Yeah, and half the websites out there will stop rendering then. Sadly, the vast majority of them don't need javascript to do their job, but such is the epic lame that is the average web programmer.
Or maybe most web programmers don't want to spend a lot of time and money supporting the 1% of users out there that don't have or disable JavaScript.
June was a dry month for video gaming. Not many good games were released (except for Infamous).
I own a Wii because I have a family and thought it would be the most family friendly game console (I think I was right).
That being said, I've been wanting adult games for the Wii badly (for myself), and I'm not talking about games that have been ported to the Wii as an afterthought. In June, The Conduit came out, and I'm really, really enjoying it. The controls are surprisingly good, and you're hearing this from a mouse/keyboard fanatic!
The Conduit was written specifically for the Wii and the Wii controller and it shows. It's a very good game. Highly recommended.
No, but this new NX server sounds like it will. If it does, this is a truly great day.
Xvnc has had this feature (persisting your entire desktop) for years, by embedding an X server that is exposed through VNC.
Personally, I find VNC almost uselessly slow, unless you severely limit the resolution and color depth. Even then, it's barely usable, at least on my broadband connection, whose upload speed is only 512k or thereabouts.
If NX does, in fact, embed an X server, so that you can persist your entire desktop, then yes, that's cool. Free Software will finally have caught up with Remote Desktop, and it's about time.
I don't care. My desktop computer has plenty of power.
Well, lah-dee-dah, good for you. That has nothing to do with the point I was making.
Yeah, but I'd have to run a web server on my desktop. No thanks.
OK, clearly you need to re-read the history of this thread. Nobody is suggesting you should run a web server on your desktop PC.
Again, I don't care. My desktop has plenty of power to run everything I want it to.
This thread started when someone thought NX would be a good replacement for HTML+HTTP. My whole point is the comparison does not make sense. They are not competitors.
Really? How will web apps help me move a single browser session from computer to computer as I move around during the day?
X, by itself, does not allow you to do that. If you lose your connection (e.g., your local X server is terminated), your X client apps are terminated. You can't move from computer to computer unless you're using something like Xvnc, in which case your entire desktop is persisted (including all your apps, including web browser sessions). And that just pushes the entire load back on the server again. It does not efficiently leverage the local PC.
In any case, a properly written web app could, theoretically, sync its state with the server on a regular basis, allowing you to reconnect later, and continue right where you left off. For example, take a look at Gmail. If you're writing an email to someone, it periodically gets automatically saved in your Drafts folder. (You can explicitly save as well.) You can logout of Gmail, go to another computer, login to Gmail, click on your draft email, and continue right where you left off.
I'm not suggesting a lot, or even many, web apps are written this way, but they can be. There's still a lot of room for growth in terms of best practices when it comes to web development.
I agree that X and web apps are for different purposes, but saying that remote X makes little sense is just wrong. It's extremely useful, and this improvement is very welcome.
X makes very little sense these days because it puts the entire load on the server. It completely fails to leverage the spare CPU cycles on the local PC. Sometimes you want the entire load on the server, but the cases where you want that are getting to be pretty rare. But that's why I said X makes very little sense, not no sense.
Web apps are actually client/server. It makes sense to leverage the local PC CPU when it makes sense, and leverage the remote server CPU when it makes sense.
Web apps are "beating" X apps because it simply makes sense in most application domains these days.
Well this sure beats HTML+HTTP and Javascript for displaying remote applications.
I'm so tired of people comparing web apps and X. They are completely different beasts.
Web apps are downloaded to your local PC and run there. Many web apps make frequent HTTP calls to sync with, or access resources, on the server, but that's completely optional. Web apps are often the right solution compared to X apps because they leverage the power of your local PC. While writing this comment, my local PC did the spell checking, it handled the keyboard events, and it updated the display, all without any communication to, or from, the server. It was fast and responsive and efficient because it all happened entirely on my local PC. The only communication that will occur with the server is when I click on Submit.
