Yeah--I was only arguing the semantics there, and I pretty much agree with everything you said, except that I just would have worded the OP's statement differently. That's all.
Right, that's what I meant by "Windows-standard," in that IE itself would be the same, on any Windows computer.
However, this brings to mind a big gripe of mine about Windows, especially post-98 versions. What is this fascination with HTML? Did Microsoft fire all their programmers and hire a bunch of bad web designers to do UI for them? The "Find File" applet in Windows 95 and 98 was perfect. It was fast and efficient and did everything the current one did. In 2000, ME, and XP, it's this huge bloated web-page-in-a-control-thing that works at half the speed and efficiency without adding any useful functionality. What is the point of this transitioning everything to HTML apps?
I understand if actual webpages are needed to be displayed within an app, e.g. the Winamp "Minibrowser" or some sort of embedded HTML toolbar. But this needless HTML-ization of the interface is IMO, a bad idea.
Pretty sure that's it. Also, that developer doc I linked seemed to indicate that it also caused problems when developers assumed that logical and physical addresses were the same--so perhaps the ROM was loaded at the very bottom of memory, shifting everything up 3MB? But I'm not a serious programmer so that's where my understanding wears a little thin.
> IE is a nice standard HTML rendering engine for Windows developers to use.
You had me until "nice" and "standard." I suppose Windows-standard would be the meaning you were going for, but for an HTML engine to be actually called "standard," I would say that it should follow W3C standards.
Yeah, but considering how many people were on the Internet back in the 1950s, just imagine how often you'd get FP!
> passanger cars have not improved their efficency that much.
Don't get me wrong, fuel inefficiency is one of my pet peeves, but I think actual passenger car efficiency has improved. For example, you couldn't buy a Corolla in 1950 that gets 30 or 40 miles to the gallon. However,average efficiency of all the cars on the (US) road hasn't improved that much due to things like the Dodge trucks with "V8 Hemi" you see making the heavy-duty trip to the cleaners and the bank, or the Hummers that spend all of their time sitting in traffic. Those people should die.
Um, why would Apple have to convince their prospective supplier?! Apple is the customer here. They made the decision to use the Hitachi drive. What would Hitachi say, "No, we will not sell you 100000 Microdrives"?!
So if anyone did convincing, obviously that would be Hitachi, as it says in the story. The extraneous "to" was obviously a typo and it does not even remotely indicate that the intention was the complete freaking opposite. Any fool can deduce that on his own, so what are you talking about, and how the f**k did this get a +4 insightful??
Think before you post. Think again before you mod.
> (IIRC, the original iMac moved certain things that used to load off disk at bootup to the ROMs...) I'm pretty sure you've got that turned around. The iMac less on ROM (again, if I remember correctly; I could be wrong) than previous Macs. The Toolbox ROM was moved to a file called Mac OS ROM on the hard disk, in the System Folder.
> One very old Mac model even had a whole (albeit stripped-down) version of the Mac OS in its ROM, and could be booted from it, without a disk.
The Mac Classic. That ROM trick was a beautiful thing. Imagine if you could boot a modern PC into a basic GUI mode from the freaking ROM without any working boot disk or anything. That would be awesome.
Aha. That does sound like the right answer to why the 1+ dialing is there in the first place.
But in New York (or on my VOIP phone), where 11-digit is mandatory and 7-digit dialing doesn't work, you can't dial seven digits. So if you dialed 413-5112, that would logically have to be interpreted area code 413, exchange 511, and it should wait for the rest of the number.
But it doesn't do that. It just sits there and gives you a fast busy signal. I guess they don't want it to be inconsistent with the way the rest of the country does it, otherwise New Yorkers would be visiting California (where 7-digits is valid for local numbers) and ring random people trying to dial 213-555-6789.
Is there a way to disable support for this "XFDF" type of file (which smells completely useless to me)? Perhaps just associating the file type/MIME type to Notepad or something? Also, I use Mozilla Firefox, and for me, PDFs open in a normal Acrobat window, not within the browser as the advisory alludes to. It didn't make clear, though, whether you're only vulnerable using the browser control.
Or maybe I'll RTFA you linked. Just checking to see if you knew a workaround besides AR6.
