And after they're through with the anti-virus scams, they should go after the CC companies for similar behavior with charging for "features" like "wallet protection," that you can't get cancelled without a major obstacle course. Not only that, they've a new tactic-- rather than charging you monthly they charge you yearly so it's less likely you'll notice the offending charge on your cards, plus the "nonrefundable" charge is in advance...
These tactics should be punished SEVERELY. $375K hell, more like $375M.
Yes, this was my thought-- is there any reason anyone should have to use Media Player (or want to?)? I stopped using it along with RealPlayer and QuickTime player years ago.
Now don't get me wrong. C is a great portable assembly language. It's close to the metal, widely known and easy to read. But as far as programming languages go, C feature poor.
I would agree with this-- and with all these now deprecated functions (replaced with "safe" ones) designed to eliminate programmer bad habits, it's become something of a nightmare...
I also spent much of the '80s in Forth. But as far as a teaching language, I'd say they ought to stick to Lisp for that sort of thing. They're similarly extensible, and I suspect Lisp will be more likely to stand the test of time...
Comments should say WHAT and WHY you are doing something not HOW you are doing it. The HOW is the code itself. If someone was to look at that code, do they know what your intent was? Were you looking for something that was exactly 7 days old, or something 7 days old or older.
Nice post. It is true that APL sends you to places you never go with any other language. And it is also true that this isn't necessarily a good thing.
My first language was APL on an IBM System/360 in about 1973. I recall one of the lab assistants had a workspace of text functions he'd created that some of us were looking at. One in particular, was designed to take a text string and reduce occurances of multiple spaces down to single spaces. The program was a one-liner, of about 120 characters. Several of us looking at it could see that it could be simplified from this 120 character monstrosity, and of course that it *should* be, so we set ourselves to the task. We divided up into a few groups, and an buddy and I worked on it for awhile and got it down to 14 characters. We concluded that was as good as it could get and were firmly convinced we would win the informal contest we were having. But then one of the other students showed us his result which was almost identical to ours but had it at 13 characters because he had noticed a logical not that could be combined with an operator in order to eliminate it. We were crushed because we worked so hard on it and were sure we had it aced...
But that was pretty typical with APL, you could spend a huge amount of time juggling array elements to be just so, in order to evaluate all the answers in parallel, when in any other language you would have just written a for loop with a few statements and been done with it. Not as challenging as APL, but as I said, that could very well be a Good Thing(TM)...
Plus, the varying quality of APL programmers meant that you may be looking at a 120 character monstrosity of obscure and unneccessary logic that could have been done more concisely in 13 characters...
APL may have compilers, but it often doesn't need them because the language is so terse that it spends very little time interpreting and most of its time in the core functions shuffling and manipulating arrays. At least that's the case if it's programmed by someone who understands the language and not someone trying to mimic a classic procedural interpreted language like Basic with it.
Many APL "interpreters" compile each line as they are entered, by converting it from parenthesis notation to RPN (the early STSC APLs for IBM mainframes did this, at any rate), so that it could execute it more quickly at runtime, and numeric data is converted to binary or floating point values. These "interpreters" when editing would decompile the stored RPN and recompile it within the line editor. The resultant "interpreted" execution then becomes simple push-push-call-push-call-push-call, etc.. The interpreted overhead is pretty minimal unless you're needlessly iterating rather than using the array capabilities of the language.
I see it now-- the new business model for games will be to embed advertising in the game itself and then allow it to be pirated. Those billboards in Sim 4 won't interfere with your ability to play or copy the game, they're just there to sell you other stuff you don't need, non-digital stuff you can't download from PirateBay, like graphics cards, video monitors, faster motherboards and diet sodas...
My oldest piece of gear used to be an LGP-30 vacuum tube computer from about 1959. I eventually gave it away because I didn't have the room for it, and never actually got it completely working (they were notorious for scratches on the drum by the heads if you turned it on too soon after you turned it off). Now, my oldest is a 1976 IMSAI w/floppy that I soldered together myself (and is still working, though finicky), and an IBM 5110 BASIC/APL. Will eBay the IMSAI one of these days when I get around to it. I also have several Atari 400s, 800s & Amigas, and an old Mac or two.
I'd just about kill for an original IBM 2741 terminal w/APL keyboard though.
Actually, it's quite possible you encountered one of these embittered persons who exhibited some of her own paranoias against you.
