from my original post: I consider myself an excellent speller...
I don't think I misspelled anything in my post, and still hold to that statement.
also: with a firm grasp of the English language, its syntax, and semantics.
I do think I have a firm grasp of the English language and can write appropriately to the style appropriate to the forum. In this case I know I butcher formal writing constructs, but I do so knowing the forum understands and accepts a certain informality in/. posts. I never did claim to be excellent in writing, just in spelling.
I stand by my construct "didn't know it was he". "he" in this case is the implied predicate of a clause, "he who wrote the letter". "him" would be more appropriate as in "didn't know him", where "him" in this case appropriately is an object (of "know").
I put illiteracy in quotes because I don't quite think of people who misspell or write less than perfectly illiterate, hence quotes as in, not the true interpretation of illiteracy.
I don't claim to be a rocket scientist, but in college, five straight semesters of calculus, diffy q, partial diffy q, I received the highest score on the finals of all students. I am in the twilight years of an illustrious career in computer technology (others' opinions, not mine). I think I've done well.
Loved your feedback. Fully expected it from someone, and I welcome it. I've added you as "friend".
I assume you're pointing at the "typo's". While maybe not highly appreciated by all it is an accepted practice for creating plurals of jargon, slang, or idioms. Would you like the page number and paragraph reference from the Chicago Manual of Style?
You raise an excellent point. Probably me being a bit snooty... when I shouldn't be... as soon as I read your reply I put myself in that situation... and it's exactly what I'd do. So much for being glib without thinking (which I think might be redundant).
I consider myself an excellent speller with a firm grasp of the English
language, its syntax, and semantics. And I consider myself to be high on the scale
of technical savvy. But I've met more brilliant people in 21 years in this industry
who couldn't spell a lick. I don't know if it's lack of care, or just plain inability
to spell.
A peer who collaborated with me on one of my major projects implemented a layer of code
to make the program more transparent and usable... and one of the major pieces
used file handles to hide named pipes... He spelled it "filehadle", which
in this case is more likely a typo, but he missed a lot of other words too. To this
day I still get questions about that variable name (it's a good filter..., a programmer
who brings that question is not one who I want working with that code).
Another best friend is now VP of a company he founded, and I hope he is
getting his correspondence edited before sending.
There are even examples of Mr. Gates' e-mail... if you didn't know it was he, you'd
think the author of some of his missives was illiterate.
All of this said and observed, I don't think I've ever been able to
see any direct relationship or correlation with "illiteracy" and the technology
gurus. I have seen more of a correlation with younger people and while I have
no conclusive evidence I would submit this is more about a school system that spends
time worrying about the wrong things. (I've even seen typo's/misspellings pop up on
the CNN crawler! Ick!)
Another experience: a best friend of mine was in a German Blue Grass band, and they
came to the U.S. and toured the midwest out of our house. So, here were four Germans
with whom I spent over a week... and one of the most notable things about them was
they spoke better English than most Americans! Go figure.
Somebody help me out here. I thought standard television was going away, not analog! There's a difference at least from the information I'm able to find. It's possible for HD to be broadcast analog, and it's possible for standard television resolution to be broadcast digital.
So, I'm not entirely sure what this article is trying to say (but, I'm not an expert in tv formats and broadcast formats).
The most telling information (in my opinion) from the article:
60 percent subscribe to cable
24 percent subscribe to digital satellite
Neither of those stats imply that noone is watching old standard television with their old sets.
Ballmer (from the article):"We can't support open source, but we can support interoperability," he said.
(what does that mean?... I can't count the number of times I've not been able to lace up some Microsoft
technology to some other technology... on the other hand, symmetrically I can't count the number of times I have easily been able to lace
up some OSS to other technology.... (I know that doesn't qualify for tautology..., but it illustrates a point))
Ballmer (from the article, re lack of SQLServer spatial storage capabilities):This may be addressed in the next release [of SQL Server] in 18 months, Ballmer said, but conceded he "really didn't know"
Ballmer (from the article, re MapPoint lack of expansion into Southeast Asia): "I didn't know we weren't doing well there," he said. "I'll address that with the team vigorously."
So, for all Ballmer doesn't know in this discussion with partners, how much weight will (Ballmer, from the article): "In the next six months, we'll catch Google in terms of relevancy," hold?
