And after the first call to the company's helpdesk, the MacOSX partition with all the user's files will be wiped since the CHD chose to solve the problem by issuing a remote reinstall of windows..
A lot of shops routinely reinstall end-users' PCs to keep a steady base line for minimizing problem reports. Just make sure your company doesn't have such a policy before going OSX/Wintel.
According to studies, Linux does infringe on a lot of patents. In a certain study infringement of 283 patents were found and out of these 27 belonged to Microsoft. Even Richard Stallman has been mentioning this in interviews as well as in talks, thus giving the claim some credibility in my eyes at least.
Since SCO is now in everyones seen as a Microsoft sock puppet, even the Redmond company realizes that it would look incredibly silly to continue using SCO as their megaphone for spreading Linux FUD.
Microsoft is at a crossroad right now. People, companies and governments have started demanding a lot more software freedoms in the last few years and it's clear that Microsoft can't tackle the "Linux threat" (i) in the same manner they've tackled all other competitors since their beginning. Since Microsoft's hand is more or less forced right now they seem to have no other option (at least given their current business model and unwillingness to become a service company) than to pull out the patent card. This might very well be a Pandora's Box, since there are a lot of big companies having a lot more patents than Microsoft who are betting a substantial part of their future on GNU/Linux. However Microsoft currently only has three options.
1) Sit back and watching their market share shrinking (due to many factors such as regulations of software freedoms in certain countries and general sway in corporate attitude towards freedom). 2) Become primarily a service company, backed by software which is still lacking in the OSS community (ii) 3) Start a legal battle to slow down the inevitable, allowing a few more years of enormous margins.
Now clearly option 1 is out of the question since it flies in the face of any Harvard MBA. Option two is not something Mr. Gates is very comfortable with and will likely not happen while he and Mr. Balmer still has significant influence over the company's direction. So They're left with option three...
i. Linux happens to be a manifistation of software freedom which looks tangible enough for Microsoft to grasp, since it can apply the typical corporate stratagem of having a "threat" and an "enemy". Tacking these labels to the real reason for their headache namely "freedom", would not play out very well as a media stunt, nor for their own employees I would guess.
ii. The future of proprietary software is in my view to fill whatever gaps exist in the OSS offerings at any given time or to invent (iii) new useful stuff. However the OSS community will catch up eventually if the applications are of enough use which means that the "software aspect" of a company who relies on proprietary stuff will have to raise the bar and / or find other gaps to focus on more quickly. It's all good in my view since it would likely accelerate the development pace in the industry.
iii. By invent I don't mean the buzzword / marketing term for "refinement" but real innovation.
So, you're saying that a free market isn't necessarily always the best option for the citizen of a country? Hmm. quite a shocker. Perhaps someone should notify the politicians asking them to.. I dunno.. revise some regulations?
Having publicly funded infrastructure for the citizen doesn't seem all that bad all of a sudden.
What I don't get is why the US aren't ahead of the pack when it comes to high bandwidth connections to the citizen. Isn't the idea that the free market should provide the best service at the lowest prices to people have resulted in the the self proclaimed free market leader of the world to be leaders in this area?
How many game developers would make games that only run on a small fraction of PCs?
Lionhead Studios comes to mind. Black & White 2 which I just bought runs awfully slow on my I.M.O. above average computer system (Athlon XP 3000+, 1GB RAM and a Geforce 6800GT). I've also seen benchmarks of that title on high speced rigs (AMD 64FX57 and GF7800) and the game only ran so-so on those as well.
So apparently there are some studios which push titles out the door requiring HW-specs available only 12-18 months into the future for the larger audience. Don't ask me their reasoning though since I haven't got the slightest.
Except that physical mechanics and safety rarely change. The experienced engineer certainly has the upper hand in your example. Computer science on the other hand is changing daily, and unfortunately "more experienced" in this field is often a very bad thing. If you've been doing it for more than a few years, it is likely obsolete.