While it didn't happen to me personally, I had the occasion to observe an individual (female) who had an interaction with another individual (male) and completely misinterpreted the intent of what was actually an inadvertent action, and immediately flew off the handle and started yelling for the police, etc. It occurred at a social activity in which I was on the organization committee. Shortly thereafter the "offence" became considerably embellished to such an extent that people who weren't even at the event saw its description as completely implausible (including the police investigator, as it turned out). Several of us observed the whole thing from various perspectives and those of us who were the organizers were then involved in a somewhat drawn-out process of assessing, investigating and evaluating the situation, where several people immediately chose sides and were demanding that one or the other or both individuals be banned from future such activities.
The problem with the embittered personality (as it is called here), is they may be oversensitive to other people's actions and misinterpret intents, and unfortunately there may be a gaggle of bystanders who are themselves sensitive and may immediately presume the worst. It's unfortunate, but as some of these stories may show, it happens. At least psychologists are learning more about behavior and personality and may perhaps provide some useful education and diagnosis in the future which may mitigate such occurances.
Those of us with a more even temperment tend NOT to take offence where an action can potentially be inadvertent-- some people say things and the words that come out don't always convey their intended meanings, and some actions people take can be misinterpreted. I think it better to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not embittered or oversensitive in that regard. Not everyone deals with interactions that way, some are quick to take offence and may interpret innocent actions as threatening.
I wish these guys would remanufacture Polaroid Vectographic Film. While you can take digital stereo photos, and you can display them via various means on digital output devices, but the non-powered handheld way that the Vectograph displays stereo images is unique. See Here
Polaroid instant film is pretty mundane in comparison, though I've seen interesting experimental works done with 8x10 sheets of Polaroid instant that are a little interesting, anyway. I think you can peel the emulsion off and stick it to stuff. Try doing that with a digital camera...
First, you know in all of those products automatic updates can be turned off, right? You don't have to un-install them, the company is just trying to provide a service (and make sure they stay in your mind for such services).
Yeah, with registry hacks: Acrobat, or with this or that homegrown solution. There's no excuse for that-- Acrobat is now gone, and the alternative is quite a bit faster as well...
Second, Acrobat (reader), QT Player, RealAudio Player, Firefox, and Safari are already free, did you pay for them? If so, you got scammed son.
I didn't mean to imply they're not free-- but so are the alternatives so it's not like I'm saving money by using Acrobat Reader.
Third, you know browsers can handle all of those things but the editing, and ripping right? And I wouldn't be surprised if local versions of web services weren't made available at some point, browsers are very flexible and there are web based services for most all of these functions.
No, that's not correct. While there may be browser-based paint programs, show me the browser-based programs of the quality of Corel Painter, Z-Brush, Maya, Cubase, Pro-Tools, Sonar, Pinnacle Studio, Vegas Pro, Poser, etc. Given the speed of web-based tools of this nature, I'd have to say-- don't quit your day job.
Lastly, why would a BIOS browser OS preclude a monolithic OS as an alternate boot option?
Because it's cheaper not to include and have to support something I have no need for? If you're going to boot an alternative "monolithic" OS, exactly what was the point of a BIOS based browser again?
It must be time to go back and revisit why service-bureau computing waned in the face of the desktop machine-- people wanted more control over their data, people wanted more control over their computer performance, people wanted more control over their computer access, and people wanted more control over their privacy. "always-on" internet based computing requires a constant internet connection, a utility that does go down or get slow now and then, and doesn't do well in remote environments, including environments as remote as about 20 miles outside of town in rural areas.
But let's face it, most of the exciting stuff to do on a computer now is online.
Get a life. Most of the most boring and timewasting stuff to do on a computer is online. If that's what 90% of the "average" users are doing, you can have it. Most of the most useful things my computer does have little to do with networking:
- Listening to music
- Composing music
- Creating digital paintings
- Editing digital photos
- Editing digital videos
- Writing an article or book
- Writing software
- Ripping CDs to MP3s
If the internet went away tomorrow, I could still do all of these things and I don't care what Adobe, Quicktime, Realaudio, Microsoft, Mozilla or anyone else thinks about whether my software is "fully patched" or "up to date" or any other thing. My W98SE systems work about as good as my XP systems on the hardware they're on, thank you very much. Persistent reminders about available upgrades have caused me to uninstall Acrobat, Quicktime Player, Realaudio Player, Firefox, Safari, and probably a few other things in favor of readily available free alternatives that aren't such a pain in the ass. What little networking I do, I do in a sandbox anyway, otherwise it's too much like unprotected and anonymous sex with complete strangers-- somewhat like Twitter & Facebook...
