I'm really curious to see what kind of CSS modifications I'll have to make to support IE7 vs. Firefox. There are a number of well known hacks for IE6 and it'll be interesting to see how people keep those in place without jeopardizing the layouts in IE7.
To prevent unauthorized distribution this product requires Telephone activation within 30 days of installation. You MUST activate the software while at your computer as the activation request number will change. We will provide you with the telephone number to activate the software. Please have your invoce number handy before calling. This activation technology has been developed by Adobe to prevent piracy.
That is both gutsy and sneaky. It's not surprising that, in this click on spam society, so many people were fooled (enough to buy a jet and Lamborghini). Quite an operation he had there.
I'd guess that Microsoft may soon add google.com to the list of blocked URL's on their intranet.
Personally, I would keep the floodgates open. What better metric do you have than if you own employees use your product? If they shut it they'll have a harder time estimating how successful they are at capturing the search market.
Generally, there are three components to a successful marketing campaign: Awareness, Trial, and Repurchase. MS has the benefits of Awareness and Trial at with their own employee base and are just sucking at the last portion. Once they get that right internally, they've got the pockets to tackle the first two.
I worked on Airport while at Apple and I can confirm that we did indeed work with Lucent but we did not simply rebrand their tech. Lots of effort from many Apple Engineers went into that product. I personally spent a month at their HQ in Holland working on the freaking thing.
Unfortunately, unlike other Apple efforts, this one gets little to no recognition today. (Parent's parent post excluded of course).
IANAL but if I recall, it's not illegal to be a monopoly. However it IS illegal to use your monopoly to extend unfairly into other areas. Hence, if MS earned a monopoly in the OS market that is ok but if they use it to create a monopoly for browsers or office software then *that* is illegal.
There are problems facing all sorts of independent businesses. From the people who sell food to the people who sell hats. If you want to do something about it then put your money where it counts and buy from indie retailers:
I've used both Thunderbird and Evolution extensively. In fact, my company has asked me to recommend a mail client going forward if/when we do switch to linux. Hands down Thunderbird is the winner. Here's why:
1. Evolution deletes mail by putting it into a virtual folder and hiding the original message in your inbox. This is ok and seamless to the end user UNLESS you happen to also use webmail. In which case your inbox will be cluttered by messages you thought you'd gotten rid of ages ago. The evolution team has flat out refused to address this issue and has been calling this 'not a bug' (which is true) since 2001.
2. Same as above but for Junk Mail.
3. Finding unread messages in Evolution is difficult. Sorting in general is more flexible in Thunderbird IMHO.
4. Thunderbird is cross-platform. From a corporate standpoint this has let me train the entire staff on Thunderbird before installing linux on any workstation. Once linux is installed, they will be using all their familiar apps but without the viruses, spyware, and blue screens of death.
5. Thunderbird will eventually get calendaring as part of Mozilla Lightning. While that's probably years away, I am patient and hopefuly that this will allow us to eventually get back full exchange-type functionality. Regardless, the calendar is not critical for our office.
Evolution does have some great features, notably beagle integration which I would love love love to see in Thunderbird. Unfortunately I don't have the needed talent to make that happen..
I always try really hard to use evolution because of beagle integration and I always end up going back to Thunderbird which I feel is a good enough client to satisfy the typical corporate desktop. At least for small businesses who don't need the calendar.
I *just* went through a situation where this could have come in handy. We just completed a merger a month ago and some of the employees from the acquired company are now starting to relocate to the new HQ. On of the PHB absolutely freaked out when I told him we'd be installing OpenOffice. I've never seen a grown man go from mature manager to whining 4 year so quickly.
Sadly, we escalated the issue to a non-technical boss who decided that it was best to appease the other PHB and just buy MS Office instead. I'm hoping that these vids will make evangelizing the use of OSS easier for me and avoid it happening next time.
Yeah, I learned to be more proactive about educating everyone about OSS.. first demo/train and then install...
I don't think the move by Apple to x86 has anything to do with linux at all. If Apple has shown one thing by using so many Open Source components it's that the Open Source community is a great counter balance to a monopoly. Should either side (MS or Apple) gain a lot of sway, the other side will be able to grab code from the Open source community and fire back. Therefore it's in everyone's interest to keep some open *nix alive.
Both co.'s will be just fine with Linux as long as they retain market dominance and integrate the features users want first. The threat to them on the desktop will most likely come from Novell/Suse who are more aggressively pushing advanced tools like Beagle/Best. But the general linux community has nothing to fear. In fact, we can only hope that now that an Arch (PPC) has been (somewhat) taken out of play that resources will now choose to focus back on x86.
