Unfortunately, or otherwise, they just couldn't get critical mass and folded when MS took them out of IE (possibly because they wanted to emphasise MSN search instead).
There are good reasons for a hierarchy. Control is devolved, rather than concentrated in a single body. Each country has control of their own TLD, (excepting those that have sold it off) and believe it or not outside the US they *are* used, particularly for local businesses. And so on to the following levels: a domain owner has the freedom to set up as many third-level subdomains as they like (smtp.mydomain.com, pop3.mydomain.com, etc.). I don't know how this would work with a single-word system.
Anyway, many browsers *will* try.com on the end if you type in a single word, or you can just stick your favourite sites in your hosts file:
Heh. Well the debate is all about the way Verisign is going about it. No-one would care if Verisign released a 'Verisign Explorer' browser, with their Sitefinder feature built in. The problem is that they are abusing their monopoly position with.com and.net to shove this 'feature'^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H bug - and it truly is that - down people's throats.
Verisign only operate.com and.net under contract from ICANN. Surely they can be prevented from relaunching Sitefinder under purely contractual grounds - previously ICANN was much against Sitefinder and threatened to sue, quoting breach of contract:
"The contractual inconsistencies include, violation of the Code of Conduct and equal access obligations agreed to by VeriSign, failure to comply with the obligation to act as a neutral registry service provider, failure to comply with the Registry-Registrar Protocol, failure to comply with domain registration limitations, and provision of an unauthorized Registry Service."
Nice idea, but the domain system only really works if we all agree on a single set of authoritative root servers. Otherwise you are effectively introducing another level into the DNS - go to 'www.mydomain.com2' is not very useful if you also have to append instructions on how to change your DNS servers. I can just imagine the voiceover at the end of the radio ads - very fast, and in the style of 'terms and conditions apply'.
Getting a search engine is fine, if that's within my control. That's a good *browser* feature. And with a good browser, you can configure such a feature to go where you want it to, or just to give an error message (my personal preference). The problem with Verisign's approach is that there is nothing to tell the browser that there was no DNS record, so you no longer have the choice.
I think the financial issue is probably not as important as the control issue. Symbian has now changed from an independent consortium over which no one phone company had a controlling stake, to a company in which Nokia has a controlling stake. As such I am presuming that Nokia can now control the future direction of the OS. I may be wrong on that point (feel free to correct me) but if that is the case I don't know how attractive that is to other phone companies. Symbian's lead, and popularity with many phone companies, was at least partially due to its independence, which it has now lost.
"Samsung and Siemens will also probably prefer paying Nokia since it's a japanese company (national loyalty is very strong in Japan, unless things have changed alot since I last did geography)."
Microsoft would be very happy to stay on the software side of things, as long as they can get the hardware OEMs using Windows Mobile.
I don't think MS has much of an interest in hardware, seeing that as (ultimately) a commodity business. With the XBox, they needed to get into the console (and more particularly, the 'computer in the living room') business quickly, and saw this as their only way of doing it. Given the amount of money they are losing on it, I don't think they'd see this as a good example of why they should get deeper into hardware.
Basically, Teklogix, which they bought in 2000, is all that's left. They make "industrial" handhelds. In a way, it represents Psion going back to their roots, but I am still somewhat sad that they didn't make more of their mainstream PDA business; I had a number of Psion PDAs, (Series 3, Revo) which in many ways were more functional than the PocketPC I'm using now.
In a sense. Nokia is moving to a situation where they have a monopoly on control of the Symbian OS. But in buying a controlling stake in Symbian, Nokia will potentially alienate their other cellphone partners, and introduce OS fragmentation on vendor lines in the mobile phone market.
Nokia, with by far the largest mobile market share, will obviously continue to put Symbian into its products. However, will others? Given Sony's heritage with the Clie it is very possible that Sony-Ericsson could move towards Palm-based phones, while Microsoft will push Windows Mobile as an "independent vendor" through playing on other manufacturers' distaste for funding their main competitor, Nokia, with licensing fees.