However, if GM were to cry foul on used car sales, everyone and their mother would jump on them.
Where've you been? It's already happened. I just tried to resell my mom's 10 year old Chevy Lumina, and the rubber gaskets in the engine were made out of such cheap materials, the intake manifold gasket is now shot and they tell me the head gasket will be next in short order. It's worthless, even though it has less than 40K miles on it. Was it intentional by GM or incompetence? Either way, the car is more trouble than it's worth-- I wouldn't take it for free, as it will cost far more than it's worth to fix and you'll be constantly fixing it from now on.
Virtually all products are on their way towards being designed to be impossible to resell. Including automobiles-- and even now, after a few years the computers or batteries or some critical custom part becomes unavailable, and the plastic and rubber breaks down. Why would the car companies want to have to compete with their old models for your business? Of course, it's short sighted-- as the very reason I choose a car is often because I know the old models are still servicable. But businesses are short sighted about things like that-- as long as they get your money, they don't care if you think they are assholes.
So what do you do when all the game companies are making games that are completely useless if resold? Perhaps you'll go out and play stickball for a change...
Why? Again, because vendors insist that they be connected so they can VPN in and support them (often using LogMeIn, Webex etc).
Don't forget, it was CUSTOMER IT DEPARTMENTS that demanded they use the internet so they didn't have to support the obsolete and otherwise unused phone line, modem, and serial port support hardware previously used for remote support.
When the equipment was designed 10+ years ago, and the support contracts were written, noone ever heard of security updates because the equipment was NOT CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET. It was NOT DESIGNED to connect to the internet, period. The fact that it's even possible to connect it to the internet, is the fly in the ointment here. And what if the original manufacturer of the multimillion dollar equipment no longer exists yet the equipment works perfectly fine for the function that it was originally designed, and there's no budget for its replacement?
Why hasn't the internet kept pace with technology and made it impossible to hook ancient insecure gear up to it anyway?
This is also a problem with forums. There used to be one forum system, and it wasn't broke. It was called Usenet. Now however, there are zillions of them and many are redundant yet disconnected with each other. You need zillions of logins to work with them all. It's now horribly fragmented.
200 years ago we didn't have any of this crap, and survived just fine. Why are we so dependent on it now? Sure, I like some of the creature comforts, but if the lights all go out I'll just go outside and look at the stars for a change...
Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea if they just turned it all off at random intervals, and help us realize we don't have to and shouldn't be so dependent on it...
Strawman. If a program is tested on a platform that you use, but not on a platform that you don't use, then the latter won't affect the program's stability on the platform that you do use.
Not true. In particular, problems with wayward pointers are famous for showing up only under certain memory conditions, where testing on a wider variety of platforms will often help reveal.
That aside, Windows 9x is simply not a "perfectly good platform".
That may be, but I've monitored quite a few websites that track and show that Windows 9x remains a persistent platform. While it may be that there are now more W9x installations in virtual machines than as a primary OS, you can't ignore it any more than you can ignore that some percentage of the population is gay, just because they're a minority.
Point is, dropping support for older Windows versions decreases the amount of testing needed. That is the biggest value, not about utilizing newer APIs.
Oh, GREAT. Now you're telling us that less testing is better than more testing. No thanks, I'll use a browser that gets tested on a wide variety of operating system versions, if for no other reason than it'll make it more robust even if I'm using the latest and greatest and "most fully supported" OS version.
I won't use a browser that won't run on W98SE actually, as that is what most of my friends have (I run XP/SP3 and Linux). They rarely need any support fortunately, as it just works and works, and on 10+ year old 233MHZ/64M hardware. They're running FF 1.5 for the most part, but I'm going to recommend a switch to K-Meleon which hasn't become abandonware on perfectly good platforms..
Slashdot Mirror
And after they're through with the anti-virus scams, they should go after the CC companies for similar behavior with charging for "features" like "wallet protection," that you can't get cancelled without a major obstacle course. Not only that, they've a new tactic-- rather than charging you monthly they charge you yearly so it's less likely you'll notice the offending charge on your cards, plus the "nonrefundable" charge is in advance...