Sounds like Microsoft is seeing Google much as they saw Netscape in the past... a threat that is important
and trumps all other goings-on on campus. I'm not sure based on what I've seen
so far Microsoft can exceed Google's technology, let alone even catch up with it. Writing
smart search technology, evolving it quickly, and improving on it is a much more
daunting challenge than cobbling a browser together quickly.
Another wedding of Microsoft and new technology. (Something old, something new^H^H^HMicrosoft, something borrowed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMicrosoft, something blue.)
Hmmmm,
sockets^H^H^H^H^H^H^HWinsock
Netscape^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HIE
NDIS^H^H^H^Hldap^H^H^H^HActive Directory
servlets^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HActive X
shell^H^H^H^H^Hmonad
$something good^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H$Microsoft version
Serially, AJAX maturing, in my opinion is a good thing. But standard caveats and disclaimers apply. If Microsoft is implementing this in their development suite and you are on a team destined (fiat or otherwise) to use AJAX in this context, make sure you investigate thoroughly all settings, flags, and usage and ramifications in the user world. Historically, if you use Microsoft's flavor of anything, it won't be comaptible with much. (Ironically, this new development actually sits on top of something Microsoft originated, though did little with thereafter.)
So, this is something studied for years, and companies still don't get it? I guess especially in technical arenas I've seen they really don't, though I can't begin to imagine why not.
It's really about satisfying the customer... treat 'em like they're people, don't lie to them, do any and everything you say you'll do, don't make promises you can't keep.
My best experiences with any support be it on-line, by phone, or in person have little (if anything) to do with final resolution of the problem, but more to do with whether I was treated respectfully. Some of my best "support" experiences have come from people who clearly didn't know the answer to my problem, but knew steps to take to ensure my problem was addressed.
Companies who drive support to "bottom line" criteria are missing the much bigger picture of what an unhappy customer base does to the bottom line. I go out of my way to stay loyal to businesses who care enough to have a relationship with me. On the other, for example, a bank whose exponential growth over the last 10 years has grown at the cost of their local flavor and service has lost me as a customer... I've moved all of my accounts from them to another friendlier local credit union.
Not sure why this is such a hard problem for businesses to solve...
The analogy doesn't hold up. To compare ad-blocking with something
that could do the same in newspapers doesn't even make sense. What's really
going on (in my opinion) is the natural selection process. Browsers started
out simple, naive, and unassuming. Then came the predators... in this case
popup ads. Now most browsers offer popup ad blocking or extensions to block
popups.
Popup ads are nothing like newspaper advertising -- the dynamic is quite
different. For example, if there were the capability and there
really was a newspaper that had advertising that actually jumped up
in front of what you had started reading, or some other intrusive behavior,
that paper would be likely shunned by most consumers and the paper would
fail.
Popup ads today are just part of the browser experience and its
evolution... but, popup ads are annoying to most, and eventually will (okay,
at least should) disappear... advertisers don't like paying
for something consumers will never see. Meanwhile I see normal sidebar ads
as being sufficient as more people use the internet... I can only speak
anecdotally, but if sidebar ads are tastefully done, and well-targeted, it
is not unusual for me to click and browse/shop and maybe even purchase.
It's similar to the newspaper paradigm... simple, unobtrusive, universally
accepted, and usually non-offensive.
I can't imagine an internet incapable of sustaining itself without popup
ads... (For the record, there's a certain mortgage/lending institution from
which I would never take a loan -- that's how annoying I
find their popups.)
I've had my fun with e-mail spoofing, but now that e-mail is
everywhere and used by almost everyone it's probably close to "time" for
mechanisms and protocols that make e-mail more trustworthy and difficult to
spoof (of course there are always going to be exceptions). But
Microsoft contributes little by doing their own end run on the industry.
From the article:
Microsoft's unilateral move may hurt
Internet users, he said. "Sender ID isn't widely deployed, meaning that
average users are now at risk for having their legitimate e-mail tagged as
spam when they send messages to Hotmail users."
Experts say one of the problems with Sender ID is that it doesn't work with
e-mail forwarding services. The basic premise of Sender ID is to check if an
e-mail that claims to be coming from a certain Internet domain is really
being sent from the e-mail servers associated with that domain.