> what the heck the point of 11 digit dialing is? Isn't the semantic content of the leading 1 exactly null?
That annoys me too, and I've wondered about this. Some theories:
- The US is technically "country code" 1. I'm not sure if this is the one we're dialing there, though. It makes no sense if it is, because it's not parallel with the other countries, i.e. I don't think you can just dial 44-whatever to call your friend in the UK. Anyone care to explain just how you do directly dial another country?
- I guess maybe it's there for compatibility reasons, so people who are trained to dial 1-800-yadda yadda or similar all their life won't get confused. Seems like optional 11/10 digit dialing would be okay though.
Why the hell wouldn't it be compatible with the iPod mini? Both come with a cable that goes from a 1394 port (like the one on his deck of cards) to the Dock connector on the bottom of the iPod. Even if he wired in the dock-cable to the battery pack, it would be compatible with the mini. The connectors are identical, as is every other connector on both devices (headphone jack and remote jack).
For any accessory, as long as it isn't mandatorily dependent on the physical dimensions of one device (i.e. cases, OEM iPod Docks) any product designed for the 3G iPod works for the Mini and so on.
Since this deck of cards, however, allows you to use your own 1394-1394 cable or 1394-Dock cable, it will work with any iPod ever made, along with any 1394 device in need of power.
Why? All the market needs to function like a well-oiled machine is the rich. The poor are the ones losing from Bush's policies, but no one really gives a crap what happens to them or whether they have enough money to buy things. It's Lincoln Navigators and Hummers that drive the economy, and surprise surprise, times are good for people selling those kinds of things! Go Bush!
And don't say "if" bush gets four more years. Say it with me: WHEN Bush gets four more years. We all know he's going to get the biggest landslide in the history of landslides. Especially with Diebold in his corner. I personally would rather the election were just cancelled today and Bush declared the winner so we could not waste our time with an outcome that's already guaranteed.
-Daniel Pritchard Registered Democrat (No, I'm not voting for Bush, but it won't matter.)
All these are available free from the vendor along with engine updates (and I found them all in five minutes using just a search engine). The suckers paying $20 a year are actually just paying for their app's "LiveUpdate" or similar feature to work, when they could either use a non-broken, older version, or grab the definitions every week or so off the vendor's website.
All revenue brought in by the subscriptions is simply a tax on laziness. Well, except it's paid to those companies instead of the government. You know what I mean.
> Microsoft is a monopoly though and that you can't disagree. I mean for God's sakes... they saw how companies were making quick cash selling music for 99 cents per song and decided to input that into their trusty Windows Media Player. Can they just not get enough money?
I'm with you on this, except for the interesting fact that nobody is making money on the music download business, except the record labels. Apple is just using it to sell iPods, and God knows how Roxio is expecting to make a profit with Napster.
Which raises the question: What kind of sick fucks are they at Microsoft? They know there's no profit to be made in that business, and yet they are going to drive out everyone else anyway, with no financial incentive to them. They're just doing it to ensure Windows Media's continued dominance as an audio format.
Likewise, in the anti-virus market, Microsoft won't be directly benefiting from bankrupting all the anti-virus vendors; however the benefit to them is more tangible than in the music analogy--they can put out press releases pretending like their OS is secure once Windows users stop contracting so many viruses.
If you thought NAV 2002 was good, you should try Norton AV Corporate Edition, Version 7. Came out circa 1999. Designed for Win2k/NT. Works like a charm on XP. No stupid bloated interface with fuzzy yellow buttons. No "subscription" reminders to pester you (It just LiveUpdates, the defs and the engine, without bitching). I install it on every computer I build.
If regular users understood the difference between an updated version of AV software and updated Virus Defs and Engine, Symantec/McAfee/etc would have no retail sales at all (they would only have the OEM market). I mean, in reality any old version of AV software will protect you from viruses just fine as long as you keep the defs and engine updated. People just buy the boxed versions because either: A. they think they have to in order to get new virus defs (this is the dumber group) or... B. their 1-year "free subscription" is over and they think they have to either buy a new box or subscribe in order to continue receiving virus defs. (Anyone smart could in most cases just remove said software and reinstall it to restore another 1-year "subscription.")