These tactics should be punished SEVERELY. $375K hell, more like $375M.
Yes, this was my thought-- is there any reason anyone should have to use Media Player (or want to?)? I stopped using it along with RealPlayer and QuickTime player years ago.
Now don't get me wrong. C is a great portable assembly language. It's close to the metal, widely known and easy to read. But as far as programming languages go, C feature poor.
I would agree with this-- and with all these now deprecated functions (replaced with "safe" ones) designed to eliminate programmer bad habits, it's become something of a nightmare...
I also spent much of the '80s in Forth. But as far as a teaching language, I'd say they ought to stick to Lisp for that sort of thing. They're similarly extensible, and I suspect Lisp will be more likely to stand the test of time...
Comments should say WHAT and WHY you are doing something not HOW you are doing it. The HOW is the code itself. If someone was to look at that code, do they know what your intent was? Were you looking for something that was exactly 7 days old, or something 7 days old or older.
Comments LIE. CODE never lies...
Nice post. It is true that APL sends you to places you never go with any other language. And it is also true that this isn't necessarily a good thing.
My first language was APL on an IBM System/360 in about 1973. I recall one of the lab assistants had a workspace of text functions he'd created that some of us were looking at. One in particular, was designed to take a text string and reduce occurances of multiple spaces down to single spaces. The program was a one-liner, of about 120 characters. Several of us looking at it could see that it could be simplified from this 120 character monstrosity, and of course that it *should* be, so we set ourselves to the task. We divided up into a few groups, and an buddy and I worked on it for awhile and got it down to 14 characters. We concluded that was as good as it could get and were firmly convinced we would win the informal contest we were having. But then one of the other students showed us his result which was almost identical to ours but had it at 13 characters because he had noticed a logical not that could be combined with an operator in order to eliminate it. We were crushed because we worked so hard on it and were sure we had it aced...
But that was pretty typical with APL, you could spend a huge amount of time juggling array elements to be just so, in order to evaluate all the answers in parallel, when in any other language you would have just written a for loop with a few statements and been done with it. Not as challenging as APL, but as I said, that could very well be a Good Thing(TM)...
Plus, the varying quality of APL programmers meant that you may be looking at a 120 character monstrosity of obscure and unneccessary logic that could have been done more concisely in 13 characters...
APL may have compilers, but it often doesn't need them because the language is so terse that it spends very little time interpreting and most of its time in the core functions shuffling and manipulating arrays. At least that's the case if it's programmed by someone who understands the language and not someone trying to mimic a classic procedural interpreted language like Basic with it.
Many APL "interpreters" compile each line as they are entered, by converting it from parenthesis notation to RPN (the early STSC APLs for IBM mainframes did this, at any rate), so that it could execute it more quickly at runtime, and numeric data is converted to binary or floating point values. These "interpreters" when editing would decompile the stored RPN and recompile it within the line editor. The resultant "interpreted" execution then becomes simple push-push-call-push-call-push-call, etc.. The interpreted overhead is pretty minimal unless you're needlessly iterating rather than using the array capabilities of the language.
I see it now-- the new business model for games will be to embed advertising in the game itself and then allow it to be pirated. Those billboards in Sim 4 won't interfere with your ability to play or copy the game, they're just there to sell you other stuff you don't need, non-digital stuff you can't download from PirateBay, like graphics cards, video monitors, faster motherboards and diet sodas...
My oldest piece of gear used to be an LGP-30 vacuum tube computer from about 1959. I eventually gave it away because I didn't have the room for it, and never actually got it completely working (they were notorious for scratches on the drum by the heads if you turned it on too soon after you turned it off). Now, my oldest is a 1976 IMSAI w/floppy that I soldered together myself (and is still working, though finicky), and an IBM 5110 BASIC/APL. Will eBay the IMSAI one of these days when I get around to it. I also have several Atari 400s, 800s & Amigas, and an old Mac or two.
I'd just about kill for an original IBM 2741 terminal w/APL keyboard though.
Actually, it's quite possible you encountered one of these embittered persons who exhibited some of her own paranoias against you.
