That is essentially what the compatibility reporter extensions does though it also allows you to report to Mozilla whether a flagged extension works or not.
"The Baroness is also former head of the British Joint Intelligence Committee... "
You'd think the Baroness would know better than to use an over sized can; perhaps this was plan B with plan A being the use of Destro's head. Can you imagine how they would have reacted to that guy's noggin?
I can practically hear Cobra Commander screaming about idiots from here!
From the end of the article, " Specifically, Nevercookie prevents abuse to both the Adobe Flash Local Storage Object (LSO) and Microsoft's Silverlight Isolated Storage (MIS)." "
Doesn't BetterPrivacy already eliminate LSOs and other stored data?
I don't have Silverlight so I don't know if it eliminates that data but unless these "Evercookies" are somehow different than "Supercookies" you can eliminate this issue right now.
I don't know how that porn comment should be taken. He may very well be completely against sexually explicit material and on a crusade to ban it from the company's products but then what major company who isn't in the adult entertainment industry is publicly pro porn? It's a politically toxic subject that most public entities are against when it comes up.
That being the case, I don't believe he is out to actively prevent people from accessing porn and the comment either didn't come out right or is being misinterpreted. Here is how I see it in the context of the discussion.
"Freedom from programs that steal your private data, freedom from programs that trash your battery, freedom from porn."
The common thread between the first two is that they are both things that are unexpected and you don't want so presumably so is the third. Contextually, I think "freedom from porn" means freedom from unwanted exposure to porn. You can run into pornographic content when you don't necessarily want to online so I think what Jobs is getting at is you won't find it in the App Store just like you won't find the other two negative kinds of programs.
This isn't at all unprecedented, you won't find pornographic magazines sitting in the racks at Target or Wal-Mart or find XXX movies in their DVD section. If you want to take it to electronic stores, you won't find XXX movies at Amazon or those crazy sexually explicit games on Steam.
The argument is usually "clearly mark the section as adult" and "put in access controls" Those things still expose you to porn in that you know it's there, right behind that Adult button and that alone makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I'm not anti-adult material in any way but if I drive down the road and see some kind of adult entertainment shop amongst the other kinds of businesses it stands out. You can't see inside but you know what's in there. Porn, in a way, is like drugs. Even though it's widely consumed it's just not something that's generally put in public since it's considered a very personal and private thing. There is nothing at all unreasonable about saying no adult content in the App Store.
At some point in the past an Apple exec (possible Jobs) said the iPhone OS platform is being used differently than traditional PC platforms so far as how people use it to get at data. Rather than hit a search engine to find things, people on iPhone OS prefer to use specialty apps built around gathering and manipulating specific data sets.
The point he was trying to convey, I think, is that the public can rest assured that the App Store will not carry programs to help people find porn. However, as long as they're bundling a web browser that can play video (he's rallying against Flash, not web video) and iPod capabilities you're certainly free to access all the porn you like the old fashioned way, by specifically seeking it out or loading it from your computer.
If Apple starts including filters (beyond parental controls) to scrub web content or forces you to browse through an Apple proxy server or something then I'll see a problem but right now I just see a widely accepted business practice.
I've only used Bing a few times as I see no compelling reason to not use Google but your Honda Civic test sounded odd to me so I decided to reproduce it myself.
I typed Honda Civic into Google in one tab and then opened Bing in another and typed Honda Civic. You are correct in that it does provide information about the Honda Civic, Used Civics, Manuals, etc.. but the way you presented the information leads one to believe that Bing is providing a mish mash of links/data but that's not what's happening at all.
Google provides results in the flat way that everybody knows, it simply presents what it thinks are the most relevant links based on your search query. It then presents other possibly relevant search queries as a footer to the search results.
Bing takes the approach of providing the user with what it deems are the most relevant categorized search results based on the original query. In other words, it's not just jumbling used cars and manuals in with product information, it clearly categorized the results into Used Civics, Manuals, Product information, etc.. and provided a link to see more results like those after the top hits in each category.
I didn't spend much time on this comparing each specific category result on each engine but they seemed to provide similar results in each category based on a quick glance at the top hits.
Bing, Google, whatever. They all find information. Pick the layout you like best, the one you think provides you with better results or the one from the company you hate the least.
Personally, I'll stick with Google just because it seems smarter and has more conveniences. The ability to quickly solve a math equation or get a word definition with just a single search query, for example. Then there's the awesome freebies like 411-GOOG; I used that when my battery died one day to call around for quotes to decide if I should just get a jump or buy a new one from AAA.
Google is better at figuring out what you meant when you misspell. I typed in the name of a local pizza joint to see if they'd both find it. I inserted a simple misspelling (one letter added) on Bing and it couldn't find any results. I then typed the same misspelling into Google and it gave me the result I wanted with the misspelling as well as providing me a "did you mean?" link with the proper spelling.
Bing did find it when I provided the proper spelling but the place has an odd name that's easy to get wrong. Google would have found exactly what I wanted where Bing would essentially be useless unless I manually played with alternate spellings.
Bing wins on pointless visual fluff but Google is just smarter about helping you find what you want as quickly as possible, IMO.
'"What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue. We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there,"
Worms! They'll Jazzercise the muscle tissue! Why, by the time they're finished it'll be as strong and flexible as Hercules and Gumby combined!
The problem I have is that on my phone the web browser is bound to the up direction on the circular directional wheel... With the OK button in the middle. I have frequently hit the up direction accidentally when I meant to press OK. And that launches the web browser. It doesn't ask for confirmation... Just pops up the web browser and immediately starts loading a page.
