Now wait a minute, didn't Balmer say just a couple months ago that Microsoft was going to be a big player in the tablet market? And didn't he even have some mock-ups at that speech? And now it's a fad? What changed?
What changed, I think, is that developers sat down with product managers and told them it couldn't be done. That the reason there wasn't a tablet running Windows is because Windows is completely unsuited to tablets. And Microsoft has nothing else to run on tablets. They'd have to start from scratch and it's too late to do that.
I've got to say, I expected Microsoft to flog Windows Tablet Edition for a longer period of time before giving up. This is actually a good move for them, as it saves unnecessary expense and public humiliation.
The great majority of these "features" don't matter. I'd get something multicore, with double Windows' base RAM requirement, shun the bottom barrel "home edition" of the OS, and the rest is price and size. But that's me.
If she's only going to surf the web and play Solitaire, I'd get the cheapest laptop I could find. Any modern sub-$500 laptop will fulfill the requirement of a casual surfer. Even the lowest end Mac would be way overkill.
Early Dr Who has a lot of good material, but the pacing tends to be very sluggish and the production values tend to be strictly high-school. The series went on hiatus in the 1980's and deservedly so, in my opinion.
The show came back in 1995 as a made-for-tv movie starring Paul McGann. If you can find it, it's pretty good -- better production values, faster paced, and decent acting. McGann got robbed, in my opinion, as he made an excellent doctor and only had one chance to play him on-screen.
The show returned again in 2005 as a re-imagined series of 13 episodes, more edgy and gritty than the original as was Battlestar Galactica. I have to say, the first episode starts out a little silly, but it rapidly improves and is going full-bore by episode 3.
The new series is available on Netflix instant play, so if you have an account you can start watching it now.
Each new season (with one exception) is 13 episodes plus a 14th "Christmas Special". There is an overall story arc that is foreshadowed early on and reaches climax on episode 13. The Christmas Special is usually a stand-alone episode but may foreshadow the following season.
The new series interweaves a bit with Torchwood, a Doctor Who spin-off aimed at adults (with a much harder edge -- be cautious letting kids watch it) and also with The Sarah Jayne Adventures, another Dr Who spin-off aimed at a younger audience.
The other day I heard my daughter playing music I didn't recognize on her iphone (plugged into speakers, in her bathroom). I asked where she got it (ripped cd, itunes purchase, loaned from friends) and she didn't seem to understand the question.
Turns out, she's streaming the music from youtube. Apparently you can create a playlist with a youtube account and stream whatever is available there. I didn't realize that. This is a lot easier, and more non-geek friendly, than figuring out how to torrent music, unpack it, and add it to your itunes playlist. She says her friends have basically replaced itunes with youtube playlists because it's easy and it works anywhere you have a browser. I wonder if this could be a major component on the dearth of downloading?
Nice job putting words in my mouth. I've used Opera on Blackberry and don't bother with Firefox on my Droid X or our Mac because Chrome works fine. I could argue that this makes me an anti-ie-fanboi, but if in your world using Firefox on Windows makes me a fanboi, I am happy to embrace that. I'd like to suggest, though, that there's a big computing world out there that isn't Windows, and once you start exploring this rich environment beyond your Windows desktop, clinging to IE starts to seem kinda silly.
Probably. IE will live on at 30 -- 40% penetration solely due to being bundled with Windows, old fogies and unsophisticated users continuing to believe that IE is "the internet".
Firefox will probably go away at some point when Mozilla changes the name again.
Ok I've used it for a day or so, and one thing I can say about Firefox 4 is that I'm glad to get my vertical desktop space back. Browsers seemed to be getting more and more verbose and colorful and gimmicky (not helped by every free software package wanting to add another toolbar) and on a small screen (netbook, slate) you ended up with a huge chunk of wasted real-estate and a little space on the bottom that had the actual content. (Well, I don't mean "you" literally, as geeks can figure out how to turn most of that off, but geeze, ever see my mother-in-law's browser?)
So far, I'm having a little trouble navigating the smaller, simpler interface, but I'm 100% for the philosophy behind it. And I think my usage will improve with time.
I didn't like this in IE7 and now I don't like it in FF 4. I customize my home page and use the home button to get to it quickly. Having the button be a little tiny thing on the far right of the screen is annoying.
I've been adding to a cache of food slowly over the last couple years. I was going for 3 months but I think I have more like 6 months cached now. Something to remember is to stock up on dog food as well. I have two 40 pound bags in the garage besides the bin in the storage room, and cycle the oldest bag through as I buy more. If something bad happens, your dog may become very important to you, and in any case as a responsible owner you should provide for them as you would your family.
Firearms/ammo are taken care of.
I have a small amount of emergency supplies in each vehicle as well. Enough for a night in the snow.