This must be among the most ridiculous things I've ever read! Nothing trumps experience and knowledge. With time you gain both. Patterns for example are timeless and with age you actually get experience implementing them, finding them and harness the adaptations of them to any given problem you might be facing. As for "computer science" changing rapidly, that statement is complete Bull. The foundations of the computer science taught today is pretty much the same as it was 10 years ago. The "bleeding edge" is what you find in research papers, white papers and the like (nearly all done by people 30+). These papers augment your existing skills helping you keep your skill set updated. Needless to say, the more year you've spent on the treadmill, the wider and deeper your knowledge and more honed your skill sets become.
Developers are using their minds to create which means a person in this field only gets better until the person ceases to be active in the fields. This is in stark contrast to physical labor, where the body's physique imposes constraints with age.
There are of course many places that are using older technology, and these are exactly the places you find the older (more experienced) guys
What's that supposed to mean? Look at the labs of IBM, Intel or any other company producing innovative stuff and see how many 30- researchers you find there who designed any break-through products in the history of those companies.
Son, get some real world experience before you blurt out any more sentences on the subject of experience.
-- It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt
For the past few years the Euro has been very close to replacing the US dollar as the main currency. For example Arab countries and Russia are among those contemplating a switch for their main reserves.
Would the Dollar come crashing down, it would likely have some impact on the global economy. However, I think it would not be enormous since the Euro is a perfectly viable alternative.
On the plus side for the Euro is that the european countries have already gotten their empirical notions out of their systems by having been at war more or less constantly for the last 2000 years (at least). The US is just an infant in comparison to Europe, Russia, Asia and the arab nations and is currently going through it's early stages which include notions of an empire and expanding it's boarders of influence (creating world wide instability).
First, this proposed law will get shot pretty much instantly by the courts
What makes you think that?
should it pass the senate (which it wont).
What makes you think that?
This proposed law pretty much pisses on the first amendment, something that should be clear to senate, and something that is certainly clear to the courts.
It violates the amendment alright and I'm very confident that both the senate representatives as well as the court officials know full well what bill entails. However that implies nothing regarding the acts and motives of the mentioned groups. We've seen time and time again that both the senate and the courts care mostly about playing ball on the same team as the administration, not what is just or in the public's (nation's) best interest
In your "group from the company divisions and IT", I really hope you have division managers present. Since you already mentioned having representatives from the allegedly incompetent IT department in your group, why n ot start by asking them the reasons for your outlined concerns?
If the IT people can explain the reasons for these problems, then your division managers should be able to successfu ly bring these underlying reasons (e.g. budget constraints) to the executive office. Start by listening and don't be so pompous in your attitude until you have all the facts.
In recent times a lot of signals have painted a very bleak pattern of the US society, or at least it's government (which one would expect reflects it's society as a whole to some extent). Signs include the following.
1. Total failure of the copyright system and it's governing mechanics. Just listened to the Eldred v. Ashcroft case and was horrified at the blatant arguments more or less swallowed by the supreme court. The government basically stating:
Yes, we know the founding fathers stipulated the protection of copyright and patents should have limits, but they.. erh.. were vague when giving power to congress, so.. well.. it's OK for congress to extend copyright forever, essentially making the power shift limitless to the culture vultures. And.. yeah, we're doing it also as a way of providing better incentives for european artists to come to the US and get a copyright here instead of 'over there'. (120 years instead of, what 110?) The system will also become more harmonized if we extend the protection, so it's closer to certain parts of the EU (contradictory statement) terms which that b*stard's employer lobbied/threatened/bullied/forced upon those countries! So, this really isn't something the supreme court should interfere with, 'kaaay?.. so.. stay out of the way will you?And they did! American copyright law colapsed at that instant. Unfortunately the government will continue pushing a colapsed copyright system and failed software patent system on the rest of the world or else, trade sanctions or just as likely, bombing or invasion.
2. Utter failure of the software patent system. Slashdot has had numerous examples about this, but when you start patenting mathematics and business processes, your at the end of the rope. I just had a great idea, I'll patent the process of payment in exchange for goods or services. Why not also throw in the concept of adding numbers together (I'll not call it addition or summing though, would be too intuitive). That way, Congress can be proud of me that I've really furthered Science and Useful Arts!