This is the first I've heard of this practice and I know I accidentally called up a data app using the wheel by accident recently so I checked my bills but there are no data charges on it. Maybe it's because I'm one of those crazy "telephones make phone calls" people and still use a Razr.
Being the kind who would rather be safe than sorry and remembering my old moto phone allowed me to customize what each of those wheel buttons did, I went to go and change it. Trouble is, that phone was bought before Verizon started forcing their standard user interface onto all phone models.
Under the forced Verizon UI the only wheel button that is allowed to be modified is the down button which doesn't map to any of their services by default so not only do you get charged if you accidentally hit the button but you can't even remap or disable the button to ensure you never accidentally press it!
Worse still, according to TFA even if you specifically call Verizon and tell them to disable all data services the very act of pressing the button only to get a message saying you can't access that results in the fee being applied because data was technically transmitted.
I was fully prepared to contact the the FCC, the FTC, the BBB and my government reps about this if I had actually seen these charges but since I haven't I can't verify that this problem actually exists.
If you have been bitten by this then by all means contact the folks above because that's about as abusively scammed as you can get by a major company.
"Jail" for a corporation should mean that all assets are frozen and all business activities are forced to halt for the same number of days that a real person would have been incarcerated.
The problem is that you'd be punishing a lot more people than those at Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't just sell operating systems for home computers; they sell and support a large number of business applications to a HUGE number of businesses. If Microsoft "went offline" for even just a few months, there'd be huge ripples throughout all sectors of the economy. Imagine if a critical security flaw were found in Windows, or IIS, or SQL Server and Microsoft couldn't patch it because they were "in jail". Just because you might not use MS products doesn't mean you don't do business with someone who does. It would be a disaster.
This, to me, sounds like the system that brought us the notion of "too big to fail"
Corporations should never have been able to get into to that position but it is possible to reel them in with enough political and populist will.
That's neither here nor there. I would address the subject of "corporate prison" or "corporate execution" in the following way.
A company sentenced to termination would have all assets liquidated and distributed. First priority is to pay off all obligations to the rank and file employees (pensions, benefits, remainder of the year's salary, things of that nature) and any outstanding debts. Anything left over would be distributed amongst the share holders since they're essentially just a bunch of rich gamblers playing an inherently risky game. It's not like this would happen overnight and they wouldn't have time to get out.
None of the distribution would apply to any members of the executive team, their salaries, bonuses, golden parachutes, stocks or what have you are forfeit as they are, essentially, the criminal minds behind the operation. Ideally, I'd like to see their personal assets seized, liquidated and redistributed along with the corporate assets.
In the case of technology companies who provide ongoing services to their customers, be it software patches or replacement parts; all source code, patents, design schematics, etc.. would be released into the public domain providing free market opportunities to service the markets that were left without support and/or provide competition to the remaining players in the market. This should result in plenty of players ready to service the departed corporation's customers rather rapidly.
Clients may have had long term contracts or what have you and would be forced to incur additional expenses as a result but that could just as easily have happen if the company declared bankruptcy or a disaster happened. With all info on the products now public they would have the option of bringing service in-house if they so chose.
Utility industries would be a bit more difficult to deal with but I'd prefer the state take them over with responsibility only to maintain the infrastructure while generating revenue by leasing access out to businesses who wish to compete for customers. Exceptions could be made to provide cheap or at cost service to other state entities (anything tax funded, basically).
Much of the above is execution, the jailing could simply involve the public domaining of their existing IP. The corporation is still in business but is now subject to full out competition and any client who no longer wishes to do business with "a felon" can rapidly make that choice without concern about product transition periods or expenses.
I'm (probably obviously) not an expert by any means or even an expert in training. I'm just another citizen with an opinion on how our society can be a better place.
If P2P has been an "underground" phenomenon where consumers were distributing "their" bandwidth to share files and ISPs have generally not been very happy about it; how do things change now that this new company wants to pay consumers to do the same thing for legal content so they can make a profit?
Commercial bandwidth is expensive and this company is basically saying they'll do an end run around having to pay for it by giving consumers what will no doubt be chump change while they pocket the rest.
It seems to me that consumers don't even have the right to be profiting off the bandwidth they are getting from their ISP because that's not the terms under which they agreed to use it. It's one thing to share but quite another to resell.
I think bandwidth caps are a load of crap as much as the next guy but this seems like a clear violation of the ISP's rights.
Simply put, the ad revenue on Hulu is much, much less than on TV. Sure, it beats piracy (a little money and control over how long your content is on there) but if people were to cancel cable or watch Hulu on their Xboxes more, both cable/satellite providers and the content providers themselves would be unhappy.
Very true.
However, this would seem to be the very definition of how the free market is supposed to work. Customers want Internet based television; prefer it over cable/satellite.
Consumers steadily begin to use the net more. Hulu can then begin to charge more for ads while broadcast TV stations lower their rates.
I would think advertisers would prefer Hulu simply because their ads can not be skipped over and users can't just change the channel during the break. That suggests they can charge more for the ads in such a business model since the ads are more effective. End result, less ad volume (compared to broadcast TV) and happier viewers or the same ad volume with more profits.
It seems the cable and satellite TV providers are the ones that lose here but why should NBC/FOX care about them? The cable providers are already in a favorable position as the access point for new media distribution. If TV as a service goes the way of the dodo then they are free to charge more for Internet access provided they ditch the stupid caps.
As long as content providers keep trying to fight customer demand they will continue to miss out on the revenue opportunities that exist. As for copyright infringement, that'll always be around but they can minimize the impact it has by not driving consumers towards it out of an unwillingness to change.