While it's certainly nice to support the ACLU I think it would be better to write your congressman or congresswoman and give your opinion.
I don't know if has something to do with the religious culture in the US but too many citizens feel that if they just give some $ to a charity it will absolve them of guilt due to inaction.
When you're the resident computer expert you're bound to get asked to fix whatever is wrong with somebody else's system. More often than not the problems are caused by buggy MS systems.
If somebody wants to choose Mac over Linux I have no problem with it since Mac's barely need support anyway. But I waste tons of time trying to solve stupid virus issues that I shouldn't have to deal with in the first place!
Or worse, let's say a member gets to be too influential and then its recommendations get implemented throughout the world. If you put in place a mechanism by which a government can apply pressure to other governments then it will most certainly happen.
Well, I bought one.. the first time I've *ever* bought anything purely for gaming. My mobile phone stores 512MB of music but since it's a pain to get them into ogg format for oggplay (the native MP3 player on my phone stinks) I decided that the PSP would be worth the investment. In addition to gaming, I get to store oodles of songs that I can actually listen to on an airplane since it's not a phone.
What pushed me over the edge to buy it is definitely the potential. In addition to some of the things linked already, the register has an article about a potential email and web browser which, when combined with this keyboard that popped up, might just make me think twice about upgrading my laptop.
Email/web browser aside, I'd love to see writeable UMDs come out though some how I doubt sony would give up the memory stick market so easily. Still, that would definitely make this a killer gadget IMHO.
I've played with my share of distros (suse, fedora, debian, ubuntu, mepis, gentoo, etc. etc) and one of things I really liked about arch was that it didn't install anything you didn't ask for. When I go through the various folders on my hard disk I see files and directories whose purpose I actually know.
As far as usability, I use it for my main machine at the office and it's been rock solid. It took only about 45 minutes to set up, including tweaks, and fairly minimal interaction with help boards. Now will it automagically burn CD's and work with my digial camera? Doubt it, but then again I don't need those things in my office environment either. I guess it's all about using the right tool for the job..
1. A lot more people are on broadband now.
2. This number is growing rapidly.
3. Google has a great store of goodwill with the public right now, unlike Microsoft.
This is not the same time and place (and company, importantly) as when Microsoft tried
You think some pictures of Paris Hilton were a problem? Imagine a day when *all* her data is online (along with everyone elses) and see how much fun it'll be.
I haven't been following this very closely, but frankly I'm pleased that the Dems put him in. People keep arguing that the media is liberal and whatnot but as far as I see it, the entire conversation has been shifted far to the right. So far that those moderate Dems are now considered left wing radicals. The Democrats could have easily buckled into that and put somebody more conservative in this position. That, in effect, would be a victory in itself for the right.
It's odd you say that. I tried Ubuntu and find that almost all of the packages I find useful are already there. Anything off the beaten path, however, and you're right. Still, even some of those (like FreeNX) have been brought over to some of the extra warty repositories.
Is it just me or are any of you sick of advertising too? Seems like I can't do anything outside of my own home without being exposed to advertising in some form. (I sold my TV years ago.) Now they are legislating advertising?!? How long before the adblock extension in firefox becomes illegal? Sorry, not trying to troll here but am feeling a bit frustrated. (and being in DC without any legislative voting representation I can tell you there is not much I feel I can do about it.)
If there's one thing I'm grateful to Bush for it's that he's fired up more people to vote than in any time I can remember.
These days it seems that more and more people can't be bother to even contact their representative or mayor to voice an opinion on issues that really matter. (examples in DC include lack of voting representation, gun ban repeal, stadium taxes, bad schools, etc). Instead they rely on a vocal minority who *sometimes* do the talking for them. This is the sort of apathy that leads to the atrophying of our civil liberties. When you can't be bothered to protest the Patriot Act (or even pay attention to it) you are basically giving your right to complain without being hypocritical. In the best scenario somebody fights for you, in the worst somebody will suffer trying to regain those liberties later on.
With corporations spending millions of dollars to trump your opinion, a single vote is a powerful thing. Think of it as your way of spending millions in one afternoon. I hope that everyone who votes tomorrow will become more involved in the political process and write your representative about the issues that may matter to you.
My maternal extended family has worked in the logging industry for more than fifty years. And strangely enough, the lumber companies are still making money and selling cheap lumber.