In contrast, X apps are run on the server and merely displayed on your local PC. Slashdot could not possibly function that way without enormous hardware and bandwidth upgrades, and even then it would probably be an annoying experience for many users on connections that experience frequent lag.
Web apps and X apps are not really competitors. They serve two different purposes. Web apps leverage the local PC and can also leverage the server where it makes sense. X apps are basically entirely run on the server with only display updates being sent to the client. This setup made sense a long time ago when servers were extremely powerful and client PCs were weak. Now that even modest hardware is extremely powerful, X makes very little sense.
I think your concern should be more that pro-government regulation fanatics will read this and think it's an example of proper government regulation.
Nice troll. Start out by labeling your opponents in a derogatory way.
From the "anti-government deregulation fanatic" point of view, the main problem with regulating light bulbs is why should government have anything to do with it.
I have an idea. To keep with the spirit of your post, let's call them the "market-can-do-no-wrong/government-can-do-no-right worshiper cult".
Replacing a $0.25 bulb with a $5 bulb is not a good use of government power.
Ignoring your cherry-picked numbers for a moment, yes, it's a good use of government power. The market rarely factors in externalized costs. The extra CO2 produced by burning inefficient bulbs impacts everyone's environment.
If it turns out that some forms of power production have unpleasant externalities (ie, impose costs or harm on nonconsenting parties), then a pollution emission market would account for those side effects, effectively billing the problem at the source of the problem rather than trying to change consumer behavior in order to indirectly meet dubious moral goals.
A "pollution emission market"? LOL! Good one! Sorry for calling you a troll, I didn't realize you were merely trying to be funny. Ha ha! I've got to tell my friends that one! A "pollution control market"! Tee-hee!
Everquest one was mostly ruined when they included instant portal stones in the Plane of Knowledge.
Agreed!
But it seems you and I are in the minority. Everyone wants instant gratification. If it takes them more than one minute to travel to the latest, greatest, hottest XP farming zone, they're annoyed.
Some of my fondest memories of original EverQuest were traveling. The world felt wonderfully big and scary. I met traveling companions (safety in numbers!), I discovered interesting places, and once at my destination, I would explore more carefully and in more detail, because after all, it took a while to get there!
Planes of Power destroyed all that. In an instant, Norrath morphed from an exciting, expansive world into a tiny little place. People were nothing but busy little bees, teleporting from XP grind to XP grind as fast as their little portal stones could take them.
Funny, we've been a customer of Microsoft's for 20 years and have yet to experience this "raping" you speak of. I know it's all sorts of fun and games to bash MS on slashdot, but seriously? Comparing them to rape? Grow up.
There's more than one definition for the word "rape". Try looking it up, before you get on your high horse and condemn other people.
I've been a professional developer for 20 years, and programmed computers as a hobby for 10 years beyond that. Yeah, I'm old, I've been around a while. And I've watched Microsoft's behavior all those years.
Microsoft is very random about some things. You never know when they're going to blindside you (wielding their FAT patent bat, anyone?).
It could very well be they'll never raise a finger to discourage Mono. On the other hand, they could start rattling their saber (simple threats) or use outright litigation anytime.
I'm not a fan of Richard Stallman, or even the GPL/LGPL, but on this issue, I think he's right. Microsoft could step in and start causing Mono developers and users grief at pretty much any time. It's very risky and you can't trust that they haven't done anything yet (once again, may I mention FAT?).
On a related note, several years back, I emailed Ubuntu with a product suggestion. I asked them for "Ubuntu on USB Flash Drives", installable via a simple Windows executable. Double click the executable, choose your USB flash drive, and it would install on the USB flash drive and just work.
My thought was that it would make it much easier for Windows users that are curious about Linux to try it out. No need to burn a disc first (burning discs can be complicated for non-technical users), no need to boot from the optical drive to get into the Ubuntu installer, etc.
And since USB flash drives are read/write, you could even let them update packages, save documents, etc. A much better, more realistic experience than a read-only test drive of Ubuntu on CD.