3. Re-election of the most dangerous person in the world (family trait?). A gung-ho short person with hyrbis (or some other mental illness). A person whose favorite hobbies include shooting barrels at the farm, shooting missiles at and bombing other countries and generally starting wars and causing global instability. A very very risky position with that person in a house which alledgedly has buttons to nuclear warheads!
4. Alientation of most all countries due to very hostile foreign policies to most countries. One can only assume that the only thing holding together the "allied forces" (The US, Bangladesh and Wales?) is the threat of retaliation to the other (two?) nations if they don't dance to the tune of this mad piper.
5. The country's conversion to a full blown police state is soon completed. The reactions on this board was a token to that effect. Most people simply making snyde comments. I guess the sentiment has gone from "Don't touch our guns! We need them to overthrow the government should the need arise" (200 years ago) to a few years ago "Write your congressman" to todays attitude "yeah, yeah, stupid idea, but who really cares".
Ok, some of the above are written with a flair of satire (which few will likely pick up on), but the overall theme is feedback I've received when travelling various countries of the EU for the past 6 months. It might seem a bit harsh but in general, people are bit upset at the US foreign policy and not very at ease with GWB as the leader of the "The Free World". Now I realize some people will probably take offense and mod this to the bottom of the troll stack, but it's just a reflection of sentiments from an area outside of the NA.
Come on. I think you are a bit unfair. First off, the sound quality of files downloaded from ITMS isn't very good to begin with (artifacts clearly audible on a mid to high-end stereo equipment). Burning the stuff to CD and ripping them back followed by yet another destructive re-encode yields even worse result. Unless you're going to use the purchased sound in a very noisy environment (like jogging in traffic or in a construction site environment) you'd easily notice the lousy quality. Granted, I don't blame Apple entirely for the poor sound quality. I know it's the RIAA dictating the sub-par quality. Still, apple is the one selling the music via ITMS meaning they made a conscious decision to do so and thus I think it's only fair that people should be allowed to criticize apple for this.
All companies selling low-grade sound files (Apple, Real, MS, Napster...) are essentially distributors of other distributors and as such have the option to sell something (even if it's bad) which some people might buy vs. not selling the thing and potentially loosing out on some revenue. Unfortunately most first line distributors have joined a cartel, resulting in the rules for second or third line distribution being the same for all with no wiggle room available for individual contracts between the cartel and the distributors to consumer (e.g. Apple).
The available options for Apple et al is to either sell the stuff on someone else's terms or say "no thanks, we don't want to sell your goods on the terms you dictate". Unfortunately, most companies are so called "quarterly companies" nowadays meaning that any additional cent in revenue (really profit) gained today wins 9 out of 10 times compared to a strategy likely doubling the revenue in a few years. Thus we have companies like apple etc. pimping for the current quarter's set of stock holders and not giving a damn "about the coming quarters" (read long term).
A working formula for a long term strategy has always been to cater for what the customers want, specializing in one or more of the specific demand characteristics (e.g portable sound files or high fidelity audio). This will give a company so.c. "value add" meaning their margins can increase without loosing a lot of customers. Diversification is the way to sustain a large market with healthy margins (allowing for fair pay of employees, sound operational investments and fair return to investors). Fighting in the market with low grade, off-the-shelf products is not a winning strategy and can't sustain more than a handful companies for a very limited time.
So, to wrap up. If a company does something wrong (not liked by others) it should be criticized. If many companies does the same thing wrong, they should all be criticized. Unless people criticize no change will ever happen which is the least desirable outcome. Pointing to other people and saying "but they do it too" is not a good base for reasoning about moral, ethics, actions and consequences I.M.O.
It's in the objects, properties, methods and event models for browser / DHTML specific javascript "classes".
Javascript is standardized and both Microsoft and Mozilla follow the same spec.
Please keep the aspects separated since it confuses people otherwise and leads to nonsense discussions.
I recall when Terraserver went online (1998-1999?), it was oh-so-cool being able to watch satellite images on a planar surfaces.