Yes, most lumber companies replant trees after they cut them down. Either because they realize that those forests are like any crop or because they are required to. But, let me give you some specific examples of what's happened in the 'burbs of Washington:
1. A lake was just drained completely and filled in to make way for a building. The entire complex used to be a farm.
2. A valley was just paved over to make room for a Walmart, Best Buy, and Lowes. The parking lot is so big that you have to drive from one to the other.
3. A small forest was chopped down to make way for some buildings including.. a Goodwill.
4. The parking lot for metro was expanded and now there are families of geese walking around amongst the cars trying to figure out where the hell they are supposed to be.
This all happened in one zip code within a few years. THAT is what I'm talking about. And, as far as who is responsible, that list extends too long to place blame on one person or group. Which is why it is still happening.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm really curious to see what kind of CSS modifications I'll have to make to support IE7 vs. Firefox. There are a number of well known hacks for IE6 and it'll be interesting to see how people keep those in place without jeopardizing the layouts in IE7.
From TFL (Link):
To prevent unauthorized distribution this product requires Telephone activation within 30 days of installation. You MUST activate the software while at your computer as the activation request number will change. We will provide you with the telephone number to activate the software. Please have your invoce number handy before calling. This activation technology has been developed by Adobe to prevent piracy.
That is both gutsy and sneaky. It's not surprising that, in this click on spam society, so many people were fooled (enough to buy a jet and Lamborghini). Quite an operation he had there.
Basically, this gives users the advantage of a Swedish IP address from anywhere in the world.
That's what I call massaging the numbers!
(Unfortunately,) I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waiter.I'd guess that Microsoft may soon add google.com to the list of blocked URL's on their intranet.
Personally, I would keep the floodgates open. What better metric do you have than if you own employees use your product? If they shut it they'll have a harder time estimating how successful they are at capturing the search market.
Generally, there are three components to a successful marketing campaign: Awareness, Trial, and Repurchase. MS has the benefits of Awareness and Trial at with their own employee base and are just sucking at the last portion. Once they get that right internally, they've got the pockets to tackle the first two.
I worked on Airport while at Apple and I can confirm that we did indeed work with Lucent but we did not simply rebrand their tech. Lots of effort from many Apple Engineers went into that product. I personally spent a month at their HQ in Holland working on the freaking thing.
Unfortunately, unlike other Apple efforts, this one gets little to no recognition today. (Parent's parent post excluded of course).
IANAL but if I recall, it's not illegal to be a monopoly. However it IS illegal to use your monopoly to extend unfairly into other areas. Hence, if MS earned a monopoly in the OS market that is ok but if they use it to create a monopoly for browsers or office software then *that* is illegal.
There are problems facing all sorts of independent businesses. From the people who sell food to the people who sell hats. If you want to do something about it then put your money where it counts and buy from indie retailers:
1. Evolution deletes mail by putting it into a virtual folder and hiding the original message in your inbox. This is ok and seamless to the end user UNLESS you happen to also use webmail. In which case your inbox will be cluttered by messages you thought you'd gotten rid of ages ago. The evolution team has flat out refused to address this issue and has been calling this 'not a bug' (which is true) since 2001.
2. Same as above but for Junk Mail.
3. Finding unread messages in Evolution is difficult. Sorting in general is more flexible in Thunderbird IMHO.
4. Thunderbird is cross-platform. From a corporate standpoint this has let me train the entire staff on Thunderbird before installing linux on any workstation. Once linux is installed, they will be using all their familiar apps but without the viruses, spyware, and blue screens of death.
5. Thunderbird will eventually get calendaring as part of Mozilla Lightning. While that's probably years away, I am patient and hopefuly that this will allow us to eventually get back full exchange-type functionality. Regardless, the calendar is not critical for our office.
Evolution does have some great features, notably beagle integration which I would love love love to see in Thunderbird. Unfortunately I don't have the needed talent to make that happen..
I always try really hard to use evolution because of beagle integration and I always end up going back to Thunderbird which I feel is a good enough client to satisfy the typical corporate desktop. At least for small businesses who don't need the calendar.
Sadly, we escalated the issue to a non-technical boss who decided that it was best to appease the other PHB and just buy MS Office instead. I'm hoping that these vids will make evangelizing the use of OSS easier for me and avoid it happening next time.
Yeah, I learned to be more proactive about educating everyone about OSS.. first demo/train and then install...
Offtopic a bit, but it'll be sad to see Eugenia leaving OS News..
