Probably the worst thing ever adopted by the education system, IMHO, is PowerPoint.
I disagree. PowerPoint is a tool, like any other. It can be used to create great presentations or it can be used to create terrible presentations.
I did a class in the late 1990'ies explaining internet ad and page statistics. I included pictures of an NBA game, to explain that counting pageviews was like counting basketball stats, and users were like players (each one has a unique numbers). Not only was this funny, but it made understanding the material easier.
It would be pretty hard for MS to walk away from ActiveX. After all, all plug-ins for IE are ActiveX components. So every single one would have to be rewritten (unless Microsoft adopted the Mozilla standard, fat chance). And if Microsoft removed ActiveX, many, many websites would be instantly broken, because they use the non-standard clsid object tags.
Gee....yeah. You are right. Almost every media standard Apple had backed early has succeeded overall in the market.
Except for SCSI. Apple backed that from the beginning, but it widely failed for consumer applications. Including SCSI for things like scanners. Apple threw in the towel and switched to IDE and USB/Firewire some time ago.
And their proprietary floppy drives (gee, 800 k on a floppy instead of 720 k). They eventually switched to the standard 1.4 mb floppy drives.
And Appletalk hardware and protocol. Replaced by 10 base T and TCP. The hardware was problematic. Especially when the connectors would work their way loose. And the software was proprietary and had efficiency problems (due to broadcasting and multicasting).
And don't even talk to me about the NeXT (which provided the foundation for OSX) magnito-optical drive. That thing was a total dog. Ours constantly broke down.
Apple has backed a bunch of dogs.
Apple has ALWAYS done things differently. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they loose.
Among the pomp and grandeur of the formal state rooms at the palace, Gates will kneel in front of the sovereign, who will gently tap him on the shoulder with a sword.
Or the penguin could drive the sword into his heart, ditch the queen disguise, and quickly waddle away.
According to Transportation California "The high level of pavement deterioration on major metropolitan roads is a result of a significant increase in urban traffic, particularly from large trucks and other large vehicles."
Instead of this hairbrained scheme, they should be taxing trucks more, as they inflict much of the damage.
It has been announced that the next generation of XBox will use IBM PowerPC processors instead of Intel. Does this represent a major shift away from Intel for Microsoft? Are we eventually going to see PowerPC based Microsoft PCs?
Apple is actually building on the Carbon APIs, treating it as a procedural alternative to the object-oriented Cocoa.
What about Java? Apple released the 1.4 JVM without support for Carbon apps, breaking all browsers written in Carbon (hint...all but the one they wrote). I don't see great support for Carbon there.
If the EU actually does rule against software patents, it will be a very compelling reason for IT companies to do development in the EU rather than in the US, and that is something that may trigger the US to review their system, but that will all take time.
This is ridiculous. Patents, or the lack thereof, provide very little reason to move software development. It will still be a violation to sell software in the United States that infringes on a patent, no matter where the software is developed.
It is true that there probably will be free software that you can only legally use in countries that don't have software patents. But software like that has been around for years for other issues (crypto, gif libraries, etc), and it didn't caused a shift in where software was developed.
Abuses of the wireless spectrum happen all the time, odds are that somewhere right now, someone is violating an aspect of the FCC guidelines.
This probably happens much more frequently than you realize.
For example, I heard a story about wireless recievers not working properly at a NASCAR race. They traced the problem down to a faulty microwave oven in a trailer in the infield. Multi-million dollar equipment not working because of a microwave.
He says that money is the only insentive for individual excellence, or a step further, that DRM is the only way to reward creativity.
I believe many artists make art to add beauty to the world, and that they desire an audience, not money.
I believe that there are many artists willing to share their creative work for free, and they are compensated by the attention they get. I believe that the market is starting to demand this art. One of the great thing about this art, as with free software, is that it can be extended, collaborated with, and changed far beyond the scope of the original art. Perhaps this art isn't as good as commercial art, or as polished, but it has great advantages, the biggest one being that it is free.
Finally, having been a successful shareware author, I can say that people are very generous if you ask them for support. I could have never distributed my software through traditional channels, and would have never made any money even if I could have, but was quite successful freely distributing my work, and only asking for payment in the about box.