Some that popped out at me: They now seem to be adopting a few Google Chrome ideas such top of the window tabs and the search box now auto suggests sites as Google's browser does... didn't Google take a lot of fire for that? Will Apple allow you to turn it off?
On the Windows side, they are now using standard Windows... windows (titlebar, scrollbar, etc..) to give it a more native appearance as well as native font rendering with Apple's font rendering still available as a toggle.
They claim to have first browser support for HTML 5 offline and have integrated an sql-like database (that is user accessible and query-able) for holding everything that's needed to run advanced web apps offline.
KDE 4, MacOSX, Windows 7, Windows Vista... Too much bling and not enough customisation in the UI for me.
You think Mac OS X has too much visual eye candy? Really?
That's interesting because a lot of the Mac users I encounter think Mac OS X is very dull looking. My own system has the graphite appearance on (the one visual option Apple gives you) and that's just a lot of gray. Even the folders are a muted, flat blue-gray color in Leopard.
I actually think Apple needs to crank it up to compete with Vista because that UI is visual tour de force in Aero mode. In basic mode, on the other hand, the UI just looks awful; awash in a hellish sea of oversized light blue gradient. That was Win 7 in a virtual appliance.
I like the OS X use of animation but the overall "bling factor" is quite low.
If users have to pick a browser they will talk about it and some will like a browser and others will like other browsers and they will do this thing Microsoft hates called "compete". Eventually different browsers will develop different reputations based upon which ones best satisfy users and those are the browsers that will be the most popular.
How is this situation different than what exists right now without bundles? Firefox has achieved ~10% adoption rate at the expense of IE without any bundles (unless you want to count Linux distributions).
Bundling is an advantage as it equals guaranteed distribution but word of mouth doesn't require bundling.
Here's the problem with that. It requires constant vigilance and work on the part of the EU. Who tests IE's compliance? Will those people be bribed? Will they become lax after a few years allowing MS to go back to business as usual? How much time and effort needs to be put in to sustain this forever? It is fine in the short term, but does not solve the problem in the long term.
If all the EU is interested in is making a quick ruling and then patting themselves on the back for a job well done then they are wasting resources on pointless theatrics.
As far as I'm concerned if a government is going to step in and regulate then they better be ready to commit the resources to proper enforcement.
How difficult would it really be? If the Slashdot crowd hears about MS shenanigans then it's not exactly a big secret and one government official should be able to confirm or deny the reports. When it comes to bribery; not much can be done about that.
Once all the incompatible sites are universally broken then you've essentially restored balance and Microsoft would then have to convince web developers to ignore Firefox, Safari, the mobile browsers based on Webkit and Opera, etc.. to pick the proprietary Micrsoft technologies again.
I don't think it'll be an issue this time around since the market is a different place than it was in the 90s.
Then again, maybe I just don't understand the problem because based on that criteria it shouldn't be a problem right now...
I fail to see how forcing the bundling of a different browser(s) solves the problem. It will only result in a worsened out of box experience for the end user (which is already incredibly horrid when it comes to big box Windows PCs) in that it forces them to make an uninformed decision the first time they want to connect to the web.
If the user knows the difference between browsers, it's a non-issue since they can just go download their choice straight away which will usually result in it becoming default during the installation. Problem solved. If they have no idea they'll just be irked and pick the first one on the list.
The solution, IMO, would seem to be forcing Microsoft to ditch the "compatibility mode" in IE and stick to the standards so that new IE is as broken on sites coded to work with previous versions of IE as any other browser. Then, prohibit them from making any further "extensions" to the specs which caused the problem to begin with.
A unified, standard plug-in model to prohibit the use of ActiveX on web sites would also be nice.
Such a decision may wreak havoc with many websites but that's the price of progress and in the end it means all browsers can compete strictly on their merits.
I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent from the main topic here (shocking for Slashdot I'm sure).
On the topic of ad blockers I'm curious as to just how the ad model works. On the one hand I know that clicking an ad generates a click-through which generates revenue.
However, ad blocker or not I'm certain that I won't be clicking on ads because I'm not a good little consumer drone and really don't care about what's trying to be sold to me.
I shop when I need something at which point research, not advertisements, point me to the best product and I then know exactly what I want.
From the tone of website owners who dislike ad blockers it sounds as though the mere act of blocking ads from being shown damages the site's revenue. I'm presuming that people paying for ads or companies that serve ads track their distribution by the number of times an ad is loaded by a certain site or page.
My question here is, if Adblock works by blocking the actual loading of the ad by the server thus denying revenue to a website why can't it be designed to load the ad but simply not display it? Would this not prevent websites from losing revenue to ad blockers?
In the end, all I want is to not see annoying flashing, blinking, video animated crap in loud colors all over my screen when I'm trying to read. My goal is not to deny a site revenue. I don't imagine there are many people out to intentionally damage a site's revenue but they hate the way advertisements are presented.
How would loading the ads but not displaying them hurt either A) the ability of Adblock to function or B) a site's revenue stream presuming people are like me and would never click an ad to begin with?
You want to talk about an organization that screws everything up? Let me tell you about this company I used to work for... How many people have stories like that?
Corruption? Come on. No sane person can say private industry is free of corruption and mean it.
Private industry is not intrinsically more efficient than government.
The only operational difference between the two, as far as I'm concerned, is that government's mandate is to provide a service within the budget granted while private industry is tasked with providing a service in budget AND with a profit margin.
The other differences are procedural and irrelevant since procedures can be changed with effort.
