This is more of a question rather than comment. Is it legal for them to read snail mail at the post office? Its stored there until you get it delivered. If no, then this lawsuit has a point.
The new problem is how much software can I possibly install to watch content? I happen to use iTunes so that I can watch content on my Mac and PC. I already find it inconvenient that I can not watch content in an open source operating system. Now I'm supposed to add additional bloat to my Windows install for Amazon's service, iTunes, this Azerus pay service, along with any other vendor entering the ring. I usually watch DVDs on my PC anyway so these download services are great in one sense. I no longer have to go to the store or buy and wait. (well download time) I don't have a problem with DRM that protects content in itself, but I do have a problem with the lack of versatility in devices and operating systems which can PLAY this content.
I suppose we should just accept that not everyone likes iTunes. If you don't like windows or own a Mac, it would be rather inconvenient. Its one of the many hurdles I face with MidnightBSD and I'm sure the Linux community feels the same way.
Still it is nice they are distributing content.
What we really need are some new laws that force companies to make their content available on multiple services so that there isn't a monopoly. This would also have the benefit of possibly putting it into different DRM formats which might be more acceptable to some. Imagine if only walmart sold movies. That's what we get now. Amazon sells star trek episodes, but Apple does not. Apple has some exclusive content on iTunes that amazon does not have. (unbox) More competition *could* keep content prices low.
For some people, it would be the end of AJAX. I don't think I'm that lucky though. To me, AJAX is just DHTML again. Sure there are some additional uses for it, but most people are trying to use it like DHTML.
How about the img tag? I think all of us can think of many uses of pictures on the internet. Hell I kept AOL as a teen to look at porn.:)
Cookies aren't all bad. Most people associate then with ads, but they also allow a stateless protocol to work with login type websites. I couldn't imagine the web without e-commerce or the ability to pay my discover card online. They could have been implemented better or differently, but that's true of all computer technologies. Just remember when working with cookies always treat the data back from them as tainted and validate it using a regular expression if possible. (if it makes sense with the data type of course)
Frames are open to debate although there are a few arguable uses like a table of contents for content, etc. Most of this can be accomplished with CSS now.
I've used WorldWideWeb on my NeXT and was able to pull up three websites. Google, Apache.org and kernel.org worked but any site using XHTML would not render. Obviously images were not supported. It was also not the very first version of WorldWideWeb (the first browser). Here's a picture from my NeXT: http://www.foolishgames.com/luke/firstbrowser.tiff
I think most people have a list of web technologies that they wish didn't exist. The list is probably different for everyone. I personally hate Flash and Java Applets. Flash is slightly worse as it runs on less operating systems than java does. Before someone says its 99%, remember that this is slashdot and many of us use other operating systems and not necessarily 32bit intel based ones. Now that Adobe owns flash, there is no hope for standards compliance although part of it may work in firefox for the systems it supports. Porting firefox is not fun.
I suspect it was added to 10.5 for Mac OS X Server! I'm sure home users could eventually need it, but I'm sure an xserve is a data center attached to an xserve raid might be a better target. Lets face it, HFS+ isn't going anywhere just yet. They also include UFS support which is sometimes used on servers as well. I'm interested in this for the CS servers I administer and not for any client uses at this time.
Most (if not all) posts seem to direct this to a Mac Book Pro or something. I don't get it.
Well remember the current Zend people took the work of someone else in PERL and created PHP 3 and on. It started as a PERL library to ease CGI development.
I can't believe they still haven't caught up to the ease of use of ASP. (not.NET, but classic ASP) Microsoft did a great job of keeping the API constant and offering a fair amount of security for the time. If PHP won't be secure, it could at least be consistent. Why can't the open source community make something like ASP? Many people using PHP are hobbyists and things could get much easier for them. And before anyone posts that the API stays the same, look at the changelog for PHP sometime.
Well then its not a good way to track sales. Apple offers gift cards as well as paypal in the US at least. I often by my relatives iTunes gift cards for birthdays and sometimes christmas gifts. My mom gets at least $45 in gift cards a year for instance. Also, gift cards are available at local retailers like Target, etc. That wouldn't be tracked in the Apple store (online) sales either. (regardless of payment method)
I can think of one reason the conclusion maybe true though. Since Apple started selling tv shows and movies, I've bought very little music from them. Most of my iTunes budget goes into shows now. I've bought every episode of Monk, and various other things. I've got about 30GB of content that was purchased through ITMS between two computers. This does not include my wife's collection.