> everyone and their grandmother would be up-in-arms (at least, one can hope).
Well, we can hope. But times have changed. The P3 ID number scandal came before 9/11 and the widespread "Whatever corporate America/Bush wants for us must be for our own good. What Bill of Rights?" attitude that's set in like a mind-virus among most Americans.
Witness the reaction to the RIAA lawsuits--the defendants are settling out of court, the not-yet-sued cower in fear. No one's protesting the unconstitutional practices. These two situations are similar: The corporate interest in both cases is widely agreed to be right by the letter of the law, but their behavior is immoral and at times unconstitutional in many instances.
Of course, this all refers to regular people, not the/. crowd.
>> This is [done] to save time educating all the stockholders from complex issues, and let a few people specialize in the company.
> This isn't...entirely correct...The board is not there to educate all the shareholders,
I don't think he meant the board was there to educate the shareholders, but rather that the existence of the board saved time because that way the shareholders would not have to be educated about every little decision and asked how they felt. Just pointing that out.
Um, in the US as a whole, the CDMA (Sprint/VZW) network is far superior to the GSM networks--and that includes both CingulATT and T-Mobile. Everyone I know agrees. My roommate got an ATT phone--and requested specifically the older TDMA technology just to avoid the GSM hell we have here.
Another example of this smart decision--another US TDMA provider, US Cellular, is transitioning its subscribers not to GSM, but to CDMA, after having considered all options. Who gives a shit if you can use the latest stupid-ass Sony-Ericsson phone if your service is so bad half your calls are dropped and the rest, nobody can hear you?
I'll take CDMA and no Bluetooth support over the pathetic US GSM network any day. And by the way, the whole world most certainly has not standardized on GSM technology. Far from it. Over 188 million subscribers worldwide rely on CDMA.
Just because large portions of Europe use GSM only doesn't make CDMA any more proprietary. What's wrong with competition in the marketplace? When several vendors join forces to cooperate on one network, we get what happened after the T-Mobile/Cingular accords in 2001--the companies cram twice the subscribers onto one network while investing no more resources in network infrastructure. This results in a shitty, unreliable network. But with competing standards, each companies has to keep up its network or die. I'd say that's preferable. Who cares if phones are portable between networks? The contracts keep you in one place for a year or two anyway, and by the time the contract is up you can buy a comparable replacement phone that works on the other network for $40 on eBay. Big deal.
Okay, first off, I have no idea how the comment text on that got duplicated.
Second, is it really Troll to honestly state the obvious? Any fool can see that Apple's marketshare is gone and is never coming back. Once a school chooses Windows as its standard OS and bans Apple purchases (as my district did in 2002), there will be no "switching" back.
``Dell is thrashing Apple in terms of new education sales by some 35% to 21% of purchases." (Nov. 2002, source)
``The trend toward standardization is hurting Apple where it has traditionally been stronger -- in schools, where information-technology workers are increasingly deciding what computers to buy, despite the protest of Mac-loyal teachers. When Quality Education Data surveyed school districts last fall, 54 percent said their schools used some Macs, while 91 percent said their schools used some Windows PCs. The number of Macs was lower than the year before. `Apple's market share is declining steadily,' said Jeanne Hayes, president of QED. `Dell is definitely the leader now both in installed base and in share, because they've moved into the server business as well.' " (Jul. 2003, source; this article also discusses Apple's market share in general and indicates the failure of the "Switch" campaign)
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Yeah--I was only arguing the semantics there, and I pretty much agree with everything you said, except that I just would have worded the OP's statement differently. That's all.
Right, that's what I meant by "Windows-standard," in that IE itself would be the same, on any Windows computer.
However, this brings to mind a big gripe of mine about Windows, especially post-98 versions. What is this fascination with HTML? Did Microsoft fire all their programmers and hire a bunch of bad web designers to do UI for them? The "Find File" applet in Windows 95 and 98 was perfect. It was fast and efficient and did everything the current one did. In 2000, ME, and XP, it's this huge bloated web-page-in-a-control-thing that works at half the speed and efficiency without adding any useful functionality. What is the point of this transitioning everything to HTML apps?