It is ironic that Bill Gates doesn't understand this. His operating system has started this revolution, that has removed the cost of distribution. What we are seeing now is a natural evolution of the personal computer.
You are suggesting that they should have sacrifice usability for a meaningless statistic. What a typical dumb PHB statement.
Exactly how does making the browser part of the operating system make Windows more usable?
Because they did this, I now can't remove IE if I want to. I have trouble with outlook if I set mozilla as my default browser. I can't upgrade IE without patching the OS (which means other programs that use IE components might break). There is no way for me to downgrade to earlier browser versions. There is no way for me to have multiple versions of IE installed, so it makes it hard to test. Because IE is in the operating system, Microsoft has delayed releasing new features until the next version of the OS is shipped.
I can't think of a single thing that integrating the browser into the OS buys you, except some code reusability. From my engineering perspective, this wasn't done for any legitimate engineering reason, but because of legal and business reasons.
It's an easy fix... pay per unique visit, per time period that you care to filter by.
Right. And how do you propose to track unique visits. By IP address? Then what about the AOL proxy caches? Also, a large percentage of these are probably robots. They can play all sort of tricks with cookies.
they offered IE for free in the hope that they could "embrace and extend" the internet - stopping all other browsers, and thereby stopping all other platforms - but it didn't work. so why should they bother any more? there's nothing to be gained by owning the users browser.
There are plenty of reasons to control the browser. For one, it allows Microsoft to control the homepage, which has made MSN viable.
And many web pages still use IE specific HTML markup, and ActiveX controls in web pages, so you can't say Microsoft has been unsuccessful in "embracing and extending" the internet.
Although the press here on Slashdot is that other browsers are making headway, according to user stats from a big non-geek website I have access to, MSIE still has 93.26% of the users.
I don't think Microsoft has found it fruitless to own the browser. They just have completely dominated, so no more effort is required.
Going to a straight popular vote would, perversely, represent the end of American democracy. Candidates would be inclined to cater to a few urban areas where they can buy the most votes for their buck (or their promise), effectively disenfranchising rural voters. To the extent that the presidency is a representative office, it should represent Peoria and Birmingham as much as it represents New York and Los Angeles.
I disagree with this. Does this mean that my vote is less important than other people because I choose to live in a higher density state? Or that smaller states should have more representation than larger ones?
If the Government is representing Peoria and Birmingham as much as New York and Los Angeles, it is not representing the people. It is not one man, one vote. If the majority of Americans choose to live in cities, why doesn't the election represent that?
More than 50% of the voters in 2000 were disinfranchised.
We are missing a lot of facts here, and it is easy to jump to conclusions. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Well, as long as we are jumping. Clearly this guy isn't stupid. I'm sure he talked to a lawyer before he left Seagate. I'm sure he even expected a lawsuit. But, in the end, the lure of big money was probably too good.
If / when we get more facts about this, then we can discuss. As it is, we know nothing.
Slashdot was USED by the publisher. They know as well as anyone else "There is no such thing as bad publicity".
If this is true, I think the publisher was sadly mistaken. I don't think this will help book sales at all. People who read Slashdot won't be interested in this book.
On the other hand, slashdotters will long remember that Penguin acted in an unethical manner. Perhaps they might even avoid buying books from them.
I believe this is simply a case of a marketing department thinking that it can do what it wants, and getting caught by public opinion.
Note this is only for Solaris x86
on
Linux Apps On Solaris
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· Score: 4, Informative
This only works on Solaris x86 machines, which has always been the ugly Solaris step-child.
This seems to me to be a little desperate. Sun seems to be saying that Linux has won, at least in terms of software support.
Slashdot Mirror
Probably the worst thing ever adopted by the education system, IMHO, is PowerPoint.
I disagree. PowerPoint is a tool, like any other. It can be used to create great presentations or it can be used to create terrible presentations.
I did a class in the late 1990'ies explaining internet ad and page statistics. I included pictures of an NBA game, to explain that counting pageviews was like counting basketball stats, and users were like players (each one has a unique numbers). Not only was this funny, but it made understanding the material easier.
It all depends on how you use PowerPoint.