Well, I agree that Google's offering is currently sweeter, but all bashing aside, I give the innovative kudos to M$ this time around for an actual first.
Last I checked, most applications or libraries which have to deal with units implement support for both the metric as well as imperial. For ex. Last week, I had to do some stuff with the JText library and the first step was to implement a conversion utility from and to metricimperical, since the library was written by americans, only supporting imperical units.
Imperial measurements are certainly not only affecting american users, as well as SI/metric units are not only affecting "ROW"-users so my question still remains.
I am sorry, but I don't understand your reasoning. When fulfilling a set of requirements, a developer starts with analyzing his/her problem domain, breaks down the problem into areas, enters an iterative process of devising an architecture and finally starts the technology selection process. The technologies chosen are the ones which under the circumstance are most likely to solve the outlined problems within current constraints (money/time/skills). For example, using a relational database for structured data, a directory (aka. "LDAP") as a user repository, Message queues for assured delivery of intersystem messages, a runtime platform for the application logic (java,python,php,C... whatever is best suited). Finally the phase goes on to detailed design, development and testing.
Given the fact that most all projects go through these phases, I fail to see the importance of a specific language. IBM has been in the industry for quite a while and to me, what they likely try to acomplish with backing PHP is to increase the number of technologies which can be leveraged with minor to no extra effort by their customers (especially 80-100% IBM shops, like Ford) when working with IBM products.
All technologies have pros and cons and what dictates what ones to use for a specific project is how well the tech. fulfills the listed requirements. Java, C nor PHP is a solution to a problem, they're just components in the equation, which when utilized under the right circumstances can help you getting closer to the goal.
IBM is in this for the $$$. What is remarkable about that company (at least for the last decade) is their approach. Giving the customers what they need/want. Look at how WAS (WebSphere Application Server), WPS (portal server), IHS (http server) etc. came to be. They all derived from customer demand. If a tech. was already on the market, IBM embraced that tech., enhanced it (adding new abilities, not changing existing ones except for bug fixes) if needed and made sure to stick to any standards which the original tech. had embraced or adapted new standards for the enhancements. Interoperability seems to be what IBM is all about and when they OpenSource stuff, I'd wager it's likely due to two reasons: 1) It's easier to get key players on board new concepts if the other players feel they can affect the course. 2) Techs which currently haven't the proper market needed to justify devoting millions or billions in own investment can continue to progress at a rapid pace by sharing the investment with others (other companies, OSS developers etc.) until hopefully the market matures. At that time it's likely easier convincing the execs to plow down the cash needed to create new products or apply the final touches before adapting the techs across existing products.
The idea is sound I think. If we ever hope to get the back waters of society ( US, UK?;-) to tag along with a common set of units, then we should try to fix the last outstanding defects of our own system first. Sure, it will be expensive as hell, but what is the current yearly cost of having two competing measurement systems today? Would be interesting if some one had some figures to do a quick ROI. The result might show if this is just another insane idea, or actually economically feasable.
Probably due to different definitions of "spyware sets", where a product groups a number of different attributes (spyware traits) under a common name.
If there are discrepancies between these groups from one program to another, then that could well explain why different number of attributes were returned depending on the execution order of the anti-spyware programs.
First off, you often don't need to know how data is used, but you do need to know what it means.
The problem in the specific case you mention isn't XML itself. It's the way the vendor (Microsoft in this case) chose to represent the data. Ideally, XML data should be stored using intuitive elements and attributes related to the context as well as being easilly understood upon reading a document.
XML is flexible, but for it to be useful, one has to store the data in a way which is interpretable (unambigious and documented and preferably intuitive), not just parsable. So, don't blame XML, the tool, blame the specific user who choose to abuse it instead of using it properly.
Slashdot Mirror
And after the first call to the company's helpdesk, the MacOSX partition with all the user's files will be wiped since the CHD chose to solve the problem by issuing a remote reinstall of windows..
