My guess is that VB.NET gets a lot of search queries from people who aren't programmers but nevertheless are dabbling in it to try to get MS Office to do something it probably shouldn't really be doing anyway. So I'm sure it's a lot of "How to do X in VB.NET" search queries. Given that these people aren't programmers and that VB.NET isn't as simple as VB6*, I'm sure this means lots of searches.
*This is because Microsoft actually fixed a lot of problems with VB with VB.NET, but one of the consequences is the learning curve is now steeper. To the point where if you're going to do anything non-trivial on Windows using.NET, you'd be better off forgetting about VB investing the time in learning C# instead.
According to the fine article, apparently it was enough to put someone in the hospital in critical condition. Though to be honest, I'm not sure how that happened either unless perhaps that person had an allergic reaction of some kind.
Actually, it's just history repeating itself. IE5 was popular with developers back in the day because it was the first browser to have CSS support that wasn't terrible, support fun toys like favicons, and also basically invented Ajax (though it wasn't called that until later). Microsoft also pushed some other stuff like ActiveX which was perhaps a bit too propriety to take over the world, but still managed to gain some traction.
How can they reasonably switch everything over to the new model? My Windows 10 laptop is old enough that I don't expect any driver updates. The graphics driver I'm using now actually targets Vista, of all things. Maybe Windows 10 +1 they can fully deprecate the current driver model, but Windows 10 is going to be stuck supporting both models indefinitely. Granted, the new Microsoft doesn't really seem to care as much about breaking people's computers, but I don't think they'd get away with this one.
This is possible for classics that have such a huge following and aftermarket support that you can literally buy new aftermarket parts for literally every piece of the car and it's just a matter of putting it all together. The problem is, of course, making it legal to drive on the roads since you don't have a VIN or title.
Not really. Go find a picture of any of the current "retro" muscle cars parked next to one of the original classics - the new models are comically huge in comparison. They don't look big to our modern eyes because everything else has grown in size so much. Even a lot of the land barges from the 1970's aren't even as large compared to modern cars. They may be a bit longer, but the modern car is just as wide and much taller, and weighs more too.
It's not just the Americans either. The largest Honda from 40 years ago (the Accord Wagon) is smaller than the smallest Honda today (the Fit) in every dimension.
The Subaru Brat (what I assume you are thinking of) got around it by literally bolting seats into bed.
The way to get around it now is to build your pickups in the US, since it only applies to trucks that are actually imported, not the "import" brands. So it really only serves to keep out more niche vehicles that are sold overseas that wouldn't be sold in the numbers worth building in the US, but possibly worth importing in smallish numbers if they weren't slapped with a 25% tax.
The one close me is full of upper-class housewives during the lunch hour that obviously don't have anything else to but go hang out at Olive Garden. On the upside, they tend to not make a lot of noise even with the constant chatter the noise level is very tolerable. It doesn't hurt that the decor is kind of old school and isn't all hard surfaces either. The breadsticks are good and the other food is decent, the biggest problem for a work lunch is that the staff is clearly used to a clientele that clearly is not in any hurry so it's just too slow to get in and out in a reasonable amount of time.
I'm kind of torn on the carpeting thing too. The modern vinyl planking floors are incredibly practical - durable, easy to clean, don't show wear, relatively inexpensive (but admittedly pricier than carpet). But I'm sure if I put it in, I wouldn't be happy with the acoustics. So the carpet has stayed in place, at least for now. I suppose I could try putting in the new flooring and doing something like putting acoustic tiles on the ceiling.
Actually, a big part of the problem with the Honda transmissions isn't outsourcing the development, but rather that they insisted on designing and building their own transmissions rather than using someone else's design (or even just buying someone else's transmission). Like a lot of NIH syndrome, this resulted in a crappier product for no real good reason. Note this really is only a problem for their automatics - their manuals are fine.
Nissan's problems are mostly related to their CVT's. They've gotten better as the technology has matured, though the other option they've used is also dumping the CVT option on some models and going back to a conventional automatic which they've usually done a decent job with.
The biggest problem is "bigger is better" attitude when it comes to the number of gears, part of which is driven by MPG requirements. After about 6 gears you really hit the point of diminishing returns for a regular car and after that you're just making the transmission more complex and fragile for only a very modest improvement to mileage and bragging rights.