While it didn't happen to me personally, I had the occasion to observe an individual (female) who had an interaction with another individual (male) and completely misinterpreted the intent of what was actually an inadvertent action, and immediately flew off the handle and started yelling for the police, etc. It occurred at a social activity in which I was on the organization committee. Shortly thereafter the "offence" became considerably embellished to such an extent that people who weren't even at the event saw its description as completely implausible (including the police investigator, as it turned out). Several of us observed the whole thing from various perspectives and those of us who were the organizers were then involved in a somewhat drawn-out process of assessing, investigating and evaluating the situation, where several people immediately chose sides and were demanding that one or the other or both individuals be banned from future such activities.
The problem with the embittered personality (as it is called here), is they may be oversensitive to other people's actions and misinterpret intents, and unfortunately there may be a gaggle of bystanders who are themselves sensitive and may immediately presume the worst. It's unfortunate, but as some of these stories may show, it happens. At least psychologists are learning more about behavior and personality and may perhaps provide some useful education and diagnosis in the future which may mitigate such occurances.
Those of us with a more even temperment tend NOT to take offence where an action can potentially be inadvertent-- some people say things and the words that come out don't always convey their intended meanings, and some actions people take can be misinterpreted. I think it better to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not embittered or oversensitive in that regard. Not everyone deals with interactions that way, some are quick to take offence and may interpret innocent actions as threatening.
Polaroid instant film is pretty mundane in comparison, though I've seen interesting experimental works done with 8x10 sheets of Polaroid instant that are a little interesting, anyway. I think you can peel the emulsion off and stick it to stuff. Try doing that with a digital camera...
Anyway, all the burglars I have heard of do not use lock-picking but rather brute force...
The bump-key issue is not about burglars, it's about neighborhood teenagers.
First, you know in all of those products automatic updates can be turned off, right? You don't have to un-install them, the company is just trying to provide a service (and make sure they stay in your mind for such services).
Yeah, with registry hacks: Acrobat, or with this or that homegrown solution. There's no excuse for that-- Acrobat is now gone, and the alternative is quite a bit faster as well...
Second, Acrobat (reader), QT Player, RealAudio Player, Firefox, and Safari are already free, did you pay for them? If so, you got scammed son.
I didn't mean to imply they're not free-- but so are the alternatives so it's not like I'm saving money by using Acrobat Reader.
Third, you know browsers can handle all of those things but the editing, and ripping right? And I wouldn't be surprised if local versions of web services weren't made available at some point, browsers are very flexible and there are web based services for most all of these functions.
No, that's not correct. While there may be browser-based paint programs, show me the browser-based programs of the quality of Corel Painter, Z-Brush, Maya, Cubase, Pro-Tools, Sonar, Pinnacle Studio, Vegas Pro, Poser, etc. Given the speed of web-based tools of this nature, I'd have to say-- don't quit your day job.
Lastly, why would a BIOS browser OS preclude a monolithic OS as an alternate boot option?
Because it's cheaper not to include and have to support something I have no need for? If you're going to boot an alternative "monolithic" OS, exactly what was the point of a BIOS based browser again?
It must be time to go back and revisit why service-bureau computing waned in the face of the desktop machine-- people wanted more control over their data, people wanted more control over their computer performance, people wanted more control over their computer access, and people wanted more control over their privacy. "always-on" internet based computing requires a constant internet connection, a utility that does go down or get slow now and then, and doesn't do well in remote environments, including environments as remote as about 20 miles outside of town in rural areas.
But let's face it, most of the exciting stuff to do on a computer now is online.
Get a life. Most of the most boring and timewasting stuff to do on a computer is online. If that's what 90% of the "average" users are doing, you can have it. Most of the most useful things my computer does have little to do with networking:
- Listening to music
- Composing music
- Creating digital paintings
- Editing digital photos
- Editing digital videos
- Writing an article or book
- Writing software
- Ripping CDs to MP3s
If the internet went away tomorrow, I could still do all of these things and I don't care what Adobe, Quicktime, Realaudio, Microsoft, Mozilla or anyone else thinks about whether my software is "fully patched" or "up to date" or any other thing. My W98SE systems work about as good as my XP systems on the hardware they're on, thank you very much. Persistent reminders about available upgrades have caused me to uninstall Acrobat, Quicktime Player, Realaudio Player, Firefox, Safari, and probably a few other things in favor of readily available free alternatives that aren't such a pain in the ass. What little networking I do, I do in a sandbox anyway, otherwise it's too much like unprotected and anonymous sex with complete strangers-- somewhat like Twitter & Facebook...