They very kindly replied thanking me for the suggestion, but alas, it never materialized...
The memory protection on the 286 was terrible. It still used segments and wasn't a flat address space.
I've never been a fan of segments either.
I think the the 68010 came out around the time of 286 and you could add a real mmu that supported paging and had a flat address space. Also the 68020 came out during the time of the 286 so you could make the jump to true 32 bit.
Sure, hardware makers could choose to add an MMU to their 68010/68020 based machines.
Of course the vast majority of 286s where used to run DOS so it's memory protection just wasn't that important.
I was lucky, I got to use QNX (running on 80286) and Microport (sp?) Unix (also running on 80286) -- both in protected mode, of course. It's a shame most 80286s ran DOS in real mode...
BTW the 68881 was an FPU the Motorola 68841 or 68851 where the MMUs.
rogue, sail, wump, search (you have crashed into a planet), battlestar (in the closet is a kingly robe), mazewars, that mazewars-like curses game who's name escapes me, with a variety of weapons (satchel bomb... oooo...) that had destructable maze walls.
You're thinking of Hunt. Multi-player fragfest goodness! It had pretty decent performance on 1200 baud (even 300 baud) too.
Hunt was also a great way to train your fingers to use the hjkl movement keys!
The fact that MS-DOS outsold the Amiga and Atari ST is proof that best doesn't always win. The x86 is a great example as well. The 68k chip was a much better CPU than the 8088,8086, and even the 80286.
The 68000 didn't have a built-in MMU. You could run an OS with process isolation (a requirement for a safe multi-user OS) on the 80286. You could not do that with a 68000 (unless you added a separate MMU; the 68881 maybe?).
...introduce a service pack for Leopard priced at 29USD...
It looked like a lot more than a service pack to me.
Apple charges an extremely fair price for OSX, in my opinion. Look at Vista Ultimate, which costs $250 retail for the full version, and $200 retail for the upgrade version.
Apple only charging $30 for the Snow Leopard upgrade seems like an incredible bargain to me.
So apparently recording agencies are able to do anything except record good music.
In your opinion...
They can bribe judges,
[Citation needed]
hire lawyers,
Anyone can hire lawyers.
buy congress,
You must be new here (to the United States).
complain,
Anyone can complain. You're doing it now!
make commercials
Uh...OK...
and now train dogs.
Yeah, so? It worked, didn't it?
You would think that with all this money they could come up with a working business model other then abusing the legal system.
How did you go from "trained dog" to "legal system abused"?
With how much ranting about music goes on around here, you would think they were taking away your food or something else that's actually important instead...
Get a grip. Don't buy their product if you don't want it (or don't like the strings attached). Simple as that.
I was a cable internet customer, with Charter, for several years. It was flaky and crapped out at least once a month, and their service sucked.
Minnesota-based ex-Charter Pipeline customer here. I subscribed to Charter Pipeline for about one year. About half a dozen to a dozen times per day, all my connections (AIM, telnet, whatever) would drop. traceroute would show packets looping in their system. By the time I got through to customer service, and went through their "reboot your PC, blah blah blah" script, it would be fixed, and customer service would tell me they didn't see anything wrong with my connection.
That, combined with constant latency problems, forced me to dump Charter Pipeline for DSL.
My god, every time someone comes up with a solution in IT, we have this built in expectation that everyone should fall on board. Cloud computing is just the latest. Are we to now upgrade every system to use the "cloud". Are we to do web applications for everything? This isn't an engineering profession, its a fashion one. We're not like Mr. Spock from Star Trek. We're like the guy on America's Next Fashion Designer.
There are a bunch of good reasons web applications have become popular.
First, they're easy to deploy. Put up a web page, point the users to that web page, and you're done. No need for an installer. No need for an updater. No need to convince users to download and run an executable (which is a scary and complex undertaking for many of them).
Second, they're relatively safe for the user. Which puts the user at less risk, navigating to a web site, or downloading and running an executable which may or may not contain malware?