If those who grew up with color TV dream in color and those who grew up with black and white TV dream in black and white; does that means those who grew up reading books dream in illustration and text?
People keep accusing Mac users (I use a Mac laptop and an XP tower myself) of being lax on security but what exactly does this mean and what exactly are "we" doing wrong?
I don't run anti-virus on my Mac but I do run it on my PC. In all the years of running it on the PC I've never once had it detect anything and the only thing the malware scanners have ever flagged are cookies and Win MRU files; even when I slacked off and didn't scan for six months or more. Prior to that I used Windows 95/98 for many years without an AV program at all; never had an issue.
Security (for a home desktop) is not a difficult thing to maintain. I've basically lived by the rules I learned from watching Leo Laporte on "The Net" on C/Net TV back when I dialed up to the Internet using my 14.4 fax/modem and and Netscape Navigator 2.0 and RealPlayer were a big deal... Don't open attachments you weren't expecting, don't download files from sites you don't trust, keep your software up-to-date, use a firewall (though that one came a bit later).
That's pretty much all there is too it folks, not that I have to tell this crowd. If people are opening attachments and downloading executables from anywhere and everywhere then that has nothing to do with platform security or feeling that you are invulnerable it's just bad practice and those people need to be introduced to the very simple rules and slapped when the fail to follow them.
On the issue of Mac passwords, I'm very suspicious when any program asks me for a password to do installations because most user land apps on a Mac shouldn't need an installer at all let alone one that needs escalated privs to install or operate. A keychain prompt is not the common occurrence that the Vista equivalent is said to be. (I haven't had much hands on time with Vista.)
The big companies are guilty of prompting for passwords often with installers but I trust they won't infect my computer with malware (depending on your views on DRM...) and let them go ahead.
To summarize this lengthy post, how are Mac users acting less cautiously than anyone else? There's not a whole lot more they could be doing aside from running mostly worthless AV programs.
Let me get see if I got this straight; If somebody is being a bully on the Internet it's a crime punishable by up to two years in prison but if somebody is being a bully in, say, our public school system then it's.... just another day in the life of countless public school students.
How does doing it to somebody over the Internet where you have the power to block, ban or otherwise delete any commentary you find offensive constitute itself to be a greater threat to somebody's emotional state than it happening, face-to-face, day after day, in a setting they have no control over and where there is effectively no protections in place?
If this were to pass could the law then be used to try and prosecute the tens of thousands of school bullies across the country? Why not? Once a law is in place it's open to all kinds of rationals and interpretations waiting to be tested in court.
On the one hand, as the victim of bullying many years ago I would say let's see what happens. Let the geeks and nerds stage a legal assault on their oppressors. Perhaps once the useless, disruptive elements are removed from the system public education will improve.
On the other hand, as an adult this is clearly ridiculous and if passed could only lead to very bad things. The wholesale removal of bullies would just lead to an even greater decline in our nation as these kids will go from getting a bad education with a 50% drop out rate to getting none at all.
Not to mention the obvious implications for free speech in our society...
More ill conceived, reactionary legislation... oh wait, it's an election year! What else will they come up with before November?
All open source software is licensed and that license dictates the terms through which the application/source can be used. If the license effectively says, "feel free to use it anyway you want, just credit the original authors" and Apple (or whomever) abides by the license then this is not "leeching" it's using the code exactly as the author(s) had intended.
Despite your perceptions, Apple does contribute a lot of changes back to the community. Their Webkit is based on KHTML and they did a bulk of the work in fixing it up to make it what it is today; One of the most standards compliant renderers available and one that is finding increasing popularity on phones and other embedded devices.
Your beef seems to be that they don't open source their platform specific products (iApps, Pro apps, the OS) but why in the hell should they? They are a for profit entity who still makes a bulk of their money selling hardware. The software promotes the sale of the hardware. It's ridiculous to expect them to open source it.
The spirit of most OSS licenses seems to be that open code results in higher quality and more rapid evolution. Only RMS and the followers of his philosophies seem to think that OSS means that once it's open then it and anything ever based on it till the end of time must also be open and thus available for free (as in beer to anyone who can work a compiler).
Licenses exist for a reason. For profit entities like the BSD and LGPL licenses because they provide a good starting point and don't damage their ability to make money.
The authors of the licensed code should be happy because what they wrote and shared finds use on the desktops and in the hands of millions of people.
The OSS community as a whole should be happy because the improved code usually does become available to the community to do with as they please as per the license terms.
It seems to me like everything is working as intended and working well.
Lot of poor people have jobs that are real understanding of a 4-hour "vote break". Which is exactly why the day of the vote should be a national holiday. It's once every four years (presidential anyway) so it's not going to have a massive effect on the economy and it would eliminate one more form of disenfranchisement.
"Although petite in size, this high performance miniature computer truly performs and comes with a durable, shock-proof solid-state design - making it easy for housewives, office ladies and student alike to carry and connect to the Internet."
So what you're saying is that women are as weak, frail, clumsy and careless as children.
Actually, it probably would have. If the 19 terrorists had gone to the next level, and started killing passengers and stews, one a minute until the cockpit door was opened...how long do you think the pilots would have held out? About 2 mins.
The people hijacking the planes had box cutters. If the door was locked and the procedure was not to open it and they killed a person how long do you think the passengers would have just sat and done nothing against guys with big razor blades? Hardly an imposing weapon against a 200 strong mob backed into a proverbial corner in a struggle for survival.