This opens up a huge can of worms... I don't quite get why Microsoft
doesn't learn from past mistake^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hefforts. The unwashed masses
(read, typical computer users) already deal daily with mind numbing quirky
computer behavior (or lack of). For example (and I know I'm beating a dead
horse (checkmate!)), Microsoft's morphing menus with chevrons, Microsoft's
dumping of random files in random directories to mold their vision of a
magical world (how many have been burned by the unexpected
"thumbs.db" file in their picture folders?), and bizarro network settings
(ever wonder why seemingly every computer in a home network gets
configured with bridging?) -- these are just a few examples of things that
confuse and irritate typical users, but the ripple effect is into the
"support" community (that's us).
Rolling out this semi-baked quasi-standard e-mail device could wreak
havoc with the e-mail users. I'm hoping whatever they do it's configured by
default to not reject non-ID'ed e-mails. Regardless,
unless and until there's a stronger and more mature standard, this one's
trouble.
This incompatibility would not be a surprise if Microsoft's default settings for Visual Studio.NET are the same as last time I used it. It has been a while since I worked on a.NET project, so I don't if Microsoft has "fixed" this, but I'm guessing not.
It's an effective approach by Microsoft.... We discovered almost immediately incompatibilities with.NET code/projects and Mozilla, but even after admonishing team members to ensure their settings were appropriate to create Mozilla compatible code, we would find settings not set appropriately, and features in our application not working in Mozilla. Finally, higher management (already a bit Microsoft-centric) waved their hands (funny how they get that kind of power) and deemed by fiat it no longer necessary to have a Mozilla compatible app. Wow!
Any other developers out there have any similar experiences?
From the article: But city officials said that only about 27
people a day took advantage of the program -- not enough to justify the
$1,800 the city paid every month for the service.
Maybe naively I've been waiting for the propogation of wireless to be
everywhere and always available and if not free, at least very inexpensive,
and ubiquitous. The quote above snapped me back to reality. Sure wireless
everywhere is the buzz these days, but how many people really need,
or want it? I would venture even in the techno-elite slashdot crowd many
wait for wireless everywhere but only a relatively modest subset of those
would actually use it, and of all who use it, it would not likely be at
great volumes everywhere (as in, that's kind of what it needs to be to
sustain and maintain the infrastructure).
Wireless internet isn't the same as cell phones in the sense that
wireless access to the internet is nice, but doesn't drive communications as
does telephony. Wireless internet access is a nicety but until wireless
folds neatly into existing or expanding other necessary
infrastructure (e.g., cell phone) I wouldn't be surprised to see other
experimental free wireless internet sites suffer the same fate (really the
question asked by the article).
If a city as large as Orlando didn't sustain the experiment there are
many other cities that would point to that as justification for not even
bothering trying, at least not in the near future.
(Doesn't mean I don't want it, just means it's too niche-y a market right
now.)
Syabri becomes a Microsoft subsidiary focusing on marketing
anti-virus and anti-spam protection for Microsoft messaging and
collaboration servers. It will continue to market Sybari's Lotus Domino
products but will not sell Antigen versions for Unix and
Linux...
Well this says to me one of two things:
Microsoft is (metaphorically) sticking out its tongue at the
Unix/Linux universe, as well as every regulatory body with which they've
"dealt" in the last ten years, or
Microsoft cedes the reliability and small risk and vulnerability of
Unix/Linux products over Windows and will thus focus continued energy to try
and approach that level of security in Windows.
You be the judge.
I guess I'm just happy Microsoft can't buy linux and drop all support for
that.
It's been over five years since I convinced my parents to drop AOL for an ISP, and they still don't know if they have AOL or not. (Though the calls for "cancel AOL" support from them have dropped off in the last couple of years!)
I made a mistake, and owe an apology to Motley Crue... I remembered the "bad guys" as Motley Crue... and put it in my post... I'd normally post as a direct reply to the poster, but in this case I'm posting high, taking my hits on karma... My apologies...
By the way, the correct "bad guys" band was Metallica, not Motley Crue. I posted here for highest visibility, and because I think I owe it to Crue.
It seems like there's a new story on this a couple of times a week. I
remember the very first time I heard anything at all (some Senator was
pushing some nefarious bill that alledgedly was going to give some "rights"
to the music manufactures to help them "control" music as it became more and
more digital...). I laughed out loud to myself (is that possible?).
Anyway, fast forward to today, and I'm amazed at the progress the
music industry has made.
