And I suspect that the relative failure of the Archimedes- where ARM first appeared- had more to do with other market factors than ARM itself, which apparently had excellent performance for its time. (Remember also that the Amiga and Atari ST were both popular in Acorn's home market of the UK (and in Western Europe generally) in the late 80s and early 90s, so lack of x86 compatibility wouldn't itself have been the kiss of death).
Acorn themselves ultimately fizzled out in the late 90s- probably victims of the market's standardisation on commodity PC clones by that point- but their ARM spinoff was massively successful.
Or use 5 or 5.8ghz. Even if there are tons of devices, it has many times more spectrum than the 802.11b/g band.
What's the deal with 802.11n and the 5 GHz band? I've seen a lot of N equipment that only seems to support the 2.4 GHz band- I'm guessing because it's cheaper to only have one radio?- so is is the case that N equipment doesn't *have* to support 5 GHz? (*)
At any rate, it sounds like buying 5 GHz-supporting N equipment would be worth the extra money. I made sure my first router and card (circa 2005) supported 802.11a even though it cost more because I suspected congestion might become a problem and the less-popular A used.... 5 GHz. (Wireless was just starting to become mass-market popular at that point). Didn't need it as it happens, but I'd still use the same strategy again if I could.
(*) Guess in theory they could make a single-radio 5 GHz only version, but since that wouldn't be backward-compatible with all the B and G (i.e. 2.4 GHz) equipment out there, people probably wouldn't like that.
hm, lets say i run a little piece of javascript to make the readonly TOS-textarea read-write. Then i change it and click accept. The problem of the other party not being informed of the change is not my problem,
Ha ha, good luck arguing that in court!
i clicked agree, the other party did not disagree (as they never actually agree but only create your account and therefore implicitly agree),
Again, good luck convincing any sane court that the other party "agreed" because of this!
the only problem is, that they really do not know about it.
Hmm. Yes, I suspect that the judge *may* view that as a problem.
(*rolls eyes so much you could attach generators to them and use them as a renewable power source*)
So later in court you can have good chances,
If you think that such drivel would get *anywhere* in court, let alone stand a "good chance", remind me not to hire you as my lawyer.;-)
but before they will just act like you violated the contract, even when they may have violated the new one.
Yeah, never mind the fact that "the other party not being informed of the change" let alone having agreed to it(!!!) means that they won't be bound by your new contract, which is probably as full of pretend-legal drivel as your ramblings here. (^_^)
In all seriousness, are we supposed to be (a) actually discussing anything that's seriously legally plausible here, (b) discussing what you *think* in your ignorance is legally plausible or (c) playing geek-bullshit-logic-masquerading-as-legalese sub-intellectual masturbation? Because I was arguing (a), whereas what you are talking about seems to be a bit of (b) combined with a lot of (c).
If the app accepts you clicking a button as agreeing to their contract, which still has not been thoroughly tested in the courts, then why should they not accept that the party that enforces this 'click to agree' system is agreeing to modifications if they, too, are clicking the correct buttons. Just because it is automated on their end should mean as much as it being automated on the users end. An automated accept of a contract, these EULAs have been trying to convince us, is just as valid as if you had read and understood everything and signed your name to the contract. That detail should work both ways.
Er, the click on the user's end is manual and presented to them explicitly- and I very, *very* much doubt that sending some guff back in the headers that the licensor wasn't expecting (and will probably be ignored by their systems) is going to have any legal weight at all. No, not even if you give some stupid argument to the judge saying "look! they accepted it".
Even the guy who designed this system admitted he basically doesn't have a clue about the legalities and tried to half-justify this half-baked, pointless, pseudo-legal drivel by saying that it would act as a conversation point or somesuch drivel.
This TOSAmend is total BS, which is why I modded it as "stupid" in the firehose.
Quite true. This is merely the automation of the kind of utterly pointless (and worthless) stupid ideas that computer nerds come up with to play or use the legal system, because they think they know how it works. Except that they don't and- as I've said before- the only way to know how legal systems work is to find out.
The "amended" proposal pretty much will never be seen - the recipient's mail program sends it straight to/dev/null
I'm not sure what the logic is supposed to be here anyway. They send it back via POST headers or something and this gives them the opportunity to see it and respond manually? Or they're deemed to have accepted the modified terms because they were passed back via the mechanism normally used to accept them?
Except that would one *really* expect to receive a modified offer in this manner and would that stand up in court? I don't know the answer, and unless this guy does, the tool is pointless. Oh, but...
Full Disclosure: I am an web app builder, not a lawyer, so I am unsure where using TOSAmend to amend terms of services would (or would not) hold up in court as a legally-permissible way of modifying a contract. I intend this as a proof of concept
So, he really doesn't have a clue, and I don't think this guy knows what the "concept" is meant to be anyway. As I said, it's just the automation of the kind of stupid, muddled pseudo-legal idea we see on Slashdot all the time. Nothing to see here.
So - in effect, you just plucked that out of your arse.
Wrong.
It was an educated guess based on the fact that (a) Amstrad were the leaders (or very close to it) in the UK PC market in the early days and (b) Amstrad's PCs were bundled with GEM. Common sense dictates that a reasonable proportion of those people (hence "some") people would have used it to some extent. The UK was a moderately large market, so that would have been a non-trivial number of people, though clearly not enough for GEM to have taken off.