How would you like it if the whole world could simply go to Google and see a photograph of you walking into a motel with a prostitute, leaving a strip club, getting mugged on the side of the street, or caught in the act of accidentally hitting somebody in a crosswalk with your car?
That's just wrong!
If the world wants to see that kind of thing they need to visit that person's MySpace page...
Slashdot Mirror
As stated below you could use the compatibility reporter extension or you can just do the following.
1)Type about:config into the URL field.
2)Context Menu > New > Boolean
3) type: extensions.checkCompatibility.X.x
4)Set the value to False
Where X.x is the version number of the browser you want to override (e.g.. 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 or 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, etc..).
See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Extensions.checkCompatibility for more details.
That is essentially what the compatibility reporter extensions does though it also allows you to report to Mozilla whether a flagged extension works or not.
"The Baroness is also former head of the British Joint Intelligence Committee ... "
You'd think the Baroness would know better than to use an over sized can; perhaps this was plan B with plan A being the use of Destro's head. Can you imagine how they would have reacted to that guy's noggin?
I can practically hear Cobra Commander screaming about idiots from here!
From the end of the article, " Specifically, Nevercookie prevents abuse to both the Adobe Flash Local Storage Object (LSO) and Microsoft's Silverlight Isolated Storage (MIS)." "
Doesn't BetterPrivacy already eliminate LSOs and other stored data?
I don't have Silverlight so I don't know if it eliminates that data but unless these "Evercookies" are somehow different than "Supercookies" you can eliminate this issue right now.
I don't know how that porn comment should be taken. He may very well be completely against sexually explicit material and on a crusade to ban it from the company's products but then what major company who isn't in the adult entertainment industry is publicly pro porn? It's a politically toxic subject that most public entities are against when it comes up.
That being the case, I don't believe he is out to actively prevent people from accessing porn and the comment either didn't come out right or is being misinterpreted. Here is how I see it in the context of the discussion.
"Freedom from programs that steal your private data, freedom from programs that trash your battery, freedom from porn."
The common thread between the first two is that they are both things that are unexpected and you don't want so presumably so is the third. Contextually, I think "freedom from porn" means freedom from unwanted exposure to porn. You can run into pornographic content when you don't necessarily want to online so I think what Jobs is getting at is you won't find it in the App Store just like you won't find the other two negative kinds of programs.
This isn't at all unprecedented, you won't find pornographic magazines sitting in the racks at Target or Wal-Mart or find XXX movies in their DVD section. If you want to take it to electronic stores, you won't find XXX movies at Amazon or those crazy sexually explicit games on Steam.
The argument is usually "clearly mark the section as adult" and "put in access controls" Those things still expose you to porn in that you know it's there, right behind that Adult button and that alone makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I'm not anti-adult material in any way but if I drive down the road and see some kind of adult entertainment shop amongst the other kinds of businesses it stands out. You can't see inside but you know what's in there. Porn, in a way, is like drugs. Even though it's widely consumed it's just not something that's generally put in public since it's considered a very personal and private thing. There is nothing at all unreasonable about saying no adult content in the App Store.
At some point in the past an Apple exec (possible Jobs) said the iPhone OS platform is being used differently than traditional PC platforms so far as how people use it to get at data. Rather than hit a search engine to find things, people on iPhone OS prefer to use specialty apps built around gathering and manipulating specific data sets.
The point he was trying to convey, I think, is that the public can rest assured that the App Store will not carry programs to help people find porn. However, as long as they're bundling a web browser that can play video (he's rallying against Flash, not web video) and iPod capabilities you're certainly free to access all the porn you like the old fashioned way, by specifically seeking it out or loading it from your computer.
If Apple starts including filters (beyond parental controls) to scrub web content or forces you to browse through an Apple proxy server or something then I'll see a problem but right now I just see a widely accepted business practice.
I've only used Bing a few times as I see no compelling reason to not use Google but your Honda Civic test sounded odd to me so I decided to reproduce it myself.
I typed Honda Civic into Google in one tab and then opened Bing in another and typed Honda Civic. You are correct in that it does provide information about the Honda Civic, Used Civics, Manuals, etc.. but the way you presented the information leads one to believe that Bing is providing a mish mash of links/data but that's not what's happening at all.
Google provides results in the flat way that everybody knows, it simply presents what it thinks are the most relevant links based on your search query. It then presents other possibly relevant search queries as a footer to the search results.
Bing takes the approach of providing the user with what it deems are the most relevant categorized search results based on the original query. In other words, it's not just jumbling used cars and manuals in with product information, it clearly categorized the results into Used Civics, Manuals, Product information, etc.. and provided a link to see more results like those after the top hits in each category.
I didn't spend much time on this comparing each specific category result on each engine but they seemed to provide similar results in each category based on a quick glance at the top hits.
Bing, Google, whatever. They all find information. Pick the layout you like best, the one you think provides you with better results or the one from the company you hate the least.
Personally, I'll stick with Google just because it seems smarter and has more conveniences. The ability to quickly solve a math equation or get a word definition with just a single search query, for example. Then there's the awesome freebies like 411-GOOG; I used that when my battery died one day to call around for quotes to decide if I should just get a jump or buy a new one from AAA.
Google is better at figuring out what you meant when you misspell. I typed in the name of a local pizza joint to see if they'd both find it. I inserted a simple misspelling (one letter added) on Bing and it couldn't find any results. I then typed the same misspelling into Google and it gave me the result I wanted with the misspelling as well as providing me a "did you mean?" link with the proper spelling.
Bing did find it when I provided the proper spelling but the place has an odd name that's easy to get wrong. Google would have found exactly what I wanted where Bing would essentially be useless unless I manually played with alternate spellings.