I watched in amazement as unexpected shills stepped forward to support
the music industry in their quest to strip consumers' rights, most notably
(or at least the one I can remember) Motley Crue. Further thought brought
the logical conculusion these shills were entrenched in the music machine
and stood to defend their obscene incomes... The bands that are popular are
mostly (not all) there by serendipity. There are tons of
excellent musicians out there waiting for their turn. So, Crue, et. al.,
dig in!
And now? Canada? Blame United States!
Regardless, I wish I wish a cohesive movement could arise and say, "no
more", though I don't have a clue how to start that. Any good organizers in
slashdot land? I don't know how a movement would manifest, but it seems
groups have been able to pressure networks to not show shows, why can't the
consuming music public apply similar pressure? I for one would be willing
to commit to ZERO purchases of any media (dvd, sacd, cd, etc.) for one
calendar year. Others? Other ideas?
After reading the link, and the meta-links, I'm not surprised. And, I'm not overly impressed. It's an okay CLI they've put together (though when they start bragging on themselves, they would do well not to put a link to "sample" cmdlets, and have no samples on the referenced page.)
The sample scripts are pretty lame, certainly easy examples to do quickly and more tersely even in the lowly Bourne Shell.
I've posted about this development before, and I'll restate... I wonder why Microsoft would come out with their own "version" of scripting when other good examples exist, and more standard ones exist. And, why for heaven's sake would they build so much into the shell? Isn't the shell supposed to be just that? I know this is essentially a philosophical nit, but again, lots of shells derived and fairly faithful to the Bourne/Ksh standard exist, have evolved (for interactive enhancements) and serve well...
Hmmmmmmmmm, maybe Microsoft is preparing to jettison MKS? (That would be a shame.)
Yeah, don't know if this has changed, but on one of my machines my
"virus" protection software absolutely needed Internet
Explorer, and would override my default browser setting to use IE for any of
it's "transactions"... Considering the history and track record of IE and my
long ago decision to eschew any use of IE this was upsetting to say
the least. I cancelled my subscription, sent a letter, and re-upped with a
different vendor. To this day, I've never gone back to check to see if this
vendor has "fixed" their approach, though I never got any response to my
letter. (I choose not to name names, it isn't necessarily about "them"... I
find this to be a somewhat absurd universe that an entire industry has grown
up around an OS stillborn in the context of capable security (not
perfect, just capable!) Heavy sigh...
Not to worry, though, maybe an industry will spring up around the
security software industry... providing us with
meta-security software...! (even heavier sigh.)
Aside: (but related), I wonder, has anyone ever
investigated, researched, done any benchmarks about how many/what percentage
of CPU cylces are allocated just for virus checking (and other
security checks)?
As one other poster noted, Einstein had a brain that only fell in the range of "normal", giving lie to the theory size alone is an indicator of likely intelligence. Here's another interesting article I coincidentally read a couple days ago.
A couple of interesting things to take from this article:
brain size relates closely to gender
there are notable physiological differences in brains along gender lines
however, there are not noticable differences in intelligence between genders
but, there are differences in how intelligence manifests between the genders.
Before drawing conclusions on brain size and correlation with intelligence therein, read this article... it sheds far more light on this discussion than does the research "summary".
Interestingly, even though men and women have fairly significant differences in brain sizes, this article shows that women's brains develop differently than mens, with density in different regions and layers possibly offsetting size differences. I'll not go over the entire article, read it.... it's good.
Sidebar: Oh, and by the way, my brain is so small, I use the extra space inside my skull to store my CD collection.
And he stressed this would be useful for
much more than simple video conferencing.
"It's very artificial to talk to somebody through a glass wall, which is
effectively what you have when you have a screen," he
added.
If someone could make this work, I could see it being a useful
improvement over traditional video-conferencing technology, albeit, maybe a
bit eerie and weird to get used to.
I worked for a large corporation, and they continued to pump large sizes
of dollars into each successive generation of new televideo conferencing
equipment to the promise of it "like being in the room with your Denver
peers" (putting aside for the moment I have no peers). And, while each
generation was an improvement, the experience never even
approached like being in the same room for so many reasons, but
like the article points points out, maybe one of the biggest reasons was the
permanent glass barrier.
I found no matter how "good" the quality got, it was always an annoying
way to communicate and I finally opted for any of those meetings to
participate from my desk via phone, no video.
