If your hardware hasn't changed, the activation will work.
And for those of us who do change our hardware regularly this is just one more reason to avoid XP.
If you use your "OS Restore CD," It's already "pre-activated," so again, no phoning MS.
If these "Restore CDs" merely restore to original factory setting then this is also no use for me, and probably for others. Unless vendors have stopped just putting everything on one single partition then this automatically hampers anyone who prefers multiple partitions and tends to install onto them.
Heck, last PC I bought for myself the first thing I did after getting it home was repartitioning and reinstalling everything myself. (Why bother paying for non-destructive partitioning software when you only really repartition on buying a new comptuer or drive?)
The problem is that a lot of organisations seem to jump straight into using Flash as, probably, "it looks cool". It wouldn't matter so much except that many of the sites don't need to be done that way.
Now Flash cartoon sites, movie sites, music sites:
These I can fully understand being primarily Flash-driven. Granted I still think they should always have a non-Flash alternative - which some still lack. But these are sites based around audio-visual content, so displaying them as ausio-visual content makes sense.
On the other hand I seriously can't understand why college websites put totally pointless animations in before you can get to their content.
Luckily these rarely use Flash menus, as these are sites I specifically want to open in a new window/tab.
Luckily recent versions of Flashblock include a whitelisting function. So as soon as you realise that you're regularly visiting a site that you do want to see the Flash animstion on, it's a (nearly) simply matter of going into the extension preferences and adding that site to the list.
Actually I was really glad to find that they had that. Blocking flash ads and useless presentations is good. But having to click-to-allow every single file on a site you visit specifically for the Flash cartoons is somewhat more annoying.
1. The TiVo brand. Can you even name another PVR brand? Nobody says "I've got to PVR that show". TiVo is the ONLY product with any name recognition in the marketplace.
Probably true in the US. Rather less so in the UK.
Tivo didn't really catch on over here. But Satellite network Sky probably had the first integrated PVR product. And I've definitely heard people saying "I'm going to SkyPlus that show".
Failing that, people still refer to "taping" or "videoing" shows - even via a PVR or DVD-Rrecorder.
Tiggs
Re:Slightly offtopic/ Fix the reception method
on
Can TiVo be Saved?
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· Score: 1
I've always been of the same opinion. Pay once, get the channels decoded and then sent to your devices - TVs, VCRs, whatever.
Like anything, though, the technology is there but it would break the companies' business model. Sure you still only pay for channels once, but they make a great deal (from their PoV) out of making customers pay for additional boxes for other rooms or VCRs.
I mean come on, most TVs these days can handle many tens of channels. Surely it wouldn't be that technologically difficult to descramble and demultiplex all the channels and have them sent via RF to your TV set that way.
It wouldn't even totally eliminate the extra-box-rental method, either. As, with current TVs anyway, for EPG data and advanced functionality you'd still need to check it from the box. And until SCART/Phono/DVI/S-Video can handle multiple channels the way an RF connection can then you'd still need additional boxes if you wanted to get the best out of several items of high-spec kit.
Of course the companies probably prefer having you unable to trivially connect muiltiple TVs/VCRs, and also prefer making people pay extra equipment rental for the "Watch Two" or "Watch One, Record One" functionality.
Like others I have to agree with you about Enter the Matrix.
It wasn't the best game in the world, and there were many bits which could have worked out better, but it was still enjoyable (for me, anyway) and the idea behind it was good.
I really like the idea of the game telling the story of some of the background events of the movie. You're not as tied to the actual Primary Cast events, and the idea of having cut-scenes that were alternate takes on things seen from the movie was a really good idea.
Granted, as I said, the game could have been better. But I do hope that other tie-ins try using the concept. The chance to work within the story world without merely aping the main plot elements was refreshing.
Personally I found that FC1 was great. FC2 had issues with my hardware (especially USB stuff) and would spontaneously lock up in ways that FC1 never did. So I went back to FC1 whilst still in my dual-booting days and that caried across when I ditched Windows after I managed to hose the system. (And I could reinstall Linux and relevant applications faster than I could Windows)
The thing that held me back from giving FC3 a try was that the third-party repositores hosting the odds and sods I persionally find essential were a little bit slow to play catch-up.
Am probably going to give Debian a try later this year. (FC1 is finally getting a little old for me, and I'm still a tad wary about teh whole repositories aspect)
The testing branch (and software repositories) seems to be more fluid, with more incremental upgrades and less change-a-lot-all-at-once type upgrades. (Seems to have less having to switch up to a newer version for newer versions of packages)
It works both was I think. Majority of UK downloads are of import series. Majority of US/Canada downloads are probably of non-US/CA series.