Bing wins on pointless visual fluff but Google is just smarter about helping you find what you want as quickly as possible, IMO.
Worms! They'll Jazzercise the muscle tissue! Why, by the time they're finished it'll be as strong and flexible as Hercules and Gumby combined!
This is the first I've heard of this practice and I know I accidentally called up a data app using the wheel by accident recently so I checked my bills but there are no data charges on it. Maybe it's because I'm one of those crazy "telephones make phone calls" people and still use a Razr.
Being the kind who would rather be safe than sorry and remembering my old moto phone allowed me to customize what each of those wheel buttons did, I went to go and change it. Trouble is, that phone was bought before Verizon started forcing their standard user interface onto all phone models.
Under the forced Verizon UI the only wheel button that is allowed to be modified is the down button which doesn't map to any of their services by default so not only do you get charged if you accidentally hit the button but you can't even remap or disable the button to ensure you never accidentally press it!
Worse still, according to TFA even if you specifically call Verizon and tell them to disable all data services the very act of pressing the button only to get a message saying you can't access that results in the fee being applied because data was technically transmitted.
I was fully prepared to contact the the FCC, the FTC, the BBB and my government reps about this if I had actually seen these charges but since I haven't I can't verify that this problem actually exists.
If you have been bitten by this then by all means contact the folks above because that's about as abusively scammed as you can get by a major company.
"Jail" for a corporation should mean that all assets are frozen and all business activities are forced to halt for the same number of days that a real person would have been incarcerated.
The problem is that you'd be punishing a lot more people than those at Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't just sell operating systems for home computers; they sell and support a large number of business applications to a HUGE number of businesses. If Microsoft "went offline" for even just a few months, there'd be huge ripples throughout all sectors of the economy. Imagine if a critical security flaw were found in Windows, or IIS, or SQL Server and Microsoft couldn't patch it because they were "in jail". Just because you might not use MS products doesn't mean you don't do business with someone who does. It would be a disaster.
This, to me, sounds like the system that brought us the notion of "too big to fail"
Corporations should never have been able to get into to that position but it is possible to reel them in with enough political and populist will.
That's neither here nor there. I would address the subject of "corporate prison" or "corporate execution" in the following way.
A company sentenced to termination would have all assets liquidated and distributed. First priority is to pay off all obligations to the rank and file employees (pensions, benefits, remainder of the year's salary, things of that nature) and any outstanding debts. Anything left over would be distributed amongst the share holders since they're essentially just a bunch of rich gamblers playing an inherently risky game. It's not like this would happen overnight and they wouldn't have time to get out.
None of the distribution would apply to any members of the executive team, their salaries, bonuses, golden parachutes, stocks or what have you are forfeit as they are, essentially, the criminal minds behind the operation. Ideally, I'd like to see their personal assets seized, liquidated and redistributed along with the corporate assets.
In the case of technology companies who provide ongoing services to their customers, be it software patches or replacement parts; all source code, patents, design schematics, etc.. would be released into the public domain providing free market opportunities to service the markets that were left without support and/or provide competition to the remaining players in the market. This should result in plenty of players ready to service the departed corporation's customers rather rapidly.
Clients may have had long term contracts or what have you and would be forced to incur additional expenses as a result but that could just as easily have happen if the company declared bankruptcy or a disaster happened. With all info on the products now public they would have the option of bringing service in-house if they so chose.
Utility industries would be a bit more difficult to deal with but I'd prefer the state take them over with responsibility only to maintain the infrastructure while generating revenue by leasing access out to businesses who wish to compete for customers. Exceptions could be made to provide cheap or at cost service to other state entities (anything tax funded, basically).
Much of the above is execution, the jailing could simply involve the public domaining of their existing IP. The corporation is still in business but is now subject to full out competition and any client who no longer wishes to do business with "a felon" can rapidly make that choice without concern about product transition periods or expenses.
I'm (probably obviously) not an expert by any means or even an expert in training. I'm just another citizen with an opinion on how our society can be a better place.
If P2P has been an "underground" phenomenon where consumers were distributing "their" bandwidth to share files and ISPs have generally not been very happy about it; how do things change now that this new company wants to pay consumers to do the same thing for legal content so they can make a profit?
Commercial bandwidth is expensive and this company is basically saying they'll do an end run around having to pay for it by giving consumers what will no doubt be chump change while they pocket the rest.
It seems to me that consumers don't even have the right to be profiting off the bandwidth they are getting from their ISP because that's not the terms under which they agreed to use it. It's one thing to share but quite another to resell.
I think bandwidth caps are a load of crap as much as the next guy but this seems like a clear violation of the ISP's rights.
Simply put, the ad revenue on Hulu is much, much less than on TV. Sure, it beats piracy (a little money and control over how long your content is on there) but if people were to cancel cable or watch Hulu on their Xboxes more, both cable/satellite providers and the content providers themselves would be unhappy.
Very true.
However, this would seem to be the very definition of how the free market is supposed to work. Customers want Internet based television; prefer it over cable/satellite.
Consumers steadily begin to use the net more. Hulu can then begin to charge more for ads while broadcast TV stations lower their rates.
I would think advertisers would prefer Hulu simply because their ads can not be skipped over and users can't just change the channel during the break. That suggests they can charge more for the ads in such a business model since the ads are more effective. End result, less ad volume (compared to broadcast TV) and happier viewers or the same ad volume with more profits.
It seems the cable and satellite TV providers are the ones that lose here but why should NBC/FOX care about them? The cable providers are already in a favorable position as the access point for new media distribution. If TV as a service goes the way of the dodo then they are free to charge more for Internet access provided they ditch the stupid caps.