Another poster was also right. I have purchased most of the older tracks that I'm going to buy. At this point, I buy tracks from a few new albums if I actually like the song.
Finally, I use iTunes on Mac OS and Windows XP nearly everyday. I often stream from my iBook to my windows machine to use my nicer speakers. It does seem a little buggy and I can't stand the hidden equalizer. I've noticed that it acts up when downloading from Apple if my network connection is maxed out. I've also noticed that it locks up frequently on my Mom's PC last time I was there. She's on a dialup and even trying to get album artwork will cause a freeze. After 20 minutes I just killed it since there was no activity on the dial-up. Apple needs to fix iTunes quickly. There's room for improvement in usability too. My mother is having trouble using 7.0 and she jumped from 4 to 7. I get calls every few days because she had it crash or can't figure out how to do something.
As for iPod sales, I know 4 people getting shuffles and one getting a 30GB iPod.
Yes and most of us are assuming local news. What about other situations like say Iraq? How many of us are in Iraq with cell phones. I'm not saying that locals will not take photos, but its unlikely they will get attention in our media. (regardless if you're american like me or live somewhere else) News can happen anywhere. Also, news outlets do interviews with people. I don't see a professional journalist wanting to take a photo for time or newsweek with their 1 megapixel sanyo they got at the local sprint store.
Right, but unless you are running SUS or similar you are not able to use windowsupdate.micorsoft.com (or the replacement) which also includes new software like DirectX which is useful in gaming.
Yes, apple does 9 major patches and a few minor security updates. But say that 10.4.x just came out.. that means 10.2.x including SERVER is no longer patched for most updates. You may be lucky enough to get iTunes and quicktime for awhile, but forget real security patches or fixes to say safari, etc. I almost understand the clients, but upgrading a server OS isn't always a picnic.
"The PC is blocked from Internet access and only turned on when it is in active use."
So you don't patch it? I really don't understand the thinking that you must keep a Windows box off the network to be safe. Granted a disconnected computer is never attackable except locally. A patched, firewalled Windows XP box is fairly safe. If you only play games on it, it is highly unlikely you'll install spyware or other malware.
This is almost as stupid as the $2000 dell server at work that I can't put on the network because it runs Windows. Look at security advisories for OS X lately. I've had OS X servers taken down by outdated samba installs in the OS that apple won't patch because they had released 10.3 already. (it was 10.2)
As for speed, 10.1-10.3 did get faster on each release. After a certain point that advantage is gone. An original iBook can't run 10.4 for instance. (well you can install it but it sucks) My G4 iBook slowed down with 10.4 as it required more ram to do the same thing and the first generation has a 640MB limitation. Its also not a fair comparison in a way. Microsoft only does an OS release every 4 3-4 years. By that time, they need to find a way to force people to buy it. Apple's solution to that problem is to not provide patches.
Microsoft is also hoping to replace vba (think vb6) with a.NET replacement. In order to support the Mac, they would need to port the.NET runtime to Mac OS.
I've seen a laptop get thrown across the room out of anger in my old job. (tech support at a university) That woman had a PHD, but she couldn't figure out that laptops break when they hit the ground. Dell didn't cover that. This was a new laptop as her last one had a large cup of coffee dropped on it. Dell did replace the keyboard and motherboard and we cleaned it up. She refused to use it though. I guess she didn't like the smell of starbucks after all. Don't worry, she was fired eventually.
More recently, I saw an Apple Xserve get dropped! It was in a 12u enclosure and my boss was trying to slide it into the cover at the top. (first server in there) The case was bent and he bled on the power supply. Surprisingly, only the PCI riser, memory and drive units were loosened. It booted up fine after those issues were resolved. So any computer can be dropped.
Didn't a Microsoft employee come up with xml from sgml? You can argue if its innovative or not, but you can't hold xml against them other than they didn't want anything to do with it until it was suggested to a standards body.
I find it sad the guy could only point out little things. Lets be clear that lack of innovation doesn't mean microsoft hasn't made some positive changes in the computer industry as well. Microsoft did bring GUIs to PC users which opened up computers to a much larger audience. It probably would have happened anyway with apple or someone else long term. Apple ships first, but Microsoft often gets the masses into the act.