Third, they're cross platform. With a little effort, your web application will run on Windows, OSX, and Linux. This should make Linux users very happy, since it helps even the playing field between Windows and Linux!
Fourth, in many cases, web application providers can offer superior document management. For example, regular users aren't good at keeping backups, and in the old days, just plain said goodbye to their archived email if their hard drive crashed. Or, if they upgraded from a Pentium 3 computer to a Pentium 4 computer, they spent hours trying to configure their new email program, and then more hours trying to move their archived email from their old computer to their new computer. Compare that to web email, which Just Works.
Do web applications involve risks and tradeoffs? Yes, this article demonstrates that. But it's up to individuals to decide what risks and tradeoffs are worthwhile, and many, many people choose web applications because the advantages are worth it to them.
Claiming that web applications are successful only because they're fashionable to developers these days is, well, just plain stupid. The fact is, web applications are the best choice among the alternatives for many users, and plenty of developers recognize that fact and leverage it by building web applications instead of thick client applications.
Basically, if you don't know at least CSS and HTML (preferably object oriented programming, MVC, database, design patterns, accessibility etc. too) then you've no place messing with web design, except for doing mockups in an art package.
There are a zillion "brochure" web sites out there, and not one of those web sites requires knowledge of CSS/HTML, OOP, MVC, DB, or design patterns.
As for 'room' for American citizens, if you can't compete with a guy who was born in India, with all your American-born advantages, he's either just plain smarter than you, or just plain works harder than you.
Oh my God, you're such an insulting ass. And you got modded +5 for it! Unbelievable.
Even if H-1B workers are good for the U.S., which is debatable, it doesn't matter in the long run, because American companies will continue to offshore work because of the cost of living in the U.S.
It simply does not matter if an American is equal to, or better than, a foreign counterpart, because the American has an insanely high cost of living and cannot hope to compete wage-wise with someone that lives in a country with a low cost of living.
The H-1B debate is pointless. Americans are too expensive, even H-1B's living in America are too expensive. The trend will be to continue to offshore the work in order to leverage lower costs of living elsewhere.
From what I understand, pretty much every employee at the fabs being closed are being offered jobs at other fabs, and pretty much the only way that anyone's losing their job is if they can't move, or refuse to do so.
Picking up your life and your family's life and moving involves, for many or most people, selling their house, which is insanely difficult or involves selling at a very low price in the current economic crisis.
Intel executives likely realize this, and realize many people will have little choice but to not accept a position at a different fab. However, isn't it so nice for Intel executives that they get to make it look like they're purely good guys?
I dual boot between Windows XP and Ubuntu GNU/Linux (of the Intrepid Ibex flavor).
Firefox is slow on Linux in general. Page Up, Page Down, Arrow Up, Arrow Down, Ctrl+Plus and Ctrl+Minus (to increase and decrease the font size)...all of these things are instantaneous on Windows XP, but there's a noticeable lag on Linux.
I'm not sure what the problem is. I'm using the proprietary ATI drivers on Linux, which should be pretty fast. And my machine is old enough that all the kinks should have been worked out of the Linux drivers for my hardware.
The only people I know still drowning in spam are the ones who are clinging to some ancient ISP-provided address, or who have a poorly managed company mail server.
I have an ISP email account and a Gmail account. I only use my ISP email account for things like registering with amazon.com or my bank, because if my Gmail account password is hacked or stolen, I'm screwed. If my ISP email account password is hacked or stolen, at least I can call my ISP and have the password reset.
This issue seems like a big problem with web based email: no recourse if your account password is compromised.
Slashdot Mirror
Must be a very large ass if he needs a nuclear powered photocopier.
Probably American...
Note for the humor impaired: The above is a joke, and I'm an American.
No mention of WinSCP? That's criminal!
There are lots of good choices for a first programming language these days, but I thought I'd chime in and suggest Lua for consideration.
Lua is free.
The Lua interactive interpreter makes exploring and learning the language a pleasure (much like the Python interactive interpreter).