I don't think the TV companies realised that they started to lose about 10 years ago. The Internet was not suitable for downloading shows then, but the information about the shows was suddenly far more easily (and quickly) available than it ever was.
People (either side of the pond, or in other countries) suddenly had at their fingertips information about this year's shows - not shows where we were lagging behind by a few seasons, or where the show got dropped before the end. That should have been the signal for the companies to work towards worldwide air-dates. OK they started a little, but not enough.
By the time the Internet could handle downloaded shows they should have pulled out all of the stops and gone for worldwide releases. Instead they hold out for better deals of whatever, but lose viewers. Especially here in the UK where they try to crowbar shows into an earlier timeslot to get more ratings - and cut (or drop - BBC dropped the Quantum Leap episode "Shock Theater" from re-runs as although it was fine for the 9pm airing it didn't work for their 6pm re-runs) the episodes to make them suitable for that timeslot.
Strangely enough people don't like waiting a year or more to get a cut-up episode, or one run out of order.
And (apart from possibly the cutting aspect) I'm pretty sure that US fans of UK shows feel similar to how some of us Brits feel about US shows. In this "new" world of instant information "Last Year's Episodes" just don't cut it anymore.
.. because if you were, and you tried to roll out an IT infrastructure that did *not* have integrated email and calendaring, you would likely be fired.
And this is, from my perspective, one of the major problems with corporate networks these days. Especially when paired with the one-size-fits-all mentality. I would rather they were kept separate as I, personally, have no problem using separate tools or logging on to separate systems.
The college I work for uses Exchange Server with OWA as the way to access your e-mail - and all of the other gubbins as well. This is fine for people on the main site LAN.
This is not so good for those of us in external centres on slow connections. We don't need the calendaring, we don't want the calendaring and we don't use the calendaring. However we're still forced to use the overblown full-on Outlook Web Access to check our e-mails via a shared 128K ISDN line. (They won't grant POP/SMTP/IMAP access, and Evolution+Connector still don't have a Windows port - I'd be using that otherwise)
All we need here is a simple e-mail program. The whole "GroupWare" thing isn't needed, and slows down massively. (The office next door on a broadband connection still complains about the speed)
But because people think that having it all integrated is the way forward, those of us stuck outside the fast internal network are saddled with a system that makes e-mail slow because it has to handle stuff we don't ever use.
A PDA works, does its job, and tends to last a while. People tend not to get a new one until the old one packs in, starts to fail, or simply lacks required features.
You also tend to have to pay full unit price in most cases.
Cellphones tend to get replaced often. Most people tend to either upgrade or replace their phones after a year or two. Personally I'm on my fourth handset since 1999 but only just (this week) bought my second PDA since 2001. (One of the buttons on my m105 was failing and I wanted a unit that was rechargable)
A new feature comes out on a phone (Hey dude, I can, like, take really fuzzy photos on my phone and play music out of tinny speakers that ticks off everyone on the bus) and everyone's all over it. Plus handsets are so heavily subsidised that the initial payout seems to provide more bang for buck.
Plus if the study doesn't take Blackberries and Smartphones into account then, as has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, they're discounting combination PDA+phone units from counting as PDAs. Even if the reason that someone's buying one rather than getting a simple cellphone is that they need the PDA functionality.
Personally I like having a separate PDA. I like my PDAs just small enough to still be usable (and readable), but I like my cellphones to me pocket-sized. if I really wanted combined functionality I'd buy stuff with Bluetooth capability.
Those smartphones always seem to me to be smaller than I wants out of a PDA, yet bigger than i want out of a phone.
A man page usable by grandmas is a waste of disk space for me, and conversely, a man page I need is utterly incomprehensible for the grandma.
Putting aside whether man is suitable or not for non-techies I'd say this would be easy enough to do.
Granted easier for the User than for the people putting together the distro/software/documentation. But even then it shouldn't be too hard.
Plus whether man or a graphical help function I'd love to be able to switch to a less/more complex version sometimes.
Two sets of documentation. Help software defaults to the simple version but a simple flag can access the more in-depth version. Similarly a simple configuration file could be used to make the more complex version default for more experienced users.
Probably still not perfect, but would allow for less experienced users to immediately get less-confusing help when needed, and the more-experienced ones would be more able to handle the steps required to switch to the in-depth help. It'd probably be a real pig to implement though.
As noted by others, middle was "Menu" and right was "Adjust". I remember when I first switched to Windows 95 I had to learn that the menu was now the right-button.
