It's true that people tend to stick with what they know even when presented with better alternatives. However, there is no harm in trying, and much benifit, because many people will make the switch. In my own world, I have successfully switched my Mom, my Dad, my Sister, and my Aunt to Mozilla. I consider that a major accomplishment for the cause.
So, just because one or a few people want to stick with IE doesn't mean you should give up. Keep trying because every little bit helps.
Linux doesn't supply my media player, Mandrake does. (Or slackware, etc...) Microsoft should work that way also. Build the OS with nothing on it, hand it off as is to the OEMs who can make their own decisions about what to software to install. Hobbyists could take the stock Windows distribution and add their own stuff if they wanted. Corporate users could create their own distribution that more closely fits their needs.
That way, everybody wins. The OEMs get to have a differentiated product they can use to jockey for market share, hobbyists get to choose exactly how their boxen should be set up, and Microsoft can devote more resources to building a better OS.
So, if the Hezzbolah (sp?) calls you up wanting to know how it can cease it's violent activities while still acheiving it's goals, you would deny them?
I think you missed the point of the ruling. Basically, it only applies to "advice" or consulting services, and only when such services are geared to promoting peace and lawfulness. Material support for terrorist organizations is still illegal, as is military advice.
They are saying that yes, you can go to a terrorist group and give them advice on becoming a lawful organization. Previously, even that advice could have landed you in prison.
I think it's safe to say that adoption of the internet would have occurred a lot more slowly in business without CGI. It's a simple fact. Before CGI, the web was a smaller, much more stagnant place. After CGI, business usage of the internet skyrocketed because consumers could now interact with web sites instead of simply downloading text. Remember that CGI came out quite a while before any of the other web application technologies such as ColdFusion, Java, ASP, and PHP. For several years, CGI was simply the only way to get dynamic content on the web.
Frankly, it's ludicrous to think that the web could have grown so quickly without CGI. Certainly a lot of other technologies had roles to play, even major ones, but the web owes a huge debt to CGI.
As far as perl being most popular, I can't really say one way or the other, but I have noticed that every programmer I know can bang out at least a little perl.
Nonsense. There's plenty of perl programming going on. Particularly if you are in NYC, Cali, or London. Hell, I make a pretty decent living hacking up perl. (Kind of like a hairball, but more spagetti-like;)
Yep, I've been using one (T1100) here at work for over a year. The thing is a piece of crap. The processor, an AMD 1300 (i think), is ok but the hard drive is a cheap 6 gig 5400 rpm something or other that sounds like jet turbine and there's no space in the box for another one. Since I dual boot with linux, I quickly maxed that one out. When I went a got a newer hard drive, I discovered that in order to install it properly I would have to remove the other one (which works fine). That's because there's only ONE hard drive bay in this thing. I ended up just hooking it up and letting it rest on top of the floppy drive. No, there aren't any holes for a second drive there either. Due to some rather extreme software requirements, I didn't want to re-install windows and linux on the new drive because it would take three or four days.
On top of all of that, the onboard sound has some sort of problem and plays static noise instead of whatever is sent to it. And then there's crap-for-performance video they put in it. The best it can manage is something like 1024x768 at 24bit in 2D.
Finally, the case is crap too. Working inside one of these things is an excercise in frustration and frequently results in small cuts and much profanity.
On the other hand though, it's well over a year old and it still runs. That's something I guess, but I still want to take a tazer to the mother board, set the whole thing on fire, put it out by peeing on it, and then run it over with my truck. Maybe I'll throw it off a cliff after that.
I'm predicting that the Moz suite will never be dropped, despite what the roadmap says. My reasoning is that open source developers work on what they want to regardless of what anyone else says. If developers want to work on the Moz suite instead of Firebird then that is exactly what they are going to do.
So, I think we are going to always have both products. I just hope that they don't grow so far apart that they are no longer really related.
Excuse me for replying to myself, but it gets worse.
As others have mentioned, the damned thing doesn't work correctly in Gecko-based browsers. I was intrigued by the article, but with a website like that, they are not going to see any of my money.
Well yeah, but there's the social responsibility thing. You can do something good with your old computer instead of simply throwing it away (contributing to a growing problem) and it doesn't have to cost anything but a little of your spare time. That alone should be worth a fair amount of effort and, like I said, you might even be able to get a few bucks out of it.
Top Ten^H^H^H Nine Reasons the Apple Dock Still Sucks
by Bruce Tognazzini
Apple Employee #66, Apple's first Interaction Designer and only Human Interface Evangelist, weighs in on the scientific evidence against the Dock and the sales reality that keeps it in place.
