe he's tuned in on water vapor): he would still be able to recognize that the Earth had to have a massive companion, and he would be able to figure out the Moon's size and orbit just from the Earth's wobble.
So even by celestial mechanics, the Earth - Moon pair should be regarded as a double planet.
Long before there were web designers churning out pages of advertising, there were content providers whose needs are significantly different. My experience as a web developer consists of over a decade of devising ways of presenting procedure manuals, FAQs, help pages, reports, and similar information on the web. My goal is to do this in a way that makes revisions and additions simple. Ideally, so simple that the content developers can do the maintenance and extensions on their own, without needing to study web technology, or bother me ever again.
The techniques of HTML 3 and 3.2 sucked. Preserving the tabular format of a complex document is not something that you can expect of someone who doesn't know HTML, doesn't want to learn HTML, and who you don't want to try to teach HTML to. And believe me, you don't want to try to teach HTML to a surgeon or corporate vice president: he's got other things on his mind and he costs way too much per hour anyway.
The answer lies in splitting out the content from the layout. Surgeons and CEOs can and will understand the use of <H1-6>, <strong>, <div class="sidebar">, and so on. They can and do understand that the web developer can manipulate the CSS independently of what they write, and that while they can make suggestions about how they want the <span class="doItMyWay"> to look, getting it to look that way is something they can delegate to someone with technical expertise in web development.
I can understand web developers who work in advertising and similar graphics presentations having a desire to stay with the tabular layouts of yesteryear. Doing web pages that look like posters or TV images is a lot easier with tables than with CSS. But their job is very different from the web developer who is tasked with presenting reading material that will need to be revised and extended from time to time. CSS— and the split between content and presentation that is its reason for being— rocks!
Any objective observer looking at the solar system from a stellar perspective [see note below] would describe the Earth and Moon as a double planet system. Each of these planets has significant dynamic features that cannot be accounted for without acknowleding the tidal effects of the other.
The taxonomy of astronomy is not going to make any sense until astronomers openly accept this, despite their personal, historical and cultural biases. It is now time for scientists to accept the Moon as a planet in its own right, and take the next significant step in completing the revolution in thought that was started by Copernicus 500 years ago. I mean come on, that's half a millenium! Isn't that enough time to take the next step and recognize that not only does the Earth go around the Sun, but that the Earth and Moon dance a dosido with each other? Gee, it isn't as if we're all Galileos facing a Church Inquisition for having bad thoughts! It is time to wake up and feel the gravities of the situation!
Astronomy has a much more serious problem than deciding what to call small distant objects. Until astronomy acknowledges that the Earth and Moon are a double planet system, the other sciences are not going to acknowledge it. Yet the advances that can be made in meteorology are limited if the tidal distortion of atmospheric envelope is not recognized in the models. Similarly, a full understanding of geology is not possible without recognizing that the Earth-Moon baricenter lies outside the Earth's core-- and that there is a significant amount of stress placed on the lithosphere due to this.
About five hundred years ago, a few astronomers dared to buck traditional thinking and in doing so not only freed astronomy from the limitations of traditional thinking, but also showed the direction to greater truths that the other sciences could take. It would be good if astronomers would again rise to the challenge, and take the next step.
The Moon is a planet. Let's acknowledge that.
note: A stellar perspective is significantly larger than a mere global perspective. From any stellar perspective, it is impossible to resolve the image of the Earth without also resolving the image of the Moon: if you can see one, you can see the other. Our stellar observer would not be able to plot the orbit of either without taking the other into account: the Moon is no mere satellite of the Earth; it is the somewhat smaller partner in a long term marriage.
GP: You can draw a line like C____C++_Java____Python___Ruby_Lisp
P: Doesn't Perl fit in there somewhere?
Yes, it does, and one of the above does not. The ordering needs adjusting, too. Unfortunately, the lameness filter has blocked my efforts to diagram the inheritance chart.