The problem is that Samsung and Siemens are now essentially being asked to license an OS from, and pay fees to, their largest competitor. As Microsoft just makes software, not the actual phones, it is not seen as a competitor in the same way, and licensing Windows Mobile may not be such a bitter pill to swallow.
"Although it will not be the first time mice have flown in space, it will be the first time mammals of any kind have lived in partial gravity for an extended period."
... and then only a few paragraphs later...
"Astronauts living on space stations have encountered serious health problems such as bone loss and muscle wasting due to their weightless environment."
Oh, wait a sec - it's the Daily Telegraph. Seriously, it's like the British newspaper equivalent of Slashdot.
I've just rotated an image there in XP, and it has preserved the metadata. I'm quite fond of the way you can display metadata right there in Explorer with XP. Perhaps an earlier version of Windows did nuke it?
(1) The medium is often all that's left, such as in the case of much of my early jazz. Back in the days when copyright was time-limited, often the masters would be lost. And with "ephemera", or material that just wasn't consistently popular, there isn't a financial incentive to ensure that this doesn't happen. That's why the like of the Prelinger archives are so important.
(2) I would like to buy my media once, and then use it forever (well, until my death). I have a large collection of LPs that I never listen to any more, and have re-bought many on CD. I don't want to repeat that. Avoiding it is possible now, particularly with digital media. The oldest files on my current laptop date from the mid-eighties - they started out on 5.25", moved to 3.5", a double-height 10mb Winchester, over many null modem cables, later CDRs, ethernet and WiFi, but they are still the same files! My music can now do the same - it's currently residing on a 670gb Shuttle box in my living room, but I'm sure that will not be it's final resting place.
"But on the other hand, how many records do you play that you bought 20 years ago? 50? 100?"
I listen to plenty of records that were recorded 20 years ago, even 50, and one or two that are pushing 100 (well, 80 - mostly early jazz). Much of the early jazz are transfers from the commerically produced end product. That's the point.
Slashdot Mirror
There are good reasons for a hierarchy. Control is devolved, rather than concentrated in a single body. Each country has control of their own TLD, (excepting those that have sold it off) and believe it or not outside the US they *are* used, particularly for local businesses. And so on to the following levels: a domain owner has the freedom to set up as many third-level subdomains as they like (smtp.mydomain.com, pop3.mydomain.com, etc.). I don't know how this would work with a single-word system.
Anyway, many browsers *will* try .com on the end if you type in a single word, or you can just stick your favourite sites in your hosts file:
66.35.250.150 slashdot
Heh. Well the debate is all about the way Verisign is going about it. No-one would care if Verisign released a 'Verisign Explorer' browser, with their Sitefinder feature built in. The problem is that they are abusing their monopoly position with .com and .net to shove this 'feature'^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H bug - and it truly is that - down people's throats.
"The contractual inconsistencies include, violation of the Code of Conduct and equal access obligations agreed to by VeriSign, failure to comply with the obligation to act as a neutral registry service provider, failure to comply with the Registry-Registrar Protocol, failure to comply with domain registration limitations, and provision of an unauthorized Registry Service."
Yes.
Nice idea, but the domain system only really works if we all agree on a single set of authoritative root servers. Otherwise you are effectively introducing another level into the DNS - go to 'www.mydomain.com2' is not very useful if you also have to append instructions on how to change your DNS servers. I can just imagine the voiceover at the end of the radio ads - very fast, and in the style of 'terms and conditions apply'.
Getting a search engine is fine, if that's within my control. That's a good *browser* feature. And with a good browser, you can configure such a feature to go where you want it to, or just to give an error message (my personal preference). The problem with Verisign's approach is that there is nothing to tell the browser that there was no DNS record, so you no longer have the choice.
Looks like they already have - www.nonexistentdomain.com ;-)
Heh. Completely off-topic, but Finnish is actually possibly related to Japanese.