Apple Sales is in love with the Dock. You can't go into an Apple store without seeing it splayed across the bottom of the screen, in the very configuration least conducive to computing on a Macintosh. Why? Because it's sexy and it sells. It makes that bright, shiny new Apple look simple, approachable, and beautiful. It makes for a great demo.
The problem does not lie with the Dock itself--if it makes a great demo, leave it in--but with Apple's apparent belief that it is a complete solution. The Dock is akin to a brightly-colored set of children's blocks, ideal for your first words--dog, cat, run, Spot, run--but not too effective for displaying the contents of War and Peace.
Contrary to my previously-held position, I no longer believe Apple should get rid of the Dock. It's just too pretty there in the store, and it does help set Mac apart from the more utilitarian appearance of Windows (although Windows grows more attractive with every release). You want that in sales. You want a visibly-apparent manifestation of the personality of the underlying technology. That's why automakers spend milliions making the outside of the car project an image of what's underneath the skin.
A certain class of Apple users--those who check their email once or twice a week and sometimes need to print an attached photo--may need nothing more than the Dock.
The rest of us need more powerful tools, so, Apple, leave the Dock as the smashing demo it is, but also supply some serious, information-dense tools. You have the talent and wherewithal to make such tools as attractive as the Dock if only you will cease seeing this one single object as a complete solution.
Apple has made a few improvements to the Dock in the last three years. Items no longer jump around seemingly at random, although the size of the Dock continues to "wheeze" in and out without user control.. Items also act like buttons, so clicking anywhere within their confines will open them. Apple also quickly gave us the ability to turn off magnification, a major improvement in day-to-day usability.
The other good news is that independent solutions now exist for getting around every limitation of the Dock. Read Make Your Mac a Monster Machine to learn how to turn your Mac into a high-productivity, but still fun workhorse. Meanwhile, here are eight continuing problems with the Dock, plus a new one, a decided lack of color. Most of these are inherent, and the solution is more and varied tools. A few can be directly addressed by design tweaks.
9. The Dock is big and clumsy
The Dock by default sucks up around 70 pixels square minimum, more than four times as much vertical space as either the Windows task bar or the Macintosh menu bar. (Yes, you can set it much smaller, but then you make it progressively more difficult to identify an icon without "scrubbing" the screen with your mouse to reveal its label.) Couple that with Apple's move to 16:9 wide screens (read: short screens), and you have a real problem. For good measure, add in the Dock's habit of floating on top of working windows, and you have little choice but to hide it.
8. Identical icons look identical
This was originally entitled "Identical pictures look identical." I pointed out that the Dock's use of thumnails in small sizes made all normal text documents look pretty much alike. Apple has now dumped thumbnails in return for identical icons. My original advice still holds: "We need information on data types, file sizes (
1. Retire old, slow performing computers 2. Spend time (re)installing Linux on them 3. Donate them to charity 4. Take tax deduction on your 1040 5. Profit!!! ?
If I ever retire my old computer (that's a big if) that is exactly what I plan to do with it. Saves me a disposal problem, let's me add more to my tax refund, and it's socially responsible.
And I don't see any particular reason to believe any of this unless more qualified observers can repeat the experiments...
Hey, I know! We can send Jerry Falwell. Or Pat Robertson. I'm sure either of those two would make much better observers than any highly competant NASA engineer. Hell, at least you know their motives are pure.
You can read nearly every MS document out there using OOo or Abiword or any of a dozen other open source office applications. Although it's true that some of the formatting may be messed up, you can still read it. And who says you have to send a word doc back in response? Save it to a more interoperable format (which probably looks better under OSS) and send that. Their MS Office app will be able to handle it fine. It also sends a subtle message that interoperability is appreciated.
Slashdot Mirror
perhaps, but not this time.
robots.txt does not exist at sco.com.
It's true that people tend to stick with what they know even when presented with better alternatives. However, there is no harm in trying, and much benifit, because many people will make the switch. In my own world, I have successfully switched my Mom, my Dad, my Sister, and my Aunt to Mozilla. I consider that a major accomplishment for the cause.
So, just because one or a few people want to stick with IE doesn't mean you should give up. Keep trying because every little bit helps.
Linux doesn't supply my media player, Mandrake does. (Or slackware, etc...) Microsoft should work that way also. Build the OS with nothing on it, hand it off as is to the OEMs who can make their own decisions about what to software to install. Hobbyists could take the stock Windows distribution and add their own stuff if they wanted. Corporate users could create their own distribution that more closely fits their needs.