I understand if actual webpages are needed to be displayed within an app, e.g. the Winamp "Minibrowser" or some sort of embedded HTML toolbar. But this needless HTML-ization of the interface is IMO, a bad idea.
Pretty sure that's it. Also, that developer doc I linked seemed to indicate that it also caused problems when developers assumed that logical and physical addresses were the same--so perhaps the ROM was loaded at the very bottom of memory, shifting everything up 3MB? But I'm not a serious programmer so that's where my understanding wears a little thin.
> What's next? MSFT has to pull it's builtin CD burning software because Roxio can't compete?
:-)
I know you were kidding, but that would be pretty humorous because Roxio created the built-in CD-burning software for Microsoft.
> IE is a nice standard HTML rendering engine for Windows developers to use.
You had me until "nice" and "standard." I suppose Windows-standard would be the meaning you were going for, but for an HTML engine to be actually called "standard," I would say that it should follow W3C standards.
> You'd need your own power plant just to read /.
Yeah, but considering how many people were on the Internet back in the 1950s, just imagine how often you'd get FP!
> passanger cars have not improved their efficency that much.
Don't get me wrong, fuel inefficiency is one of my pet peeves, but I think actual passenger car efficiency has improved. For example, you couldn't buy a Corolla in 1950 that gets 30 or 40 miles to the gallon. However, average efficiency of all the cars on the (US) road hasn't improved that much due to things like the Dodge trucks with "V8 Hemi" you see making the heavy-duty trip to the cleaners and the bank, or the Hummers that spend all of their time sitting in traffic. Those people should die.
Um, why would Apple have to convince their prospective supplier?! Apple is the customer here. They made the decision to use the Hitachi drive. What would Hitachi say, "No, we will not sell you 100000 Microdrives"?!
So if anyone did convincing, obviously that would be Hitachi, as it says in the story. The extraneous "to" was obviously a typo and it does not even remotely indicate that the intention was the complete freaking opposite. Any fool can deduce that on his own, so what are you talking about, and how the f**k did this get a +4 insightful??
Think before you post. Think again before you mod.
> (IIRC, the original iMac moved certain things that used to load off disk at bootup to the ROMs...)
I'm pretty sure you've got that turned around. The iMac less on ROM (again, if I remember correctly; I could be wrong) than previous Macs. The Toolbox ROM was moved to a file called Mac OS ROM on the hard disk, in the System Folder.
> One very old Mac model even had a whole (albeit stripped-down) version of the Mac OS in its ROM, and could be booted from it, without a disk.
The Mac Classic. That ROM trick was a beautiful thing. Imagine if you could boot a modern PC into a basic GUI mode from the freaking ROM without any working boot disk or anything. That would be awesome.
Aha. That does sound like the right answer to why the 1+ dialing is there in the first place.
But in New York (or on my VOIP phone), where 11-digit is mandatory and 7-digit dialing doesn't work, you can't dial seven digits. So if you dialed 413-5112, that would logically have to be interpreted area code 413, exchange 511, and it should wait for the rest of the number.
But it doesn't do that. It just sits there and gives you a fast busy signal. I guess they don't want it to be inconsistent with the way the rest of the country does it, otherwise New Yorkers would be visiting California (where 7-digits is valid for local numbers) and ring random people trying to dial 213-555-6789.
Is there a way to disable support for this "XFDF" type of file (which smells completely useless to me)? Perhaps just associating the file type/MIME type to Notepad or something? Also, I use Mozilla Firefox, and for me, PDFs open in a normal Acrobat window, not within the browser as the advisory alludes to. It didn't make clear, though, whether you're only vulnerable using the browser control.
Or maybe I'll RTFA you linked. Just checking to see if you knew a workaround besides AR6.
> what the heck the point of 11 digit dialing is? Isn't the semantic content of the leading 1 exactly null?
That annoys me too, and I've wondered about this. Some theories:
- The US is technically "country code" 1. I'm not sure if this is the one we're dialing there, though. It makes no sense if it is, because it's not parallel with the other countries, i.e. I don't think you can just dial 44-whatever to call your friend in the UK. Anyone care to explain just how you do directly dial another country?