We don't have a detailed plan but in general if this area is rendered uninhabitable and we're able to get out, we have a relative's place 200 miles away at which to regroup, and another one 500 miles away as a secondary option.
On data, I have what's important to me backed up to DVD at a friend's house, but that only protects me from very narrowly defined disasters. I'm thinking I should put a second copy some geological distance away.
Hollywood is a *business* (or collection of businesses). They aren't ALLOWED a "patriot act". What's next, questioning our patriotism if we don't go to their movies?
I'm conflicted. "Hard scifi", the way many geeks mean it, means I will sit through long periods of nothing much until we get to the inevitable downer ending. So I get to say "ok, as a reasonably knowledgeable geek I couldn't find any technical issues with the plot beyond the single mcguffin that makes the story possible, but geeze, that was no fun at all." Solaris, (the American remake) Mission to Mars, and a large number of sci-fi flicks from the sixties and seventies fall into this category. And, to a certain extent, the last several years of the Star Trek franchise, before the reboot.
On the other hand, there's Transformers 2. I think I just threw up in the back of my mouth. It wasn't just that it was an action flick. It was a *bad*, incoherent, and at times openly offensive action flick. I couldn't even enjoy it from a mindless eye-candy perspective.
What I'm looking for in a sci-fi film is something that gets most details right, shows good imagination, and is at the same time fun or at least interesting to watch. Duncan Jones' "Moon" falls into that category. Except for the stupid robot attack dog, Red Planet would have fallen into that category. Although others may disagree, I submit that "Aliens" fits into that category. ("Alien" was ok but I'm not a fan of gothic horror/slasher flicks, and setting it in space does not make it less so.)
Maybe it's just my perception, but there seems to be some unwritten rule that "hard" SF films must also be slow and/or depressing. (Usually both.) That's not the case with written SF, and it doesn't have to be the case with SF films. (Think "Have Space Suit, Will Travel" with Duncan Jones directing.) But if things get too energetic, or the story is brought to a too-successful conclusion, geeks will flutter their soft little hands and say "it's only an action flick".
I would like to think that there's more choices than that.
Deep Impact? Seriously? That was an action/disaster film with some weak sci-fi elements.
Red Planet had some problems, (the killer robot dog was completely unnecessary) but at least it was more watchable than Mission to Mars. Man, what a snorefest that was.
Agreed. I've seen Moon multiple times and am looking forward to Duncan Jones' Source Code. Besides being a well-executed hard SF film, Moon was interesting and engaging, which isn't always true for hard SF films.
I don't think it's a "for profit" issue, or even a "trust" issue. Whether a college has a reputation for giving value for the cost of tuition, or not, should be verifiable fairly easily. If they have a record for punishing tuition to prepare people for low paying jobs, (which was my own experience) then the point has been proven, and whether they're "for profit" or government supported doesn't have a lot to do with it. (Except, in the case of the former, if people stop signing up they go out of business.)
The amount of my loan at DeVry doesn't seem like much now as it was in late-70's dollars, but it took me until 1991 to pay it off at punishing interest. And then a collection agency called me a year later and said I still owed money (a few hundred). So I paid it. And then a different collection agency called me a year and a half after that and said I still owed money (a smaller amount, but still in the hundreds). After fighting with them for some time, I ate the cost and paid it. I lived in some anxiety for the next decade expecting yet another call.
My BSET from DeVry qualified me for a engineering assistant position at about 50% above what was minimum wage at the time. The ads show you working in the space industry or military electronics and you can get those jobs (I did) but what they don't tell you is that stringing wires is still stringing wires, whether it's a PBX or a command module.
My financial situation didn't turn around until I taught myself programming and system integration, which positioned me to ride the internet / dot com wave. DeVry had little to do with that -- their few programming classes were still on punch cards when I was there.
Since we already have two gestures that fill the same function as maximize, it can go. But if I understand TFA, there needs to be some way to temporarily iconify or otherwise eliminate windows that you're not currently using but you don't yet want to dismiss. If they don't want to provide a dock, fine. But there needs to be a different paradigm.
One of the reasons I have a powerful machine is so that I can do one heck of a lot of things in parallel. Taking away the tools I use to manage that is not a good idea.
...actually, I'd see that too. That's an interesting idea. Shrinking all three films down to, say, 88 minutes (2 1/4 hours is still too long) would get rid of a tremendous amount of crap. Jarjar would be a background character, most of the filler that was the pod race gone, incomprehensible battles condensed down to highlights, all of the comic relief that didn't work... GONE. Jake Lloyd as a walk-on part. Keep the few things that did work, like the lightsaber fight with Darth Maul and the arena fight, but cut out the repetitious parts. Yoda as a voiceover would work.
Seriously, this is something anyone with taste and a little experience could do. Who wants to give it a try?