On a personal level, Microsoft got me interested in computers as well. Then again I wanted a Mac once I got to the store. Instead I got a Packard Bell!
Yes, and in the case of minivans they often don't fare that well as they are low to the ground. I was rear-ended in 2005 as some jackass father decided to turn around to yell at his kids instead of stopping at the red light coming up. He was doing around 55 and it turned into a 5 car accident. Only two people didn't end up in the hospital.. me and him. His kids and all the other occupants went to the hospital. His van leaked antifreeze all over and took most of the damage. My car was just barely totaled and it was only due to the air bag deployment. (1998 saturn sl1) My car still ran fine.
Similarly my wife was hit in her late teens by a drunk driver driving a minivan. His wouldn't start and his wife was rushed to the ER (granted she had been drinking a lot...) but my wife only had scratches. He was traveling at 60 mph and side impacted with a 1996 saturn sl2. So no, minivans are not safer. In fact, they had a lot of trouble getting that drunks wife out of the car. She was trapped since there isn't a lot of area in the front of a minivan to squish so it ends up locking your legs in.
As for SUVs, everyone in my family that has one has flipped theirs at least one time. I've never done that in a car.
In my last job, I had to support Mac OS 10.2 clients and servers. It was a nightmare as there is a severe problem with samba in OS X server which would easily cause a DOS attack on the box. I had to disable access to windows clients which were primarily IT and accounting employees. Apple has a terrible patch policy. I feel that they are a large enough company to release patches at least 2 versions back considering they like to do a release every 1-1.5 years. Imagine if Microsoft released a new vista every year. That would be a support nightmare. Of course Microsoft can't even get a start menu change done in a year...
Apple can develop great products, but they sure can't support them very long. Someone at apple needs to learn about maintaining software. Essentially you have to pay for security patches every two to three years. I end up running the latest OS release because safari and a few other things rarely see patches once its a version behind.
Before someone points out that apple is smaller than Microsoft, consider that smaller companies and groups maintain patches to their linux distros for far longer than Apple does with a commercial OS. I suppose some projects have worse policies... for instance FreeBSD EOL'd a bunch of stuff recently. I'm not in a position to back port patches when I get a few releases done with MidnightBSD yet since I don't have many developers. Apple does have developers.
Microsoft often has trouble selling the first or second generation of a product. Look how long it took to get Windows on desktops or to get Windows Mobile going? xbox 1.0 was the sega dreamcast as it ran windows ce. The xbox 360 is now somewhat popular. I like the iPod, but I think Microsoft will eventually gain marketshare. Wait until revision two or three and see where the zune sells. I suspect sandisk will put a dent in apple's sales over the next year as I hear about them increasingly. The zune will then take over for the sandisk.
I can't wait to see what apple does with the iPod to compete with the newer players. Apple is the Microsoft of MP3 players right now... number one and an ever increasing base of people who hate the iPod. Apple could also be repeating the mistake in the 80s. If so, by 2015 (windows 95) Microsoft will have the best selling digital media player (it won't be mp3.. not enough drm).
Just a clarification. My point with the breastfeeding is that women want breasts not to be looked at as a sexual object. If they aren't sexual, then its ok to display them. If society can't distinguish than its not time to allow breast feeding. My wife saw a woman at target breast feeding a few months ago. A 14 year old boy was watching her and enjoying every minute of it. She did not use a blanket. My wife asked her to cover up since someone was obviously not "understanding her natural process..."
Because the parent (or someone) gave access to the internet unattended to the child! I remember what I did on the internet at 16 in my room. I had a PC in my room with a password only I knew for internet access. My parents were clueless. Based on that experience, I think anyone who gives free reign on the net to a child is an idiot.
Conversely, there are good parents who try to monitor their kids. I had a coworker who caught her 13 year old daughter talking to a 23 year old guy. The were already exchanging pictures! After that, she asked me about monitoring IM conversations and I told her about the various keyloggers you can get for IM software. Simple prevention and taking responsibility as a parent can go a long way. People only get angry after something happens to their kid. Where were they before? I know its popular to let children do anything they want now.
No, I'm not a parent since my wife doesn't want children.
People can't have it both ways.. women want to breast feed in public. Women like to wear practically nothing at the beach. Sears likes to send underwear ads in the sunday newspaper. Then video games are immoral for showing the same thing in an often ANIMATED way.
