I just wrote this up a few days ago, it would be nice if these guys thought it was a good idea and we figured out how to make it happen:
A not-so-modest proposal. by Andrew Theken (andrewtheken.com)
Ok, some of you Open Source folks aren't going to like me for this one, but here goes. Normally, I wouldn't suggest such a huge step but we need to take it. You folks over at the Mozilla Foundation need to make this happen. Things are easy to implement/design deploy with web standards, when they are adhered to. Firefox's (and KHTML's) compliance is very high compared to Internet Explorer. We need to find a way to get Microsoft to use Gecko or KHTML in Internet Explorer. I realize I might be spinning my wheels here.
I know this may sound like blasphemy, but always look to the comments made in regards to the LGPL (I think the following has been stated by Richard Stallman - if anybody can source the following, email me, it's probably on the gnu.org site). Let me paraphrase: The LGPL is designed to allow a developer that wants to add commonly available functionality to do so without opening the entire application, so long as that functionality is not materially the core portion of the application. Basically, making it so that a commercial developer would choose an Open Source library for some small, non-critical feature instead of a commercial counterpart. Basically, something like a HTTP server, which is, at this point, a commonplace set of code. LGPL is designed to have you adopt Open Source instead of paying for a closed source trivial portion of code. Essentially, the proliferation of the Open implementation is more important than getting additional code to go "Open."
Now, Gecko is not LGPL'd (to my knowledge), but there's a reason why I brought it up. Untold good would come from giving away Gecko to Microsoft for IE. they have a rendering engine, they could buy and integrate any one that they wished, we need them to adopt one that complies to W3C and the rest. Give 'em the engine, have them integrate it, code contributions be damned.
Firefox would still have it's place as a more secure browser, extensions, etc. We'd just have less implementation work to do to get websites up and looking good. Something I am sure we can all appreciate.
Let them add in all their Microsoft-y glory. Code change submissions would be optional. Require that the Gecko engine generally render in much the same way as it does in other browsers, no more, no less. We need the web standards for end users and web designers more than we need Microsoft's code.
Now, let's not think about how perverse it would be to run Internet Explorer with a Netscape-derived rendering engine. Would Microsoft do it? Seems like their codebase for IE is so bad that they'll take any help they can get (seriously folks, I think they had 51% standards compliance in the 5.x series which jumps to 54% for IE7, I think Firefox's is about 94% -if anybody can source this, email me.).
I like RXC, I find him to be on top of things and a hell of a Mac Pundit, but I have to say this: WE ALL KNOW THAT IT'S A MEDIA SERVER - if you don't see that, you're blind.
And I also will mention that it's a hell of a product, some stats from a guy who knows a guy:
Initial 50,000 were sold on day one. Of those 50,000 over 45% were switchers. So tell Dell to get off of Apple's nuts, we know it was a strong business move, and presumably, it's working.
Lots of times it's about what's NOT there more than what is, instead of releasing info with holes in it, don't release the dataset. sorry if you're out of luck, but geographic data IS and will continue to be very sensitive.
Wow, your eloquent speech does a great job of winning me over. "planeload of pussies," I am sure the families of those victims are gratified to see you trivializing their loss with an alliteration. Finally, I agree with "AHumbleOpinion" and believe that a "small-town" target is a much more effective, and likely, target.
What if I told you that your water supply had been posioned. That would cause _terror_. It gets reported nationally, causing panic in other locations. I have a GIS degree, and I work for a GIS company and some of the "public" information we have does pose a risk if it would be available for general consumption.
the main issue is where the toolbox (and tools for that matter) sit. It needs to stay up top and available. On the other hand, some tools (like CROP/RESIZE) need to not pop strange windows when all I want to do is move the handles on the image and click "ok" (Photoshop does this WAY BETTER). I do like Gimp and am excited to see what happens
agreed, and I also don't understand why there's so many "haters" out there - he writes eloquently, and only picks topics that have at least SOME relevance. (more than I can say for *most* blogs). Everybody probably hates daringfireball.com also.