A lot of shops routinely reinstall end-users' PCs to keep a steady base line for minimizing problem reports. Just make sure your company doesn't have such a policy before going OSX/Wintel.
According to studies, Linux does infringe on a lot of patents. In a certain study infringement of 283 patents were found and out of these 27 belonged to Microsoft. Even Richard Stallman has been mentioning this in interviews as well as in talks, thus giving the claim some credibility in my eyes at least.
Since SCO is now in everyones seen as a Microsoft sock puppet, even the Redmond company realizes that it would look incredibly silly to continue using SCO as their megaphone for spreading Linux FUD.
Microsoft is at a crossroad right now. People, companies and governments have started demanding a lot more software freedoms in the last few years and it's clear that Microsoft can't tackle the "Linux threat" (i) in the same manner they've tackled all other competitors since their beginning. Since Microsoft's hand is more or less forced right now they seem to have no other option (at least given their current business model and unwillingness to become a service company) than to pull out the patent card. This might very well be a Pandora's Box, since there are a lot of big companies having a lot more patents than Microsoft who are betting a substantial part of their future on GNU/Linux. However Microsoft currently only has three options.
1) Sit back and watching their market share shrinking (due to many factors such as regulations of software freedoms in certain countries and general sway in corporate attitude towards freedom).
2) Become primarily a service company, backed by software which is still lacking in the OSS community (ii)
3) Start a legal battle to slow down the inevitable, allowing a few more years of enormous margins.
Now clearly option 1 is out of the question since it flies in the face of any Harvard MBA. Option two is not something Mr. Gates is very comfortable with and will likely not happen while he and Mr. Balmer still has significant influence over the company's direction. So They're left with option three...
i. Linux happens to be a manifistation of software freedom which looks tangible enough for Microsoft to grasp, since it can apply the typical corporate stratagem of having a "threat" and an "enemy". Tacking these labels to the real reason for their headache namely "freedom", would not play out very well as a media stunt, nor for their own employees I would guess.
ii. The future of proprietary software is in my view to fill whatever gaps exist in the OSS offerings at any given time or to invent (iii) new useful stuff. However the OSS community will catch up eventually if the applications are of enough use which means that the "software aspect" of a company who relies on proprietary stuff will have to raise the bar and / or find other gaps to focus on more quickly. It's all good in my view since it would likely accelerate the development pace in the industry.
iii. By invent I don't mean the buzzword / marketing term for "refinement" but real innovation.
So, you're saying that a free market isn't necessarily always the best option for the citizen of a country? Hmm. quite a shocker. Perhaps someone should notify the politicians asking them to.. I dunno .. revise some regulations?
Having publicly funded infrastructure for the citizen doesn't seem all that bad all of a sudden.
However, if the companies are determined enough, they'll get the site yanked.
Yanked, on what grounds? If you read TFA it would be apparent to you that what TBP is doing is not illegal in Sweden.
What I don't get is why the US aren't ahead of the pack when it comes to high bandwidth connections to the citizen. Isn't the idea that the free market should provide the best service at the lowest prices to people have resulted in the the self proclaimed free market leader of the world to be leaders in this area?
...
Something here doesn't click
How many game developers would make games that only run on a small fraction of PCs?
Lionhead Studios comes to mind. Black & White 2 which I just bought runs awfully slow on my I.M.O. above average computer system (Athlon XP 3000+, 1GB RAM and a Geforce 6800GT). I've also seen benchmarks of that title on high speced rigs (AMD 64FX57 and GF7800) and the game only ran so-so on those as well.
So apparently there are some studios which push titles out the door requiring HW-specs available only 12-18 months into the future for the larger audience. Don't ask me their reasoning though since I haven't got the slightest.
This must be among the most ridiculous things I've ever read! Nothing trumps experience and knowledge. With time you gain both. Patterns for example are timeless and with age you actually get experience implementing them, finding them and harness the adaptations of them to any given problem you might be facing. As for "computer science" changing rapidly, that statement is complete Bull. The foundations of the computer science taught today is pretty much the same as it was 10 years ago. The "bleeding edge" is what you find in research papers, white papers and the like (nearly all done by people 30+). These papers augment your existing skills helping you keep your skill set updated. Needless to say, the more year you've spent on the treadmill, the wider and deeper your knowledge and more honed your skill sets become.