Because the U.K. (based on what your dad told you)
Nope, that part was based on personal experience and knowledge.
and what you "believe" is the US, is the world?
Where did I say that? Oh, hang on.... I *didn't*.
I stated what I believed to be the situation in the US based on having read this from multiple sources and the situation in the UK from that, combined with personal experience. I didn't claim- nor imply- that this was a reflection of the rest of the world. On the contrary, I didn't comment on the other markets because I didn't know them as well, and I'm sure that someone else could fill in better if they wanted to.
Was this just a third-rate attempt to turn the tables and make me out to be a hypocrite because you're sore at my earlier attack on US-centric assumptions? Seems like it.
OS/2? Xenix? IBM DOS? How many copies of GEM?
What point are you trying to make with your incoherent ramblings? More importantly, what point did you think *I* was trying to make?
Of course GEM was a flop. If you'd actually paid attention to what I said in my original post, you'd have seen that this was what was said.
(*) Yes, early versions of Windows and whatever-happened-to contender GEM [wikipedia.org] were around in the mid-80s. No, no-one (or very few people) used them at the time- Windows *really* took off with Windows 3.1 in the early 90s and GEM never did (though it *was* included with Amstrad PCs in the UK- which were the first really popular low-cost PC compatibles here- so some people, my Dad included, must have used it!).
i.e. GEM never took off, and wasn't used much at the time with the exception of a few Amstrad owners (see above).
The Amstrad 1512 also had a special graphics mode, 640x200x16 colors that was not compatible with any of the graphic standards of the time [Hercules, TGA (Tandy), CGA, EGA].
IIRC according to my Dad, the Amstrads also had text mode(s) that weren't quite standard and caused some programs to crash due to the lack of a bottom line (or something like that). He considered them "almost" compatibles in that there were a few areas like that where they weren't *quite* standard that could cause problems. But I don't get the impression it was a major deal.
At the time, I looked up at the Amstrad 1640 as the "perfect" computer, with 640K RAM and an EGA adapter (this time, 16 colors on screen _for real!_).
I remember deciding I wanted a PC at some point in the late 80s, but could never could have afforded one then. No great loss- unless you wanted to run that crappy text-based office software, an Amiga was a lot more impressive back then!:-)
I understand this was the case in the US. Again, in the UK however, not so much- though my Dad *did* have one at work in the early 80s and I understand some businesses used them before the PC became the de facto standard for business (if not home and hobbyist) use.
Probably didn't help that the PAL-compatible (European TV system) versions of the Apple II were apparently incapable of colour because the original US Apples' colour was generated using idosyncracies of the US TV system that didn't work with the different spec of PAL.
I also suspect that its US success was due to establishing itself in the early days, so that even after it had been surpassed by other machines that offered more for less, the ecosystem and support made it worthwhile. I don't think that was ever the case here (did Apple push it as hard in Europe? did they focus on their home market first? and did tarriffs and/or the generally lower disposable income in Europe hinder it?) hence other cheaper, more modern computers getting in by the time the market here took off in the early 80s(?)
especially in education
Nope, the BBC Micro (and to a lesser extent some Research Machines models) were the leaders in education here- never saw an Apple II at school, ever.
the Mac wasn't too shabby in terms of market share by the beginning of the 90's as well
Used a Mac in the school's English department circa 1993, and someone I knew had one, but they were never that common. Really, I get the impression that the Mac was always a bigger deal in the US than elsewhere in its early years.
That was the year I finished school, and also around the time the PC compatible *was* starting to take over and the worldwide market did become more homogenous.
For quite some time the ST, Amiga and the like were considered to be the home computers to own
Waiting for some US user to come along in 3, 2, 1..... and explain that you're totally wrong because *everyone* knows that the Amiga was a total flop. Where "everyone" is defined as US users who don't know or care that their market *wasn't* synonymous with the situation worldwide and that the Amiga was massively popular in Europe. Then again...
PCs were primarily for business use; only when Windows 3.0 came along did the PC really take off for home users because it then offered most of the capabilities of those other computers at a lower price.
You're kind of guilty of the reverse yourself here:-) My understanding is that in the US, the home market went straight from the early-80s 8-bit computers (mainly the C64 there) to the PC compatibles at the higher end (despite their lousy specs and primarily text-based interface at that time (*)) and the NES at the low end. The Amiga and ST generally *were* a flop there.
(*) Yes, early versions of Windows and whatever-happened-to contender GEM were around in the mid-80s. No, no-one (or very few people) used them at the time- Windows *really* took off with Windows 3.1 in the early 90s and GEM never did (though it *was* included with Amstrad PCs in the UK- which were the first really popular low-cost PC compatibles here- so some people, my Dad included, must have used it!).
"A lot of US-centric commentators assume that because they didn't do much over there that the formats were a total flop- not so."
But they WERE a total flop. Where are they now?
Stupid, *stupid* argument I've already.pointed out elsewhere that using the "where are they now?" argument, the original PlayStation was a flop because no mainstream companies make games for it any more.
I loved the Amiga, don't get me wrong, but I'm under no illusions. It was clear from at least the late 80's that it was a flop.