Slashdot Mirror
Now wait a minute, didn't Balmer say just a couple months ago that Microsoft was going to be a big player in the tablet market? And didn't he even have some mock-ups at that speech? And now it's a fad? What changed?
What changed, I think, is that developers sat down with product managers and told them it couldn't be done. That the reason there wasn't a tablet running Windows is because Windows is completely unsuited to tablets. And Microsoft has nothing else to run on tablets. They'd have to start from scratch and it's too late to do that.
I've got to say, I expected Microsoft to flog Windows Tablet Edition for a longer period of time before giving up. This is actually a good move for them, as it saves unnecessary expense and public humiliation.
The great majority of these "features" don't matter. I'd get something multicore, with double Windows' base RAM requirement, shun the bottom barrel "home edition" of the OS, and the rest is price and size. But that's me.
If she's only going to surf the web and play Solitaire, I'd get the cheapest laptop I could find. Any modern sub-$500 laptop will fulfill the requirement of a casual surfer. Even the lowest end Mac would be way overkill.
Any product made in China?
Early Dr Who has a lot of good material, but the pacing tends to be very sluggish and the production values tend to be strictly high-school. The series went on hiatus in the 1980's and deservedly so, in my opinion.
The show came back in 1995 as a made-for-tv movie starring Paul McGann. If you can find it, it's pretty good -- better production values, faster paced, and decent acting. McGann got robbed, in my opinion, as he made an excellent doctor and only had one chance to play him on-screen.
The show returned again in 2005 as a re-imagined series of 13 episodes, more edgy and gritty than the original as was Battlestar Galactica. I have to say, the first episode starts out a little silly, but it rapidly improves and is going full-bore by episode 3.
The new series is available on Netflix instant play, so if you have an account you can start watching it now.
Each new season (with one exception) is 13 episodes plus a 14th "Christmas Special". There is an overall story arc that is foreshadowed early on and reaches climax on episode 13. The Christmas Special is usually a stand-alone episode but may foreshadow the following season.
The new series interweaves a bit with Torchwood, a Doctor Who spin-off aimed at adults (with a much harder edge -- be cautious letting kids watch it) and also with The Sarah Jayne Adventures, another Dr Who spin-off aimed at a younger audience.
Have fun.
The other day I heard my daughter playing music I didn't recognize on her iphone (plugged into speakers, in her bathroom). I asked where she got it (ripped cd, itunes purchase, loaned from friends) and she didn't seem to understand the question.
Turns out, she's streaming the music from youtube. Apparently you can create a playlist with a youtube account and stream whatever is available there. I didn't realize that. This is a lot easier, and more non-geek friendly, than figuring out how to torrent music, unpack it, and add it to your itunes playlist. She says her friends have basically replaced itunes with youtube playlists because it's easy and it works anywhere you have a browser. I wonder if this could be a major component on the dearth of downloading?
The music sucks.
Nice job putting words in my mouth. I've used Opera on Blackberry and don't bother with Firefox on my Droid X or our Mac because Chrome works fine. I could argue that this makes me an anti-ie-fanboi, but if in your world using Firefox on Windows makes me a fanboi, I am happy to embrace that. I'd like to suggest, though, that there's a big computing world out there that isn't Windows, and once you start exploring this rich environment beyond your Windows desktop, clinging to IE starts to seem kinda silly.
You are correct. Fixed now. Thanks.
> IE will survive, while firefox will die.
Probably. IE will live on at 30 -- 40% penetration solely due to being bundled with Windows, old fogies and unsophisticated users continuing to believe that IE is "the internet".
Firefox will probably go away at some point when Mozilla changes the name again.
There. Prediction confirmed.
Ok I've used it for a day or so, and one thing I can say about Firefox 4 is that I'm glad to get my vertical desktop space back. Browsers seemed to be getting more and more verbose and colorful and gimmicky (not helped by every free software package wanting to add another toolbar) and on a small screen (netbook, slate) you ended up with a huge chunk of wasted real-estate and a little space on the bottom that had the actual content. (Well, I don't mean "you" literally, as geeks can figure out how to turn most of that off, but geeze, ever see my mother-in-law's browser?)
So far, I'm having a little trouble navigating the smaller, simpler interface, but I'm 100% for the philosophy behind it. And I think my usage will improve with time.
I didn't like this in IE7 and now I don't like it in FF 4. I customize my home page and use the home button to get to it quickly. Having the button be a little tiny thing on the far right of the screen is annoying.
If you're a logmein user, be cognizant that the plugin doesn't yet work with Firefox 4. Won't even install.
Google just patented the Message of the Day...
> The data, on the other hand, indicate that those admitted are no more able, productive, or innovative than America's homegrown talent, he said.