Perl could be a good first language. A major argument in favor is that Perl allows the student to focus on and learn one concept by forgiving his mistakes with other aspects of programming that he hasn't mastered yet: this is the positive side of DWIMness and TIMTOWDTI. The major argument against Perl as a first language is that these features allow somebody who doesn't know what they are doing to write programs that sort of work (and end up creating huge amounts of work for others later on).
There have been some really bad programs written in Perl, and Perl's reputation is bad because of that. There have been some really bad novels and poems written in english, and it is therefore correct to disdain all english novelists and poets since the english language is obviously such a piece of crap.
If you choose to use Perl as your first l
Recent history:
Does anyone else feel that this time line suggests that the last item or two might be part of a hidden agenda? Are we witnessing the start of a FUD throwing contest between two of the industry's major players?
I am so confused. What web news publishers should I now put my faith in?
PNG is really only suitable for line art...
Others in this discussion have pointed out that PNG has a truecolor mode as well as the 256 color and lower modes. The only differences I've noticed when I've been working with portraits and landscape photos in PNGs rather than JPGs are
Yes, I was guilty of oversimplifying. Thanks for correcting that.
Now, two corrections to your corrections:
Other browsers have been optimizing their PNG routines in recent years... but MS hasn't released any updates to MSIE for... how many years now? I've lost track.
Why shouldn't MS make a format that can be used front-to-back?
Ah! Now I think I understand.
I thought this was about digital photography and image manipulation tools. But that isn't it, is it?
This is about the sudden emergence of a multi billion dollar market in digital point'n'click cameras over the last couple of years. Microsoft just wants to embrace all these snapshooters and take a piece of the action. The technical merits of WMPhoto vs the formats used today by professionals and serious amateurs doesn't matter. What matters is whether WMPhoto provides the platform for a better sales pitch to Joe Sixpack and the companies that make those mini camera thingies for Joe Sixpack.
Thank you for your contribution to this discussion. Combined with other reading, it helped spark an insight I did not yet have.
So WMPhoto is intended to become the native format of digital cameras? Is that what you are saying?
But I'm curious: why do you think that Microsoft would build alpha channel and other digital darkroom features into WMPhoto if they intended WMPhoto files to be generated in the camera? Doesn't that seem like a waste of engineering talent to you?
There are good reasons why it is very unlikely that you'll ever see a digital camera that generates PNG files. It doesn't make any sense to do that: nothing would be gained from the increased overhead of PNG features that cannot be utilized within a camera body.
The primary reason to favor jpg and gif over png on web pages is that png support in MSIE has not been very good. Go figure.
I mostly use Paint Shop Pro (v8.x) for image development (I started with PSP more than a decade ago). The lossless png format with layers, alpha, etc appears to be a solid format for use during image manipulation and for archiving-- but it is less convenient than PSP's proprietary format so I haven't done much with it. Yet. As I'm in the process of a very slow migration to GIMP, I expect I'll be using png more "in house". Converting my archived development images (that can run to 12 MB or more, what with all the layers, etc) to png will probably be the best way to move them from PSP to GIMP. If I can do all my development in png, then I'll be pretty certain that I can access my archived images from any image manipulation software I'm likely to use in the future (it is unlikely that I'd ever use an MS product... but PhotoShop, or something from Canon or Kodak might be in my future).
But to get back to your question-- I can't think of any reason except poor browser support for not using the png format. And poor browser support is increasingly a thing of the past (Firefox, Opera, etc are continually improving png capabilities and rendering speeds).
My first reaction is "Why are they comparing this WMPhoto format to JPEG and not PNG? Isn't that like comparing the specs of a sleek, new 2007 Ford truck to the performance of a 1950 Chevrolet farm pickup rather than comparing it with a contemporary alternative?"
After RTFM, I am very bothered that there is no comparison made to PNG. In fact PNG isn't even mentioned. Yet PNG has been receiving increasing support by all browser developers (including Microsoft) and PNG already offers all the significant features that MS is claiming for WMPhoto.