But yeah, I loved that method. One button for regular clicking, one for accessing menus, and an on-mouse button for modified clicking.
I remember that double-right-clicking would have a slight different effect. If I remember correctly (10 years ago now...) opening a directory would default (double-Select) to opening in a new window, but double-Adjust would close the original window too - kind of like "Open in Same Window". I found that very useful as
whether I wanted to keep the first directory window open often depended on what
Iw as doing, and I could then decide on the fly which to use.
Heck as much as I found the few times I used a Mac to be a little odd (only one button...?) I found my first experience of Windows just as odd as there were
only two buttons and much less functionality.
Despite all the defenses I can imagine, we still develop for Firefox and adjust to make it work in IE. We're both Firefox users that have to keep IE in our arsenal because that's what EVERY SINGLE CLIENT USES.
And that's an attitude we can only hope spreads to more website developers as time goes on. You code for one, but adjust to make sure it works in the other. In my mind it doesn't matter which is first and which is second, more that the end result is a site that probably works pretty well in either browser. (And probably others too)
Sadly too many developers simply write sites for one browser (usually IE) and don't even spare a thought for users of alternatives.
The problem, as far as I can tell (I haven't looked into it that much) lies partly in/. and partly in Gecko.
Y'know I think this is probably one of the first posts I've seen that actually attribute the problem to both sides - which is my guess too. Slashdot's HTML is probably slightly buggy, and the Gecko engine doesn't fail as gracefully as it could.
The other thing (which is more a Slashdot issue than a Gecko/Moz/FF issue in my mind) that really bugs me about this is that the adverts tend to compound the problem.
Running on a rather slow connection here at work the rendering error crops up quite a lot. It seems that the pause whilst it contacts the advert server is at just the wrong critical moment, and the page then lays itself out all screwy.
Actually they're not all as bad as they seem, but they are (deliberately) misleading.
I've seen a few sites like that where the answers are on the actual page in question. However they don't exactly go out of their way to make this obvious. You get a big "Register to view answers" link followed by what look like a stack of end-of-page adverts and links.
Scroll past this garbage and you can still find the discussion including the submitted suggestions.
It is irritating, though. The answer is there on some of these sites but they make it seem like you have to register - and I'd guess that many people end up registering due to this deception.
If online casino gambling is illegal here then why do the major online casinos get away with advertising openly?
I'd love to not see Casino-XYZ advertising on every main hoarding on the roads and above the stalls in motorway service stations toilets. And I'm sure if online gambling was illegal they'd have have to have pulled the advertising by now.
Oh yes. If I ever feel the need to post any of those quiz-things I make good use of the <lj-cut> tag. So if anyone on my Friends list (or a random person finding my Journal) doesn't want to see the results they don't have to.
Actually one of the more useful LJ Features i know of is one that allows you to screen out images over a set size from your Friends list. So you need to view the entry in question to see the image, which is good for your bandwidth and/or narrow page layout.
IBM isn't doing this because they are "nice" and "charitable". They are doing this as a business strategy in hopes it will payoff later. Personally, I wish more companies would try this tactic.
My sentiments exactly. Businesses tend to act in their own self-interest. This is understandable - if usually annoying. The will strive to maintain the status quo whlist they still beleive it's in their best interests to do so.
If IBM (and/or other companies) can take such risks and have them work to their advantage whilst still "playing fair" then it can hopefully pave the way for more companies to do likewise.
What they've done seems really interesting. Granted a lot of these patents do seem to be rather old it still seems quite a change from the usual habit of "Rights-sitting" that so many companies do these days.
The interesting question this brings up in my mind is does this positively effect people using older IBM hardware or software. I'm not sure but it seems to me that this might allow projects to spring up for older IBM products that otherwise would have been tied up in Patent Hell.
Of course it would be nice is a larger amount of their patent portfolio was opened up in this manner, but I still think it's a good first step. I'm sure that many companies (or those companies' lawyers) would usually choke on even opening older patents like this. But the door is now open, even if only by a small amount in one company.
If IBM can do this and prove that it benefits them (or at elast doesn't harm them) to do this then it increases the chances of them (or other companies) doing the same with more later down the line.
Seriously, a fair bit of what he says really sits uncomfortably. For one thing what he says about IE and Firefox is, although perfectly true, not quite as clear-cut as he seems to be making it sound.
So when people say Firefox is being downloaded onto people's systems, that's true, but IE is also on those systems.
That's not exactly by choice in all cases. I am confident that were IE trivially uninstallable from a Windows setup then that point would be less valid.
I don't necessarily think that every FF user would uninstall IE if it were easily doable but I do think that in many of the cases where "IE is also on those systems" it's only because there's no simple way of remiving it.