If society choses to be modest in every other way then they can regulate video games. Many video games are played by adults... so much in fact that Nintendo released a console targeted toward them! Just as the simpsons isn't meant for a 5 year old, not all video games are for little tikes. I think my cousin could handle most of the games in my collection (he's a minor) but I wouldn't let him play doom 3. However, his parents let me play doom at 15 (just a little older) at their home when he was almost 2. Its up to them to sensor him and not the government, the PTA, or anyone else.
1. Parents should be responsible for their children. That includes their behavior and what they view/see. 2. Parents should monitor what their children do online and offline. They should teach them what they expect and how to be safe. 3. When someone tries to solicit a child online, its not just that persons fault. Its also the parents fault for not watching their child, letting them use myspace or ET or whatever. 4. Parents need to learn their kid doesn't get a cut in line or special favors. Nothing is that much greater about your kid than every other kid on the planet and if there was it would be on CNN right now.
I could have handled most if not all video games in my teens. Hell i was playing doom and leisure suit larry at 16. I didn't blow up anything, threaten anyone or have 8 children with a bunch of child support. I guess video games aren't the only motivating factor in society! Heaven forbid I might have learned something from my parents and others.
We must hold off with the firefox 2 upgrade at work due to old ssl support with the webserver. There is a workaround but people above me don't want to do it.
11% growth is good, but then again they are a monopoly. Its sad they only see that kind of growth. Perhaps competition including Apple as well as open source projects are starting to hit their bottom line? Then again it could be the massive waste of money trying to enter new markets. How much have they spent on the xbox division? What about the zune? Microsoft should focus on their core product line and improve it. Windows always needs a lot of work and I don't just mean new features. Microsoft steals instead of innovates quite often. Why can't they keep up with apple? They used to steal faster than they do now. Microsoft used to release more service packs. I miss that. It was nice to deploy updates as service packs and not have 50-100 patches waiting post service pack. Maybe they could even bundle patches since service packs in a giant service pack like update but without the guarantee of QA that a service pack brings. Perhaps they need more testers and developers devoted to core products. They have the money obviously.
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This is more of a question rather than comment. Is it legal for them to read snail mail at the post office? Its stored there until you get it delivered. If no, then this lawsuit has a point.
The new problem is how much software can I possibly install to watch content? I happen to use iTunes so that I can watch content on my Mac and PC. I already find it inconvenient that I can not watch content in an open source operating system. Now I'm supposed to add additional bloat to my Windows install for Amazon's service, iTunes, this Azerus pay service, along with any other vendor entering the ring. I usually watch DVDs on my PC anyway so these download services are great in one sense. I no longer have to go to the store or buy and wait. (well download time) I don't have a problem with DRM that protects content in itself, but I do have a problem with the lack of versatility in devices and operating systems which can PLAY this content.
I suppose we should just accept that not everyone likes iTunes. If you don't like windows or own a Mac, it would be rather inconvenient. Its one of the many hurdles I face with MidnightBSD and I'm sure the Linux community feels the same way.
Still it is nice they are distributing content.
What we really need are some new laws that force companies to make their content available on multiple services so that there isn't a monopoly. This would also have the benefit of possibly putting it into different DRM formats which might be more acceptable to some. Imagine if only walmart sold movies. That's what we get now. Amazon sells star trek episodes, but Apple does not. Apple has some exclusive content on iTunes that amazon does not have. (unbox) More competition *could* keep content prices low.
For some people, it would be the end of AJAX. I don't think I'm that lucky though. To me, AJAX is just DHTML again. Sure there are some additional uses for it, but most people are trying to use it like DHTML.
How about the img tag? I think all of us can think of many uses of pictures on the internet. Hell I kept AOL as a teen to look at porn. :)
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Cookies aren't all bad. Most people associate then with ads, but they also allow a stateless protocol to work with login type websites. I couldn't imagine the web without e-commerce or the ability to pay my discover card online. They could have been implemented better or differently, but that's true of all computer technologies. Just remember when working with cookies always treat the data back from them as tainted and validate it using a regular expression if possible. (if it makes sense with the data type of course)
Frames are open to debate although there are a few arguable uses like a table of contents for content, etc. Most of this can be accomplished with CSS now.