On the contrary, you clearly *are* residing under the illusion that the US market reflected the situation worldwide (see comments elsewhere in this thread for more detail). The Amiga was gaining massive popularity in Europe in the late-80s, becoming *the* computer of choice for most hobbyist, home and game users that most people wanted (and eventually bought). It peaked in the early 1990s (sales figures say 1992 was its bestselling year) and enjoyed quite a reign of success before C='s lack of investment and commoditisation in the PC market meant it was overtaken and fell out of favour.
I don't live in the United States, so I don't use Netflix. Hulu- that officially isn't available here either, though I'm well aware I could use a proxy except that I'm not enough into TV to have considered bothering.:-)
Which is beside the point....
And the countless amount of TV channels that use Silverlight on their websites, even in my country. Silverlight offers DRM while Flash doesn't, and that's why it will stay relevant even with Flash and HTML5 video.
...well, not really. It depends what you mean by "relevant". Those are existing uses that were created beforehand. Sure, it's quite possible- if not probable- that they'll continue using Silverlight for that reason, but that's a still niche.
It says nothing about Silverlight as a replacement for Flash outside those niche uses. Given that MS have effectively declared that as a dead end and stopped pushing it in that direction, no-one (except the poor mugs who took MS at their word and wasted their time learning it for that purpose before MS abruptly changed their mind and declared HTML5 to be the future) is going to bother moving to Silverlight for Flash-like use, nor invest in that side of the ecosystem.
MS killed it off *before* it became truly relevant by supplanting Flash- or at least one thinks that was the intended plan.
VB6 is still in extended support after 13 years and Silverlight is still going.
VB6 I'll grant you, and I wouldn't have used that as an example myself. However, while it hasn't been killed off, Silverlight has been blatantly sidelined from its original marketed intent of being a Flash-killer.
One may argue that MS made the right decision there, but it doesn't alter the fact that they changed their minds!
While Silverlight still remains in some form as one of the development platforms for Windows Phone 7, I don't know how similar that version is to the Flash-killer, how much overlap there is between the two uses and how meaningfully one may transfer their skills to that use.
Grew up with them. They might have been *the* gaming machine... for an extremely limited number of people. The majority went from the Apple ][ to IBM PCs and DOS. PC games and the rise of the dedicated game machine killed off even that market.
I agree with the other reply- it's blatantly obvious you grew up in the USA and it probably didn't even occur to you that the situation might be different in the rest of the world (the bits marked "Here Be Dragons" on your map).
Given that I specifically mentioned Europe in the post you were originally replying to, and more importantly that post's grandparent had already clearly pointed out that the ST and Amiga were far more successful in Europe than the US, I don't see how you missed it.
Here in the UK (and outside the US in general), the Apple II was nowhere near as popular and it's certainly not true that the "majority" owned one, not in the home (where the Spectrum and C64 were dominant) and not even in the education market (where the BBC Micro ruled). After them, people switched en masse to the ST and then Amiga. Yes, the PC did get some popularity in the mid-80s when Amstrad launched some cheap clones, but it was only circa 1993 (around the time Doom was launched) that the PC and 16-bit consoles truly took over.
You may now replace your head up your backside if you so wish.
I was an Amigan back in the day, but seriously, where are they now?
Obviously no-one but a rabid fanboy would dispute the Amiga has been dead in terms of mainstream support for at least 15 years.
But that wasn't the point being argued- it was that the ST and Amiga were like Blackberry's tablets and WebOS in that they "[didn't] have the mindshare to attract third party developers". Which is blatantly incorrect- unlike their alleged modern counterparts, they most certainly *did* enjoy the support of third party developers for a number of years, in Europe at least.
How many "big name" companies are producing games for the original PlayStation nowadays? None, obviously, but we wouldn't say that the format was a commercial failure on that basis- merely that its time has passed.
And then you have RIM and HP who represent the likes of Commodore and Atari, they also provide a consistent platform like Apple, but don't have the mindshare to attract third party developers.
I assume you were referring to the 16/32-bit Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, as that would be the most likely in this context.
Actually, those formats were very successful as gamer and hobbyist machines in Europe from the mid-80s until the early 1990s, and were well-supported by games developers (if less so in a business context). A lot of US-centric commentators assume that because they didn't do much over there that the formats were a total flop- not so.
Similarly, I've seen cases with more recent technologies where those that US (and sometimes European) commentators considered to be a flop are actually doing quite well in other parts of the world, in particular Asia. I suspect that this *won't* apply to RIM and HP, but in general it *does* pay to take a worldwide view before dismissing something as a failure.
Does the same apply to colour-correction at (e.g.) the printing stage using traditional chemical-based photographic processes?
Is there any inherent difference in altering the white balance on the LED before the photo is taken or altering it via Photoshop afterwards? And are you sure that those photographers aren't just doing it in Photoshop because it's *easiest* that way rather than because they *can't* do it any other way?
Is it cheating to add colour-correction filters to the front of your lens?
And was Ansel Adams a "phony" because his famous black and white prints were reliant on extensive dodging and burning, and certainly wouldn't have looked like they did printed "straight"? I wouldn't consider them straight photographs, but simply dismissing them as "phony" would also be rather harsh, if not downright arrogant.
People got suspicious he was using stock photographs when they saw his image of a female lynx sitting in front of a computer with two male lynxes behind her, one of them pointing at the screen. One of the lynxes was looking thoughtful while the other two were smiling.