As long as content providers keep trying to fight customer demand they will continue to miss out on the revenue opportunities that exist. As for copyright infringement, that'll always be around but they can minimize the impact it has by not driving consumers towards it out of an unwillingness to change.
If anyone wants to enter full Apple marketing land they can click this link to see the full list of "150 features".
Some that popped out at me: They now seem to be adopting a few Google Chrome ideas such top of the window tabs and the search box now auto suggests sites as Google's browser does... didn't Google take a lot of fire for that? Will Apple allow you to turn it off?
On the Windows side, they are now using standard Windows... windows (titlebar, scrollbar, etc..) to give it a more native appearance as well as native font rendering with Apple's font rendering still available as a toggle.
They claim to have first browser support for HTML 5 offline and have integrated an sql-like database (that is user accessible and query-able) for holding everything that's needed to run advanced web apps offline.
KDE 4, MacOSX, Windows 7, Windows Vista... Too much bling and not enough customisation in the UI for me.
You think Mac OS X has too much visual eye candy? Really?
That's interesting because a lot of the Mac users I encounter think Mac OS X is very dull looking. My own system has the graphite appearance on (the one visual option Apple gives you) and that's just a lot of gray. Even the folders are a muted, flat blue-gray color in Leopard.
I actually think Apple needs to crank it up to compete with Vista because that UI is visual tour de force in Aero mode. In basic mode, on the other hand, the UI just looks awful; awash in a hellish sea of oversized light blue gradient. That was Win 7 in a virtual appliance.
I like the OS X use of animation but the overall "bling factor" is quite low.
You know you want to.
If users have to pick a browser they will talk about it and some will like a browser and others will like other browsers and they will do this thing Microsoft hates called "compete". Eventually different browsers will develop different reputations based upon which ones best satisfy users and those are the browsers that will be the most popular.
How is this situation different than what exists right now without bundles? Firefox has achieved ~10% adoption rate at the expense of IE without any bundles (unless you want to count Linux distributions).
Bundling is an advantage as it equals guaranteed distribution but word of mouth doesn't require bundling.
Here's the problem with that. It requires constant vigilance and work on the part of the EU. Who tests IE's compliance? Will those people be bribed? Will they become lax after a few years allowing MS to go back to business as usual? How much time and effort needs to be put in to sustain this forever? It is fine in the short term, but does not solve the problem in the long term.
If all the EU is interested in is making a quick ruling and then patting themselves on the back for a job well done then they are wasting resources on pointless theatrics.
As far as I'm concerned if a government is going to step in and regulate then they better be ready to commit the resources to proper enforcement.
How difficult would it really be? If the Slashdot crowd hears about MS shenanigans then it's not exactly a big secret and one government official should be able to confirm or deny the reports. When it comes to bribery; not much can be done about that.
Once all the incompatible sites are universally broken then you've essentially restored balance and Microsoft would then have to convince web developers to ignore Firefox, Safari, the mobile browsers based on Webkit and Opera, etc.. to pick the proprietary Micrsoft technologies again.
I don't think it'll be an issue this time around since the market is a different place than it was in the 90s.
Then again, maybe I just don't understand the problem because based on that criteria it shouldn't be a problem right now...
I fail to see how forcing the bundling of a different browser(s) solves the problem. It will only result in a worsened out of box experience for the end user (which is already incredibly horrid when it comes to big box Windows PCs) in that it forces them to make an uninformed decision the first time they want to connect to the web.
If the user knows the difference between browsers, it's a non-issue since they can just go download their choice straight away which will usually result in it becoming default during the installation. Problem solved. If they have no idea they'll just be irked and pick the first one on the list.
The solution, IMO, would seem to be forcing Microsoft to ditch the "compatibility mode" in IE and stick to the standards so that new IE is as broken on sites coded to work with previous versions of IE as any other browser. Then, prohibit them from making any further "extensions" to the specs which caused the problem to begin with.
A unified, standard plug-in model to prohibit the use of ActiveX on web sites would also be nice.
Such a decision may wreak havoc with many websites but that's the price of progress and in the end it means all browsers can compete strictly on their merits.
I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent from the main topic here (shocking for Slashdot I'm sure).
On the topic of ad blockers I'm curious as to just how the ad model works. On the one hand I know that clicking an ad generates a click-through which generates revenue.
However, ad blocker or not I'm certain that I won't be clicking on ads because I'm not a good little consumer drone and really don't care about what's trying to be sold to me.
I shop when I need something at which point research, not advertisements, point me to the best product and I then know exactly what I want.
From the tone of website owners who dislike ad blockers it sounds as though the mere act of blocking ads from being shown damages the site's revenue. I'm presuming that people paying for ads or companies that serve ads track their distribution by the number of times an ad is loaded by a certain site or page.
My question here is, if Adblock works by blocking the actual loading of the ad by the server thus denying revenue to a website why can't it be designed to load the ad but simply not display it? Would this not prevent websites from losing revenue to ad blockers?
In the end, all I want is to not see annoying flashing, blinking, video animated crap in loud colors all over my screen when I'm trying to read. My goal is not to deny a site revenue. I don't imagine there are many people out to intentionally damage a site's revenue but they hate the way advertisements are presented.
How would loading the ads but not displaying them hurt either A) the ability of Adblock to function or B) a site's revenue stream presuming people are like me and would never click an ad to begin with?
You want to talk about an organization that screws everything up? Let me tell you about this company I used to work for... How many people have stories like that?