With most utilities you are in debt. They provide you the electricity/water/gas/whatever, and after a certain period they bill you for what you used. Since you already used it, you are in debt and the bill is to settle the debt. If you don't pay, they'll send collections after you. That's why some things like prepaid cell phone plans are not reported because there's no debt. If you decide to stop paying they'll just cut the service and that's the end of it.
Black Friday isn't even that old in the US. It's been around a long while in the sense it's known that the Friday after Thanksgiving is a popular day to go shopping, but it's really only the last 10-15 years or so when the retailers have been hyping it up into a major event. Though it seems to be dying the last couple of years for a variety of reasons - people buying online, the retailers pushing it to be a week and the entire month of November which just means people spread out their spending, and people not wanting to deal with the crowds and lines. Finally, the big thing is that people are realizing it's all hype and games and the deals aren't even that good. As you say, if you want a deal wait until it's January and the stores are actually trying to clear out some inventory.
I still see little reason to replace my PC though it's 6 years old. I've upgraded the graphics card somewhat recently and put in a SSD. But the Core i7 processor, 16 GB of ram, motherboard, and all the other bits are original from 2012 and and still compare well to a new PC. The only real innovations seem to be increasing the core count, and some things like NVMe which this motherboard is too old to support.
They've mucked around with the Thinkpad keyboards too. They are still some of the best laptop keyboards out there, but that's more of a statement about how crappy other laptop keyboards are (especially Apple). It's too bad because they used to have excellent keyboards and a layout that was as close to a standard keyboard as possible which made switching between a Thinkpad and a regular desktop almost seamless.
Besides the Windows key, some of the fancy ones with customizable keys, backlighting, macros, and stuff like that require a driver (since the "smarts" are done by the driver and not in the keyboard's firmware). Most often those are Windows only. Granted, these also tend to be gamer keyboards so Windows is more or less expected.
The place I worked previously had piles of those. They used to have a local company build whitebox PC's and that was the standard issue keyboard. They weren't terrible, but looked and felt like a knock-off of the Model M. They were kind of mushy but otherwise had good feel, travel, and spacing. Beige dominated, especially since they held out switching from biege cases as long as possible, but there were a few black versions around too. They also came with a Keytronic mouse which was absolute garbage.
They eventually switched to Lenovo, and to be honest the standard issue Lenovo corporate keyboard isn't bad as inexpensive keyboards go. I have one at work as it's the best I can do without going through the rigamarole of getting a "special" keyboard. Otherwise, it's a choice between what's in the supply cabinet - various Microsoft models (some are decent depending on the model), and Dell (mostly crap, except for some old PS/2 models).
It works by using an electric field to generate nitrogen ions which are then shot out the back to generate thrust. So it's more similar to a rocket than something like a propeller plane which pushes air around. So unless the wind blowing past your windmill is made up of charged ions - in which case you could generate electricity just by letting the ions pass through a loop of wire, it's not going to work in reverse.
I've actually been thinking about it and so far I've not come up with a way to get electricity from moving air without moving parts, even if the stipulation of "useful amounts of electricity" is removed. The best I've been able to come up with is something like a plate the wind could push on which would compress a piezo-electric material which would create electricity. And technically that would have moving parts.
Toyota has been on a long downhill side. They peaked sometime in the mid-90's. The 1992-1996 Camry is probably the best car they'll ever build. Nowadays they seem complacent, assuming that they can build whatever and people will buy it because it has a Toyota badge on it. That's not to say Toyotas are bad cars if you can put with the increasingly bizarre styling, but the years of decontenting is obvious.
The ones to keep an eye on are the Koreans as they seem to be trying really hard and they've made huge improvements over what they were selling years ago. I don't think they are quite there yet, but they could very well do to Toyota the same thing Toyota did to GM back in the 80's.
The funny thing about GM is they've actually done a pretty decent job on some of their newer cars, but no one has noticed because everyone has completely written them off.
And that's only if they have battery backup for the digital line. My DSL modem is plugged into my UPS. Years ago, it was always amusing to be IM'ing people that my power went out - well so long as the UPS lasted that is. Now when the power goes out, the DSL almost always dies too, so I assume the VOIP will also be dead.
Slashdot Mirror
Chrome OS?
My guess is that VB.NET gets a lot of search queries from people who aren't programmers but nevertheless are dabbling in it to try to get MS Office to do something it probably shouldn't really be doing anyway. So I'm sure it's a lot of "How to do X in VB.NET" search queries. Given that these people aren't programmers and that VB.NET isn't as simple as VB6*, I'm sure this means lots of searches.