As for his stance on IP rights then I think he hasn't got a clue.
However what I will say is that I'm no businessman and he runs a very successful business. So I freely admit that as much as I disagree with his points of view they obviously work in business. In fact I'd be pretty surprised if he didn't have views like that - many businesses seem to share the "IP Rights are Good" mentality.
Having said that I do think that what's good for business isn't always good for innovation and incentive. And that's why I personally think that the concept of "Intellectual Property" needs a major overhaul. Patents and non-terminating copyrights simply have too many drawbacks.
Like the main incentive for Patents that companies seem to have is that if they have a great idea then not only should they benefit from selling it but they shoudl benefit from anyone improving on it - as they'll have to pay to license it. Great from a business perspective but from a technical perspective this is dreadful because if someone's got great dieas to extend something but no money or Patents to bargain with then the new idea will be lost.
Mr Gates said the PC, like Microsoft's Media Centre, had a central role to play in how people would be making the most out of audio, video and images but it would not be the only device.
"It is the way all these devices work together which will make the difference," he said.
Obviously I find it a bit odd when Bill Gates (or anyone Microsoft spokeperson) talks about things "working together". Unless they're having a complete turnaround in their policies he probably means that when "devices work together" they will always be working via Windows.
Obviously this makes a great quote as he goes down as saying that interoperability is important - or something like that - but it just falls flat as more often than not he isn't tlaking about devices talking with non-Microsoft devices.
I guess it was the ultimate proof of the old saying about technical support.
"If you do your job properly no-one will see you doing anything."
All the preventitive measures taken whilst things were working ensured that very little went wrong when Y2K rolled around. But you correctly flag up the media hype as being the main issue. They were saying things would go wrong, so when hardly anything did go wrong at the scale that was being hyped up then it will look like wasted effort to anyone except those involved or those who weren't but understand the nature of the job.
I'm also guessing that many places probably had emergency measures in place just in case the worst happened to their systems. And either they were unneeded (and unnoticed) or successfully used (and therefore also largely unnoticed).
I do think, though, that the success of the preventitive measure combined with the level of "the disasters will happen" that the media predicted will combine to lull people into a false sense of security.
Though it may look bad in statistics, a lot of it is due to unavoidable situations, such as surfing at work, or on public terminals.
Very true. Although I msotly use Linux at home and only use Firefox I don't have the choice at work. Granted I use Firefox here, but my machine here is a Windows XP box and I have no choice in the matter.
Seeing that I also do most of my Slashdot browsing at work and very little at home (read most of what I want by the time I get home) it means that I'd register as a "Windows User" in Slashdot logs, despite me mainly being a Linux user.
I will admit, however, that 85%/60% are pretty high numbers for a learned crowd. I just hope that a lot of people are surfing at work or school!
It's also possible that some Slashdotters who use non-IE browsers might spoof their User Agent string. Especially seeing that there are more sites that claim to be IE-specific (but filter on browser) than actually are IE-specific.
Movies get the budget, but require trying to compress long books into a couple of hours or so. It's probably going to remain a problem until people risk sinking the same level of resources into TV series.
Frankly I enjoyed the first two LoTR films. And I would've seen the third already had I not dreaded the prospect of three hours in a cinema. (Though the extended box-set is on my to-buy-this-week list)
But even though I've not the hugest fan of the books (read them once, years ago) I still would love to see a longer drawn out adaptation. I just don't think feature-length is long enough for these things.
It is a movie for crying out loud.. Movies are never or at least almost never identical to a book. If you have a problem with that, don't watch movies based on books you have read.
Personally I think this is a valid point.
Movies and books are completely and utterly different media. What works on one often won't work on the other. I don't know LoTR enough to comment, but I've seen other adaptations (like Harry Potter) where although I don't like the changes I simply accept that leaving them as-was wouldn't work in a movie. The flow and focus of the two are drastically different.
Actually I think the real problem is that they try to make long books (or book-series) into movies. I'd rather they made TV series. You don't have to compress quite as much. You don't need as much "filler action material" as you only need to hold attention for a half-hour at a time rather than two hours or more in one go. You don't have to make time-based cuts.
The other problem with films is that they have to be hugely popular. So they almost have to make sure they will appeal to everyone. Pleasing the fans of the original source material is a bonus, but nothing more. Pleasing the general cinema-going DVD-buying mechandise-happy public is the main focus. That's the way it probably has to be with movies, which is why there will never really be a totally faithful movie conversion that actually has mass-appeal. The "perfect conversion" would probably not be a box-office blockbuster, despite being a sure-fire winner for true fans.
