Yes, the US enjoys very low prices. Partly because of the huge unified market, partly because of low taxes (but then, I understand you have to pay for medical insurance, and even for decent schools).
They said they wanted artists' rights protected, but if they really meant this, they should go after actual copyright infringers. They really just want money
The money they want is then re-distributed to the artists (according to some certainly extremely complex calculation).
I find it much more sensible to have a small tax on media to counter-balance the copying, rather than the insane lawsuits against teenagers that the US RIAA seems to prefer. These lawsuits don't bring a cent to artists (the teenagers won't be able to pay), only to lawyers. The tax, on the other hand, does go to artists.
("S25" or "C35" being channels as listed on the cable provider's web site. Not sure if it looks similar in the US.)
or my VCR:
# record 14 today 21:05-23:00 # record tomorrow 15:00-16:00 Error: missing channel number. Usage: record channel date starttime-endtime # record 14 tomorrow 15:00-16:00
But that will be easy when I replace my old VHS with a Linux PVR, I guess... (or will it?)
I like your car analogy, and actually use it a lot with the people who refuse to learn anything about computers, but I don't use it the same way you do.
Can every car driver troubleshoot a problem with their car?
Of course not, they have a mechanic for that. Just like computer users need a "computer-mechanic" for periodic maintenance, upgrades, etc.
But car owners do know many things about their cars: they know there is an engine which needs gas, oil, and water for cooling. They know the pressure in the tires is something to watch, and the oil needs to be changed every 10 or 15'000 kilometers. If they drive a manual car, they also have at least a vague notion about what the clutch is.
(They also (hopefully) have a driver license, which would also be something nice on the "information highway", but let us forget about this for now).
Well, my point is that if people were willing to learn as little about their computer as they know about their car, things would be much better, and so would be their computer experience.
shutdown \\computername/l/a/r/t:xx "msg"/y/c You can use the following switches with Shutdown.exe:
* \\computername: Use this switch to specify the remote computer to shut down. If you omit this parameter, the local computer name is used.
*/l (Note that this is a lowercase "L" character): Use this switch to shut down the local computer
*/a: Use this switch to quit a shutdown operation. You can do this only during the time-out period. If you use this switch, all other parameters are ignored.
*/r: Use this switch to restart the computer instead of fully shutting it down.
*/t:xx: Use this switch to specify the time (in seconds) after which the computer is shut down. The default is 20 seconds.
* "msg": Use this switch to specify a message during the shutdown process. The maximum number of characters that the message can contain is 127.
*/y: Use this switch to force a "yes" answer to all queries from the computer.
*/c: Use this switch quit all running programs. If you use this switch, Windows forces all programs that are running to quit. The option to save any data that may have changed is ignored. This can result in data loss in any programs for which data is not previously saved.
Unless of course, you are talking about Win9x machines, or as you suggest, you are re-inventing the wheel just for fun ("fun" definitely being a valid reason to re-invent wheels and other stuff).
"Move Up Paragraph" may be used bajillions of times, but technically, if it were removed it would only be moderately annoying overall.
Funny that you mention "Move Up Paragraph". I don't know what you are working on and if what you mean by that is related, but anyway:
My preferred word processor (Lotus Ami Pro from over 10 years ago!), had among others this extremely usefull feature: Alt-UpArrow would move a paragraph up and of course Alt-Down down.
I miss this everyday in my text editors, other word processors, html editors, email,... I miss it everywhere! It's so much faster than select + cut + move + paste.
In the past, certain developers licensed software with usage restrictions: for instance, one license I've seen said something akin to "anyone may use this software except members of the United States armed forces." The GPL prohibits these kinds of restrictions.
Interesting. I'm also occasionally thinking about adding almost exactly the same clause to my own license. (Except it would apply to any armed forces, not just the US).
So it seems I can't do that on top of GPL.:-)
But anyway, the "bad guys" are far from being only the military, so the whole idea is somehow silly even if it has it's tempting aspects, which come to haunt me when I see.mil in my Apache logs. All the other armies and "bad guys" in general do not have their own TLD.
I certainly support your idea of using some user feedback about what options / menus / etc. are the most used to improve the interface.
But also be carefull about it.
Some things are very rarely used but still important in some situations. Some options will rarely be used because they were not easy to find, which can also skew your stats.
Anonymous statistics tell you some things, but they won't tell you many other things. They are OK if you also spend a lot of time with very different individual users and talk with them.
For example, on Macs, I always have the feeling the software is crippled and features are mising because some designer thought that these things were not necessary since most people wouldn't understand them. For example, Mac OS 1-9 had no command line. Of course most people wouldn't know how to use it, but that's not a reason to suppress it completely and cripple the users who can occasionally really benefit from it. They put it back in OS X, but their Mail app still doesn't show you the server error if your mail cannot be sent. Sure, most people wouldn't understand "Relaying denied", but with that message they could at least call someone who does.