*This is because Microsoft actually fixed a lot of problems with VB with VB.NET, but one of the consequences is the learning curve is now steeper. To the point where if you're going to do anything non-trivial on Windows using .NET, you'd be better off forgetting about VB investing the time in learning C# instead.
According to the fine article, apparently it was enough to put someone in the hospital in critical condition. Though to be honest, I'm not sure how that happened either unless perhaps that person had an allergic reaction of some kind.
Actually, it's just history repeating itself. IE5 was popular with developers back in the day because it was the first browser to have CSS support that wasn't terrible, support fun toys like favicons, and also basically invented Ajax (though it wasn't called that until later). Microsoft also pushed some other stuff like ActiveX which was perhaps a bit too propriety to take over the world, but still managed to gain some traction.
In many ways, Chrome is the new IE6.
Well there's IceCat. It's basically the GNU version of Firefox, but without the bullshit and is open source and completely free software.
Unfortunately for those not using Linux, there's no official binaries so you pretty much have to build it yourself.
Hey, it's a Bond movie. Do you really think 007 has a cutting laser in his watch too?
How can they reasonably switch everything over to the new model? My Windows 10 laptop is old enough that I don't expect any driver updates. The graphics driver I'm using now actually targets Vista, of all things. Maybe Windows 10 +1 they can fully deprecate the current driver model, but Windows 10 is going to be stuck supporting both models indefinitely. Granted, the new Microsoft doesn't really seem to care as much about breaking people's computers, but I don't think they'd get away with this one.
This is possible for classics that have such a huge following and aftermarket support that you can literally buy new aftermarket parts for literally every piece of the car and it's just a matter of putting it all together. The problem is, of course, making it legal to drive on the roads since you don't have a VIN or title.
Not really. Go find a picture of any of the current "retro" muscle cars parked next to one of the original classics - the new models are comically huge in comparison. They don't look big to our modern eyes because everything else has grown in size so much. Even a lot of the land barges from the 1970's aren't even as large compared to modern cars. They may be a bit longer, but the modern car is just as wide and much taller, and weighs more too.
It's not just the Americans either. The largest Honda from 40 years ago (the Accord Wagon) is smaller than the smallest Honda today (the Fit) in every dimension.
The Subaru Brat (what I assume you are thinking of) got around it by literally bolting seats into bed.
The way to get around it now is to build your pickups in the US, since it only applies to trucks that are actually imported, not the "import" brands. So it really only serves to keep out more niche vehicles that are sold overseas that wouldn't be sold in the numbers worth building in the US, but possibly worth importing in smallish numbers if they weren't slapped with a 25% tax.
The one close me is full of upper-class housewives during the lunch hour that obviously don't have anything else to but go hang out at Olive Garden. On the upside, they tend to not make a lot of noise even with the constant chatter the noise level is very tolerable. It doesn't hurt that the decor is kind of old school and isn't all hard surfaces either. The breadsticks are good and the other food is decent, the biggest problem for a work lunch is that the staff is clearly used to a clientele that clearly is not in any hurry so it's just too slow to get in and out in a reasonable amount of time.
I'm kind of torn on the carpeting thing too. The modern vinyl planking floors are incredibly practical - durable, easy to clean, don't show wear, relatively inexpensive (but admittedly pricier than carpet). But I'm sure if I put it in, I wouldn't be happy with the acoustics. So the carpet has stayed in place, at least for now. I suppose I could try putting in the new flooring and doing something like putting acoustic tiles on the ceiling.
Actually, a big part of the problem with the Honda transmissions isn't outsourcing the development, but rather that they insisted on designing and building their own transmissions rather than using someone else's design (or even just buying someone else's transmission). Like a lot of NIH syndrome, this resulted in a crappier product for no real good reason. Note this really is only a problem for their automatics - their manuals are fine.
Nissan's problems are mostly related to their CVT's. They've gotten better as the technology has matured, though the other option they've used is also dumping the CVT option on some models and going back to a conventional automatic which they've usually done a decent job with.
The biggest problem is "bigger is better" attitude when it comes to the number of gears, part of which is driven by MPG requirements. After about 6 gears you really hit the point of diminishing returns for a regular car and after that you're just making the transmission more complex and fragile for only a very modest improvement to mileage and bragging rights.