(Er, seriously, apparently one of the giveaways was the fact that the Lynx in the photo supposedly taken in summar had "winter fur". So it wasn't crappy photoshopping or obvious ripping off that initially tipped people off- if he hadn't made that silly mistake, he'd probably have gotten away with it. He was last seen being led away to jail muttering something about "pesky kids").
Your use of the word "enjoin" suggests that you were trying to be a pretentious ass. The word you were looking for was "join."
Hey, if he's enjoin' it, there's nothin' wrong with gettin' a l'il bit of pleasure out of it!
That said, are you absolutely *sure* that he didn't mean enjoin? Though I'm not clear whether or not (according to the linked definition) that forcing Sony to participate in a particular course of legal action against their will or desire (i.e. forcing them to participate in the supposedly banned class-action lawsuit) would count as "enjoing" them... or not?
I hear there's this new thing called mono that brings c# and.net to linux.
You really only just "heard" that of this "new" Mono, or you were just being so wittily sarcastic and implying that it's a good solution?
It's a great solution!... If you don't mind it being condemned to being perpetually behind the curve, that is, catching up to Microsoft's current version and almost getting there (if they're lucky) around the point that MS release the next one, which they- of course- have a head start on.
And if you don't mind all the bits that are- in the real world- needed for compatibility with Windows.Net applications being on legally shaky ground (because MS hasn't submitted those parts to ECMA or promised not to assert their patents on them).
Given the nature of the.Net ecosystem, most people wanting to use it will likely be exploiting all the related technologies, and not just the "free" core ones that Mono is safe to use (and actually implements). I like how Wikipedia says that "These technologies are today not fully implemented in Mono and not required for developing Mono-applications, they are simply there for developers and users who need full compatibility with the Windows system."
Yes, because people are really going to be interested in Mono if it's not fully compatible with Windows, of course!
MS knows all this damn well, it knows that any other implementation of its "free" and "open" specification will always be playing catch up, but it can point to them as evidence of.Net's "cross-platform" (cough!) compatibility, and benefits from being able to exploit FUD on Mono's (even half-baked) implementation of.Net's non-free ecosystem areas, and even- as a last resort- being able to launch a patent attack on them. Oh dear, you can't run your application under Linux any more because Mono infringed our patents? Never mind, you can run it under Windows instead!
If the Mono developers wish to be MS's "useful idiots" under the delusion that they're doing something worthwhile for free software- rather than encouraging people to dance to MS's tune- well, they have the right to, but they're not.
Pedantry, but there was no Java SE 4. Confusingly it is Java2, version 1.4. Then they went to Java 5, 6, 7, but kept the internal version number as 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, and it's still "Java 2 platform, standard edition".
Yeah, but with respect, while Slashdotters may be pedantic on occasion (and gratuitously so), you can normally argue that there *might* be a point.
Whereas Java's stupidly inconsistent naming and numbering scheme over the years reflects nothing more than a succession of pointless changes made by stuffed shirts in marketing to justify their jobs, cosmetic changes for changes sake that did nothing but confuse things. (*) Actually worrying about the "correct" nomenclature when everyone knows what is meant seems like dignifying the worthless f*****g about of said marketing tossers, so with no offence intended to you personally, you'll excuse us if we don't give a flying fu... er, monkey! (^_^)
(*) In a similar way to how they confused the "Java" branding by slapping it over many things that were barely related if at all, e.g. the "Java" Desktop System. Though to be fair, MS do similar things, or- the other way round- rebrand the same product/technology under multiple names (e.g. their multiple attempts to promote their Microsoft Passport unified sign-in under countless names over the years).
an individual may not notice, but 10,000 manual transactions at the opening bell aggregated together on that same network might notice a difference.
Are you talking about latency or bandwidth?
Anyway, I'm not clear what point you're making; proportionately, the accumulated milliseconds gained are still going to be proportionately tiny compared to the accumulated human factor on each transaction.
Regardless, it still says a lot about the speed of life these days
Given that it probably applies only to automated trades, it really doesn't, given that though the speed of life may have risen, it hasn't gone up anywhere near as fast as the speed of computers has!
Perhaps those "lazy" Europeans still know a thing or two about this thing we used to call Quality of Life.
I'm in the UK, does that count as "European"? At any rate, there are several southern European countries I wouldn't like to be a part of right now, particularly Greece.
In short, don't over-romanticise Europe- it's not as perfect as a frustrated American might like to think.
I think we now have real proof that life is moving too fast when the metric to measure your performance as a large hedge fund investor is now measured in single milliseconds.
As far as I'm aware, the millisecond-critical trades in question will be those conducted automatically by high-frequency, high-speed trading computer algorithms.
I don't know that for sure, but it's common sense as there's no way a human being could react, let alone think, fast enough for single milliseconds to make any noticeable difference to a manually-initiated trade.
Slashdot Mirror
Had it been developed as a mainstream OS in the intervening time, it would've gone to pre-emptive multitasking as soon as the hardware permitted it.
You do realise that the Amiga had full, no-nonsense pre-emptive multitasking on its launch in 1985- and that was based around a 68000.
As the other reply said, it had been possible for years. Surely it would have been doable on the ARM/Archimedes?
Anybody remember Acorn? They didn't do so well! Arm on the desktop? been there, done that, went broke.
