(1.) Where do I put my swap file? If I use flash for my swap, I imagine my MTBF on any flash drive would be measured in months, if not weeks, for PCs that are never turned off.
(2.) How many motherboards will die sad deaths due to these ultra-fast drives using HD interfaces? I'm sure a lot of chipsets are only tested on hard drives, not on the technical limitations of the bus. Failures never seen in development will happen in real life.
The real message from Microsoft is this: "Vista sucks, but don't worry, we're already working on something better. Buy Vista now and anticipate the wonder that will be Vienna later."
It's too bad that this guy's house got burnt down, but suck it up, buttercup. Devices malfunction, despite hardware engineers' best intentions for them to do otherwise. Nothing is perfect. That's why people buy insurance.
Go into
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run
Create a new REG_SZ key with any name you want.
Enter data in this new key
C:\Windows\system32\subst.exe x: "C:\Documents and Settings\wintermute1974\Desktop"
substituting wintermute1974 for your username.
Was that so hard? Now you have a shortcut to a Drive X:\ pointing to one of the classic deeply-buried MS directories.
Microsoft isn't stupid. Even if it can't excite the masses over Vista, they might as well start talking up their new products. It sounds like Fiji is going to what Vista should be, if Vista was allowed to be bug-fixed before being released. And Vienna is so far in the future, that Microsoft can promise us anything they want, then scale back the features to meet the ship date, as always.
I hear that 2K3 R2 is a good OS. Maybe that's what I will have to upgrade to once my 2K machine can't load the drivers written for new hardware.
For the security-minded readers here on Slashdot, it is pretty much certain that some have already been doing something like this in their heads, for years.
For once, Microsoft does something right and adds internationalization for some little two-bit language. What does MS get in return? A lawsuit. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
I suppose the natives believe that foreigners who write software in their language steal their souls, much like cameras.
Sadly, the people who screw up URLs or don't use bookmarks are the kind of people who could most benefit from using OpenDNS, which does take common typos and automatically redirects you to the correct site.
There must be a thousand reasons why you might want to be completely anonymous, but right now I can't think of one.
Okay, how about this one: Human beings have a right to privacy.
Just because the technology exists whereby every IP address you connect to, on what ports, for what duration, and with a count of the data transferred can be logged does not mean we should do it.
The more data people have on you, the more they can abuse you, blackmail you, threaten you, annoy you, or any number of other undesirable things.
Just how intrusive does monitoring have to become before you say enough? You are already willing to have all the data into and out of your ISP monitored. If you were asked to place surveillance cameras in your home, would you consent, arguing that "I'm not doing anything illegal so let them watch"? Some of us refuse to be on display like in a zoo.
There must be a thousand reasons why you might want to be completely anonymous, but right now I can't think of one
Okay, here's one for you: I belong to the largest ISP in Canada, called Sympatico. This summer, it sent all its users a message saying that it was going to log all Internet traffic. The reason for this change in Terms and Conditions was not given, but I cannot think of one reason that would benefit its users.
Now, whenever I surf the web, I feel like someone is looking over my shoulder. I start to wonder: Is it a crime to read Slashdot? What about any website with the work "anarchy" on it? Or an article on DVD Jon? I'm sure that given all my URLs, a clever prosecutor could put me in jail for completely innocent reasons.
For this reason alone, I really like this new VPN service.
Okay, I read the original discussion and now this one.
My question is: Where are these design guides? Are they publically available? All the talk here on Slashdot is just talk. Without seeing the recommendations, we don't know how much value they bring.
There might be something insightful about them, but without reading them, how will anyone know?
Why didn't I think of that? Just ignore the standard and design for IE. Its such a great idea! Let's be practical here; who really cares about those fringe users running Linux, Unix, OS X, embedded systems, etc. If they want to look at websites, they can just get a real OS, right?
The sad part is that many people will probably read your comment and miss the sarcasm completely.
I have had many otherwise knowledgable people who make their living from designing websites defend the practice of designing for IE and IE alone, arguing that since that's where the market is, web standards can be damned.