The Dodge colt is just a rebadged Mitsubishi.
If you have money and you would like to continue to have money, I wouldn't follow this advice.
With most utilities you are in debt. They provide you the electricity/water/gas/whatever, and after a certain period they bill you for what you used. Since you already used it, you are in debt and the bill is to settle the debt. If you don't pay, they'll send collections after you. That's why some things like prepaid cell phone plans are not reported because there's no debt. If you decide to stop paying they'll just cut the service and that's the end of it.
Black Friday isn't even that old in the US. It's been around a long while in the sense it's known that the Friday after Thanksgiving is a popular day to go shopping, but it's really only the last 10-15 years or so when the retailers have been hyping it up into a major event. Though it seems to be dying the last couple of years for a variety of reasons - people buying online, the retailers pushing it to be a week and the entire month of November which just means people spread out their spending, and people not wanting to deal with the crowds and lines. Finally, the big thing is that people are realizing it's all hype and games and the deals aren't even that good. As you say, if you want a deal wait until it's January and the stores are actually trying to clear out some inventory.
I still see little reason to replace my PC though it's 6 years old. I've upgraded the graphics card somewhat recently and put in a SSD. But the Core i7 processor, 16 GB of ram, motherboard, and all the other bits are original from 2012 and and still compare well to a new PC. The only real innovations seem to be increasing the core count, and some things like NVMe which this motherboard is too old to support.
They've mucked around with the Thinkpad keyboards too. They are still some of the best laptop keyboards out there, but that's more of a statement about how crappy other laptop keyboards are (especially Apple). It's too bad because they used to have excellent keyboards and a layout that was as close to a standard keyboard as possible which made switching between a Thinkpad and a regular desktop almost seamless.
Besides the Windows key, some of the fancy ones with customizable keys, backlighting, macros, and stuff like that require a driver (since the "smarts" are done by the driver and not in the keyboard's firmware). Most often those are Windows only. Granted, these also tend to be gamer keyboards so Windows is more or less expected.
The place I worked previously had piles of those. They used to have a local company build whitebox PC's and that was the standard issue keyboard. They weren't terrible, but looked and felt like a knock-off of the Model M. They were kind of mushy but otherwise had good feel, travel, and spacing. Beige dominated, especially since they held out switching from biege cases as long as possible, but there were a few black versions around too. They also came with a Keytronic mouse which was absolute garbage.
They eventually switched to Lenovo, and to be honest the standard issue Lenovo corporate keyboard isn't bad as inexpensive keyboards go. I have one at work as it's the best I can do without going through the rigamarole of getting a "special" keyboard. Otherwise, it's a choice between what's in the supply cabinet - various Microsoft models (some are decent depending on the model), and Dell (mostly crap, except for some old PS/2 models).
It works by using an electric field to generate nitrogen ions which are then shot out the back to generate thrust. So it's more similar to a rocket than something like a propeller plane which pushes air around. So unless the wind blowing past your windmill is made up of charged ions - in which case you could generate electricity just by letting the ions pass through a loop of wire, it's not going to work in reverse.
I've actually been thinking about it and so far I've not come up with a way to get electricity from moving air without moving parts, even if the stipulation of "useful amounts of electricity" is removed. The best I've been able to come up with is something like a plate the wind could push on which would compress a piezo-electric material which would create electricity. And technically that would have moving parts.
Toyota has been on a long downhill side. They peaked sometime in the mid-90's. The 1992-1996 Camry is probably the best car they'll ever build. Nowadays they seem complacent, assuming that they can build whatever and people will buy it because it has a Toyota badge on it. That's not to say Toyotas are bad cars if you can put with the increasingly bizarre styling, but the years of decontenting is obvious.
The ones to keep an eye on are the Koreans as they seem to be trying really hard and they've made huge improvements over what they were selling years ago. I don't think they are quite there yet, but they could very well do to Toyota the same thing Toyota did to GM back in the 80's.
The funny thing about GM is they've actually done a pretty decent job on some of their newer cars, but no one has noticed because everyone has completely written them off.
Keep in mind that Windows 3.1 was useless by itself. You also had to buy MS-DOS.
And that's only if they have battery backup for the digital line. My DSL modem is plugged into my UPS. Years ago, it was always amusing to be IM'ing people that my power went out - well so long as the UPS lasted that is. Now when the power goes out, the DSL almost always dies too, so I assume the VOIP will also be dead.