Maybe that's a "whoosh" I hear, but... you do realise that ARM *was* originally developed for desktop use and by Acorn themselves at that!
And I suspect that the relative failure of the Archimedes- where ARM first appeared- had more to do with other market factors than ARM itself, which apparently had excellent performance for its time. (Remember also that the Amiga and Atari ST were both popular in Acorn's home market of the UK (and in Western Europe generally) in the late 80s and early 90s, so lack of x86 compatibility wouldn't itself have been the kiss of death).
Acorn themselves ultimately fizzled out in the late 90s- probably victims of the market's standardisation on commodity PC clones by that point- but their ARM spinoff was massively successful.
Or use 5 or 5.8ghz. Even if there are tons of devices, it has many times more spectrum than the 802.11b/g band.
What's the deal with 802.11n and the 5 GHz band? I've seen a lot of N equipment that only seems to support the 2.4 GHz band- I'm guessing because it's cheaper to only have one radio?- so is is the case that N equipment doesn't *have* to support 5 GHz? (*)
At any rate, it sounds like buying 5 GHz-supporting N equipment would be worth the extra money. I made sure my first router and card (circa 2005) supported 802.11a even though it cost more because I suspected congestion might become a problem and the less-popular A used.... 5 GHz. (Wireless was just starting to become mass-market popular at that point). Didn't need it as it happens, but I'd still use the same strategy again if I could.
(*) Guess in theory they could make a single-radio 5 GHz only version, but since that wouldn't be backward-compatible with all the B and G (i.e. 2.4 GHz) equipment out there, people probably wouldn't like that.
hm, lets say i run a little piece of javascript to make the readonly TOS-textarea read-write. Then i change it and click accept. The problem of the other party not being informed of the change is not my problem,
Ha ha, good luck arguing that in court!
i clicked agree, the other party did not disagree (as they never actually agree but only create your account and therefore implicitly agree),
Again, good luck convincing any sane court that the other party "agreed" because of this!
the only problem is, that they really do not know about it.
Hmm. Yes, I suspect that the judge *may* view that as a problem. (*rolls eyes so much you could attach generators to them and use them as a renewable power source*)
So later in court you can have good chances,
If you think that such drivel would get *anywhere* in court, let alone stand a "good chance", remind me not to hire you as my lawyer. ;-)
but before they will just act like you violated the contract, even when they may have violated the new one.
Yeah, never mind the fact that "the other party not being informed of the change" let alone having agreed to it(!!!) means that they won't be bound by your new contract, which is probably as full of pretend-legal drivel as your ramblings here. (^_^)
In all seriousness, are we supposed to be (a) actually discussing anything that's seriously legally plausible here, (b) discussing what you *think* in your ignorance is legally plausible or (c) playing geek-bullshit-logic-masquerading-as-legalese sub-intellectual masturbation? Because I was arguing (a), whereas what you are talking about seems to be a bit of (b) combined with a lot of (c).
If the app accepts you clicking a button as agreeing to their contract, which still has not been thoroughly tested in the courts, then why should they not accept that the party that enforces this 'click to agree' system is agreeing to modifications if they, too, are clicking the correct buttons. Just because it is automated on their end should mean as much as it being automated on the users end. An automated accept of a contract, these EULAs have been trying to convince us, is just as valid as if you had read and understood everything and signed your name to the contract. That detail should work both ways.
Er, the click on the user's end is manual and presented to them explicitly- and I very, *very* much doubt that sending some guff back in the headers that the licensor wasn't expecting (and will probably be ignored by their systems) is going to have any legal weight at all. No, not even if you give some stupid argument to the judge saying "look! they accepted it".
Even the guy who designed this system admitted he basically doesn't have a clue about the legalities and tried to half-justify this half-baked, pointless, pseudo-legal drivel by saying that it would act as a conversation point or somesuch drivel.
This TOSAmend is total BS, which is why I modded it as "stupid" in the firehose.
Quite true. This is merely the automation of the kind of utterly pointless (and worthless) stupid ideas that computer nerds come up with to play or use the legal system, because they think they know how it works. Except that they don't and- as I've said before- the only way to know how legal systems work is to find out.
The "amended" proposal pretty much will never be seen - the recipient's mail program sends it straight to /dev/null
I'm not sure what the logic is supposed to be here anyway. They send it back via POST headers or something and this gives them the opportunity to see it and respond manually? Or they're deemed to have accepted the modified terms because they were passed back via the mechanism normally used to accept them?
Except that would one *really* expect to receive a modified offer in this manner and would that stand up in court? I don't know the answer, and unless this guy does, the tool is pointless. Oh, but...
Full Disclosure: I am an web app builder, not a lawyer, so I am unsure where using TOSAmend to amend terms of services would (or would not) hold up in court as a legally-permissible way of modifying a contract. I intend this as a proof of concept
So, he really doesn't have a clue, and I don't think this guy knows what the "concept" is meant to be anyway. As I said, it's just the automation of the kind of stupid, muddled pseudo-legal idea we see on Slashdot all the time. Nothing to see here.
So - in effect, you just plucked that out of your arse.
Wrong.
It was an educated guess based on the fact that (a) Amstrad were the leaders (or very close to it) in the UK PC market in the early days and (b) Amstrad's PCs were bundled with GEM. Common sense dictates that a reasonable proportion of those people (hence "some") people would have used it to some extent. The UK was a moderately large market, so that would have been a non-trivial number of people, though clearly not enough for GEM to have taken off.