It would be pretty hard for MS to walk away from ActiveX. After all, all plug-ins for IE are ActiveX components. So every single one would have to be rewritten (unless Microsoft adopted the Mozilla standard, fat chance). And if Microsoft removed ActiveX, many, many websites would be instantly broken, because they use the non-standard clsid object tags.
Not the same thing at all. Your link requires a big tube, which is impractical in office buildings. This uses fiber optics, or really little tubes.
Gee....yeah. You are right. Almost every media standard Apple had backed early has succeeded overall in the market.
Except for SCSI. Apple backed that from the beginning, but it widely failed for consumer applications. Including SCSI for things like scanners. Apple threw in the towel and switched to IDE and USB/Firewire some time ago.
And their proprietary floppy drives (gee, 800 k on a floppy instead of 720 k). They eventually switched to the standard 1.4 mb floppy drives.
And Appletalk hardware and protocol. Replaced by 10 base T and TCP. The hardware was problematic. Especially when the connectors would work their way loose. And the software was proprietary and had efficiency problems (due to broadcasting and multicasting).
And don't even talk to me about the NeXT (which provided the foundation for OSX) magnito-optical drive. That thing was a total dog. Ours constantly broke down.
Apple has backed a bunch of dogs.
Apple has ALWAYS done things differently. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they loose.
Among the pomp and grandeur of the formal state rooms at the palace, Gates will kneel in front of the sovereign, who will gently tap him on the shoulder with a sword.
Or the penguin could drive the sword into his heart, ditch the queen disguise, and quickly waddle away.
Only humans have opposable thumbs. They can grasp with their fingers, thought.
According to Transportation California "The high level of pavement deterioration on major metropolitan roads is a result of a significant increase in urban traffic, particularly from large trucks and other large vehicles."
Instead of this hairbrained scheme, they should be taxing trucks more, as they inflict much of the damage.
It has been announced that the next generation of XBox will use IBM PowerPC processors instead of Intel. Does this represent a major shift away from Intel for Microsoft? Are we eventually going to see PowerPC based Microsoft PCs?
Apple is actually building on the Carbon APIs, treating it as a procedural alternative to the object-oriented Cocoa.
What about Java? Apple released the 1.4 JVM without support for Carbon apps, breaking all browsers written in Carbon (hint...all but the one they wrote). I don't see great support for Carbon there.
If the EU actually does rule against software patents, it will be a very compelling reason for IT companies to do development in the EU rather than in the US, and that is something that may trigger the US to review their system, but that will all take time.
This is ridiculous. Patents, or the lack thereof, provide very little reason to move software development. It will still be a violation to sell software in the United States that infringes on a patent, no matter where the software is developed.
It is true that there probably will be free software that you can only legally use in countries that don't have software patents. But software like that has been around for years for other issues (crypto, gif libraries, etc), and it didn't caused a shift in where software was developed.
Abuses of the wireless spectrum happen all the time, odds are that somewhere right now, someone is violating an aspect of the FCC guidelines.
This probably happens much more frequently than you realize.
For example, I heard a story about wireless recievers not working properly at a NASCAR race. They traced the problem down to a faulty microwave oven in a trailer in the infield. Multi-million dollar equipment not working because of a microwave.
He says that money is the only insentive for individual excellence, or a step further, that DRM is the only way to reward creativity.
I believe many artists make art to add beauty to the world, and that they desire an audience, not money.
I believe that there are many artists willing to share their creative work for free, and they are compensated by the attention they get. I believe that the market is starting to demand this art. One of the great thing about this art, as with free software, is that it can be extended, collaborated with, and changed far beyond the scope of the original art. Perhaps this art isn't as good as commercial art, or as polished, but it has great advantages, the biggest one being that it is free.
Finally, having been a successful shareware author, I can say that people are very generous if you ask them for support. I could have never distributed my software through traditional channels, and would have never made any money even if I could have, but was quite successful freely distributing my work, and only asking for payment in the about box.
It is ironic that Bill Gates doesn't understand this. His operating system has started this revolution, that has removed the cost of distribution. What we are seeing now is a natural evolution of the personal computer.
Is that Justin Ellsworth probably didn't even read the terms of service when he signed up for Yahoo email.