Corruption? Come on. No sane person can say private industry is free of corruption and mean it.
Private industry is not intrinsically more efficient than government.
The only operational difference between the two, as far as I'm concerned, is that government's mandate is to provide a service within the budget granted while private industry is tasked with providing a service in budget AND with a profit margin.
The other differences are procedural and irrelevant since procedures can be changed with effort.
If those who grew up with color TV dream in color and those who grew up with black and white TV dream in black and white; does that means those who grew up reading books dream in illustration and text?
People keep accusing Mac users (I use a Mac laptop and an XP tower myself) of being lax on security but what exactly does this mean and what exactly are "we" doing wrong?
I don't run anti-virus on my Mac but I do run it on my PC. In all the years of running it on the PC I've never once had it detect anything and the only thing the malware scanners have ever flagged are cookies and Win MRU files; even when I slacked off and didn't scan for six months or more. Prior to that I used Windows 95/98 for many years without an AV program at all; never had an issue.
Security (for a home desktop) is not a difficult thing to maintain. I've basically lived by the rules I learned from watching Leo Laporte on "The Net" on C/Net TV back when I dialed up to the Internet using my 14.4 fax/modem and and Netscape Navigator 2.0 and RealPlayer were a big deal... Don't open attachments you weren't expecting, don't download files from sites you don't trust, keep your software up-to-date, use a firewall (though that one came a bit later).
That's pretty much all there is too it folks, not that I have to tell this crowd. If people are opening attachments and downloading executables from anywhere and everywhere then that has nothing to do with platform security or feeling that you are invulnerable it's just bad practice and those people need to be introduced to the very simple rules and slapped when the fail to follow them.
On the issue of Mac passwords, I'm very suspicious when any program asks me for a password to do installations because most user land apps on a Mac shouldn't need an installer at all let alone one that needs escalated privs to install or operate. A keychain prompt is not the common occurrence that the Vista equivalent is said to be. (I haven't had much hands on time with Vista.)
The big companies are guilty of prompting for passwords often with installers but I trust they won't infect my computer with malware (depending on your views on DRM...) and let them go ahead.
To summarize this lengthy post, how are Mac users acting less cautiously than anyone else? There's not a whole lot more they could be doing aside from running mostly worthless AV programs.
Let me get see if I got this straight; If somebody is being a bully on the Internet it's a crime punishable by up to two years in prison but if somebody is being a bully in, say, our public school system then it's .... just another day in the life of countless public school students.
How does doing it to somebody over the Internet where you have the power to block, ban or otherwise delete any commentary you find offensive constitute itself to be a greater threat to somebody's emotional state than it happening, face-to-face, day after day, in a setting they have no control over and where there is effectively no protections in place?
If this were to pass could the law then be used to try and prosecute the tens of thousands of school bullies across the country? Why not? Once a law is in place it's open to all kinds of rationals and interpretations waiting to be tested in court.
On the one hand, as the victim of bullying many years ago I would say let's see what happens. Let the geeks and nerds stage a legal assault on their oppressors. Perhaps once the useless, disruptive elements are removed from the system public education will improve.
On the other hand, as an adult this is clearly ridiculous and if passed could only lead to very bad things. The wholesale removal of bullies would just lead to an even greater decline in our nation as these kids will go from getting a bad education with a 50% drop out rate to getting none at all.
Not to mention the obvious implications for free speech in our society...
More ill conceived, reactionary legislation... oh wait, it's an election year! What else will they come up with before November?
I don't get the attitude being displayed here.
All open source software is licensed and that license dictates the terms through which the application/source can be used. If the license effectively says, "feel free to use it anyway you want, just credit the original authors" and Apple (or whomever) abides by the license then this is not "leeching" it's using the code exactly as the author(s) had intended.
Despite your perceptions, Apple does contribute a lot of changes back to the community. Their Webkit is based on KHTML and they did a bulk of the work in fixing it up to make it what it is today; One of the most standards compliant renderers available and one that is finding increasing popularity on phones and other embedded devices.
Your beef seems to be that they don't open source their platform specific products (iApps, Pro apps, the OS) but why in the hell should they? They are a for profit entity who still makes a bulk of their money selling hardware. The software promotes the sale of the hardware. It's ridiculous to expect them to open source it.
The spirit of most OSS licenses seems to be that open code results in higher quality and more rapid evolution. Only RMS and the followers of his philosophies seem to think that OSS means that once it's open then it and anything ever based on it till the end of time must also be open and thus available for free (as in beer to anyone who can work a compiler).
Licenses exist for a reason. For profit entities like the BSD and LGPL licenses because they provide a good starting point and don't damage their ability to make money.
The authors of the licensed code should be happy because what they wrote and shared finds use on the desktops and in the hands of millions of people.
The OSS community as a whole should be happy because the improved code usually does become available to the community to do with as they please as per the license terms.
It seems to me like everything is working as intended and working well.
From the press release that was linked to:
"Although petite in size, this high performance miniature computer truly performs and comes with a durable, shock-proof solid-state design - making it easy for housewives, office ladies and student alike to carry and connect to the Internet."
So what you're saying is that women are as weak, frail, clumsy and careless as children.
Who comes up with this stuff?
The people hijacking the planes had box cutters. If the door was locked and the procedure was not to open it and they killed a person how long do you think the passengers would have just sat and done nothing against guys with big razor blades? Hardly an imposing weapon against a 200 strong mob backed into a proverbial corner in a struggle for survival.
That's just wrong! If the world wants to see that kind of thing they need to visit that person's MySpace page...