I've used WorldWideWeb on my NeXT and was able to pull up three websites. Google, Apache.org and kernel.org worked but any site using XHTML would not render. Obviously images were not supported. It was also not the very first version of WorldWideWeb (the first browser). Here's a picture from my NeXT: http://www.foolishgames.com/luke/firstbrowser.tif
I think most people have a list of web technologies that they wish didn't exist. The list is probably different for everyone. I personally hate Flash and Java Applets. Flash is slightly worse as it runs on less operating systems than java does. Before someone says its 99%, remember that this is slashdot and many of us use other operating systems and not necessarily 32bit intel based ones. Now that Adobe owns flash, there is no hope for standards compliance although part of it may work in firefox for the systems it supports. Porting firefox is not fun.
I suspect it was added to 10.5 for Mac OS X Server! I'm sure home users could eventually need it, but I'm sure an xserve is a data center attached to an xserve raid might be a better target. Lets face it, HFS+ isn't going anywhere just yet. They also include UFS support which is sometimes used on servers as well. I'm interested in this for the CS servers I administer and not for any client uses at this time.
Most (if not all) posts seem to direct this to a Mac Book Pro or something. I don't get it.
Well remember the current Zend people took the work of someone else in PERL and created PHP 3 and on. It started as a PERL library to ease CGI development.
.NET, but classic ASP) Microsoft did a great job of keeping the API constant and offering a fair amount of security for the time. If PHP won't be secure, it could at least be consistent. Why can't the open source community make something like ASP? Many people using PHP are hobbyists and things could get much easier for them. And before anyone posts that the API stays the same, look at the changelog for PHP sometime.
I can't believe they still haven't caught up to the ease of use of ASP. (not
Well then its not a good way to track sales. Apple offers gift cards as well as paypal in the US at least. I often by my relatives iTunes gift cards for birthdays and sometimes christmas gifts. My mom gets at least $45 in gift cards a year for instance. Also, gift cards are available at local retailers like Target, etc. That wouldn't be tracked in the Apple store (online) sales either. (regardless of payment method)
I can think of one reason the conclusion maybe true though. Since Apple started selling tv shows and movies, I've bought very little music from them. Most of my iTunes budget goes into shows now. I've bought every episode of Monk, and various other things. I've got about 30GB of content that was purchased through ITMS between two computers. This does not include my wife's collection.
Another poster was also right. I have purchased most of the older tracks that I'm going to buy. At this point, I buy tracks from a few new albums if I actually like the song.
Finally, I use iTunes on Mac OS and Windows XP nearly everyday. I often stream from my iBook to my windows machine to use my nicer speakers. It does seem a little buggy and I can't stand the hidden equalizer. I've noticed that it acts up when downloading from Apple if my network connection is maxed out. I've also noticed that it locks up frequently on my Mom's PC last time I was there. She's on a dialup and even trying to get album artwork will cause a freeze. After 20 minutes I just killed it since there was no activity on the dial-up. Apple needs to fix iTunes quickly. There's room for improvement in usability too. My mother is having trouble using 7.0 and she jumped from 4 to 7. I get calls every few days because she had it crash or can't figure out how to do something.
As for iPod sales, I know 4 people getting shuffles and one getting a 30GB iPod.
Yes and most of us are assuming local news. What about other situations like say Iraq? How many of us are in Iraq with cell phones. I'm not saying that locals will not take photos, but its unlikely they will get attention in our media. (regardless if you're american like me or live somewhere else) News can happen anywhere. Also, news outlets do interviews with people. I don't see a professional journalist wanting to take a photo for time or newsweek with their 1 megapixel sanyo they got at the local sprint store.
Right, but unless you are running SUS or similar you are not able to use windowsupdate.micorsoft.com (or the replacement) which also includes new software like DirectX which is useful in gaming.
Yes, apple does 9 major patches and a few minor security updates. But say that 10.4.x just came out.. that means 10.2.x including SERVER is no longer patched for most updates. You may be lucky enough to get iTunes and quicktime for awhile, but forget real security patches or fixes to say safari, etc. I almost understand the clients, but upgrading a server OS isn't always a picnic.
"The PC is blocked from Internet access and only turned on when it is in active use."
So you don't patch it? I really don't understand the thinking that you must keep a Windows box off the network to be safe. Granted a disconnected computer is never attackable except locally. A patched, firewalled Windows XP box is fairly safe. If you only play games on it, it is highly unlikely you'll install spyware or other malware.