Even if it was not intentional on its part, the bad CSS rendering code in Internet Explorer can be considered another of Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" strategies. After all, if Microsoft cannot own the web, at least it can render it unviewable by anything other than its own software.
Ah, good ol' Microsoft: Setting back world progress in computing yet again.
Incidentally, to whom do I address my invoice at Microsoft to cover the months of unnecessary work I have spent over the years to make my perflectly CSS-compliant websites not looked like squashed garbage in MSIE?
Sorry parent poster, you're wrong. The Commodore Amiga came out with a full-screen, 4,096-color palette, high-resolution monitor, with sound and a multitasking OS all in 1985. It was far more advanced than the Mac of the day.
As memory fades, we tend to remember the PCs that have lived on until today, notably the IBM PC and the Apple Mac. But just because these PCs are around now does not mean that they were necessarily the better computers then. Far from it.
At the time of the Amiga's release, Apple was still selling the monochrome, single-tasking Macintosh and for roughly three times the price, and the Apple bosses were sick with worry.
In fact, Apple considered buying the Amiga and selling it as their own product. Look it up. I'd recommend reading On The Edgeif you need a reference.
Let's say you deal with internal people (bosses, coworkers, minions) and external people (suppliers, customers, third-parties). Let's also say you are involved in bidding projects, working on projects, and maintaining those projects after they are done.
Now, with the files and folders metaphor that we use today, how can you group all these messages in a meaningful way? You could create folders to sort e-mail by:
person (one or more e-mail addresses)
project (each one covering bid/work/maintenance)
stage (one for bids, one for WIP, one for maintenance)
or some other attribute
But regardless of which one you choose, you are now stuck. Want to collect all the mail from Customer X in the bidding stage regardless of project? Tough luck. You can't.
Being able to create multiple views of what you already have would prove immensely useful.
The parent poster would probably change his mind if he were to watch any of the presentations made by Jensen Harris, the man in charge of the new Office UI.
I am a Windows 2000/Office 97 user who does not upgrade just because Microsoft decides they need to make a few extra billions with a bump in version number and some new eye candy. I assumed (without any evidence) that the new Office would be more of the same. But then I found Jensen Harris' presentation at BayCHI last December to be so interesting that now I am excited about trying the new Office UI.
Essentially, the new UI gets rid of the menu bars, button bars, side panels, clippy agents, personal menus and other cruft that slowly accumulated over the successive revisions of Microsoft Office. His argument is that a complex product needs a clear interface. And that's what the ribbon is: Everything is there, and its choices are always context sensitive.
My own personal opinion is that the new interface is pure brilliance, and it won't be long before other companies start poorly(*) imitating its task-based approach over the traditional feature-based approach.
Download the BayCHI slides and video. If you develop software, the new UI is definitely something to behold.
=== (*) The imitations will be done poorly because most other software firms do not have the huge sample of user reports automatically created in the current version of Office. The Office UI team was able to determine the frequency of commands so that even their arrangement on the ribbon will be from most-used to least.
TFA: "Among the more significant new features: Excel 2007's new ways of visualizing data. For example, you can use conditional formatting to color the background of cells based on their value..."
That's present at least in Excel 2003, and I think maybe as far back as 2000.
It goes back further than that. Conditional formatting works in Excel 97 as well.
I just used that feature in Excel 97 today. As far as I could tell, Office 97 was the last version of MS Office to have significantly new features that anyone would want. After that, the programmers decided to play with the UI instead.
Google Translate absolutely chokes on this. The "Japanese(BETA) to English" utility spits out hiragana, katakana and kanji characters. How English is that?
Can anyone do a quick translation here for the anglophone crowd?
Slashdot Mirror
The beta site does not include an Apple Mac OS X version.
https://www14.software.ibm.com/iwm/web/swerplotus/LotusSymphonyPick.html
(1.) Where do I put my swap file? If I use flash for my swap, I imagine my MTBF on any flash drive would be measured in months, if not weeks, for PCs that are never turned off.
(2.) How many motherboards will die sad deaths due to these ultra-fast drives using HD interfaces? I'm sure a lot of chipsets are only tested on hard drives, not on the technical limitations of the bus. Failures never seen in development will happen in real life.