Because the U.K. (based on what your dad told you)
Nope, that part was based on personal experience and knowledge.
and what you "believe" is the US, is the world?
Where did I say that? Oh, hang on.... I *didn't*.
I stated what I believed to be the situation in the US based on having read this from multiple sources and the situation in the UK from that, combined with personal experience. I didn't claim- nor imply- that this was a reflection of the rest of the world. On the contrary, I didn't comment on the other markets because I didn't know them as well, and I'm sure that someone else could fill in better if they wanted to.
Was this just a third-rate attempt to turn the tables and make me out to be a hypocrite because you're sore at my earlier attack on US-centric assumptions? Seems like it.
OS/2? Xenix? IBM DOS? How many copies of GEM?
What point are you trying to make with your incoherent ramblings? More importantly, what point did you think *I* was trying to make?
Of course GEM was a flop. If you'd actually paid attention to what I said in my original post, you'd have seen that this was what was said.
(*) Yes, early versions of Windows and whatever-happened-to contender GEM [wikipedia.org] were around in the mid-80s. No, no-one (or very few people) used them at the time- Windows *really* took off with Windows 3.1 in the early 90s and GEM never did (though it *was* included with Amstrad PCs in the UK- which were the first really popular low-cost PC compatibles here- so some people, my Dad included, must have used it!).
i.e. GEM never took off, and wasn't used much at the time with the exception of a few Amstrad owners (see above).
The Amstrad 1512 also had a special graphics mode, 640x200x16 colors that was not compatible with any of the graphic standards of the time [Hercules, TGA (Tandy), CGA, EGA].
IIRC according to my Dad, the Amstrads also had text mode(s) that weren't quite standard and caused some programs to crash due to the lack of a bottom line (or something like that). He considered them "almost" compatibles in that there were a few areas like that where they weren't *quite* standard that could cause problems. But I don't get the impression it was a major deal.
At the time, I looked up at the Amstrad 1640 as the "perfect" computer, with 640K RAM and an EGA adapter (this time, 16 colors on screen _for real!_).
I remember deciding I wanted a PC at some point in the late 80s, but could never could have afforded one then. No great loss- unless you wanted to run that crappy text-based office software, an Amiga was a lot more impressive back then! :-)
The Apple II was pretty popular as well
I understand this was the case in the US. Again, in the UK however, not so much- though my Dad *did* have one at work in the early 80s and I understand some businesses used them before the PC became the de facto standard for business (if not home and hobbyist) use.
Probably didn't help that the PAL-compatible (European TV system) versions of the Apple II were apparently incapable of colour because the original US Apples' colour was generated using idosyncracies of the US TV system that didn't work with the different spec of PAL.
I also suspect that its US success was due to establishing itself in the early days, so that even after it had been surpassed by other machines that offered more for less, the ecosystem and support made it worthwhile. I don't think that was ever the case here (did Apple push it as hard in Europe? did they focus on their home market first? and did tarriffs and/or the generally lower disposable income in Europe hinder it?) hence other cheaper, more modern computers getting in by the time the market here took off in the early 80s(?)
especially in education
Nope, the BBC Micro (and to a lesser extent some Research Machines models) were the leaders in education here- never saw an Apple II at school, ever.
the Mac wasn't too shabby in terms of market share by the beginning of the 90's as well
Used a Mac in the school's English department circa 1993, and someone I knew had one, but they were never that common. Really, I get the impression that the Mac was always a bigger deal in the US than elsewhere in its early years.
That was the year I finished school, and also around the time the PC compatible *was* starting to take over and the worldwide market did become more homogenous.
For quite some time the ST, Amiga and the like were considered to be the home computers to own
Waiting for some US user to come along in 3, 2, 1..... and explain that you're totally wrong because *everyone* knows that the Amiga was a total flop. Where "everyone" is defined as US users who don't know or care that their market *wasn't* synonymous with the situation worldwide and that the Amiga was massively popular in Europe. Then again...
PCs were primarily for business use; only when Windows 3.0 came along did the PC really take off for home users because it then offered most of the capabilities of those other computers at a lower price.
You're kind of guilty of the reverse yourself here :-) My understanding is that in the US, the home market went straight from the early-80s 8-bit computers (mainly the C64 there) to the PC compatibles at the higher end (despite their lousy specs and primarily text-based interface at that time (*)) and the NES at the low end. The Amiga and ST generally *were* a flop there.
(*) Yes, early versions of Windows and whatever-happened-to contender GEM were around in the mid-80s. No, no-one (or very few people) used them at the time- Windows *really* took off with Windows 3.1 in the early 90s and GEM never did (though it *was* included with Amstrad PCs in the UK- which were the first really popular low-cost PC compatibles here- so some people, my Dad included, must have used it!).
"A lot of US-centric commentators assume that because they didn't do much over there that the formats were a total flop- not so."
But they WERE a total flop. Where are they now?
Stupid, *stupid* argument I've already .pointed out elsewhere that using the "where are they now?" argument, the original PlayStation was a flop because no mainstream companies make games for it any more.
I loved the Amiga, don't get me wrong, but I'm under no illusions. It was clear from at least the late 80's that it was a flop.