Perhaps you guys can read between the lines, but it's incredibly difficult to read sarcasm in plain text, for me... I DID get it, but since there was no emphasis in the OP, you could go either way with it - so you all can go to hell.
asside from MIME-types in browsers "asking for help" from other types of programs. (could be even more than just that, obviously) I HATE patent law. Be MORE SPECIFIC!
These are generally the only two apps I need to suggest for PC users having problems. One other app that just makes people happy is PDFCreator (pdfcreator.sf.net) which adds a PDF printer to your system printer folder - great if you don't want to shell out $100 for acrobat.
Thank you AC, in the US, copying a movie you do not own some rights to IS illegal. I made the assumption that we'd be talking about the US, sorry for the ethnocentrism. Incidentally, your comment about TV is to "macaroni" as Pay-per-view is to single-view movies is a logical falsehood. At any rate, if you are in the US, YOU are not a very good laywer, if you _are_ a lawyer at all. I suppose a lawyer SHOULD have the belief belief in the law system which they have studied, a lawyer who systematically ignores law should be disbarred.
I don't agree that $15+ a movie is a good value, but I do believe the industry should make money for their ventures, and more revenues ensure at least a broad selection of new movies, both GOOD and bad.
1) Pay-per-view is just that, Pey PER View, PVRs were not concieved with the notion of allowing you to permanently archive TV/Movies - you don't rent a movie from blockbuster and expect to retain a copy of the movie when you go to return it, do you? VCRs weren't even designed with this in mind, hence the Betamax decision.
2) Along the lines of archiving video, the rulings which make TiVo and the like possible basically because it is for time-shifting, this is not the same as PERMANENT archiving.
3) TV stations make money by selling advertisement, they don't make money by paying for broadcast rights. This is their reason for skipping commercials plain and simple.
Making information free costs money, are you going to pay for it?
The question is this? How frequently do users who notice an error repair it - no often to be sure. The secondary issue is that the articles which were submitted were so obscure that they would likely not be of any use to the general public. Needless to say, if we're trying to create a FACTbook, we need people that will go and verify the information.
Unfortunately, your definition of "Safe Driver" is lacking (you don't have one) and furthermore, the insurance company's definition doesn't exist. Therefore even your "oh-so-wonderful" driving will potentially be at risk of looking "unsafe." I've found that even good drivers get lucky sometimes.
I just don't care about games, I have played a few in the RTS which I could get into, but otherwise, I generally enjoy doing more creative "things" with the machine - coding, writing, photoshopping (really). and the BSD subsystem is very useful if you need to forward X and whatnot from say, Solaris (as is the case at Ohio State)
it... was... a... joke. I don't really want to pick up random people on the internet, and anyway, most women I've known didn't mind being called a "chick" it's the "bitch" "slut" "whore" words that piss them off.
asside from the comment the OP makes "stunning" - yeah, it's a shocker - thing makes me sick - the bevel on the screen is an inch in every direction! It's powerbook 12" or nothing for me, for good!
a chick on slashdot? can I get your number? Actually, the real problem is roomates that don't lock the door - this happened to me quite frequently, when I moved into a place with a private bedroom, I had a randomly assigned roommate break into my room one weekend. I have taken notes with my laptop - and you'll find that if you'll do it, some other people will start to bring theirs in. I think a footlocker which is not made out of plastic, with a lock would be best. You just want to make it a deterent, also you don't have to give your dormmates the "benefit of the doubt" right away - don't trust them (at least not right away)!
Finally, I would suggest, if you haven't got a laptop yet, a PowerBook, you won't need to upgrade for 4 years, you'll get a great discount, and they really are the best as far as entertainment/productivity, as long as you don't want to play the NEWEST games (but even some of those are out, depending).
mod grandparent UP, it's the best advice anybody could give I think.