Developers are using their minds to create which means a person in this field only gets better until the person ceases to be active in the fields. This is in stark contrast to physical labor, where the body's physique imposes constraints with age.
What's that supposed to mean? Look at the labs of IBM, Intel or any other company producing innovative stuff and see how many 30- researchers you find there who designed any break-through products in the history of those companies.
Son, get some real world experience before you blurt out any more sentences on the subject of experience.
-- It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt
For the past few years the Euro has been very close to replacing the US dollar as the main currency. For example Arab countries and Russia are among those contemplating a switch for their main reserves.
Would the Dollar come crashing down, it would likely have some impact on the global economy. However, I think it would not be enormous since the Euro is a perfectly viable alternative.
On the plus side for the Euro is that the european countries have already gotten their empirical notions out of their systems by having been at war more or less constantly for the last 2000 years (at least). The US is just an infant in comparison to Europe, Russia, Asia and the arab nations and is currently going through it's early stages which include notions of an empire and expanding it's boarders of influence (creating world wide instability).
First, this proposed law will get shot pretty much instantly by the courts
What makes you think that?
should it pass the senate (which it wont).
What makes you think that?
This proposed law pretty much pisses on the first amendment, something that should be clear to senate, and something that is certainly clear to the courts.
It violates the amendment alright and I'm very confident that both the senate representatives as well as the court officials know full well what bill entails. However that implies nothing regarding the acts and motives of the mentioned groups. We've seen time and time again that both the senate and the courts care mostly about playing ball on the same team as the administration, not what is just or in the public's (nation's) best interest
I really am not the least bit worried.
I am. Very!
In your "group from the company divisions and IT", I really hope you have division managers present. Since you already mentioned having representatives from the allegedly incompetent IT department in your group, why n ot start by asking them the reasons for your outlined concerns?
If the IT people can explain the reasons for these problems, then your division managers should be able to successfu ly bring these underlying reasons (e.g. budget constraints) to the executive office. Start by listening and don't be so pompous in your attitude until you have all the facts.
A violation to the DMCA, in the US, yes. However, there are about 6 billion people outside the US, so for the vast majority the DMCA does not apply.
In recent times a lot of signals have painted a very bleak pattern of the US society, or at least it's government (which one would expect reflects it's society as a whole to some extent). Signs include the following.
.. erh .. were vague when giving power to congress, so .. well .. it's OK for congress to extend copyright forever, essentially making the power shift limitless to the culture vultures. And .. yeah, we're doing it also as a way of providing better incentives for european artists to come to the US and get a copyright here instead of 'over there'. (120 years instead of, what 110?) The system will also become more harmonized if we extend the protection, so it's closer to certain parts of the EU (contradictory statement) terms which that b*stard's employer lobbied/threatened/bullied/forced upon those countries! So, this really isn't something the supreme court should interfere with, 'kaaay? .. so .. stay out of the way will you? And they did!
1. Total failure of the copyright system and it's governing mechanics.
Just listened to the Eldred v. Ashcroft case and was horrified at the blatant arguments more or less swallowed by the supreme court. The government basically stating:
Yes, we know the founding fathers stipulated the protection of copyright and patents should have limits, but they
American copyright law colapsed at that instant. Unfortunately the government will continue pushing a colapsed copyright system and failed software patent system on the rest of the world or else, trade sanctions or just as likely, bombing or invasion.
2. Utter failure of the software patent system. Slashdot has had numerous examples about this, but when you start patenting mathematics and business processes, your at the end of the rope. I just had a great idea, I'll patent the process of payment in exchange for goods or services. Why not also throw in the concept of adding numbers together (I'll not call it addition or summing though, would be too intuitive). That way, Congress can be proud of me that I've really furthered Science and Useful Arts!