Well, in fact, setting up a network printer in Windows is certainly not better.
You have the choice between "Local printer" and "Network printer". If you do have a network printer like an HP with a JetDirect card, the correct choice is NOT "Network printer". It is "Local printer", and later you have to add a "Standard TCP/IP port". ("Network printer" is only to add a printer shared over SMB by another computer)
So while he has a good point on a bad interface, and while it is true that for some things Windows may have a better interface, it certainly doesn't for networked printers.
If they get their way with site finder, it seems to me a class action suit should be possible.
Since most non-tech people seem to think that the Internet is the web, let's take the web angle in a very simple way.
I have a web site. A potential customer mistypes my domain name in his browser.
1. Without site finder he gets an error and realizes he has mistyped the address, so he corrects the error and comes to my site.
2. With site finder, he comes to a confusing Verisign page. From there on, who knows where he will get. Probably not to my site. Versisgn is unfairly taking business from me.
And what about email? Badly addressed email is replied to with a bounce message. What happens when it goes to Verisign?
Refining on these ideas, I'm sure domain owners with good lawyers could start a class action suit against Verisign.
(I'm glad that in my country, domain names are managed by a monopolistic body controlled by the state and some universities. It is cheap, fast, simple and efficient, and there is not a single advertisement when registering or managing domain names)
During the period 1963-1968, the ISO draft standards supported the use of either CR+LF or LF alone as a newline, while the ASA drafts supported only CR+LF
Since CRLF was adopted by CP/M, I guess if you like you might call it a Digital-Research-ism:-)
But calling an ISO / ASA draft from the sixties a "non-standard Microsoft-ism" is probably not a usefull way of bashing MS. There are better issues that deserve some MS-bashing.
The bulk of any large organization's workforce are paper pushers
What you call "paper pushers", and what they call (according to your good link) "Administration" etc. is indeed the main role of the UN. "Peace keeping" after wars and such is a lot of administration, management, logistics, police,...
I was in Cambodia when they were organizing the first real elections after Pol Pot. Nobody was starving, and there was no need for emergency aid like food distribution (there was and still is need for medical care though). The job was to set up fair elections, and that certainly wasn't easy.
I don't know how the food situation is in East Timor, but I suspect that there also, food is not the main problem. The difficulty is helping to set up a decent civilian administration to run the country after decades of war.
etc. in other places.
What I want to say is that you cannot dismiss the work the UN does on the ground that it is "paper pushers" work. That's the work they are supposed to be doing. Now I'm sure there are many examples where it is badly done, or in an inefficient way, but from what I've seen they also definitely do manage to get good work done.
And even more direct emergency help like for refugees requires a lot of administrative office work.
I don't know what percentage of Kodak business professional motion picture film is, but that certainly isn't dying. And development continues.
Their latest Vision 2 negatives are a huge improvement over previous material.
In the professional field, they also seem to well understand how to marry chemical and digital. Many years ago, they introduced the Cineon to scan motion picture negative, manipulate the pictures, and output back to film. It is still the reference, and such "digital intermediates" in the film process are becoming the norm.
I think data theft will become a hotter topic in the near future.
Actually, I don't think so. Not data theft on random computers infected with trojans. There is no useful data, or if there is, it's seldom and hard to find. Plain spamming is probably much more efficient, economically.
For example, if you had full access to my PC, you could find my credit card number by scanning the 20GB of files I have (OK, statistically, you would have to scan less than the 20 GB). But that's not really a secret anyway. You could also find the numbers of my bank accounts. These would be harder to find than a simple VISA number with/(\d{4}\s?){4}/, but they are not secret either.
For bank transactions, you would need a different number which isn't stored on the computer, plus a hardware device with my bank card in it, plus a password which isn't stored anywhere.
Maybe you could find the cookie with my login on Slashdot, but how would you get rich with that?
The only opportunity to make money with data on my computer seems to be with this email to which I have to reply. It's from the son of a deceased African president. Maybe I should encrypt his email address so nobody can steal this incredibly opportunity from me.
It is true that they added Flyer as an NLE, but I never heard of anybody actually using that professionally. For editing, everybody used Avid at the time (and mostly still does).
Slashdot Mirror
I could use some wicked cool batch files.
.
Forget "batch files", and simply get the Windows version of wicked cool
(Seriously!)
who would pirate French music? :)
- My way
- Autumn Leaves
- What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life
- Summer 42
Just the first standards that spring to my mind right now, but there are many others.