Slashdot Mirror
I just wrote this up a few days ago, it would be nice if these guys thought it was a good idea and we figured out how to make it happen:
A not-so-modest proposal.
by Andrew Theken (andrewtheken.com)
Ok, some of you Open Source folks aren't going to like me for this one, but here goes. Normally, I wouldn't suggest such a huge step but we need to take it. You folks over at the Mozilla Foundation need to make this happen. Things are easy to implement/design deploy with web standards, when they are adhered to. Firefox's (and KHTML's) compliance is very high compared to Internet Explorer. We need to find a way to get Microsoft to use Gecko or KHTML in Internet Explorer. I realize I might be spinning my wheels here.
I know this may sound like blasphemy, but always look to the comments made in regards to the LGPL (I think the following has been stated by Richard Stallman - if anybody can source the following, email me, it's probably on the gnu.org site). Let me paraphrase: The LGPL is designed to allow a developer that wants to add commonly available functionality to do so without opening the entire application, so long as that functionality is not materially the core portion of the application. Basically, making it so that a commercial developer would choose an Open Source library for some small, non-critical feature instead of a commercial counterpart. Basically, something like a HTTP server, which is, at this point, a commonplace set of code. LGPL is designed to have you adopt Open Source instead of paying for a closed source trivial portion of code. Essentially, the proliferation of the Open implementation is more important than getting additional code to go "Open."
Now, Gecko is not LGPL'd (to my knowledge), but there's a reason why I brought it up. Untold good would come from giving away Gecko to Microsoft for IE. they have a rendering engine, they could buy and integrate any one that they wished, we need them to adopt one that complies to W3C and the rest. Give 'em the engine, have them integrate it, code contributions be damned.
Firefox would still have it's place as a more secure browser, extensions, etc. We'd just have less implementation work to do to get websites up and looking good. Something I am sure we can all appreciate.
Let them add in all their Microsoft-y glory. Code change submissions would be optional. Require that the Gecko engine generally render in much the same way as it does in other browsers, no more, no less. We need the web standards for end users and web designers more than we need Microsoft's code.
Now, let's not think about how perverse it would be to run Internet Explorer with a Netscape-derived rendering engine. Would Microsoft do it? Seems like their codebase for IE is so bad that they'll take any help they can get (seriously folks, I think they had 51% standards compliance in the 5.x series which jumps to 54% for IE7, I think Firefox's is about 94% -if anybody can source this, email me.).
PLEASE Mozilla & Microsoft, share your love.
Unless it works in 48 hours, the trading spaces crew doesn't want it.
I like RXC, I find him to be on top of things and a hell of a Mac Pundit, but I have to say this: WE ALL KNOW THAT IT'S A MEDIA SERVER - if you don't see that, you're blind.
And I also will mention that it's a hell of a product, some stats from a guy who knows a guy:
Initial 50,000 were sold on day one. Of those 50,000 over 45% were switchers. So tell Dell to get off of Apple's nuts, we know it was a strong business move, and presumably, it's working.
Lots of times it's about what's NOT there more than what is, instead of releasing info with holes in it, don't release the dataset. sorry if you're out of luck, but geographic data IS and will continue to be very sensitive.
Wow, your eloquent speech does a great job of winning me over. "planeload of pussies," I am sure the families of those victims are gratified to see you trivializing their loss with an alliteration. Finally, I agree with "AHumbleOpinion" and believe that a "small-town" target is a much more effective, and likely, target.
so we should just hand them the data instead? that is just ridiculous.
What if I told you that your water supply had been posioned. That would cause _terror_. It gets reported nationally, causing panic in other locations. I have a GIS degree, and I work for a GIS company and some of the "public" information we have does pose a risk if it would be available for general consumption.
the main issue is where the toolbox (and tools for that matter) sit. It needs to stay up top and available. On the other hand, some tools (like CROP /RESIZE) need to not pop strange windows when all I want to do is move the handles on the image and click "ok" (Photoshop does this WAY BETTER). I do like Gimp and am excited to see what happens
maybe the submitter hasn't seend any wacom tablets. This is not new technology.
On OS X - rock solid, but keybindings aren't perfect yet - can't complain though.
agreed, and I also don't understand why there's so many "haters" out there - he writes eloquently, and only picks topics that have at least SOME relevance. (more than I can say for *most* blogs). Everybody probably hates daringfireball.com also.