So how does WMPhoto stack up against PNG?
I work for the department of a community college that teaches computer skills to adults who are seeking entry level jobs. Our clientelle are generally funded by one of half a dozen different State grants. We've got a proven track record of taking persons off State assistance programs and turning them into taxpayers.
In this milieu, I think "computer literacy" can be regarded as a continuum with definite upper and lower boundaries:
Note that it is entirely possible for someone with extensive programming or sysadmin skills to score pretty low on this continuum. I have met such people. It almost seems as though some people can learn to shoe a horse without ever learning the basics about how to ride one.
Why does it seem Microsoft is running out of good ideas?
So if my cousin, Jose Gonzalez, upgrades to this, he will be paying Microsoft when he uses the Firefox or the OpenOffice? And he will be paying Microsoft when SETI@home is running during his lunch break and siesta?
And he will also be paying Microsoft when he dual boots to Linux (which he has to do to participate in his classes in System Architecture at University)?
I do think that Jose will be using this "pay as you go" method of "ownership". I do not think he will be recommending it to his neighbors.
I think he may see it as being like the old land usage laws that his father and uncles shed their blood to reform.
I do not think this will be seen as such a good idea by many University students. I think if Microsoft sees this as a good idea, then there will be many countries where the people will see that Microsoft is like the bad old ways that they have fought so hard to get rid of.
Several statements in TFA only make sense when one recognizes that the MS mouthpiece is using "reliability" and "dependability" to describe states of perception, that, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. Not intrinsic to the product.
I work with a network administrator who perceives MS software to be reliable and dependable. I don't understand his world view at all. I think he may have so much time and effort invested in mastering MS OS and network products (about 25 years) that he can no longer allow himself to think about any other possibility... his ignorance about what I see as current major issues in IT, such as FOSS, GPL, ODF, strikes me as incredible. He has no desire to talk about such things, he dismisses such talk in the same manner as he dismisses discussions about the social affects of Grand Theft Auto... as having no meaning wrt to the Important Work of keeping the campus infrastructure running. He doesn't even know the meaning of those acronyms.
Letting anything other than MS products into his domain is a direct threat to the way he makes his living. So in his perceptions, in his world, MS products are the only ones that have the reliability and dependability that he needs to stay on top of things.
Microsoft is betting that there are enough IT managers out there who are like this guy that a backhand appeal to their fear of having to learn something new will be an effective marketing ploy. By associating the words "reliability" and "dependability" with commercial software, this MS mouthpiece is preaching to his choir (and hoping that his choir will then sing loud enough to make some parts of the rational debate hard to hear).
So that's how this type of FUD works. Neener, neener, nyah-nyah.
Agree w/ parent and GP.
IIRC, the general plan before it got modified by politicians was to place the ISS at a higher orbit and use a never-constructed Space Tug to transfer cargo from the low orbit that is all the Shuttle can manage to the ISS itself. Combined with fully recoverable/reuseable Shuttle boosters, this could have been an effective system (provided the technology of the day was up to constructing it without going too far over budget).
Too many cost overruns in the Shuttle's development, and too many careers that became too dependent on doing something that could be described as a success in some way did the whole thing in. But now that nearly everyone who made a career out of building the Shuttle and ISS is retired, maybe it will be possible to take another run at the problem and get things more nearly right.
The Apple II was arguably the micro with the greatest historical impact.
The first flight simulator was written for the Apple II, which triggered the imagination of a lot of people. But more importantly, the first electronic spreadsheet was written for the Apple II, and became an instant hit with accounting firms. Suddenly these micro computers were no longer just toys for guys who spent too much time with Popular Science; there might be money to be made with them, somehow...
Speaking of the venerable Trash Eighty, another home-made tool of the times was a keycap popper, so you could clean the dang keyboard and get the frickin "S" key to work again.