However, for those who have seen Revenge, I found the
"pseudo" conferencing whereby remote participants (at this point that line
becomes blurred) existed as holograms, sitting in a chair in the room with
everyone else. That may be eerie, but I think the biological nature of man
would quickly overcome that weirdness and it could soon seem as if the
person were really there.
They also found that more people trust
Microsoft with security.
There is nothing in the actual article to even suggest/support this
thesis... (ignoring for the moment the thesis is not well-formed... e.g.,
"more people than what?, than before?")
The closest thing I can find from the article says:
The FBI
scored more favorably among Internet users in the survey but still lower
than technology companies, such as Microsoft Corp. and Dell
Inc.
I don't think that is the same as "more people trust
Microsoft...".
Slashdot Mirror
from my original post: I consider myself an excellent speller...
I don't think I misspelled anything in my post, and still hold to that statement.
also: with a firm grasp of the English language, its syntax, and semantics.
I do think I have a firm grasp of the English language and can write appropriately to the style appropriate to the forum. In this case I know I butcher formal writing constructs, but I do so knowing the forum understands and accepts a certain informality in /. posts. I never did claim to be excellent in writing, just in spelling.
I stand by my construct "didn't know it was he". "he" in this case is the implied predicate of a clause, "he who wrote the letter". "him" would be more appropriate as in "didn't know him", where "him" in this case appropriately is an object (of "know").
I put illiteracy in quotes because I don't quite think of people who misspell or write less than perfectly illiterate, hence quotes as in, not the true interpretation of illiteracy.
I don't claim to be a rocket scientist, but in college, five straight semesters of calculus, diffy q, partial diffy q, I received the highest score on the finals of all students. I am in the twilight years of an illustrious career in computer technology (others' opinions, not mine). I think I've done well.
Loved your feedback. Fully expected it from someone, and I welcome it. I've added you as "friend".
Best Regards, "y"
I assume you're pointing at the "typo's". While maybe not highly appreciated by all it is an accepted practice for creating plurals of jargon, slang, or idioms. Would you like the page number and paragraph reference from the Chicago Manual of Style?
You raise an excellent point. Probably me being a bit snooty... when I shouldn't be... as soon as I read your reply I put myself in that situation... and it's exactly what I'd do. So much for being glib without thinking (which I think might be redundant).
Thanks for pointing it out.
I consider myself an excellent speller with a firm grasp of the English language, its syntax, and semantics. And I consider myself to be high on the scale of technical savvy. But I've met more brilliant people in 21 years in this industry who couldn't spell a lick. I don't know if it's lack of care, or just plain inability to spell.
A peer who collaborated with me on one of my major projects implemented a layer of code to make the program more transparent and usable... and one of the major pieces used file handles to hide named pipes... He spelled it "filehadle", which in this case is more likely a typo, but he missed a lot of other words too. To this day I still get questions about that variable name (it's a good filter..., a programmer who brings that question is not one who I want working with that code).
Another best friend is now VP of a company he founded, and I hope he is getting his correspondence edited before sending.
There are even examples of Mr. Gates' e-mail... if you didn't know it was he, you'd think the author of some of his missives was illiterate.
All of this said and observed, I don't think I've ever been able to see any direct relationship or correlation with "illiteracy" and the technology gurus. I have seen more of a correlation with younger people and while I have no conclusive evidence I would submit this is more about a school system that spends time worrying about the wrong things. (I've even seen typo's/misspellings pop up on the CNN crawler! Ick!)
Another experience: a best friend of mine was in a German Blue Grass band, and they came to the U.S. and toured the midwest out of our house. So, here were four Germans with whom I spent over a week... and one of the most notable things about them was they spoke better English than most Americans! Go figure.
Somebody help me out here. I thought standard television was going away, not analog! There's a difference at least from the information I'm able to find. It's possible for HD to be broadcast analog, and it's possible for standard television resolution to be broadcast digital.
So, I'm not entirely sure what this article is trying to say (but, I'm not an expert in tv formats and broadcast formats).
The most telling information (in my opinion) from the article:
Neither of those stats imply that noone is watching old standard television with their old sets.