What jackass dubbed it the "Axis of Evil?"
However, if GM were to cry foul on used car sales, everyone and their mother would jump on them.
Where've you been? It's already happened. I just tried to resell my mom's 10 year old Chevy Lumina, and the rubber gaskets in the engine were made out of such cheap materials, the intake manifold gasket is now shot and they tell me the head gasket will be next in short order. It's worthless, even though it has less than 40K miles on it. Was it intentional by GM or incompetence? Either way, the car is more trouble than it's worth-- I wouldn't take it for free, as it will cost far more than it's worth to fix and you'll be constantly fixing it from now on.
Virtually all products are on their way towards being designed to be impossible to resell. Including automobiles-- and even now, after a few years the computers or batteries or some critical custom part becomes unavailable, and the plastic and rubber breaks down. Why would the car companies want to have to compete with their old models for your business? Of course, it's short sighted-- as the very reason I choose a car is often because I know the old models are still servicable. But businesses are short sighted about things like that-- as long as they get your money, they don't care if you think they are assholes.
So what do you do when all the game companies are making games that are completely useless if resold? Perhaps you'll go out and play stickball for a change...
because they patch it early and often, and it's very good at maintaining itself (updating when you restart, checking for plugin updates, etc.)
Huh. That's why I stopped using it. I thought it had been taken over by RealNetworks.
Why? Again, because vendors insist that they be connected so they can VPN in and support them (often using LogMeIn, Webex etc).
Don't forget, it was CUSTOMER IT DEPARTMENTS that demanded they use the internet so they didn't have to support the obsolete and otherwise unused phone line, modem, and serial port support hardware previously used for remote support.
When the equipment was designed 10+ years ago, and the support contracts were written, noone ever heard of security updates because the equipment was NOT CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET. It was NOT DESIGNED to connect to the internet, period. The fact that it's even possible to connect it to the internet, is the fly in the ointment here. And what if the original manufacturer of the multimillion dollar equipment no longer exists yet the equipment works perfectly fine for the function that it was originally designed, and there's no budget for its replacement?
Why hasn't the internet kept pace with technology and made it impossible to hook ancient insecure gear up to it anyway?
This is also a problem with forums. There used to be one forum system, and it wasn't broke. It was called Usenet. Now however, there are zillions of them and many are redundant yet disconnected with each other. You need zillions of logins to work with them all. It's now horribly fragmented.
200 years ago we didn't have any of this crap, and survived just fine. Why are we so dependent on it now? Sure, I like some of the creature comforts, but if the lights all go out I'll just go outside and look at the stars for a change...
Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea if they just turned it all off at random intervals, and help us realize we don't have to and shouldn't be so dependent on it...
Strawman. If a program is tested on a platform that you use, but not on a platform that you don't use, then the latter won't affect the program's stability on the platform that you do use.
Not true. In particular, problems with wayward pointers are famous for showing up only under certain memory conditions, where testing on a wider variety of platforms will often help reveal.
That aside, Windows 9x is simply not a "perfectly good platform".
That may be, but I've monitored quite a few websites that track and show that Windows 9x remains a persistent platform. While it may be that there are now more W9x installations in virtual machines than as a primary OS, you can't ignore it any more than you can ignore that some percentage of the population is gay, just because they're a minority.
This site has some statistics: , but leaves out mobile platforms for some reason-- I suspect many of those are less than the 0.1% attributed to W9x. But we don't care, we don't have to, we're MOZILLA...
Point is, dropping support for older Windows versions decreases the amount of testing needed. That is the biggest value, not about utilizing newer APIs.
Oh, GREAT. Now you're telling us that less testing is better than more testing. No thanks, I'll use a browser that gets tested on a wide variety of operating system versions, if for no other reason than it'll make it more robust even if I'm using the latest and greatest and "most fully supported" OS version.
I won't use a browser that won't run on W98SE actually, as that is what most of my friends have (I run XP/SP3 and Linux). They rarely need any support fortunately, as it just works and works, and on 10+ year old 233MHZ/64M hardware. They're running FF 1.5 for the most part, but I'm going to recommend a switch to K-Meleon which hasn't become abandonware on perfectly good platforms..
Given their well-known blatant and outrageous disregard for individual rights, anyone who would buy any service from AT&T deserves what they get.