There are excellent and up-to-date free tutorials for Lua available online.
Lua integrates easily with C, giving you trivial access to any low level OS features you need.
The language is a pleasure to use. It just feels right.
Give it a shot. You won't be disappointed. :-)
Yeah, and half the websites out there will stop rendering then. Sadly, the vast majority of them don't need javascript to do their job, but such is the epic lame that is the average web programmer.
Or maybe most web programmers don't want to spend a lot of time and money supporting the 1% of users out there that don't have or disable JavaScript.
I'm just sayin'.
June was a dry month for video gaming. Not many good games were released (except for Infamous).
I own a Wii because I have a family and thought it would be the most family friendly game console (I think I was right).
That being said, I've been wanting adult games for the Wii badly (for myself), and I'm not talking about games that have been ported to the Wii as an afterthought. In June, The Conduit came out, and I'm really, really enjoying it. The controls are surprisingly good, and you're hearing this from a mouse/keyboard fanatic!
The Conduit was written specifically for the Wii and the Wii controller and it shows. It's a very good game. Highly recommended.
No, but this new NX server sounds like it will. If it does, this is a truly great day.
Xvnc has had this feature (persisting your entire desktop) for years, by embedding an X server that is exposed through VNC.
Personally, I find VNC almost uselessly slow, unless you severely limit the resolution and color depth. Even then, it's barely usable, at least on my broadband connection, whose upload speed is only 512k or thereabouts.
If NX does, in fact, embed an X server, so that you can persist your entire desktop, then yes, that's cool. Free Software will finally have caught up with Remote Desktop, and it's about time.
I don't care. My desktop computer has plenty of power.
Well, lah-dee-dah, good for you. That has nothing to do with the point I was making.
Yeah, but I'd have to run a web server on my desktop. No thanks.
OK, clearly you need to re-read the history of this thread. Nobody is suggesting you should run a web server on your desktop PC.
Again, I don't care. My desktop has plenty of power to run everything I want it to.
This thread started when someone thought NX would be a good replacement for HTML+HTTP. My whole point is the comparison does not make sense. They are not competitors.
Really? How will web apps help me move a single browser session from computer to computer as I move around during the day?
X, by itself, does not allow you to do that. If you lose your connection (e.g., your local X server is terminated), your X client apps are terminated. You can't move from computer to computer unless you're using something like Xvnc, in which case your entire desktop is persisted (including all your apps, including web browser sessions). And that just pushes the entire load back on the server again. It does not efficiently leverage the local PC.
In any case, a properly written web app could, theoretically, sync its state with the server on a regular basis, allowing you to reconnect later, and continue right where you left off. For example, take a look at Gmail. If you're writing an email to someone, it periodically gets automatically saved in your Drafts folder. (You can explicitly save as well.) You can logout of Gmail, go to another computer, login to Gmail, click on your draft email, and continue right where you left off.
I'm not suggesting a lot, or even many, web apps are written this way, but they can be. There's still a lot of room for growth in terms of best practices when it comes to web development.
I agree that X and web apps are for different purposes, but saying that remote X makes little sense is just wrong. It's extremely useful, and this improvement is very welcome.
X makes very little sense these days because it puts the entire load on the server. It completely fails to leverage the spare CPU cycles on the local PC. Sometimes you want the entire load on the server, but the cases where you want that are getting to be pretty rare. But that's why I said X makes very little sense, not no sense.
Web apps are actually client/server. It makes sense to leverage the local PC CPU when it makes sense, and leverage the remote server CPU when it makes sense.
Web apps are "beating" X apps because it simply makes sense in most application domains these days.
Well this sure beats HTML+HTTP and Javascript for displaying remote applications.
I'm so tired of people comparing web apps and X. They are completely different beasts.
Web apps are downloaded to your local PC and run there. Many web apps make frequent HTTP calls to sync with, or access resources, on the server, but that's completely optional. Web apps are often the right solution compared to X apps because they leverage the power of your local PC. While writing this comment, my local PC did the spell checking, it handled the keyboard events, and it updated the display, all without any communication to, or from, the server. It was fast and responsive and efficient because it all happened entirely on my local PC. The only communication that will occur with the server is when I click on Submit.