That's for the stuff Americans would have heard. I do have a lot French songs on my HD (but I have to admit: mainly from the fifties and sixties).
That's the 40GB version. The 15 GB is Euro 350 at FNAC.
Yes, the US enjoys very low prices. Partly because of the huge unified market, partly because of low taxes (but then, I understand you have to pay for medical insurance, and even for decent schools).
They said they wanted artists' rights protected, but if they really meant this, they should go after actual copyright infringers. They really just want money
The money they want is then re-distributed to the artists (according to some certainly extremely complex calculation).
I find it much more sensible to have a small tax on media to counter-balance the copying, rather than the insane lawsuits against teenagers that the US RIAA seems to prefer. These lawsuits don't bring a cent to artists (the teenagers won't be able to pay), only to lawyers. The tax, on the other hand, does go to artists.
What? Coffee in a microwave? You are disgusting!
On a Real Microwave, the session would look like this:You must be using some propietary WinOwave...
I don't have either of those, but I often felt it would make the setup of my TV much easier:("S25" or "C35" being channels as listed on the cable provider's web site. Not sure if it looks similar in the US.)
or my VCR:But that will be easy when I replace my old VHS with a Linux PVR, I guess... (or will it?)
I do.
It enabled me to actually do some useful stuff with the Windows command-line and batch files.
That was, of course, before I discovered Perl. And later (on Linux) what a real CLI is supposed to be.
I like your car analogy, and actually use it a lot with the people who refuse to learn anything about computers, but I don't use it the same way you do.
Can every car driver troubleshoot a problem with their car?
Of course not, they have a mechanic for that. Just like computer users need a "computer-mechanic" for periodic maintenance, upgrades, etc.
But car owners do know many things about their cars: they know there is an engine which needs gas, oil, and water for cooling. They know the pressure in the tires is something to watch, and the oil needs to be changed every 10 or 15'000 kilometers. If they drive a manual car, they also have at least a vague notion about what the clutch is.
(They also (hopefully) have a driver license, which would also be something nice on the "information highway", but let us forget about this for now).
Well, my point is that if people were willing to learn as little about their computer as they know about their car, things would be much better, and so would be their computer experience.
Why not use the remote shutdown tool from the Windows 2000 Resource kit?
Or some other (freeware) version.
Unless of course, you are talking about Win9x machines, or as you suggest, you are re-inventing the wheel just for fun ("fun" definitely being a valid reason to re-invent wheels and other stuff).
This sounds very much like this old /. story:
SCO Fined in Munich For Linux Claims.
Here is an easier to read summary. More keep appearing on Google news. Try this search. It already brings up a link to a space.com article, and to one in the Los Angeles Times for those of you who have a subscription (I don't).
Sounds like a good opportunity to look into why and exactly what isn't going too well, so it can be fixed.
"Move Up Paragraph" may be used bajillions of times, but technically, if it were removed it would only be moderately annoying overall.
... I miss it everywhere! It's so much faster than select + cut + move + paste.
Funny that you mention "Move Up Paragraph". I don't know what you are working on and if what you mean by that is related, but anyway:
My preferred word processor (Lotus Ami Pro from over 10 years ago!), had among others this extremely usefull feature: Alt-UpArrow would move a paragraph up and of course Alt-Down down.
I miss this everyday in my text editors, other word processors, html editors, email,
Good luck with your project.
In the past, certain developers licensed software with usage restrictions: for instance, one license I've seen said something akin to "anyone may use this software except members of the United States armed forces." The GPL prohibits these kinds of restrictions.
:-)
.mil in my Apache logs. All the other armies and "bad guys" in general do not have their own TLD.
Interesting. I'm also occasionally thinking about adding almost exactly the same clause to my own license. (Except it would apply to any armed forces, not just the US).
So it seems I can't do that on top of GPL.
But anyway, the "bad guys" are far from being only the military, so the whole idea is somehow silly even if it has it's tempting aspects, which come to haunt me when I see
A lot comes from Asian computers, but if you look into the spam itself (what it sells -> who is actually selling it), most comes in fact from the US.
I certainly support your idea of using some user feedback about what options / menus / etc. are the most used to improve the interface.
But also be carefull about it.
Some things are very rarely used but still important in some situations. Some options will rarely be used because they were not easy to find, which can also skew your stats.
Anonymous statistics tell you some things, but they won't tell you many other things. They are OK if you also spend a lot of time with very different individual users and talk with them.
For example, on Macs, I always have the feeling the software is crippled and features are mising because some designer thought that these things were not necessary since most people wouldn't understand them. For example, Mac OS 1-9 had no command line. Of course most people wouldn't know how to use it, but that's not a reason to suppress it completely and cripple the users who can occasionally really benefit from it. They put it back in OS X, but their Mail app still doesn't show you the server error if your mail cannot be sent. Sure, most people wouldn't understand "Relaying denied", but with that message they could at least call someone who does.