On the contrary, you clearly *are* residing under the illusion that the US market reflected the situation worldwide (see comments elsewhere in this thread for more detail). The Amiga was gaining massive popularity in Europe in the late-80s, becoming *the* computer of choice for most hobbyist, home and game users that most people wanted (and eventually bought). It peaked in the early 1990s (sales figures say 1992 was its bestselling year) and enjoyed quite a reign of success before C='s lack of investment and commoditisation in the PC market meant it was overtaken and fell out of favour.
Completely forget about Netflix and Hulu?
I don't live in the United States, so I don't use Netflix. Hulu- that officially isn't available here either, though I'm well aware I could use a proxy except that I'm not enough into TV to have considered bothering. :-)
Which is beside the point....
And the countless amount of TV channels that use Silverlight on their websites, even in my country. Silverlight offers DRM while Flash doesn't, and that's why it will stay relevant even with Flash and HTML5 video.
...well, not really. It depends what you mean by "relevant". Those are existing uses that were created beforehand. Sure, it's quite possible- if not probable- that they'll continue using Silverlight for that reason, but that's a still niche.
It says nothing about Silverlight as a replacement for Flash outside those niche uses. Given that MS have effectively declared that as a dead end and stopped pushing it in that direction, no-one (except the poor mugs who took MS at their word and wasted their time learning it for that purpose before MS abruptly changed their mind and declared HTML5 to be the future) is going to bother moving to Silverlight for Flash-like use, nor invest in that side of the ecosystem.
MS killed it off *before* it became truly relevant by supplanting Flash- or at least one thinks that was the intended plan.
VB6 is still in extended support after 13 years and Silverlight is still going.
VB6 I'll grant you, and I wouldn't have used that as an example myself. However, while it hasn't been killed off, Silverlight has been blatantly sidelined from its original marketed intent of being a Flash-killer.
One may argue that MS made the right decision there, but it doesn't alter the fact that they changed their minds!
While Silverlight still remains in some form as one of the development platforms for Windows Phone 7, I don't know how similar that version is to the Flash-killer, how much overlap there is between the two uses and how meaningfully one may transfer their skills to that use.
If you're going to get me a Reliant, I'd prefer it be prepended with USS.
You want a Reliant? Which one, a Reliant Robin or a Reliant Regal?
You can call it USS if you like... (^_^)
Grew up with them. They might have been *the* gaming machine... for an extremely limited number of people. The majority went from the Apple ][ to IBM PCs and DOS. PC games and the rise of the dedicated game machine killed off even that market.
I agree with the other reply- it's blatantly obvious you grew up in the USA and it probably didn't even occur to you that the situation might be different in the rest of the world (the bits marked "Here Be Dragons" on your map).
Given that I specifically mentioned Europe in the post you were originally replying to, and more importantly that post's grandparent had already clearly pointed out that the ST and Amiga were far more successful in Europe than the US, I don't see how you missed it.
Here in the UK (and outside the US in general), the Apple II was nowhere near as popular and it's certainly not true that the "majority" owned one, not in the home (where the Spectrum and C64 were dominant) and not even in the education market (where the BBC Micro ruled). After them, people switched en masse to the ST and then Amiga. Yes, the PC did get some popularity in the mid-80s when Amstrad launched some cheap clones, but it was only circa 1993 (around the time Doom was launched) that the PC and 16-bit consoles truly took over.
You may now replace your head up your backside if you so wish.
I was an Amigan back in the day, but seriously, where are they now?
Obviously no-one but a rabid fanboy would dispute the Amiga has been dead in terms of mainstream support for at least 15 years.
But that wasn't the point being argued- it was that the ST and Amiga were like Blackberry's tablets and WebOS in that they "[didn't] have the mindshare to attract third party developers". Which is blatantly incorrect- unlike their alleged modern counterparts, they most certainly *did* enjoy the support of third party developers for a number of years, in Europe at least.
How many "big name" companies are producing games for the original PlayStation nowadays? None, obviously, but we wouldn't say that the format was a commercial failure on that basis- merely that its time has passed.
And then you have RIM and HP who represent the likes of Commodore and Atari, they also provide a consistent platform like Apple, but don't have the mindshare to attract third party developers.
I assume you were referring to the 16/32-bit Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, as that would be the most likely in this context.
Actually, those formats were very successful as gamer and hobbyist machines in Europe from the mid-80s until the early 1990s, and were well-supported by games developers (if less so in a business context). A lot of US-centric commentators assume that because they didn't do much over there that the formats were a total flop- not so.
Similarly, I've seen cases with more recent technologies where those that US (and sometimes European) commentators considered to be a flop are actually doing quite well in other parts of the world, in particular Asia. I suspect that this *won't* apply to RIM and HP, but in general it *does* pay to take a worldwide view before dismissing something as a failure.
For Republicans, you need to be a "discrete" 18 year old boy
That's siamese twins out, then.
Does the same apply to colour-correction at (e.g.) the printing stage using traditional chemical-based photographic processes?
Is there any inherent difference in altering the white balance on the LED before the photo is taken or altering it via Photoshop afterwards? And are you sure that those photographers aren't just doing it in Photoshop because it's *easiest* that way rather than because they *can't* do it any other way?
Is it cheating to add colour-correction filters to the front of your lens?