In contrast, X apps are run on the server and merely displayed on your local PC. Slashdot could not possibly function that way without enormous hardware and bandwidth upgrades, and even then it would probably be an annoying experience for many users on connections that experience frequent lag.
Web apps and X apps are not really competitors. They serve two different purposes. Web apps leverage the local PC and can also leverage the server where it makes sense. X apps are basically entirely run on the server with only display updates being sent to the client. This setup made sense a long time ago when servers were extremely powerful and client PCs were weak. Now that even modest hardware is extremely powerful, X makes very little sense.
I think your concern should be more that pro-government regulation fanatics will read this and think it's an example of proper government regulation.
Nice troll. Start out by labeling your opponents in a derogatory way.
From the "anti-government deregulation fanatic" point of view, the main problem with regulating light bulbs is why should government have anything to do with it.
I have an idea. To keep with the spirit of your post, let's call them the "market-can-do-no-wrong/government-can-do-no-right worshiper cult".
Replacing a $0.25 bulb with a $5 bulb is not a good use of government power.
Ignoring your cherry-picked numbers for a moment, yes, it's a good use of government power. The market rarely factors in externalized costs. The extra CO2 produced by burning inefficient bulbs impacts everyone's environment.
If it turns out that some forms of power production have unpleasant externalities (ie, impose costs or harm on nonconsenting parties), then a pollution emission market would account for those side effects, effectively billing the problem at the source of the problem rather than trying to change consumer behavior in order to indirectly meet dubious moral goals.
A "pollution emission market"? LOL! Good one! Sorry for calling you a troll, I didn't realize you were merely trying to be funny. Ha ha! I've got to tell my friends that one! A "pollution control market"! Tee-hee!
Everquest one was mostly ruined when they included instant portal stones in the Plane of Knowledge.
Agreed!
But it seems you and I are in the minority. Everyone wants instant gratification. If it takes them more than one minute to travel to the latest, greatest, hottest XP farming zone, they're annoyed.
Some of my fondest memories of original EverQuest were traveling. The world felt wonderfully big and scary. I met traveling companions (safety in numbers!), I discovered interesting places, and once at my destination, I would explore more carefully and in more detail, because after all, it took a while to get there!
Planes of Power destroyed all that. In an instant, Norrath morphed from an exciting, expansive world into a tiny little place. People were nothing but busy little bees, teleporting from XP grind to XP grind as fast as their little portal stones could take them.
Funny, we've been a customer of Microsoft's for 20 years and have yet to experience this "raping" you speak of. I know it's all sorts of fun and games to bash MS on slashdot, but seriously? Comparing them to rape? Grow up.
There's more than one definition for the word "rape". Try looking it up, before you get on your high horse and condemn other people.
I've been a professional developer for 20 years, and programmed computers as a hobby for 10 years beyond that. Yeah, I'm old, I've been around a while. And I've watched Microsoft's behavior all those years.
Microsoft is very random about some things. You never know when they're going to blindside you (wielding their FAT patent bat, anyone?).
It could very well be they'll never raise a finger to discourage Mono. On the other hand, they could start rattling their saber (simple threats) or use outright litigation anytime.
I'm not a fan of Richard Stallman, or even the GPL/LGPL, but on this issue, I think he's right. Microsoft could step in and start causing Mono developers and users grief at pretty much any time. It's very risky and you can't trust that they haven't done anything yet (once again, may I mention FAT?).
Use Mono at your own risk. And it's quite a risk.
On a related note, several years back, I emailed Ubuntu with a product suggestion. I asked them for "Ubuntu on USB Flash Drives", installable via a simple Windows executable. Double click the executable, choose your USB flash drive, and it would install on the USB flash drive and just work.