This is almost as stupid as the $2000 dell server at work that I can't put on the network because it runs Windows. Look at security advisories for OS X lately. I've had OS X servers taken down by outdated samba installs in the OS that apple won't patch because they had released 10.3 already. (it was 10.2)
As for speed, 10.1-10.3 did get faster on each release. After a certain point that advantage is gone. An original iBook can't run 10.4 for instance. (well you can install it but it sucks) My G4 iBook slowed down with 10.4 as it required more ram to do the same thing and the first generation has a 640MB limitation. Its also not a fair comparison in a way. Microsoft only does an OS release every 4 3-4 years. By that time, they need to find a way to force people to buy it. Apple's solution to that problem is to not provide patches.
Microsoft is also hoping to replace vba (think vb6) with a .NET replacement. In order to support the Mac, they would need to port the .NET runtime to Mac OS.
I've seen a laptop get thrown across the room out of anger in my old job. (tech support at a university) That woman had a PHD, but she couldn't figure out that laptops break when they hit the ground. Dell didn't cover that. This was a new laptop as her last one had a large cup of coffee dropped on it. Dell did replace the keyboard and motherboard and we cleaned it up. She refused to use it though. I guess she didn't like the smell of starbucks after all. Don't worry, she was fired eventually.
More recently, I saw an Apple Xserve get dropped! It was in a 12u enclosure and my boss was trying to slide it into the cover at the top. (first server in there) The case was bent and he bled on the power supply. Surprisingly, only the PCI riser, memory and drive units were loosened. It booted up fine after those issues were resolved. So any computer can be dropped.
Didn't a Microsoft employee come up with xml from sgml? You can argue if its innovative or not, but you can't hold xml against them other than they didn't want anything to do with it until it was suggested to a standards body.
I find it sad the guy could only point out little things. Lets be clear that lack of innovation doesn't mean microsoft hasn't made some positive changes in the computer industry as well. Microsoft did bring GUIs to PC users which opened up computers to a much larger audience. It probably would have happened anyway with apple or someone else long term. Apple ships first, but Microsoft often gets the masses into the act.
On a personal level, Microsoft got me interested in computers as well. Then again I wanted a Mac once I got to the store. Instead I got a Packard Bell!
Yes, and in the case of minivans they often don't fare that well as they are low to the ground. I was rear-ended in 2005 as some jackass father decided to turn around to yell at his kids instead of stopping at the red light coming up. He was doing around 55 and it turned into a 5 car accident. Only two people didn't end up in the hospital.. me and him. His kids and all the other occupants went to the hospital. His van leaked antifreeze all over and took most of the damage. My car was just barely totaled and it was only due to the air bag deployment. (1998 saturn sl1) My car still ran fine.
Similarly my wife was hit in her late teens by a drunk driver driving a minivan. His wouldn't start and his wife was rushed to the ER (granted she had been drinking a lot...) but my wife only had scratches. He was traveling at 60 mph and side impacted with a 1996 saturn sl2. So no, minivans are not safer. In fact, they had a lot of trouble getting that drunks wife out of the car. She was trapped since there isn't a lot of area in the front of a minivan to squish so it ends up locking your legs in.
As for SUVs, everyone in my family that has one has flipped theirs at least one time. I've never done that in a car.
In my last job, I had to support Mac OS 10.2 clients and servers. It was a nightmare as there is a severe problem with samba in OS X server which would easily cause a DOS attack on the box. I had to disable access to windows clients which were primarily IT and accounting employees. Apple has a terrible patch policy. I feel that they are a large enough company to release patches at least 2 versions back considering they like to do a release every 1-1.5 years. Imagine if Microsoft released a new vista every year. That would be a support nightmare. Of course Microsoft can't even get a start menu change done in a year...
Apple can develop great products, but they sure can't support them very long. Someone at apple needs to learn about maintaining software. Essentially you have to pay for security patches every two to three years. I end up running the latest OS release because safari and a few other things rarely see patches once its a version behind.
Before someone points out that apple is smaller than Microsoft, consider that smaller companies and groups maintain patches to their linux distros for far longer than Apple does with a commercial OS. I suppose some projects have worse policies... for instance FreeBSD EOL'd a bunch of stuff recently. I'm not in a position to back port patches when I get a few releases done with MidnightBSD yet since I don't have many developers. Apple does have developers.