Make it simple, but do not cripple it.
Well, in fact, setting up a network printer in Windows is certainly not better.
You have the choice between "Local printer" and "Network printer". If you do have a network printer like an HP with a JetDirect card, the correct choice is NOT "Network printer". It is "Local printer", and later you have to add a "Standard TCP/IP port". ("Network printer" is only to add a printer shared over SMB by another computer)
So while he has a good point on a bad interface, and while it is true that for some things Windows may have a better interface, it certainly doesn't for networked printers.
If they get their way with site finder, it seems to me a class action suit should be possible.
Since most non-tech people seem to think that the Internet is the web, let's take the web angle in a very simple way.
I have a web site. A potential customer mistypes my domain name in his browser.
1. Without site finder he gets an error and realizes he has mistyped the address, so he corrects the error and comes to my site.
2. With site finder, he comes to a confusing Verisign page. From there on, who knows where he will get. Probably not to my site. Versisgn is unfairly taking business from me.
And what about email? Badly addressed email is replied to with a bounce message. What happens when it goes to Verisign?
Refining on these ideas, I'm sure domain owners with good lawyers could start a class action suit against Verisign.
(I'm glad that in my country, domain names are managed by a monopolistic body controlled by the state and some universities. It is cheap, fast, simple and efficient, and there is not a single advertisement when registering or managing domain names)
From Wikipedia about "newline":
Since CRLF was adopted by CP/M, I guess if you like you might call it a Digital-Research-ism
But calling an ISO / ASA draft from the sixties a "non-standard Microsoft-ism" is probably not a usefull way of bashing MS. There are better issues that deserve some MS-bashing.
CRLF is a Microsoft-ism??
Maybe you should read a few RFCs. Like for example the venerable SMTP RFC 821 from August 1982:
The bulk of any large organization's workforce are paper pushers
...
What you call "paper pushers", and what they call (according to your good link) "Administration" etc. is indeed the main role of the UN. "Peace keeping" after wars and such is a lot of administration, management, logistics, police,
I was in Cambodia when they were organizing the first real elections after Pol Pot. Nobody was starving, and there was no need for emergency aid like food distribution (there was and still is need for medical care though). The job was to set up fair elections, and that certainly wasn't easy.
I don't know how the food situation is in East Timor, but I suspect that there also, food is not the main problem. The difficulty is helping to set up a decent civilian administration to run the country after decades of war.
etc. in other places.
What I want to say is that you cannot dismiss the work the UN does on the ground that it is "paper pushers" work. That's the work they are supposed to be doing. Now I'm sure there are many examples where it is badly done, or in an inefficient way, but from what I've seen they also definitely do manage to get good work done.
And even more direct emergency help like for refugees requires a lot of administrative office work.
I don't think Agfa still manufactures film. Do they? Definitely not professional motion picture film anymore.
And in this field, Kodak still excells, and innovates.
They may have dropped Kodachrome, but they introduced new motion picture negative material (Vision 2), which is fantastic.
I don't know what percentage of Kodak business professional motion picture film is, but that certainly isn't dying. And development continues.
Their latest Vision 2 negatives are a huge improvement over previous material.
In the professional field, they also seem to well understand how to marry chemical and digital. Many years ago, they introduced the Cineon to scan motion picture negative, manipulate the pictures, and output back to film. It is still the reference, and such "digital intermediates" in the film process are becoming the norm.
I think data theft will become a hotter topic in the near future.
/(\d{4}\s?){4}/, but they are not secret either.
Actually, I don't think so. Not data theft on random computers infected with trojans. There is no useful data, or if there is, it's seldom and hard to find. Plain spamming is probably much more efficient, economically.
For example, if you had full access to my PC, you could find my credit card number by scanning the 20GB of files I have (OK, statistically, you would have to scan less than the 20 GB). But that's not really a secret anyway. You could also find the numbers of my bank accounts. These would be harder to find than a simple VISA number with
For bank transactions, you would need a different number which isn't stored on the computer, plus a hardware device with my bank card in it, plus a password which isn't stored anywhere.
Maybe you could find the cookie with my login on Slashdot, but how would you get rich with that?
The only opportunity to make money with data on my computer seems to be with this email to which I have to reply. It's from the son of a deceased African president. Maybe I should encrypt his email address so nobody can steal this incredibly opportunity from me.
It is true that they added Flyer as an NLE, but I never heard of anybody actually using that professionally. For editing, everybody used Avid at the time (and mostly still does).