- I guess maybe it's there for compatibility reasons, so people who are trained to dial 1-800-yadda yadda or similar all their life won't get confused. Seems like optional 11/10 digit dialing would be okay though.
Yeah, I mean, christ, AcroRead6 even displays a freaking little ad button on the toolbar now. One time installing that POS taught me to only use version 5.1, conveniently available from the text-only download page.
> I'll buy the one (Score:5, Funny) ...
that makes my phone sound like it's losing the connection so I can get out of boring conversations easily.
Here you go! This is the one you're looking for!
> big well funded companies like that tend to cover all their bases.
SCO, Microsoft to Linux users: "All your base are belong to us!"
Come on, somebody had to say it.
More correctly, they merged. Verizon comprises the former Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, and GTE companies.
Why the hell wouldn't it be compatible with the iPod mini? Both come with a cable that goes from a 1394 port (like the one on his deck of cards) to the Dock connector on the bottom of the iPod. Even if he wired in the dock-cable to the battery pack, it would be compatible with the mini. The connectors are identical, as is every other connector on both devices (headphone jack and remote jack).
For any accessory, as long as it isn't mandatorily dependent on the physical dimensions of one device (i.e. cases, OEM iPod Docks) any product designed for the 3G iPod works for the Mini and so on.
Since this deck of cards, however, allows you to use your own 1394-1394 cable or 1394-Dock cable, it will work with any iPod ever made, along with any 1394 device in need of power.
Why? All the market needs to function like a well-oiled machine is the rich. The poor are the ones losing from Bush's policies, but no one really gives a crap what happens to them or whether they have enough money to buy things. It's Lincoln Navigators and Hummers that drive the economy, and surprise surprise, times are good for people selling those kinds of things! Go Bush!
And don't say "if" bush gets four more years. Say it with me: WHEN Bush gets four more years. We all know he's going to get the biggest landslide in the history of landslides. Especially with Diebold in his corner. I personally would rather the election were just cancelled today and Bush declared the winner so we could not waste our time with an outcome that's already guaranteed.
-Daniel Pritchard
Registered Democrat
(No, I'm not voting for Bush, but it won't matter.)
Right, I mean, all you really have to do to get new defs/engine is to look for them. For example:
Today's McAfee Definitions
Today's Symantec (Norton) Definitions
Today's TrendMicro Antivirus Definitions
All these are available free from the vendor along with engine updates (and I found them all in five minutes using just a search engine). The suckers paying $20 a year are actually just paying for their app's "LiveUpdate" or similar feature to work, when they could either use a non-broken, older version, or grab the definitions every week or so off the vendor's website.
All revenue brought in by the subscriptions is simply a tax on laziness. Well, except it's paid to those companies instead of the government. You know what I mean.
> Microsoft is a monopoly though and that you can't disagree. I mean for God's sakes... they saw how companies were making quick cash selling music for 99 cents per song and decided to input that into their trusty Windows Media Player. Can they just not get enough money?
I'm with you on this, except for the interesting fact that nobody is making money on the music download business, except the record labels. Apple is just using it to sell iPods, and God knows how Roxio is expecting to make a profit with Napster.
Which raises the question: What kind of sick fucks are they at Microsoft? They know there's no profit to be made in that business, and yet they are going to drive out everyone else anyway, with no financial incentive to them. They're just doing it to ensure Windows Media's continued dominance as an audio format.
Likewise, in the anti-virus market, Microsoft won't be directly benefiting from bankrupting all the anti-virus vendors; however the benefit to them is more tangible than in the music analogy--they can put out press releases pretending like their OS is secure once Windows users stop contracting so many viruses.
But if Apple bought Iraq, then Iraqi oil would be incompatible with the cars in the rest of the world. And we'd be forced to buy iRaqi cars to use it.
> I long for the days of NAV2002
If you thought NAV 2002 was good, you should try Norton AV Corporate Edition, Version 7. Came out circa 1999. Designed for Win2k/NT. Works like a charm on XP. No stupid bloated interface with fuzzy yellow buttons. No "subscription" reminders to pester you (It just LiveUpdates, the defs and the engine, without bitching). I install it on every computer I build.