It does not mean I like the changes that often get made, but I know that otherwise you'll end up with hours-long films with sections of not-much-happening that are feature-length in themselves. I'd much rather have a full TV series with an eventual 20+ episode box-set DVD available when converting books, but I doubt I'll see it any time soon.
Yeah. First time I heard about them (original Slashdot article) and I immediately puchased some Aphex Twin and Black Dog from them. Enjoyed the music (still do) and was glad that I was able to actually legitimately buy it. I've said that I'm willing to pay for DRM-free digital music and enjoyed the chance to actually put my money where my mouth was.
Haven't used it since but as their catalogue seems to have increased then I think I'll be using them again. The more sites that do this the better things will get. Plus if they're willing to sell DRM-free standard MP3 files then I'm willing to give their music a try.
Slashdot Mirror
And for those of us who do change our hardware regularly this is just one more reason to avoid XP.
If these "Restore CDs" merely restore to original factory setting then this is also no use for me, and probably for others. Unless vendors have stopped just putting everything on one single partition then this automatically hampers anyone who prefers multiple partitions and tends to install onto them.
Heck, last PC I bought for myself the first thing I did after getting it home was repartitioning and reinstalling everything myself. (Why bother paying for non-destructive partitioning software when you only really repartition on buying a new comptuer or drive?)
The problem is that a lot of organisations seem to jump straight into using Flash as, probably, "it looks cool". It wouldn't matter so much except that many of the sites don't need to be done that way.
Now Flash cartoon sites, movie sites, music sites:
These I can fully understand being primarily Flash-driven. Granted I still think they should always have a non-Flash alternative - which some still lack. But these are sites based around audio-visual content, so displaying them as ausio-visual content makes sense.
On the other hand I seriously can't understand why college websites put totally pointless animations in before you can get to their content.
Luckily these rarely use Flash menus, as these are sites I specifically want to open in a new window/tab.
Luckily recent versions of Flashblock include a whitelisting function. So as soon as you realise that you're regularly visiting a site that you do want to see the Flash animstion on, it's a (nearly) simply matter of going into the extension preferences and adding that site to the list.
Actually I was really glad to find that they had that. Blocking flash ads and useless presentations is good. But having to click-to-allow every single file on a site you visit specifically for the Flash cartoons is somewhat more annoying.
Probably true in the US. Rather less so in the UK.
Tivo didn't really catch on over here. But Satellite network Sky probably had the first integrated PVR product. And I've definitely heard people saying "I'm going to SkyPlus that show".
Failing that, people still refer to "taping" or "videoing" shows - even via a PVR or DVD-Rrecorder.
TiggsI've always been of the same opinion. Pay once, get the channels decoded and then sent to your devices - TVs, VCRs, whatever.
Like anything, though, the technology is there but it would break the companies' business model. Sure you still only pay for channels once, but they make a great deal (from their PoV) out of making customers pay for additional boxes for other rooms or VCRs.
I mean come on, most TVs these days can handle many tens of channels. Surely it wouldn't be that technologically difficult to descramble and demultiplex all the channels and have them sent via RF to your TV set that way.
It wouldn't even totally eliminate the extra-box-rental method, either. As, with current TVs anyway, for EPG data and advanced functionality you'd still need to check it from the box. And until SCART/Phono/DVI/S-Video can handle multiple channels the way an RF connection can then you'd still need additional boxes if you wanted to get the best out of several items of high-spec kit.
Of course the companies probably prefer having you unable to trivially connect muiltiple TVs/VCRs, and also prefer making people pay extra equipment rental for the "Watch Two" or "Watch One, Record One" functionality.
Like others I have to agree with you about Enter the Matrix.
It wasn't the best game in the world, and there were many bits which could have worked out better, but it was still enjoyable (for me, anyway) and the idea behind it was good.
I really like the idea of the game telling the story of some of the background events of the movie. You're not as tied to the actual Primary Cast events, and the idea of having cut-scenes that were alternate takes on things seen from the movie was a really good idea.
Granted, as I said, the game could have been better. But I do hope that other tie-ins try using the concept. The chance to work within the story world without merely aping the main plot elements was refreshing.
Personally I found that FC1 was great. FC2 had issues with my hardware (especially USB stuff) and would spontaneously lock up in ways that FC1 never did. So I went back to FC1 whilst still in my dual-booting days and that caried across when I ditched Windows after I managed to hose the system. (And I could reinstall Linux and relevant applications faster than I could Windows)
The thing that held me back from giving FC3 a try was that the third-party repositores hosting the odds and sods I persionally find essential were a little bit slow to play catch-up.