Perhaps you guys can read between the lines, but it's incredibly difficult to read sarcasm in plain text, for me... I DID get it, but since there was no emphasis in the OP, you could go either way with it - so you all can go to hell.
You sir, are an idiot. Read the effin' GPL.
asside from MIME-types in browsers "asking for help" from other types of programs. (could be even more than just that, obviously) I HATE patent law. Be MORE SPECIFIC!
perhaps the monitor is different, but that doesn't mean the OS isn't to fault. -OR- are you using a bluetooth/wireless mouse?
These are generally the only two apps I need to suggest for PC users having problems. One other app that just makes people happy is PDFCreator (pdfcreator.sf.net) which adds a PDF printer to your system printer folder - great if you don't want to shell out $100 for acrobat.
Thank you AC, in the US, copying a movie you do not own some rights to IS illegal. I made the assumption that we'd be talking about the US, sorry for the ethnocentrism. Incidentally, your comment about TV is to "macaroni" as Pay-per-view is to single-view movies is a logical falsehood. At any rate, if you are in the US, YOU are not a very good laywer, if you _are_ a lawyer at all. I suppose a lawyer SHOULD have the belief belief in the law system which they have studied, a lawyer who systematically ignores law should be disbarred.
I don't agree that $15+ a movie is a good value, but I do believe the industry should make money for their ventures, and more revenues ensure at least a broad selection of new movies, both GOOD and bad.
1) Pay-per-view is just that, Pey PER View, PVRs were not concieved with the notion of allowing you to permanently archive TV/Movies - you don't rent a movie from blockbuster and expect to retain a copy of the movie when you go to return it, do you? VCRs weren't even designed with this in mind, hence the Betamax decision. 2) Along the lines of archiving video, the rulings which make TiVo and the like possible basically because it is for time-shifting, this is not the same as PERMANENT archiving. 3) TV stations make money by selling advertisement, they don't make money by paying for broadcast rights. This is their reason for skipping commercials plain and simple. Making information free costs money, are you going to pay for it?
The question is this? How frequently do users who notice an error repair it - no often to be sure. The secondary issue is that the articles which were submitted were so obscure that they would likely not be of any use to the general public. Needless to say, if we're trying to create a FACTbook, we need people that will go and verify the information.
Unfortunately, your definition of "Safe Driver" is lacking (you don't have one) and furthermore, the insurance company's definition doesn't exist. Therefore even your "oh-so-wonderful" driving will potentially be at risk of looking "unsafe." I've found that even good drivers get lucky sometimes.
I just don't care about games, I have played a few in the RTS which I could get into, but otherwise, I generally enjoy doing more creative "things" with the machine - coding, writing, photoshopping (really). and the BSD subsystem is very useful if you need to forward X and whatnot from say, Solaris (as is the case at Ohio State)
it ... was ... a ... joke. I don't really want to pick up random people on the internet, and anyway, most women I've known didn't mind being called a "chick" it's the "bitch" "slut" "whore" words that piss them off.
asside from the comment the OP makes "stunning" - yeah, it's a shocker - thing makes me sick - the bevel on the screen is an inch in every direction! It's powerbook 12" or nothing for me, for good!
a chick on slashdot? can I get your number? Actually, the real problem is roomates that don't lock the door - this happened to me quite frequently, when I moved into a place with a private bedroom, I had a randomly assigned roommate break into my room one weekend. I have taken notes with my laptop - and you'll find that if you'll do it, some other people will start to bring theirs in. I think a footlocker which is not made out of plastic, with a lock would be best. You just want to make it a deterent, also you don't have to give your dormmates the "benefit of the doubt" right away - don't trust them (at least not right away)! Finally, I would suggest, if you haven't got a laptop yet, a PowerBook, you won't need to upgrade for 4 years, you'll get a great discount, and they really are the best as far as entertainment/productivity, as long as you don't want to play the NEWEST games (but even some of those are out, depending). mod grandparent UP, it's the best advice anybody could give I think.
the 40GB comes with a holster and a dock. The "price drop" didn't really happen, people just got more capacity for their money.