If regular users understood the difference between an updated version of AV software and updated Virus Defs and Engine, Symantec/McAfee/etc would have no retail sales at all (they would only have the OEM market). I mean, in reality any old version of AV software will protect you from viruses just fine as long as you keep the defs and engine updated. People just buy the boxed versions because either:
A. they think they have to in order to get new virus defs (this is the dumber group) or...
B. their 1-year "free subscription" is over and they think they have to either buy a new box or subscribe in order to continue receiving virus defs. (Anyone smart could in most cases just remove said software and reinstall it to restore another 1-year "subscription.")
> everyone and their grandmother would be up-in-arms (at least, one can hope).
/. crowd.
Well, we can hope. But times have changed. The P3 ID number scandal came before 9/11 and the widespread "Whatever corporate America/Bush wants for us must be for our own good. What Bill of Rights?" attitude that's set in like a mind-virus among most Americans.
Witness the reaction to the RIAA lawsuits--the defendants are settling out of court, the not-yet-sued cower in fear. No one's protesting the unconstitutional practices. These two situations are similar: The corporate interest in both cases is widely agreed to be right by the letter of the law, but their behavior is immoral and at times unconstitutional in many instances.
Of course, this all refers to regular people, not the
>> This is [done] to save time educating all the stockholders from complex issues, and let a few people specialize in the company.
> This isn't...entirely correct...The board is not there to educate all the shareholders,
I don't think he meant the board was there to educate the shareholders, but rather that the existence of the board saved time because that way the shareholders would not have to be educated about every little decision and asked how they felt. Just pointing that out.
Um, in the US as a whole, the CDMA (Sprint/VZW) network is far superior to the GSM networks--and that includes both CingulATT and T-Mobile. Everyone I know agrees. My roommate got an ATT phone--and requested specifically the older TDMA technology just to avoid the GSM hell we have here.
Another example of this smart decision--another US TDMA provider, US Cellular, is transitioning its subscribers not to GSM, but to CDMA, after having considered all options. Who gives a shit if you can use the latest stupid-ass Sony-Ericsson phone if your service is so bad half your calls are dropped and the rest, nobody can hear you?
I'll take CDMA and no Bluetooth support over the pathetic US GSM network any day. And by the way, the whole world most certainly has not standardized on GSM technology. Far from it. Over 188 million subscribers worldwide rely on CDMA.
Just because large portions of Europe use GSM only doesn't make CDMA any more proprietary. What's wrong with competition in the marketplace? When several vendors join forces to cooperate on one network, we get what happened after the T-Mobile/Cingular accords in 2001--the companies cram twice the subscribers onto one network while investing no more resources in network infrastructure. This results in a shitty, unreliable network. But with competing standards, each companies has to keep up its network or die. I'd say that's preferable. Who cares if phones are portable between networks? The contracts keep you in one place for a year or two anyway, and by the time the contract is up you can buy a comparable replacement phone that works on the other network for $40 on eBay. Big deal.
Okay, first off, I have no idea how the comment text on that got duplicated.
Second, is it really Troll to honestly state the obvious? Any fool can see that Apple's marketshare is gone and is never coming back. Once a school chooses Windows as its standard OS and bans Apple purchases (as my district did in 2002), there will be no "switching" back.
``Dell is thrashing Apple in terms of new education sales by some 35% to 21% of purchases." (Nov. 2002, source)
Education Market Share
Apple: 15%
Dell: 35%
(Sep. 2002, source)
``The trend toward standardization is hurting Apple where it has traditionally been stronger -- in schools, where information-technology workers are increasingly deciding what computers to buy, despite the protest of Mac-loyal teachers. When Quality Education Data surveyed school districts last fall, 54 percent said their schools used some Macs, while 91 percent said their schools used some Windows PCs. The number of Macs was lower than the year before.
`Apple's market share is declining steadily,' said Jeanne Hayes, president of QED. `Dell is definitely the leader now both in installed base and in share, because they've moved into the server business as well.' "
(Jul. 2003, source; this article also discusses Apple's market share in general and indicates the failure of the "Switch" campaign)