Ballmer (from the article):"We can't support open source, but we can support interoperability," he said. (what does that mean?... I can't count the number of times I've not been able to lace up some Microsoft technology to some other technology... on the other hand, symmetrically I can't count the number of times I have easily been able to lace up some OSS to other technology.... (I know that doesn't qualify for tautology..., but it illustrates a point))
Ballmer (from the article, re lack of SQLServer spatial storage capabilities):This may be addressed in the next release [of SQL Server] in 18 months, Ballmer said, but conceded he "really didn't know"
Ballmer (from the article, re MapPoint lack of expansion into Southeast Asia): "I didn't know we weren't doing well there," he said. "I'll address that with the team vigorously."
So, for all Ballmer doesn't know in this discussion with partners, how much weight will (Ballmer, from the article): "In the next six months, we'll catch Google in terms of relevancy," hold?
Sounds like Microsoft is seeing Google much as they saw Netscape in the past... a threat that is important and trumps all other goings-on on campus. I'm not sure based on what I've seen so far Microsoft can exceed Google's technology, let alone even catch up with it. Writing smart search technology, evolving it quickly, and improving on it is a much more daunting challenge than cobbling a browser together quickly.
Another wedding of Microsoft and new technology. (Something old, something new^H^H^HMicrosoft, something borrowed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMicrosoft, something blue.)
Hmmmm,
Serially, AJAX maturing, in my opinion is a good thing. But standard caveats and disclaimers apply. If Microsoft is implementing this in their development suite and you are on a team destined (fiat or otherwise) to use AJAX in this context, make sure you investigate thoroughly all settings, flags, and usage and ramifications in the user world. Historically, if you use Microsoft's flavor of anything, it won't be comaptible with much. (Ironically, this new development actually sits on top of something Microsoft originated, though did little with thereafter.)
So, this is something studied for years, and companies still don't get it? I guess especially in technical arenas I've seen they really don't, though I can't begin to imagine why not.
It's really about satisfying the customer... treat 'em like they're people, don't lie to them, do any and everything you say you'll do, don't make promises you can't keep.
My best experiences with any support be it on-line, by phone, or in person have little (if anything) to do with final resolution of the problem, but more to do with whether I was treated respectfully. Some of my best "support" experiences have come from people who clearly didn't know the answer to my problem, but knew steps to take to ensure my problem was addressed.
Companies who drive support to "bottom line" criteria are missing the much bigger picture of what an unhappy customer base does to the bottom line. I go out of my way to stay loyal to businesses who care enough to have a relationship with me. On the other, for example, a bank whose exponential growth over the last 10 years has grown at the cost of their local flavor and service has lost me as a customer... I've moved all of my accounts from them to another friendlier local credit union.
Not sure why this is such a hard problem for businesses to solve...
A: You can't cross a mosquito and a mountain climber -- one is a vector, the other is a scaler.
actually, a vector times a scalar is each element of the vector times that scalar....
The analogy doesn't hold up. To compare ad-blocking with something that could do the same in newspapers doesn't even make sense. What's really going on (in my opinion) is the natural selection process. Browsers started out simple, naive, and unassuming. Then came the predators... in this case popup ads. Now most browsers offer popup ad blocking or extensions to block popups.
Popup ads are nothing like newspaper advertising -- the dynamic is quite different. For example, if there were the capability and there really was a newspaper that had advertising that actually jumped up in front of what you had started reading, or some other intrusive behavior, that paper would be likely shunned by most consumers and the paper would fail.
Popup ads today are just part of the browser experience and its evolution... but, popup ads are annoying to most, and eventually will (okay, at least should) disappear... advertisers don't like paying for something consumers will never see. Meanwhile I see normal sidebar ads as being sufficient as more people use the internet... I can only speak anecdotally, but if sidebar ads are tastefully done, and well-targeted, it is not unusual for me to click and browse/shop and maybe even purchase. It's similar to the newspaper paradigm... simple, unobtrusive, universally accepted, and usually non-offensive.
I can't imagine an internet incapable of sustaining itself without popup ads... (For the record, there's a certain mortgage/lending institution from which I would never take a loan -- that's how annoying I find their popups.)
I've had my fun with e-mail spoofing, but now that e-mail is everywhere and used by almost everyone it's probably close to "time" for mechanisms and protocols that make e-mail more trustworthy and difficult to spoof (of course there are always going to be exceptions). But Microsoft contributes little by doing their own end run on the industry.