Am probably going to give Debian a try later this year. (FC1 is finally getting a little old for me, and I'm still a tad wary about teh whole repositories aspect)
The testing branch (and software repositories) seems to be more fluid, with more incremental upgrades and less change-a-lot-all-at-once type upgrades. (Seems to have less having to switch up to a newer version for newer versions of packages)
It works both was I think. Majority of UK downloads are of import series. Majority of US/Canada downloads are probably of non-US/CA series.
I don't think the TV companies realised that they started to lose about 10 years ago. The Internet was not suitable for downloading shows then, but the information about the shows was suddenly far more easily (and quickly) available than it ever was.
People (either side of the pond, or in other countries) suddenly had at their fingertips information about this year's shows - not shows where we were lagging behind by a few seasons, or where the show got dropped before the end. That should have been the signal for the companies to work towards worldwide air-dates. OK they started a little, but not enough.
By the time the Internet could handle downloaded shows they should have pulled out all of the stops and gone for worldwide releases. Instead they hold out for better deals of whatever, but lose viewers. Especially here in the UK where they try to crowbar shows into an earlier timeslot to get more ratings - and cut (or drop - BBC dropped the Quantum Leap episode "Shock Theater" from re-runs as although it was fine for the 9pm airing it didn't work for their 6pm re-runs) the episodes to make them suitable for that timeslot.
Strangely enough people don't like waiting a year or more to get a cut-up episode, or one run out of order.
And (apart from possibly the cutting aspect) I'm pretty sure that US fans of UK shows feel similar to how some of us Brits feel about US shows. In this "new" world of instant information "Last Year's Episodes" just don't cut it anymore.
And this is, from my perspective, one of the major problems with corporate networks these days. Especially when paired with the one-size-fits-all mentality. I would rather they were kept separate as I, personally, have no problem using separate tools or logging on to separate systems.
The college I work for uses Exchange Server with OWA as the way to access your e-mail - and all of the other gubbins as well. This is fine for people on the main site LAN.
This is not so good for those of us in external centres on slow connections. We don't need the calendaring, we don't want the calendaring and we don't use the calendaring. However we're still forced to use the overblown full-on Outlook Web Access to check our e-mails via a shared 128K ISDN line. (They won't grant POP/SMTP/IMAP access, and Evolution+Connector still don't have a Windows port - I'd be using that otherwise)
All we need here is a simple e-mail program. The whole "GroupWare" thing isn't needed, and slows down massively. (The office next door on a broadband connection still complains about the speed)
But because people think that having it all integrated is the way forward, those of us stuck outside the fast internal network are saddled with a system that makes e-mail slow because it has to handle stuff we don't ever use.
Your subject sums it up, really.
A PDA works, does its job, and tends to last a while. People tend not to get a new one until the old one packs in, starts to fail, or simply lacks required features.
You also tend to have to pay full unit price in most cases.
Cellphones tend to get replaced often. Most people tend to either upgrade or replace their phones after a year or two. Personally I'm on my fourth handset since 1999 but only just (this week) bought my second PDA since 2001. (One of the buttons on my m105 was failing and I wanted a unit that was rechargable)
A new feature comes out on a phone (Hey dude, I can, like, take really fuzzy photos on my phone and play music out of tinny speakers that ticks off everyone on the bus) and everyone's all over it. Plus handsets are so heavily subsidised that the initial payout seems to provide more bang for buck.
Plus if the study doesn't take Blackberries and Smartphones into account then, as has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, they're discounting combination PDA+phone units from counting as PDAs. Even if the reason that someone's buying one rather than getting a simple cellphone is that they need the PDA functionality.
Personally I like having a separate PDA. I like my PDAs just small enough to still be usable (and readable), but I like my cellphones to me pocket-sized. if I really wanted combined functionality I'd buy stuff with Bluetooth capability.
Those smartphones always seem to me to be smaller than I wants out of a PDA, yet bigger than i want out of a phone.
Putting aside whether man is suitable or not for non-techies I'd say this would be easy enough to do.
Granted easier for the User than for the people putting together the distro/software/documentation. But even then it shouldn't be too hard.
Plus whether man or a graphical help function I'd love to be able to switch to a less/more complex version sometimes.
Two sets of documentation. Help software defaults to the simple version but a simple flag can access the more in-depth version. Similarly a simple configuration file could be used to make the more complex version default for more experienced users.
Probably still not perfect, but would allow for less experienced users to immediately get less-confusing help when needed, and the more-experienced ones would be more able to handle the steps required to switch to the in-depth help. It'd probably be a real pig to implement though.