And was Ansel Adams a "phony" because his famous black and white prints were reliant on extensive dodging and burning, and certainly wouldn't have looked like they did printed "straight"? I wouldn't consider them straight photographs, but simply dismissing them as "phony" would also be rather harsh, if not downright arrogant.
People got suspicious he was using stock photographs when they saw his image of a female lynx sitting in front of a computer with two male lynxes behind her, one of them pointing at the screen. One of the lynxes was looking thoughtful while the other two were smiling.
(Er, seriously, apparently one of the giveaways was the fact that the Lynx in the photo supposedly taken in summar had "winter fur". So it wasn't crappy photoshopping or obvious ripping off that initially tipped people off- if he hadn't made that silly mistake, he'd probably have gotten away with it. He was last seen being led away to jail muttering something about "pesky kids").
Your use of the word "enjoin" suggests that you were trying to be a pretentious ass. The word you were looking for was "join."
Hey, if he's enjoin' it, there's nothin' wrong with gettin' a l'il bit of pleasure out of it!
That said, are you absolutely *sure* that he didn't mean enjoin? Though I'm not clear whether or not (according to the linked definition) that forcing Sony to participate in a particular course of legal action against their will or desire (i.e. forcing them to participate in the supposedly banned class-action lawsuit) would count as "enjoing" them... or not?
I hear there's this new thing called mono that brings c# and .net to linux.
You really only just "heard" that of this "new" Mono, or you were just being so wittily sarcastic and implying that it's a good solution?
.Net applications being on legally shaky ground (because MS hasn't submitted those parts to ECMA or promised not to assert their patents on them).
.Net ecosystem, most people wanting to use it will likely be exploiting all the related technologies, and not just the "free" core ones that Mono is safe to use (and actually implements). I like how Wikipedia says that "These technologies are today not fully implemented in Mono and not required for developing Mono-applications, they are simply there for developers and users who need full compatibility with the Windows system."
.Net's "cross-platform" (cough!) compatibility, and benefits from being able to exploit FUD on Mono's (even half-baked) implementation of .Net's non-free ecosystem areas, and even- as a last resort- being able to launch a patent attack on them. Oh dear, you can't run your application under Linux any more because Mono infringed our patents? Never mind, you can run it under Windows instead!
It's a great solution!... If you don't mind it being condemned to being perpetually behind the curve, that is, catching up to Microsoft's current version and almost getting there (if they're lucky) around the point that MS release the next one, which they- of course- have a head start on.
And if you don't mind all the bits that are- in the real world- needed for compatibility with Windows
Given the nature of the
Yes, because people are really going to be interested in Mono if it's not fully compatible with Windows, of course!
MS knows all this damn well, it knows that any other implementation of its "free" and "open" specification will always be playing catch up, but it can point to them as evidence of
If the Mono developers wish to be MS's "useful idiots" under the delusion that they're doing something worthwhile for free software- rather than encouraging people to dance to MS's tune- well, they have the right to, but they're not.
Pedantry, but there was no Java SE 4. Confusingly it is Java2, version 1.4. Then they went to Java 5, 6, 7, but kept the internal version number as 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, and it's still "Java 2 platform, standard edition".
Yeah, but with respect, while Slashdotters may be pedantic on occasion (and gratuitously so), you can normally argue that there *might* be a point.
Whereas Java's stupidly inconsistent naming and numbering scheme over the years reflects nothing more than a succession of pointless changes made by stuffed shirts in marketing to justify their jobs, cosmetic changes for changes sake that did nothing but confuse things. (*) Actually worrying about the "correct" nomenclature when everyone knows what is meant seems like dignifying the worthless f*****g about of said marketing tossers, so with no offence intended to you personally, you'll excuse us if we don't give a flying fu... er, monkey! (^_^)
(*) In a similar way to how they confused the "Java" branding by slapping it over many things that were barely related if at all, e.g. the "Java" Desktop System. Though to be fair, MS do similar things, or- the other way round- rebrand the same product/technology under multiple names (e.g. their multiple attempts to promote their Microsoft Passport unified sign-in under countless names over the years).
an individual may not notice, but 10,000 manual transactions at the opening bell aggregated together on that same network might notice a difference.
Are you talking about latency or bandwidth?
Anyway, I'm not clear what point you're making; proportionately, the accumulated milliseconds gained are still going to be proportionately tiny compared to the accumulated human factor on each transaction.
Regardless, it still says a lot about the speed of life these days
Given that it probably applies only to automated trades, it really doesn't, given that though the speed of life may have risen, it hasn't gone up anywhere near as fast as the speed of computers has!
Perhaps those "lazy" Europeans still know a thing or two about this thing we used to call Quality of Life.
I'm in the UK, does that count as "European"? At any rate, there are several southern European countries I wouldn't like to be a part of right now, particularly Greece.
In short, don't over-romanticise Europe- it's not as perfect as a frustrated American might like to think.
I think we now have real proof that life is moving too fast when the metric to measure your performance as a large hedge fund investor is now measured in single milliseconds.
As far as I'm aware, the millisecond-critical trades in question will be those conducted automatically by high-frequency, high-speed trading computer algorithms.
I don't know that for sure, but it's common sense as there's no way a human being could react, let alone think, fast enough for single milliseconds to make any noticeable difference to a manually-initiated trade.