Both co.'s will be just fine with Linux as long as they retain market dominance and integrate the features users want first. The threat to them on the desktop will most likely come from Novell/Suse who are more aggressively pushing advanced tools like Beagle/Best. But the general linux community has nothing to fear. In fact, we can only hope that now that an Arch (PPC) has been (somewhat) taken out of play that resources will now choose to focus back on x86.
I don't know if has something to do with the religious culture in the US but too many citizens feel that if they just give some $ to a charity it will absolve them of guilt due to inaction.
Hey, if you give me some funding, I might be able to arrange a speech for you..
If somebody wants to choose Mac over Linux I have no problem with it since Mac's barely need support anyway. But I waste tons of time trying to solve stupid virus issues that I shouldn't have to deal with in the first place!
IBM already has an investment in Novell but don't expect to see IBM buy them unless they've got something compelling to offer.
Or worse, let's say a member gets to be too influential and then its recommendations get implemented throughout the world. If you put in place a mechanism by which a government can apply pressure to other governments then it will most certainly happen.
What pushed me over the edge to buy it is definitely the potential. In addition to some of the things linked already, the register has an article about a potential email and web browser which, when combined with this keyboard that popped up, might just make me think twice about upgrading my laptop.
Email/web browser aside, I'd love to see writeable UMDs come out though some how I doubt sony would give up the memory stick market so easily. Still, that would definitely make this a killer gadget IMHO.
Oh, and the games are fun too.
As far as usability, I use it for my main machine at the office and it's been rock solid. It took only about 45 minutes to set up, including tweaks, and fairly minimal interaction with help boards. Now will it automagically burn CD's and work with my digial camera? Doubt it, but then again I don't need those things in my office environment either. I guess it's all about using the right tool for the job..
You think some pictures of Paris Hilton were a problem? Imagine a day when *all* her data is online (along with everyone elses) and see how much fun it'll be.
I haven't been following this very closely, but frankly I'm pleased that the Dems put him in. People keep arguing that the media is liberal and whatnot but as far as I see it, the entire conversation has been shifted far to the right. So far that those moderate Dems are now considered left wing radicals. The Democrats could have easily buckled into that and put somebody more conservative in this position. That, in effect, would be a victory in itself for the right.
It's odd you say that. I tried Ubuntu and find that almost all of the packages I find useful are already there. Anything off the beaten path, however, and you're right. Still, even some of those (like FreeNX) have been brought over to some of the extra warty repositories.
Is it just me or are any of you sick of advertising too? Seems like I can't do anything outside of my own home without being exposed to advertising in some form. (I sold my TV years ago.) Now they are legislating advertising?!? How long before the adblock extension in firefox becomes illegal? Sorry, not trying to troll here but am feeling a bit frustrated. (and being in DC without any legislative voting representation I can tell you there is not much I feel I can do about it.)
These days it seems that more and more people can't be bother to even contact their representative or mayor to voice an opinion on issues that really matter. (examples in DC include lack of voting representation, gun ban repeal, stadium taxes, bad schools, etc). Instead they rely on a vocal minority who *sometimes* do the talking for them. This is the sort of apathy that leads to the atrophying of our civil liberties. When you can't be bothered to protest the Patriot Act (or even pay attention to it) you are basically giving your right to complain without being hypocritical. In the best scenario somebody fights for you, in the worst somebody will suffer trying to regain those liberties later on.
With corporations spending millions of dollars to trump your opinion, a single vote is a powerful thing. Think of it as your way of spending millions in one afternoon. I hope that everyone who votes tomorrow will become more involved in the political process and write your representative about the issues that may matter to you.
Yes, most lumber companies replant trees after they cut them down. Either because they realize that those forests are like any crop or because they are required to. But, let me give you some specific examples of what's happened in the 'burbs of Washington:
1. A lake was just drained completely and filled in to make way for a building. The entire complex used to be a farm.
2. A valley was just paved over to make room for a Walmart, Best Buy, and Lowes. The parking lot is so big that you have to drive from one to the other.
3. A small forest was chopped down to make way for some buildings including.. a Goodwill.
4. The parking lot for metro was expanded and now there are families of geese walking around amongst the cars trying to figure out where the hell they are supposed to be.
This all happened in one zip code within a few years. THAT is what I'm talking about. And, as far as who is responsible, that list extends too long to place blame on one person or group. Which is why it is still happening.
It doesn't help that we're tearing down forests and paving over habitat all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if that number reached 30% by 2011.