Microsoft often has trouble selling the first or second generation of a product. Look how long it took to get Windows on desktops or to get Windows Mobile going? xbox 1.0 was the sega dreamcast as it ran windows ce. The xbox 360 is now somewhat popular. I like the iPod, but I think Microsoft will eventually gain marketshare. Wait until revision two or three and see where the zune sells. I suspect sandisk will put a dent in apple's sales over the next year as I hear about them increasingly. The zune will then take over for the sandisk.
I can't wait to see what apple does with the iPod to compete with the newer players. Apple is the Microsoft of MP3 players right now... number one and an ever increasing base of people who hate the iPod. Apple could also be repeating the mistake in the 80s. If so, by 2015 (windows 95) Microsoft will have the best selling digital media player (it won't be mp3.. not enough drm).
Just a clarification. My point with the breastfeeding is that women want breasts not to be looked at as a sexual object. If they aren't sexual, then its ok to display them. If society can't distinguish than its not time to allow breast feeding. My wife saw a woman at target breast feeding a few months ago. A 14 year old boy was watching her and enjoying every minute of it. She did not use a blanket. My wife asked her to cover up since someone was obviously not "understanding her natural process..."
Because the parent (or someone) gave access to the internet unattended to the child! I remember what I did on the internet at 16 in my room. I had a PC in my room with a password only I knew for internet access. My parents were clueless. Based on that experience, I think anyone who gives free reign on the net to a child is an idiot.
Conversely, there are good parents who try to monitor their kids. I had a coworker who caught her 13 year old daughter talking to a 23 year old guy. The were already exchanging pictures! After that, she asked me about monitoring IM conversations and I told her about the various keyloggers you can get for IM software. Simple prevention and taking responsibility as a parent can go a long way. People only get angry after something happens to their kid. Where were they before? I know its popular to let children do anything they want now.
No, I'm not a parent since my wife doesn't want children.
People can't have it both ways.. women want to breast feed in public. Women like to wear practically nothing at the beach. Sears likes to send underwear ads in the sunday newspaper. Then video games are immoral for showing the same thing in an often ANIMATED way.
If society choses to be modest in every other way then they can regulate video games. Many video games are played by adults... so much in fact that Nintendo released a console targeted toward them! Just as the simpsons isn't meant for a 5 year old, not all video games are for little tikes. I think my cousin could handle most of the games in my collection (he's a minor) but I wouldn't let him play doom 3. However, his parents let me play doom at 15 (just a little older) at their home when he was almost 2. Its up to them to sensor him and not the government, the PTA, or anyone else.
1. Parents should be responsible for their children. That includes their behavior and what they view/see.
2. Parents should monitor what their children do online and offline. They should teach them what they expect and how to be safe.
3. When someone tries to solicit a child online, its not just that persons fault. Its also the parents fault for not watching their child, letting them use myspace or ET or whatever.
4. Parents need to learn their kid doesn't get a cut in line or special favors. Nothing is that much greater about your kid than every other kid on the planet and if there was it would be on CNN right now.
I could have handled most if not all video games in my teens. Hell i was playing doom and leisure suit larry at 16. I didn't blow up anything, threaten anyone or have 8 children with a bunch of child support. I guess video games aren't the only motivating factor in society! Heaven forbid I might have learned something from my parents and others.
We must hold off with the firefox 2 upgrade at work due to old ssl support with the webserver. There is a workaround but people above me don't want to do it.
Ever heard of open source? Many people create things so that other people like Redhat, Novell and IBM can profit off it.
11% growth is good, but then again they are a monopoly. Its sad they only see that kind of growth. Perhaps competition including Apple as well as open source projects are starting to hit their bottom line? Then again it could be the massive waste of money trying to enter new markets. How much have they spent on the xbox division? What about the zune? Microsoft should focus on their core product line and improve it. Windows always needs a lot of work and I don't just mean new features. Microsoft steals instead of innovates quite often. Why can't they keep up with apple? They used to steal faster than they do now. Microsoft used to release more service packs. I miss that. It was nice to deploy updates as service packs and not have 50-100 patches waiting post service pack. Maybe they could even bundle patches since service packs in a giant service pack like update but without the guarantee of QA that a service pack brings. Perhaps they need more testers and developers devoted to core products. They have the money obviously.
No, they play the same four songs over and over again on radio just as the RIAA tells them to do.
Or using wine in another OS besides linux... what about BSD?
Exactly. Look at Windows and IE marketshare.