The real message from Microsoft is this: "Vista sucks, but don't worry, we're already working on something better. Buy Vista now and anticipate the wonder that will be Vienna later."
It's too bad that this guy's house got burnt down, but suck it up, buttercup. Devices malfunction, despite hardware engineers' best intentions for them to do otherwise. Nothing is perfect. That's why people buy insurance.
- Go into
r entVersion\Run
-
Create a new REG_SZ key with any name you want.
-
Enter data in this new key
Was that so hard? Now you have a shortcut to a Drive X:\ pointing to one of the classic deeply-buried MS directories.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cur
C:\Windows\system32\subst.exe x: "C:\Documents and Settings\wintermute1974\Desktop"
substituting wintermute1974 for your username.
Microsoft isn't stupid. Even if it can't excite the masses over Vista, they might as well start talking up their new products.
It sounds like Fiji is going to what Vista should be, if Vista was allowed to be bug-fixed before being released.
And Vienna is so far in the future, that Microsoft can promise us anything they want, then scale back the features to meet the ship date, as always.
I hear that 2K3 R2 is a good OS. Maybe that's what I will have to upgrade to once my 2K machine can't load the drivers written for new hardware.
For the security-minded readers here on Slashdot, it is pretty much certain that some have already been doing something like this in their heads, for years.
For once, Microsoft does something right and adds internationalization for some little two-bit language. What does MS get in return? A lawsuit. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
I suppose the natives believe that foreigners who write software in their language steal their souls, much like cameras.
Yes, yes, we've all read Cryptonomicon too.
Sadly, the people who screw up URLs or don't use bookmarks are the kind of people who could most benefit from using OpenDNS, which does take common typos and automatically redirects you to the correct site.
There must be a thousand reasons why you might want to be completely anonymous, but right now I can't think of one.
Okay, how about this one: Human beings have a right to privacy.
Just because the technology exists whereby every IP address you connect to, on what ports, for what duration, and with a count of the data transferred can be logged does not mean we should do it.
The more data people have on you, the more they can abuse you, blackmail you, threaten you, annoy you, or any number of other undesirable things.
Just how intrusive does monitoring have to become before you say enough? You are already willing to have all the data into and out of your ISP monitored. If you were asked to place surveillance cameras in your home, would you consent, arguing that "I'm not doing anything illegal so let them watch"? Some of us refuse to be on display like in a zoo.
There must be a thousand reasons why you might want to be completely anonymous, but right now I can't think of one
Okay, here's one for you: I belong to the largest ISP in Canada, called Sympatico. This summer, it sent all its users a message saying that it was going to log all Internet traffic. The reason for this change in Terms and Conditions was not given, but I cannot think of one reason that would benefit its users.
Now, whenever I surf the web, I feel like someone is looking over my shoulder. I start to wonder: Is it a crime to read Slashdot? What about any website with the work "anarchy" on it? Or an article on DVD Jon? I'm sure that given all my URLs, a clever prosecutor could put me in jail for completely innocent reasons.
For this reason alone, I really like this new VPN service.
Where is the URL that points toward the Steve Jobs' live webcast?
Searching Apple's website and Googling the web turns up nothing.
Okay, I read the original discussion and now this one.
My question is: Where are these design guides? Are they publically available? All the talk here on Slashdot is just talk. Without seeing the recommendations, we don't know how much value they bring.
There might be something insightful about them, but without reading them, how will anyone know?
Do I hear a Googlefight in the making? Why yes, it's Norvig vs. Berners-Lee.
Why didn't I think of that? Just ignore the standard and design for IE. Its such a great idea! Let's be practical here; who really cares about those fringe users running Linux, Unix, OS X, embedded systems, etc. If they want to look at websites, they can just get a real OS, right?
The sad part is that many people will probably read your comment and miss the sarcasm completely.
I have had many otherwise knowledgable people who make their living from designing websites defend the practice of designing for IE and IE alone, arguing that since that's where the market is, web standards can be damned.