3. Re-election of the most dangerous person in the world (family trait?). A gung-ho short person with hyrbis (or some other mental illness). A person whose favorite hobbies include shooting barrels at the farm, shooting missiles at and bombing other countries and generally starting wars and causing global instability. A very very risky position with that person in a house which alledgedly has buttons to nuclear warheads!
4. Alientation of most all countries due to very hostile foreign policies to most countries. One can only assume that the only thing holding together the "allied forces" (The US, Bangladesh and Wales?) is the threat of retaliation to the other (two?) nations if they don't dance to the tune of this mad piper.
5. The country's conversion to a full blown police state is soon completed. The reactions on this board was a token to that effect. Most people simply making snyde comments. I guess the sentiment has gone from "Don't touch our guns! We need them to overthrow the government should the need arise" (200 years ago) to a few years ago "Write your congressman" to todays attitude "yeah, yeah, stupid idea, but who really cares".
Ok, some of the above are written with a flair of satire (which few will likely pick up on), but the overall theme is feedback I've received when travelling various countries of the EU for the past 6 months. It might seem a bit harsh but in general, people are bit upset at the US foreign policy and not very at ease with GWB as the leader of the "The Free World". Now I realize some people will probably take offense and mod this to the bottom of the troll stack, but it's just a reflection of sentiments from an area outside of the NA.
Just how is >Ajax< putting an end to procedural development? Thought it was just way to update web pages ...
Come on. I think you are a bit unfair.
...) are essentially distributors of other distributors and as such have the option to sell something (even if it's bad) which some people might buy vs. not selling the thing and potentially loosing out on some revenue. Unfortunately most first line distributors have joined a cartel, resulting in the rules for second or third line distribution being the same for all with no wiggle room available for individual contracts between the cartel and the distributors to consumer (e.g. Apple).
First off, the sound quality of files downloaded from ITMS isn't very good to begin with (artifacts clearly audible on a mid to high-end stereo equipment). Burning the stuff to CD and ripping them back followed by yet another destructive re-encode yields even worse result. Unless you're going to use the purchased sound in a very noisy environment (like jogging in traffic or in a construction site environment) you'd easily notice the lousy quality.
Granted, I don't blame Apple entirely for the poor sound quality. I know it's the RIAA dictating the sub-par quality. Still, apple is the one selling the music via ITMS meaning they made a conscious decision to do so and thus I think it's only fair that people should be allowed to criticize apple for this.
All companies selling low-grade sound files (Apple, Real, MS, Napster
The available options for Apple et al is to either sell the stuff on someone else's terms or say "no thanks, we don't want to sell your goods on the terms you dictate". Unfortunately, most companies are so called "quarterly companies" nowadays meaning that any additional cent in revenue (really profit) gained today wins 9 out of 10 times compared to a strategy likely doubling the revenue in a few years. Thus we have companies like apple etc. pimping for the current quarter's set of stock holders and not giving a damn "about the coming quarters" (read long term).
A working formula for a long term strategy has always been to cater for what the customers want, specializing in one or more of the specific demand characteristics (e.g portable sound files or high fidelity audio). This will give a company so.c. "value add" meaning their margins can increase without loosing a lot of customers. Diversification is the way to sustain a large market with healthy margins (allowing for fair pay of employees, sound operational investments and fair return to investors). Fighting in the market with low grade, off-the-shelf products is not a winning strategy and can't sustain more than a handful companies for a very limited time.
So, to wrap up. If a company does something wrong (not liked by others) it should be criticized. If many companies does the same thing wrong, they should all be criticized. Unless people criticize no change will ever happen which is the least desirable outcome. Pointing to other people and saying "but they do it too" is not a good base for reasoning about moral, ethics, actions and consequences I.M.O.
It's in the objects, properties, methods and event models for browser / DHTML specific javascript "classes". Javascript is standardized and both Microsoft and Mozilla follow the same spec. Please keep the aspects separated since it confuses people otherwise and leads to nonsense discussions.
I recall when Terraserver went online (1998-1999?), it was oh-so-cool being able to watch satellite images on a planar surfaces.