I've been adding to a cache of food slowly over the last couple years. I was going for 3 months but I think I have more like 6 months cached now. Something to remember is to stock up on dog food as well. I have two 40 pound bags in the garage besides the bin in the storage room, and cycle the oldest bag through as I buy more. If something bad happens, your dog may become very important to you, and in any case as a responsible owner you should provide for them as you would your family.
Firearms/ammo are taken care of.
I have a small amount of emergency supplies in each vehicle as well. Enough for a night in the snow.
We don't have a detailed plan but in general if this area is rendered uninhabitable and we're able to get out, we have a relative's place 200 miles away at which to regroup, and another one 500 miles away as a secondary option.
On data, I have what's important to me backed up to DVD at a friend's house, but that only protects me from very narrowly defined disasters. I'm thinking I should put a second copy some geological distance away.
Hollywood is a *business* (or collection of businesses). They aren't ALLOWED a "patriot act". What's next, questioning our patriotism if we don't go to their movies?
I'm conflicted. "Hard scifi", the way many geeks mean it, means I will sit through long periods of nothing much until we get to the inevitable downer ending. So I get to say "ok, as a reasonably knowledgeable geek I couldn't find any technical issues with the plot beyond the single mcguffin that makes the story possible, but geeze, that was no fun at all." Solaris, (the American remake) Mission to Mars, and a large number of sci-fi flicks from the sixties and seventies fall into this category. And, to a certain extent, the last several years of the Star Trek franchise, before the reboot.
On the other hand, there's Transformers 2. I think I just threw up in the back of my mouth. It wasn't just that it was an action flick. It was a *bad*, incoherent, and at times openly offensive action flick. I couldn't even enjoy it from a mindless eye-candy perspective.
What I'm looking for in a sci-fi film is something that gets most details right, shows good imagination, and is at the same time fun or at least interesting to watch. Duncan Jones' "Moon" falls into that category. Except for the stupid robot attack dog, Red Planet would have fallen into that category. Although others may disagree, I submit that "Aliens" fits into that category. ("Alien" was ok but I'm not a fan of gothic horror/slasher flicks, and setting it in space does not make it less so.)
Maybe it's just my perception, but there seems to be some unwritten rule that "hard" SF films must also be slow and/or depressing. (Usually both.) That's not the case with written SF, and it doesn't have to be the case with SF films. (Think "Have Space Suit, Will Travel" with Duncan Jones directing.) But if things get too energetic, or the story is brought to a too-successful conclusion, geeks will flutter their soft little hands and say "it's only an action flick".
I would like to think that there's more choices than that.
Deep Impact? Seriously? That was an action/disaster film with some weak sci-fi elements.
Red Planet had some problems, (the killer robot dog was completely unnecessary) but at least it was more watchable than Mission to Mars. Man, what a snorefest that was.
Agreed. I've seen Moon multiple times and am looking forward to Duncan Jones' Source Code. Besides being a well-executed hard SF film, Moon was interesting and engaging, which isn't always true for hard SF films.
The web catches up with the X window system from 1984... :-) At least the implementation will be better.
I don't think it's a "for profit" issue, or even a "trust" issue. Whether a college has a reputation for giving value for the cost of tuition, or not, should be verifiable fairly easily. If they have a record for punishing tuition to prepare people for low paying jobs, (which was my own experience) then the point has been proven, and whether they're "for profit" or government supported doesn't have a lot to do with it. (Except, in the case of the former, if people stop signing up they go out of business.)
The amount of my loan at DeVry doesn't seem like much now as it was in late-70's dollars, but it took me until 1991 to pay it off at punishing interest. And then a collection agency called me a year later and said I still owed money (a few hundred). So I paid it. And then a different collection agency called me a year and a half after that and said I still owed money (a smaller amount, but still in the hundreds). After fighting with them for some time, I ate the cost and paid it. I lived in some anxiety for the next decade expecting yet another call.
My BSET from DeVry qualified me for a engineering assistant position at about 50% above what was minimum wage at the time. The ads show you working in the space industry or military electronics and you can get those jobs (I did) but what they don't tell you is that stringing wires is still stringing wires, whether it's a PBX or a command module.
My financial situation didn't turn around until I taught myself programming and system integration, which positioned me to ride the internet / dot com wave. DeVry had little to do with that -- their few programming classes were still on punch cards when I was there.
Since we already have two gestures that fill the same function as maximize, it can go. But if I understand TFA, there needs to be some way to temporarily iconify or otherwise eliminate windows that you're not currently using but you don't yet want to dismiss. If they don't want to provide a dock, fine. But there needs to be a different paradigm.
One of the reasons I have a powerful machine is so that I can do one heck of a lot of things in parallel. Taking away the tools I use to manage that is not a good idea.
Seriously, this is something anyone with taste and a little experience could do. Who wants to give it a try?