From the article:
This opens up a huge can of worms... I don't quite get why Microsoft doesn't learn from past mistake^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hefforts. The unwashed masses (read, typical computer users) already deal daily with mind numbing quirky computer behavior (or lack of). For example (and I know I'm beating a dead horse (checkmate!)), Microsoft's morphing menus with chevrons, Microsoft's dumping of random files in random directories to mold their vision of a magical world (how many have been burned by the unexpected "thumbs.db" file in their picture folders?), and bizarro network settings (ever wonder why seemingly every computer in a home network gets configured with bridging?) -- these are just a few examples of things that confuse and irritate typical users, but the ripple effect is into the "support" community (that's us).
Rolling out this semi-baked quasi-standard e-mail device could wreak havoc with the e-mail users. I'm hoping whatever they do it's configured by default to not reject non-ID'ed e-mails. Regardless, unless and until there's a stronger and more mature standard, this one's trouble.
This incompatibility would not be a surprise if Microsoft's default settings for Visual Studio .NET are the same as last time I used it. It has been a while since I worked on a .NET project, so I don't if Microsoft has "fixed" this, but I'm guessing not.
It's an effective approach by Microsoft.... We discovered almost immediately incompatibilities with .NET code/projects and Mozilla, but even after admonishing team members to ensure their settings were appropriate to create Mozilla compatible code, we would find settings not set appropriately, and features in our application not working in Mozilla. Finally, higher management (already a bit Microsoft-centric) waved their hands (funny how they get that kind of power) and deemed by fiat it no longer necessary to have a Mozilla compatible app. Wow!
Any other developers out there have any similar experiences?
From the article: But city officials said that only about 27 people a day took advantage of the program -- not enough to justify the $1,800 the city paid every month for the service.
Maybe naively I've been waiting for the propogation of wireless to be everywhere and always available and if not free, at least very inexpensive, and ubiquitous. The quote above snapped me back to reality. Sure wireless everywhere is the buzz these days, but how many people really need, or want it? I would venture even in the techno-elite slashdot crowd many wait for wireless everywhere but only a relatively modest subset of those would actually use it, and of all who use it, it would not likely be at great volumes everywhere (as in, that's kind of what it needs to be to sustain and maintain the infrastructure).
Wireless internet isn't the same as cell phones in the sense that wireless access to the internet is nice, but doesn't drive communications as does telephony. Wireless internet access is a nicety but until wireless folds neatly into existing or expanding other necessary infrastructure (e.g., cell phone) I wouldn't be surprised to see other experimental free wireless internet sites suffer the same fate (really the question asked by the article).
If a city as large as Orlando didn't sustain the experiment there are many other cities that would point to that as justification for not even bothering trying, at least not in the near future.
(Doesn't mean I don't want it, just means it's too niche-y a market right now.)
From the article:
Well this says to me one of two things:
You be the judge.
I guess I'm just happy Microsoft can't buy linux and drop all support for that.
Thought I was "replying" to an article on MS Xbox...
YOU had trouble cancelling AOL! You!
It's been over five years since I convinced my parents to drop AOL for an ISP, and they still don't know if they have AOL or not. (Though the calls for "cancel AOL" support from them have dropped off in the last couple of years!)
I made a mistake, and owe an apology to Motley Crue... I remembered the "bad guys" as Motley Crue... and put it in my post... I'd normally post as a direct reply to the poster, but in this case I'm posting high, taking my hits on karma... My apologies...
By the way, the correct "bad guys" band was Metallica, not Motley Crue. I posted here for highest visibility, and because I think I owe it to Crue.
(Thanks to this slashdot post for correcting my post.)
It seems like there's a new story on this a couple of times a week. I remember the very first time I heard anything at all (some Senator was pushing some nefarious bill that alledgedly was going to give some "rights" to the music manufactures to help them "control" music as it became more and more digital...). I laughed out loud to myself (is that possible?). Anyway, fast forward to today, and I'm amazed at the progress the music industry has made.
I watched in amazement as unexpected shills stepped forward to support the music industry in their quest to strip consumers' rights, most notably (or at least the one I can remember) Motley Crue. Further thought brought the logical conculusion these shills were entrenched in the music machine and stood to defend their obscene incomes... The bands that are popular are mostly (not all) there by serendipity. There are tons of excellent musicians out there waiting for their turn. So, Crue, et. al., dig in!
And now? Canada? Blame United States!