My thought was that it would make it much easier for Windows users that are curious about Linux to try it out. No need to burn a disc first (burning discs can be complicated for non-technical users), no need to boot from the optical drive to get into the Ubuntu installer, etc.
And since USB flash drives are read/write, you could even let them update packages, save documents, etc. A much better, more realistic experience than a read-only test drive of Ubuntu on CD.
They very kindly replied thanking me for the suggestion, but alas, it never materialized...
The memory protection on the 286 was terrible. It still used segments and wasn't a flat address space.
I've never been a fan of segments either.
I think the the 68010 came out around the time of 286 and you could add a real mmu that supported paging and had a flat address space. Also the 68020 came out during the time of the 286 so you could make the jump to true 32 bit.
Sure, hardware makers could choose to add an MMU to their 68010/68020 based machines.
Of course the vast majority of 286s where used to run DOS so it's memory protection just wasn't that important.
I was lucky, I got to use QNX (running on 80286) and Microport (sp?) Unix (also running on 80286) -- both in protected mode, of course. It's a shame most 80286s ran DOS in real mode...
BTW the 68881 was an FPU the Motorola 68841 or 68851 where the MMUs.
Thanks for the correction!
rogue, sail, wump, search (you have crashed into a planet), battlestar (in the closet is a kingly robe), mazewars, that mazewars-like curses game who's name escapes me, with a variety of weapons (satchel bomb... oooo...) that had destructable maze walls.
You're thinking of Hunt. Multi-player fragfest goodness! It had pretty decent performance on 1200 baud (even 300 baud) too.
Hunt was also a great way to train your fingers to use the hjkl movement keys!
The fact that MS-DOS outsold the Amiga and Atari ST is proof that best doesn't always win. The x86 is a great example as well. The 68k chip was a much better CPU than the 8088,8086, and even the 80286.
The 68000 didn't have a built-in MMU. You could run an OS with process isolation (a requirement for a safe multi-user OS) on the 80286. You could not do that with a 68000 (unless you added a separate MMU; the 68881 maybe?).
...introduce a service pack for Leopard priced at 29USD...
It looked like a lot more than a service pack to me.
Apple charges an extremely fair price for OSX, in my opinion. Look at Vista Ultimate, which costs $250 retail for the full version, and $200 retail for the upgrade version.
Apple only charging $30 for the Snow Leopard upgrade seems like an incredible bargain to me.
kicking of the processes
Listen up, mister! We don't take kindly to process abuse around here!
So apparently recording agencies are able to do anything except record good music.
In your opinion...
They can bribe judges,
[Citation needed]
hire lawyers,
Anyone can hire lawyers.
buy congress,
You must be new here (to the United States).
complain,
Anyone can complain. You're doing it now!
make commercials
Uh...OK...
and now train dogs.
Yeah, so? It worked, didn't it?
You would think that with all this money they could come up with a working business model other then abusing the legal system.
How did you go from "trained dog" to "legal system abused"?
With how much ranting about music goes on around here, you would think they were taking away your food or something else that's actually important instead...
Get a grip. Don't buy their product if you don't want it (or don't like the strings attached). Simple as that.
I was a cable internet customer, with Charter, for several years. It was flaky and crapped out at least once a month, and their service sucked.
Minnesota-based ex-Charter Pipeline customer here. I subscribed to Charter Pipeline for about one year. About half a dozen to a dozen times per day, all my connections (AIM, telnet, whatever) would drop. traceroute would show packets looping in their system. By the time I got through to customer service, and went through their "reboot your PC, blah blah blah" script, it would be fixed, and customer service would tell me they didn't see anything wrong with my connection.
That, combined with constant latency problems, forced me to dump Charter Pipeline for DSL.
Good riddance, Charter Pipeline!
My god, every time someone comes up with a solution in IT, we have this built in expectation that everyone should fall on board. Cloud computing is just the latest. Are we to now upgrade every system to use the "cloud". Are we to do web applications for everything? This isn't an engineering profession, its a fashion one. We're not like Mr. Spock from Star Trek. We're like the guy on America's Next Fashion Designer.