As noted by others, middle was "Menu" and right was "Adjust". I remember when I first switched to Windows 95 I had to learn that the menu was now the right-button.
But yeah, I loved that method. One button for regular clicking, one for accessing menus, and an on-mouse button for modified clicking.
I remember that double-right-clicking would have a slight different effect. If I remember correctly (10 years ago now...) opening a directory would default (double-Select) to opening in a new window, but double-Adjust would close the original window too - kind of like "Open in Same Window". I found that very useful as whether I wanted to keep the first directory window open often depended on what Iw as doing, and I could then decide on the fly which to use.
Heck as much as I found the few times I used a Mac to be a little odd (only one button...?) I found my first experience of Windows just as odd as there were only two buttons and much less functionality.
And that's an attitude we can only hope spreads to more website developers as time goes on. You code for one, but adjust to make sure it works in the other. In my mind it doesn't matter which is first and which is second, more that the end result is a site that probably works pretty well in either browser. (And probably others too)
Sadly too many developers simply write sites for one browser (usually IE) and don't even spare a thought for users of alternatives.
Y'know I think this is probably one of the first posts I've seen that actually attribute the problem to both sides - which is my guess too. Slashdot's HTML is probably slightly buggy, and the Gecko engine doesn't fail as gracefully as it could.
The other thing (which is more a Slashdot issue than a Gecko/Moz/FF issue in my mind) that really bugs me about this is that the adverts tend to compound the problem.
Running on a rather slow connection here at work the rendering error crops up quite a lot. It seems that the pause whilst it contacts the advert server is at just the wrong critical moment, and the page then lays itself out all screwy.
Actually they're not all as bad as they seem, but they are (deliberately) misleading.
I've seen a few sites like that where the answers are on the actual page in question. However they don't exactly go out of their way to make this obvious. You get a big "Register to view answers" link followed by what look like a stack of end-of-page adverts and links.
Scroll past this garbage and you can still find the discussion including the submitted suggestions.
It is irritating, though. The answer is there on some of these sites but they make it seem like you have to register - and I'd guess that many people end up registering due to this deception.
If online casino gambling is illegal here then why do the major online casinos get away with advertising openly?
I'd love to not see Casino-XYZ advertising on every main hoarding on the roads and above the stalls in motorway service stations toilets. And I'm sure if online gambling was illegal they'd have have to have pulled the advertising by now.
Oh yes. If I ever feel the need to post any of those quiz-things I make good use of the <lj-cut> tag. So if anyone on my Friends list (or a random person finding my Journal) doesn't want to see the results they don't have to.
Actually one of the more useful LJ Features i know of is one that allows you to screen out images over a set size from your Friends list. So you need to view the entry in question to see the image, which is good for your bandwidth and/or narrow page layout.
My sentiments exactly. Businesses tend to act in their own self-interest. This is understandable - if usually annoying. The will strive to maintain the status quo whlist they still beleive it's in their best interests to do so.
If IBM (and/or other companies) can take such risks and have them work to their advantage whilst still "playing fair" then it can hopefully pave the way for more companies to do likewise.
What they've done seems really interesting. Granted a lot of these patents do seem to be rather old it still seems quite a change from the usual habit of "Rights-sitting" that so many companies do these days.
The interesting question this brings up in my mind is does this positively effect people using older IBM hardware or software. I'm not sure but it seems to me that this might allow projects to spring up for older IBM products that otherwise would have been tied up in Patent Hell.
Of course it would be nice is a larger amount of their patent portfolio was opened up in this manner, but I still think it's a good first step. I'm sure that many companies (or those companies' lawyers) would usually choke on even opening older patents like this. But the door is now open, even if only by a small amount in one company.
If IBM can do this and prove that it benefits them (or at elast doesn't harm them) to do this then it increases the chances of them (or other companies) doing the same with more later down the line.
Seriously, a fair bit of what he says really sits uncomfortably. For one thing what he says about IE and Firefox is, although perfectly true, not quite as clear-cut as he seems to be making it sound.
That's not exactly by choice in all cases. I am confident that were IE trivially uninstallable from a Windows setup then that point would be less valid.
I don't necessarily think that every FF user would uninstall IE if it were easily doable but I do think that in many of the cases where "IE is also on those systems" it's only because there's no simple way of remiving it.
As for his stance on IP rights then I think he hasn't got a clue.
However what I will say is that I'm no businessman and he runs a very successful business. So I freely admit that as much as I disagree with his points of view they obviously work in business. In fact I'd be pretty surprised if he didn't have views like that - many businesses seem to share the "IP Rights are Good" mentality.