That way, everybody wins. The OEMs get to have a differentiated product they can use to jockey for market share, hobbyists get to choose exactly how their boxen should be set up, and Microsoft can devote more resources to building a better OS.
Too bad it'll never happen.
So, if the Hezzbolah (sp?) calls you up wanting to know how it can cease it's violent activities while still acheiving it's goals, you would deny them?
The exception only applies where the given advice is on how to become lawful or otherwise cease violent activities.
I think you missed the point of the ruling. Basically, it only applies to "advice" or consulting services, and only when such services are geared to promoting peace and lawfulness. Material support for terrorist organizations is still illegal, as is military advice.
They are saying that yes, you can go to a terrorist group and give them advice on becoming a lawful organization. Previously, even that advice could have landed you in prison.
(Tin foil hats are property of the producers of the movie Signs. You had damn well better register that now, before it's too late.)
/me ducks
I think I qualify as prior art.
Yet Darl has indicated that BSD will be next on the hit list. I don't think he specified which flavor, which probably means all of them.
Well. That's very comforting.
Except that I live in Texas. I do not want to move to Brazil.
I think it's safe to say that adoption of the internet would have occurred a lot more slowly in business without CGI. It's a simple fact. Before CGI, the web was a smaller, much more stagnant place. After CGI, business usage of the internet skyrocketed because consumers could now interact with web sites instead of simply downloading text. Remember that CGI came out quite a while before any of the other web application technologies such as ColdFusion, Java, ASP, and PHP. For several years, CGI was simply the only way to get dynamic content on the web.
Frankly, it's ludicrous to think that the web could have grown so quickly without CGI. Certainly a lot of other technologies had roles to play, even major ones, but the web owes a huge debt to CGI.
As far as perl being most popular, I can't really say one way or the other, but I have noticed that every programmer I know can bang out at least a little perl.
Not all problems require an OO solution.
Blasphemer! Burn him! Burn him! Send him to hell!
Hurry, before he says that a database might not be the solution to everything either!
Nonsense. There's plenty of perl programming going on. Particularly if you are in NYC, Cali, or London. Hell, I make a pretty decent living hacking up perl. (Kind of like a hairball, but more spagetti-like ;)
Yep, I've been using one (T1100) here at work for over a year. The thing is a piece of crap. The processor, an AMD 1300 (i think), is ok but the hard drive is a cheap 6 gig 5400 rpm something or other that sounds like jet turbine and there's no space in the box for another one. Since I dual boot with linux, I quickly maxed that one out. When I went a got a newer hard drive, I discovered that in order to install it properly I would have to remove the other one (which works fine). That's because there's only ONE hard drive bay in this thing. I ended up just hooking it up and letting it rest on top of the floppy drive. No, there aren't any holes for a second drive there either. Due to some rather extreme software requirements, I didn't want to re-install windows and linux on the new drive because it would take three or four days.
On top of all of that, the onboard sound has some sort of problem and plays static noise instead of whatever is sent to it. And then there's crap-for-performance video they put in it. The best it can manage is something like 1024x768 at 24bit in 2D.
Finally, the case is crap too. Working inside one of these things is an excercise in frustration and frequently results in small cuts and much profanity.
On the other hand though, it's well over a year old and it still runs. That's something I guess, but I still want to take a tazer to the mother board, set the whole thing on fire, put it out by peeing on it, and then run it over with my truck. Maybe I'll throw it off a cliff after that.
WHY? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHY??
nope, that's no help
(This here is a lameness filter buster)
Maybe that's just the old tin-foil hat I'm feeling.
;)
Stop it. Unless you're a sexy geek chick, in which case go right ahead
Seriously though, you are right on the money. Most people do seem to prefer the blocker add ons, and some of them are indeed malware. It's sickening.
I'm predicting that the Moz suite will never be dropped, despite what the roadmap says. My reasoning is that open source developers work on what they want to regardless of what anyone else says. If developers want to work on the Moz suite instead of Firebird then that is exactly what they are going to do.
So, I think we are going to always have both products. I just hope that they don't grow so far apart that they are no longer really related.
Not to worry, we Americans are slick. We'll just run the software backwards.
Excuse me for replying to myself, but it gets worse.
As others have mentioned, the damned thing doesn't work correctly in Gecko-based browsers. I was intrigued by the article, but with a website like that, they are not going to see any of my money.