Well, I agree that Google's offering is currently sweeter, but all bashing aside, I give the innovative kudos to M$ this time around for an actual first.
Last I checked, most applications or libraries which have to deal with units implement support for both the metric as well as imperial. For ex. Last week, I had to do some stuff with the JText library and the first step was to implement a conversion utility from and to metricimperical, since the library was written by americans, only supporting imperical units.
Imperial measurements are certainly not only affecting american users, as well as SI/metric units are not only affecting "ROW"-users so my question still remains.
I am sorry, but I don't understand your reasoning. ... whatever is best suited). Finally the phase goes on to detailed design, development and testing.
When fulfilling a set of requirements, a developer starts with analyzing his/her problem domain, breaks down the problem into areas, enters an iterative process of devising an architecture and finally starts the technology selection process. The technologies chosen are the ones which under the circumstance are most likely to solve the outlined problems within current constraints (money/time/skills). For example, using a relational database for structured data, a directory (aka. "LDAP") as a user repository, Message queues for assured delivery of intersystem messages, a runtime platform for the application logic (java,python,php,C
Given the fact that most all projects go through these phases, I fail to see the importance of a specific language. IBM has been in the industry for quite a while and to me, what they likely try to acomplish with backing PHP is to increase the number of technologies which can be leveraged with minor to no extra effort by their customers (especially 80-100% IBM shops, like Ford) when working with IBM products.
All technologies have pros and cons and what dictates what ones to use for a specific project is how well the tech. fulfills the listed requirements.
Java, C nor PHP is a solution to a problem, they're just components in the equation, which when utilized under the right circumstances can help you getting closer to the goal.
IBM is in this for the $$$. What is remarkable about that company (at least for the last decade) is their approach. Giving the customers what they need/want. Look at how WAS (WebSphere Application Server), WPS (portal server), IHS (http server) etc. came to be. They all derived from customer demand. If a tech. was already on the market, IBM embraced that tech., enhanced it (adding new abilities, not changing existing ones except for bug fixes) if needed and made sure to stick to any standards which the original tech. had embraced or adapted new standards for the enhancements. Interoperability seems to be what IBM is all about and when they OpenSource stuff, I'd wager it's likely due to two reasons: 1) It's easier to get key players on board new concepts if the other players feel they can affect the course. 2) Techs which currently haven't the proper market needed to justify devoting millions or billions in own investment can continue to progress at a rapid pace by sharing the investment with others (other companies, OSS developers etc.) until hopefully the market matures. At that time it's likely easier convincing the execs to plow down the cash needed to create new products or apply the final touches before adapting the techs across existing products.
The idea is sound I think. If we ever hope to get the back waters of society ( US, UK? ;-) to tag along with a common set of units, then we should try to fix the last outstanding defects of our own system first. Sure, it will be expensive as hell, but what is the current yearly cost of having two competing measurement systems today? Would be interesting if some one had some figures to do a quick ROI. The result might show if this is just another insane idea, or actually economically feasable.
Probably due to different definitions of "spyware sets", where a product groups a number of different attributes (spyware traits) under a common name. If there are discrepancies between these groups from one program to another, then that could well explain why different number of attributes were returned depending on the execution order of the anti-spyware programs.
First off, you often don't need to know how data is used, but you do need to know what it means.
...
H N0b3Jpbmcg ZGF0YSAK</data>
The problem in the specific case you mention isn't XML itself. It's the way the vendor (Microsoft in this case) chose to represent the data.
Ideally, XML data should be stored using intuitive elements and attributes related to the context as well as being easilly understood upon reading a document.
For example, using a structure like
<book>
<title>foo</title>
<author>John Doe</author>
<isbn>0596002920</isbn>
</book>
would much a more intuitive way of storing data in XML format than say
<book>
<data>dGhpcyBpcyBhIHBvb3IgY2hvaWNlIG9mI
</book>
XML is flexible, but for it to be useful, one has to store the data in a way which is interpretable (unambigious and documented and preferably intuitive), not just parsable. So, don't blame XML, the tool, blame the specific user who choose to abuse it instead of using it properly.