Certainly, he doesn't have much of an expectation of privacy now that he is dead.
Rollerblading wheels. They have had flexible hubs for a while.
You are suggesting that they should have sacrifice usability for a meaningless statistic. What a typical dumb PHB statement.
Exactly how does making the browser part of the operating system make Windows more usable?
Because they did this, I now can't remove IE if I want to. I have trouble with outlook if I set mozilla as my default browser. I can't upgrade IE without patching the OS (which means other programs that use IE components might break). There is no way for me to downgrade to earlier browser versions. There is no way for me to have multiple versions of IE installed, so it makes it hard to test. Because IE is in the operating system, Microsoft has delayed releasing new features until the next version of the OS is shipped.
I can't think of a single thing that integrating the browser into the OS buys you, except some code reusability. From my engineering perspective, this wasn't done for any legitimate engineering reason, but because of legal and business reasons.
It's an easy fix... pay per unique visit, per time period that you care to filter by.
Right. And how do you propose to track unique visits. By IP address? Then what about the AOL proxy caches? Also, a large percentage of these are probably robots. They can play all sort of tricks with cookies.
This is a difficult problem.
The problem is that blogs are filled with misinformation. People need news companies to filter out the crap.
Perhaps blogs will some day be fact checked, and reliable.
This would get a -1 Flamebait.
My feeling is that these features are good news. There should be no gloating on the part of C#, it was clearly built on Java's coattails.
Competition is a great thing, ain't it?
they offered IE for free in the hope that they could "embrace and extend" the internet - stopping all other browsers, and thereby stopping all other platforms - but it didn't work. so why should they bother any more? there's nothing to be gained by owning the users browser.
There are plenty of reasons to control the browser. For one, it allows Microsoft to control the homepage, which has made MSN viable.
And many web pages still use IE specific HTML markup, and ActiveX controls in web pages, so you can't say Microsoft has been unsuccessful in "embracing and extending" the internet.
Although the press here on Slashdot is that other browsers are making headway, according to user stats from a big non-geek website I have access to, MSIE still has 93.26% of the users.
I don't think Microsoft has found it fruitless to own the browser. They just have completely dominated, so no more effort is required.
Won't be long before we're all solving impossible encryption problems.
How much you want to bet that the NSA already has this technology, and already solve impossible encryption problems?
Going to a straight popular vote would, perversely, represent the end of American democracy. Candidates would be inclined to cater to a few urban areas where they can buy the most votes for their buck (or their promise), effectively disenfranchising rural voters. To the extent that the presidency is a representative office, it should represent Peoria and Birmingham as much as it represents New York and Los Angeles.
I disagree with this. Does this mean that my vote is less important than other people because I choose to live in a higher density state? Or that smaller states should have more representation than larger ones?
If the Government is representing Peoria and Birmingham as much as New York and Los Angeles, it is not representing the people. It is not one man, one vote. If the majority of Americans choose to live in cities, why doesn't the election represent that?
More than 50% of the voters in 2000 were disinfranchised.
Sometimes, according to Ms Behrens, a technology can be so hyped it may never meet expectations.
It seems like the Segway fits here. Vast hype, vast expectations, little impact two and a half years after introduction.
We are missing a lot of facts here, and it is easy to jump to conclusions. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Well, as long as we are jumping. Clearly this guy isn't stupid. I'm sure he talked to a lawyer before he left Seagate. I'm sure he even expected a lawsuit. But, in the end, the lure of big money was probably too good.
If / when we get more facts about this, then we can discuss. As it is, we know nothing.
Slashdot was USED by the publisher. They know as well as anyone else "There is no such thing as bad publicity".
If this is true, I think the publisher was sadly mistaken. I don't think this will help book sales at all. People who read Slashdot won't be interested in this book.
On the other hand, slashdotters will long remember that Penguin acted in an unethical manner. Perhaps they might even avoid buying books from them.
I believe this is simply a case of a marketing department thinking that it can do what it wants, and getting caught by public opinion.
This only works on Solaris x86 machines, which has always been the ugly Solaris step-child.
This seems to me to be a little desperate. Sun seems to be saying that Linux has won, at least in terms of software support.