There are a bunch of good reasons web applications have become popular.
First, they're easy to deploy. Put up a web page, point the users to that web page, and you're done. No need for an installer. No need for an updater. No need to convince users to download and run an executable (which is a scary and complex undertaking for many of them).
Second, they're relatively safe for the user. Which puts the user at less risk, navigating to a web site, or downloading and running an executable which may or may not contain malware?
Third, they're cross platform. With a little effort, your web application will run on Windows, OSX, and Linux. This should make Linux users very happy, since it helps even the playing field between Windows and Linux!
Fourth, in many cases, web application providers can offer superior document management. For example, regular users aren't good at keeping backups, and in the old days, just plain said goodbye to their archived email if their hard drive crashed. Or, if they upgraded from a Pentium 3 computer to a Pentium 4 computer, they spent hours trying to configure their new email program, and then more hours trying to move their archived email from their old computer to their new computer. Compare that to web email, which Just Works.
Do web applications involve risks and tradeoffs? Yes, this article demonstrates that. But it's up to individuals to decide what risks and tradeoffs are worthwhile, and many, many people choose web applications because the advantages are worth it to them.
Claiming that web applications are successful only because they're fashionable to developers these days is, well, just plain stupid. The fact is, web applications are the best choice among the alternatives for many users, and plenty of developers recognize that fact and leverage it by building web applications instead of thick client applications.
Basically, if you don't know at least CSS and HTML (preferably object oriented programming, MVC, database, design patterns, accessibility etc. too) then you've no place messing with web design, except for doing mockups in an art package.
There are a zillion "brochure" web sites out there, and not one of those web sites requires knowledge of CSS/HTML, OOP, MVC, DB, or design patterns.
As for 'room' for American citizens, if you can't compete with a guy who was born in India, with all your American-born advantages, he's either just plain smarter than you, or just plain works harder than you.
Oh my God, you're such an insulting ass. And you got modded +5 for it! Unbelievable.
Even if H-1B workers are good for the U.S., which is debatable, it doesn't matter in the long run, because American companies will continue to offshore work because of the cost of living in the U.S.
It simply does not matter if an American is equal to, or better than, a foreign counterpart, because the American has an insanely high cost of living and cannot hope to compete wage-wise with someone that lives in a country with a low cost of living.
The H-1B debate is pointless. Americans are too expensive, even H-1B's living in America are too expensive. The trend will be to continue to offshore the work in order to leverage lower costs of living elsewhere.
From what I understand, pretty much every employee at the fabs being closed are being offered jobs at other fabs, and pretty much the only way that anyone's losing their job is if they can't move, or refuse to do so.
Picking up your life and your family's life and moving involves, for many or most people, selling their house, which is insanely difficult or involves selling at a very low price in the current economic crisis.
Intel executives likely realize this, and realize many people will have little choice but to not accept a position at a different fab. However, isn't it so nice for Intel executives that they get to make it look like they're purely good guys?
I dual boot between Windows XP and Ubuntu GNU/Linux (of the Intrepid Ibex flavor).
Firefox is slow on Linux in general. Page Up, Page Down, Arrow Up, Arrow Down, Ctrl+Plus and Ctrl+Minus (to increase and decrease the font size)...all of these things are instantaneous on Windows XP, but there's a noticeable lag on Linux.
I'm not sure what the problem is. I'm using the proprietary ATI drivers on Linux, which should be pretty fast. And my machine is old enough that all the kinks should have been worked out of the Linux drivers for my hardware.
The only people I know still drowning in spam are the ones who are clinging to some ancient ISP-provided address, or who have a poorly managed company mail server.
I have an ISP email account and a Gmail account. I only use my ISP email account for things like registering with amazon.com or my bank, because if my Gmail account password is hacked or stolen, I'm screwed. If my ISP email account password is hacked or stolen, at least I can call my ISP and have the password reset.
This issue seems like a big problem with web based email: no recourse if your account password is compromised.