Regardless, I wish I wish a cohesive movement could arise and say, "no more", though I don't have a clue how to start that. Any good organizers in slashdot land? I don't know how a movement would manifest, but it seems groups have been able to pressure networks to not show shows, why can't the consuming music public apply similar pressure? I for one would be willing to commit to ZERO purchases of any media (dvd, sacd, cd, etc.) for one calendar year. Others? Other ideas?
(sorry, couldn't think of a better subject line).
After reading the link, and the meta-links, I'm not surprised. And, I'm not overly impressed. It's an okay CLI they've put together (though when they start bragging on themselves, they would do well not to put a link to "sample" cmdlets, and have no samples on the referenced page.)
The sample scripts are pretty lame, certainly easy examples to do quickly and more tersely even in the lowly Bourne Shell.
I've posted about this development before, and I'll restate... I wonder why Microsoft would come out with their own "version" of scripting when other good examples exist, and more standard ones exist. And, why for heaven's sake would they build so much into the shell? Isn't the shell supposed to be just that? I know this is essentially a philosophical nit, but again, lots of shells derived and fairly faithful to the Bourne/Ksh standard exist, have evolved (for interactive enhancements) and serve well...
Hmmmmmmmmm, maybe Microsoft is preparing to jettison MKS? (That would be a shame.)
Yeah, don't know if this has changed, but on one of my machines my "virus" protection software absolutely needed Internet Explorer, and would override my default browser setting to use IE for any of it's "transactions"... Considering the history and track record of IE and my long ago decision to eschew any use of IE this was upsetting to say the least. I cancelled my subscription, sent a letter, and re-upped with a different vendor. To this day, I've never gone back to check to see if this vendor has "fixed" their approach, though I never got any response to my letter. (I choose not to name names, it isn't necessarily about "them"... I find this to be a somewhat absurd universe that an entire industry has grown up around an OS stillborn in the context of capable security (not perfect, just capable!) Heavy sigh...
Not to worry, though, maybe an industry will spring up around the security software industry... providing us with meta-security software...! (even heavier sigh.)
Aside: (but related), I wonder, has anyone ever investigated, researched, done any benchmarks about how many/what percentage of CPU cylces are allocated just for virus checking (and other security checks)?
As one other poster noted, Einstein had a brain that only fell in the range of "normal", giving lie to the theory size alone is an indicator of likely intelligence. Here's another interesting article I coincidentally read a couple days ago.
A couple of interesting things to take from this article:
Before drawing conclusions on brain size and correlation with intelligence therein, read this article... it sheds far more light on this discussion than does the research "summary".
Interestingly, even though men and women have fairly significant differences in brain sizes, this article shows that women's brains develop differently than mens, with density in different regions and layers possibly offsetting size differences. I'll not go over the entire article, read it.... it's good.
Sidebar: Oh, and by the way, my brain is so small, I use the extra space inside my skull to store my CD collection.
From the article:
If someone could make this work, I could see it being a useful improvement over traditional video-conferencing technology, albeit, maybe a bit eerie and weird to get used to.
I worked for a large corporation, and they continued to pump large sizes of dollars into each successive generation of new televideo conferencing equipment to the promise of it "like being in the room with your Denver peers" (putting aside for the moment I have no peers). And, while each generation was an improvement, the experience never even approached like being in the same room for so many reasons, but like the article points points out, maybe one of the biggest reasons was the permanent glass barrier.
I found no matter how "good" the quality got, it was always an annoying way to communicate and I finally opted for any of those meetings to participate from my desk via phone, no video.
However, for those who have seen Revenge, I found the "pseudo" conferencing whereby remote participants (at this point that line becomes blurred) existed as holograms, sitting in a chair in the room with everyone else. That may be eerie, but I think the biological nature of man would quickly overcome that weirdness and it could soon seem as if the person were really there.
Or, this could just be a bunch of hoooie.
(from the post...):
Unless!, you take advantage of the time continuum heap exploit.
With the threat of cassette tapes going away, what does this mean for me and my TRS-80? Are there CD Burners for the TRS-80? Help!
From the post:
There is nothing in the actual article to even suggest/support this thesis... (ignoring for the moment the thesis is not well-formed... e.g., "more people than what?, than before?")
The closest thing I can find from the article says:
I don't think that is the same as "more people trust Microsoft...".