Why indeed?
Here's what the W3C thinks.
Frames and XHTML, sheesh, these guys are amatuers.
Fear not gentle troon, you can watch Duel without trepidation for flammable is a perfectly cromulent word.
Well yeah, but there's the social responsibility thing. You can do something good with your old computer instead of simply throwing it away (contributing to a growing problem) and it doesn't have to cost anything but a little of your spare time. That alone should be worth a fair amount of effort and, like I said, you might even be able to get a few bucks out of it.
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.ht ml
Top Ten^H^H^H Nine Reasons the Apple Dock Still Sucks
by Bruce Tognazzini
Apple Employee #66, Apple's first Interaction Designer and only Human Interface Evangelist, weighs in on the scientific evidence against the Dock and the sales reality that keeps it in place.
Apple Sales is in love with the Dock. You can't go into an Apple store without seeing it splayed across the bottom of the screen, in the very configuration least conducive to computing on a Macintosh. Why? Because it's sexy and it sells. It makes that bright, shiny new Apple look simple, approachable, and beautiful. It makes for a great demo.
The problem does not lie with the Dock itself--if it makes a great demo, leave it in--but with Apple's apparent belief that it is a complete solution. The Dock is akin to a brightly-colored set of children's blocks, ideal for your first words--dog, cat, run, Spot, run--but not too effective for displaying the contents of War and Peace.
Contrary to my previously-held position, I no longer believe Apple should get rid of the Dock. It's just too pretty there in the store, and it does help set Mac apart from the more utilitarian appearance of Windows (although Windows grows more attractive with every release). You want that in sales. You want a visibly-apparent manifestation of the personality of the underlying technology. That's why automakers spend milliions making the outside of the car project an image of what's underneath the skin.
A certain class of Apple users--those who check their email once or twice a week and sometimes need to print an attached photo--may need nothing more than the Dock.
The rest of us need more powerful tools, so,
Apple, leave the Dock as the smashing demo it is, but also supply some serious, information-dense tools. You have the talent and wherewithal to make such tools as attractive as the Dock if only you will cease seeing this one single object as a complete solution.
Apple has made a few improvements to the Dock in the last three years. Items no longer jump around seemingly at random, although the size of the Dock continues to "wheeze" in and out without user control.. Items also act like buttons, so clicking anywhere within their confines will open them. Apple also quickly gave us the ability to turn off magnification, a major improvement in day-to-day usability.
The other good news is that independent solutions now exist for getting around every limitation of the Dock. Read Make Your Mac a Monster Machine to learn how to turn your Mac into a high-productivity, but still fun workhorse. Meanwhile, here are eight continuing problems with the Dock, plus a new one, a decided lack of color. Most of these are inherent, and the solution is more and varied tools. A few can be directly addressed by design tweaks.
9. The Dock is big and clumsy
The Dock by default sucks up around 70 pixels square minimum, more than four times as much vertical space as either the Windows task bar or the Macintosh menu bar. (Yes, you can set it much smaller, but then you make it progressively more difficult to identify an icon without "scrubbing" the screen with your mouse to reveal its label.) Couple that with Apple's move to 16:9 wide screens (read: short screens), and you have a real problem. For good measure, add in the Dock's habit of floating on top of working windows, and you have little choice but to hide it.
8. Identical icons look identical
This was originally entitled "Identical pictures look identical." I pointed out that the Dock's use of thumnails in small sizes made all normal text documents look pretty much alike. Apple has now dumped thumbnails in return for identical icons. My original advice still holds: "We need information on data types, file sizes (
1. Retire old, slow performing computers
2. Spend time (re)installing Linux on them
3. Donate them to charity
4. Take tax deduction on your 1040
5. Profit!!! ?
If I ever retire my old computer (that's a big if) that is exactly what I plan to do with it. Saves me a disposal problem, let's me add more to my tax refund, and it's socially responsible.
And I don't see any particular reason to believe any of this unless more qualified observers can repeat the experiments...
Hey, I know! We can send Jerry Falwell. Or Pat Robertson. I'm sure either of those two would make much better observers than any highly competant NASA engineer. Hell, at least you know their motives are pure.
You can read nearly every MS document out there using OOo or Abiword or any of a dozen other open source office applications. Although it's true that some of the formatting may be messed up, you can still read it. And who says you have to send a word doc back in response? Save it to a more interoperable format (which probably looks better under OSS) and send that. Their MS Office app will be able to handle it fine. It also sends a subtle message that interoperability is appreciated.