Even if it was not intentional on its part, the bad CSS rendering code in Internet Explorer can be considered another of Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" strategies. After all, if Microsoft cannot own the web, at least it can render it unviewable by anything other than its own software.
Ah, good ol' Microsoft: Setting back world progress in computing yet again.
Incidentally, to whom do I address my invoice at Microsoft to cover the months of unnecessary work I have spent over the years to make my perflectly CSS-compliant websites not looked like squashed garbage in MSIE?
FWIW, Opera can search from the address bar too. It also automates the creation of your own custom searches.
Sorry parent poster, you're wrong. The Commodore Amiga came out with a full-screen, 4,096-color palette, high-resolution monitor, with sound and a multitasking OS all in 1985. It was far more advanced than the Mac of the day.
As memory fades, we tend to remember the PCs that have lived on until today, notably the IBM PC and the Apple Mac. But just because these PCs are around now does not mean that they were necessarily the better computers then. Far from it.
At the time of the Amiga's release, Apple was still selling the monochrome, single-tasking Macintosh and for roughly three times the price, and the Apple bosses were sick with worry.
In fact, Apple considered buying the Amiga and selling it as their own product. Look it up. I'd recommend reading On The Edge if you need a reference.
Let's say you deal with internal people (bosses, coworkers, minions) and external people (suppliers, customers, third-parties). Let's also say you are involved in bidding projects, working on projects, and maintaining those projects after they are done.
Now, with the files and folders metaphor that we use today, how can you group all these messages in a meaningful way? You could create folders to sort e-mail by:
- person (one or more e-mail addresses)
- project (each one covering bid/work/maintenance)
- stage (one for bids, one for WIP, one for maintenance)
- or some other attribute
But regardless of which one you choose, you are now stuck. Want to collect all the mail from Customer X in the bidding stage regardless of project? Tough luck. You can't.Being able to create multiple views of what you already have would prove immensely useful.
The beta version only installs on Windows XP.
Now armed with this knowledge, people running older versions of Windows can save their bandwidth for other things.
The parent poster would probably change his mind if he were to watch any of the presentations made by Jensen Harris, the man in charge of the new Office UI.
I am a Windows 2000/Office 97 user who does not upgrade just because Microsoft decides they need to make a few extra billions with a bump in version number and some new eye candy. I assumed (without any evidence) that the new Office would be more of the same. But then I found Jensen Harris' presentation at BayCHI last December to be so interesting that now I am excited about trying the new Office UI.
Essentially, the new UI gets rid of the menu bars, button bars, side panels, clippy agents, personal menus and other cruft that slowly accumulated over the successive revisions of Microsoft Office. His argument is that a complex product needs a clear interface. And that's what the ribbon is: Everything is there, and its choices are always context sensitive.
My own personal opinion is that the new interface is pure brilliance, and it won't be long before other companies start poorly(*) imitating its task-based approach over the traditional feature-based approach.
Download the BayCHI slides and video. If you develop software, the new UI is definitely something to behold.
===
(*) The imitations will be done poorly because most other software firms do not have the huge sample of user reports automatically created in the current version of Office. The Office UI team was able to determine the frequency of commands so that even their arrangement on the ribbon will be from most-used to least.
TFA: "Among the more significant new features: Excel 2007's new ways of visualizing data. For example, you can use conditional formatting to color the background of cells based on their value..."
That's present at least in Excel 2003, and I think maybe as far back as 2000.
It goes back further than that. Conditional formatting works in Excel 97 as well.
I just used that feature in Excel 97 today. As far as I could tell, Office 97 was the last version of MS Office to have significantly new features that anyone would want. After that, the programmers decided to play with the UI instead.
Do you often find yourself remarking: "My subconscious enjoys me?
Google Translate absolutely chokes on this. The "Japanese(BETA) to English" utility spits out hiragana, katakana and kanji characters. How English is that?
Can anyone do a quick translation here for the anglophone crowd?
Also, who the hell would be too embarrassed to ask for a Wii?
Customer: "I'll take a Wii please."
Store Clerk: "The food court is down the hall."