I think the financial issue is probably not as important as the control issue. Symbian has now changed from an independent consortium over which no one phone company had a controlling stake, to a company in which Nokia has a controlling stake. As such I am presuming that Nokia can now control the future direction of the OS. I may be wrong on that point (feel free to correct me) but if that is the case I don't know how attractive that is to other phone companies. Symbian's lead, and popularity with many phone companies, was at least partially due to its independence, which it has now lost.
Nokia is a Finnish company.
Microsoft would be very happy to stay on the software side of things, as long as they can get the hardware OEMs using Windows Mobile. I don't think MS has much of an interest in hardware, seeing that as (ultimately) a commodity business. With the XBox, they needed to get into the console (and more particularly, the 'computer in the living room') business quickly, and saw this as their only way of doing it. Given the amount of money they are losing on it, I don't think they'd see this as a good example of why they should get deeper into hardware.
Basically, Teklogix, which they bought in 2000, is all that's left. They make "industrial" handhelds. In a way, it represents Psion going back to their roots, but I am still somewhat sad that they didn't make more of their mainstream PDA business; I had a number of Psion PDAs, (Series 3, Revo) which in many ways were more functional than the PocketPC I'm using now.
In a sense. Nokia is moving to a situation where they have a monopoly on control of the Symbian OS. But in buying a controlling stake in Symbian, Nokia will potentially alienate their other cellphone partners, and introduce OS fragmentation on vendor lines in the mobile phone market.
Nokia, with by far the largest mobile market share, will obviously continue to put Symbian into its products. However, will others? Given Sony's heritage with the Clie it is very possible that Sony-Ericsson could move towards Palm-based phones, while Microsoft will push Windows Mobile as an "independent vendor" through playing on other manufacturers' distaste for funding their main competitor, Nokia, with licensing fees.
The problem is that Samsung and Siemens are now essentially being asked to license an OS from, and pay fees to, their largest competitor. As Microsoft just makes software, not the actual phones, it is not seen as a competitor in the same way, and licensing Windows Mobile may not be such a bitter pill to swallow.
They have a photo of just that on their website (bottom right of the page).
If the story is complaining about immigration or the European Union, then yes, you have a very good chance.
My point still stands about it being the Daily Telegaph though. Seriously.
"Astronauts living on space stations have encountered serious health problems such as bone loss and muscle wasting due to their weightless environment."
Oh, wait a sec - it's the Daily Telegraph. Seriously, it's like the British newspaper equivalent of Slashdot.
I am very sorry.
Can anyone say "Hobson's choice"?
I've just rotated an image there in XP, and it has preserved the metadata. I'm quite fond of the way you can display metadata right there in Explorer with XP. Perhaps an earlier version of Windows did nuke it?
(1) The medium is often all that's left, such as in the case of much of my early jazz. Back in the days when copyright was time-limited, often the masters would be lost. And with "ephemera", or material that just wasn't consistently popular, there isn't a financial incentive to ensure that this doesn't happen. That's why the like of the Prelinger archives are so important.
(2) I would like to buy my media once, and then use it forever (well, until my death). I have a large collection of LPs that I never listen to any more, and have re-bought many on CD. I don't want to repeat that. Avoiding it is possible now, particularly with digital media. The oldest files on my current laptop date from the mid-eighties - they started out on 5.25", moved to 3.5", a double-height 10mb Winchester, over many null modem cables, later CDRs, ethernet and WiFi, but they are still the same files! My music can now do the same - it's currently residing on a 670gb Shuttle box in my living room, but I'm sure that will not be it's final resting place.
DRM prevents all of this.
I listen to plenty of records that were recorded 20 years ago, even 50, and one or two that are pushing 100 (well, 80 - mostly early jazz). Much of the early jazz are transfers from the commerically produced end product. That's the point.
I use Windows (duck) and it preserves my metadata fine.
Given what it thinks of the best OS. Although I don't know about the handsome smart guy.