Having said that I do think that what's good for business isn't always good for innovation and incentive. And that's why I personally think that the concept of "Intellectual Property" needs a major overhaul. Patents and non-terminating copyrights simply have too many drawbacks.
Like the main incentive for Patents that companies seem to have is that if they have a great idea then not only should they benefit from selling it but they shoudl benefit from anyone improving on it - as they'll have to pay to license it. Great from a business perspective but from a technical perspective this is dreadful because if someone's got great dieas to extend something but no money or Patents to bargain with then the new idea will be lost.
Obviously I find it a bit odd when Bill Gates (or anyone Microsoft spokeperson) talks about things "working together". Unless they're having a complete turnaround in their policies he probably means that when "devices work together" they will always be working via Windows.
Obviously this makes a great quote as he goes down as saying that interoperability is important - or something like that - but it just falls flat as more often than not he isn't tlaking about devices talking with non-Microsoft devices.
I guess it was the ultimate proof of the old saying about technical support.
"If you do your job properly no-one will see you doing anything."
All the preventitive measures taken whilst things were working ensured that very little went wrong when Y2K rolled around. But you correctly flag up the media hype as being the main issue. They were saying things would go wrong, so when hardly anything did go wrong at the scale that was being hyped up then it will look like wasted effort to anyone except those involved or those who weren't but understand the nature of the job.
I'm also guessing that many places probably had emergency measures in place just in case the worst happened to their systems. And either they were unneeded (and unnoticed) or successfully used (and therefore also largely unnoticed).
I do think, though, that the success of the preventitive measure combined with the level of "the disasters will happen" that the media predicted will combine to lull people into a false sense of security.
Very true. Although I msotly use Linux at home and only use Firefox I don't have the choice at work. Granted I use Firefox here, but my machine here is a Windows XP box and I have no choice in the matter.
Seeing that I also do most of my Slashdot browsing at work and very little at home (read most of what I want by the time I get home) it means that I'd register as a "Windows User" in Slashdot logs, despite me mainly being a Linux user.
It's also possible that some Slashdotters who use non-IE browsers might spoof their User Agent string. Especially seeing that there are more sites that claim to be IE-specific (but filter on browser) than actually are IE-specific.
That's the real crux of the problem though.
Movies get the budget, but require trying to compress long books into a couple of hours or so. It's probably going to remain a problem until people risk sinking the same level of resources into TV series.
Frankly I enjoyed the first two LoTR films. And I would've seen the third already had I not dreaded the prospect of three hours in a cinema. (Though the extended box-set is on my to-buy-this-week list)
But even though I've not the hugest fan of the books (read them once, years ago) I still would love to see a longer drawn out adaptation. I just don't think feature-length is long enough for these things.
Personally I think this is a valid point.
Movies and books are completely and utterly different media. What works on one often won't work on the other. I don't know LoTR enough to comment, but I've seen other adaptations (like Harry Potter) where although I don't like the changes I simply accept that leaving them as-was wouldn't work in a movie. The flow and focus of the two are drastically different.
Actually I think the real problem is that they try to make long books (or book-series) into movies. I'd rather they made TV series. You don't have to compress quite as much. You don't need as much "filler action material" as you only need to hold attention for a half-hour at a time rather than two hours or more in one go. You don't have to make time-based cuts.
The other problem with films is that they have to be hugely popular. So they almost have to make sure they will appeal to everyone. Pleasing the fans of the original source material is a bonus, but nothing more. Pleasing the general cinema-going DVD-buying mechandise-happy public is the main focus. That's the way it probably has to be with movies, which is why there will never really be a totally faithful movie conversion that actually has mass-appeal. The "perfect conversion" would probably not be a box-office blockbuster, despite being a sure-fire winner for true fans.
It does not mean I like the changes that often get made, but I know that otherwise you'll end up with hours-long films with sections of not-much-happening that are feature-length in themselves. I'd much rather have a full TV series with an eventual 20+ episode box-set DVD available when converting books, but I doubt I'll see it any time soon.
Yeah. First time I heard about them (original Slashdot article) and I immediately puchased some Aphex Twin and Black Dog from them. Enjoyed the music (still do) and was glad that I was able to actually legitimately buy it. I've said that I'm willing to pay for DRM-free digital music and enjoyed the chance to actually put my money where my mouth was.
Haven't used it since but as their catalogue seems to have increased then I think I'll be using them again. The more sites that do this the better things will get. Plus if they're willing to sell DRM-free standard MP3 files then I'm willing to give their music a try.