Is this going to affect games or OpenGL Apps? If so, SOMEONE in gaming will come out with some sort of patch or solution. That, or Vista will be boycotted by many.
Sorry to sound cynical, but boycotted by who?
People who read Slashdot? Wow, yeah, that will get Microsoft's attention. A group made up disproportionately by people who don't use Windows to begin with are going to boycott the next version!
Everyday consumers don't know anything about what DirectX/OpenGL do, this point will mean nothing to them.
Gamers who do know about this sort of stuff will just stop buying the OpenGL version of games in their neverending quest for better framerates if they run Vista.
>>>The dust jacket of a book that was to be sold in-store was recently altered because a Tesco buyer did not like it.
>>That's a bit silly, really. It leads to bland stuff that has been toned down to not offend anybody. Sure, if it offends a whole bunch of people, it might make sense to alter it, but one person?
>I think you misread the article. The Tesco buyer is a Tesco employee who buys for Tesco. It wasn't a customer buying from Tesco who complained.
Even if he did misinterpret what a "Tesco buyer" is the comment is still correct. The Tesco buyer is one person and because they in their personal judgement did not like the book jacket it was altered. It's still one person making judgements for many.
A couple of weeks later I went to California and tried to do the same. It took them more 45 minutes to set me up on Cingular. And then USD$10 didn't even last me a week of very light usage. What a rip-off. I used a third of that with heavier usage in the UK. I think billing by the second versus minute is one of the biggest issues.
I think most of your problems with cellular pricing in the U.S. haven't been with competition, but with the collective agreement of lack of competition.
Many people who have experienced prepaid mobile service in the U.K. come here and wonder why things are so much more complicated. Why does one have to by prepaid minutes cards and only use certain models of phones instead of just buying a plain cell phone and putting in a prepaid SIM from your choice of company? Why are all handsets locked to their providers when first bought? And why is there no per-second billing? There is not technical issue preventing these from happening (at least in GSM provider's cases). Why does the consumer pay for all incoming and outgoing calls (unlike landline phone where the initiator of the call pays for LD usage)?
The reason is the mobile companies have actively refused to do business this way because they make more money in their current methods and seem to all be in an agreement to do business this way, after all if any of them adopted these methods that carrier would be at a competitive advantage, by everyone following these rules they all profit.
There used to be per-second billing with a few companies in the U.S. (I remember one called Arial). What happened to them? Guess.
The new company was bought out by the established major wireless companies region by region, who then discontinued the per second billing plans and waited out the customers who were grandfathered in with the old plans, either by enticing them to take new plans that didn't include the per second billing (which I'm sure they didn't mention loudly at the time of sale) or simply letting them leave the service. It worked because the big wireless telcos all worked togther so there was no per-second company to turn to after that.
When I first signed on with T-Mobile, I got a plan where the first minute of incoming calls was free (so any incoming call lasting one minute or less didn't cost me any of my airtime "bucket"). Gee? Why isn't that available now? Because T-Mobile and other wireless companies realized many calls require less than a minute.
"Oh. Hi Mom!" "Yeah I'm at the park" "Can I stay out till 11:30" "11:00?" "Alright, thanks mom." "Yeah, I'll walk the dog when I get home" "Bye"
So they all got rid of their free-incoming-minute plans to keep things "level" between carriers. I still have mine because I have simply not changed plans.
The issue to me, is that these lines are on public property, and in public airspace... Would another company be allowed to build poles and run lines right next the current lines?
The problem is this requires lots of inital investment and with you being the new guy in town, getting customers away from the incombant is tough.
There's a company called RCN that did just that. Ran a separate fiber/coax network over areas that already had existing ones (Adelphia, Comcast, TW are the existing companies in their space). The company was in bankruptcy court a year or so ago, because they were unable to keep up on the debts they incurred from building the network (not enough customres had signed on to cover the costs). But they seem to be making process to getting out of it after some restructuring.
As one marketting manager of a broadband company told me recently, it's actually cheaper to buy an ISP than start a new one. This is why nobody is making their own infastructure.
Before I get a dozen posts saying "wtf are you saying Caldrea for" that was a typo.
You have to admit, given the trading and changing of names of the parties involved one can get mixed up pretty quickly. But I do know who I was talking about, really.
Once thing nice about cell phones is you don't have to worry about the premium phone service in those premium hotels that costs an arm and a leg just to make a local call, chances are the mobile is cheaper
Every hotel I've been at (including "premium" ones) have free local calls.
However, the fact I am staying at this hotel means I am far from home, making all my cell phone calls roaming calls, and calls to anywhere local (relative to the hotel) long-distance (as far as the cell phone company is concerned) on top of that.
According to dictionar.com premium means, among other things " Something offered free or at a reduced price as an inducement to buy something else.". What's the problem if someone gets "premium" content for free then?
Perhaps the problem is the premium content was not being offered for free in this case? But was available at a "reduced price", which the individual did not pay?
Completely disagree. If SCO is bankrupt without the funds in question, and those funds do belong to Novell, then Novell stands to lose considerably if/when SCO goes bankrupt anyway.
I thought the whole reason it was requested they be put in a trust was so if SCO loses another case and has to pay damages, or decides to throw in the towel and declare bankruptcy, the money would be there for Caldera if they are in fact entitled to it.
The money is supposed to be in dipute. If it is already a given fact the money is Caldera's, why would Caldera ask it be put into a trust instead of just handed over to them? Since SCO is the other party in the dispute it would not be right to have them surrender the money if it would cause the company to collapse. What if SCO was in fact the rightful reciever of said funds (not saying I agree with it, just making a point). Because SCO would collapse without the money they would be unable to prove their case, and Caldera would be winning by default. Thus, an arrangement where the money is "ear-marked" so to speak, so SCO cannot gobble it up while it is in dispute, but where they are able to continue their case*, is needed.
* - It occurs to me this is how patent infringment cases should be played out when it comes to legal fees. If legal council was not paid until the time of verdict, and the plaintif was forced to pay the defendants legal bills if they lost the case, this would prevent the legal precident being set where the party with the most money simply delays until the other party cannot continue to fight the case in court, caving under financial pressure.
Of corse, how would the lawyer make a living is he was devoting all his time to a client and couldn't get paid till a settlement is reached or a trial is completed?
I'd like to see what happens to people who put their money down and then can't make the other $180,000, or if the space tourism idea doesn't fly in the end (pun not intended).
Frat houses all over the world could soon be linked up in massive online drinking games...
This may look like a stupid observation, but aren't the majority of Frat boy in college, the therefore under twenty-one and not legally able to drink?
I mean, I know it may be common knowledge that people involved in Fraterities like to drink, and do so quite a bit, but any company/individual setting up activities that involve drinking at residences were the majority of occupants are underage seems to be asking for trouble either from "promoting underage drinking" to "wrongful death from alcohol poisoning".
So the real question here (to me, at least) is this: what do the leap second problems tell us about how software is developed?
Are people not thinking about leap seconds when they write code? Or are they thinking about them, but not testing the leap second cases properly? What's going on?
Seems to me this is nothing more than a money-saving exercise taken to enormous levels. Exectutive 1: This leap-second things is messing with all our computer systems and causeing havoc for our business.
Development Head: It's because the code is not made to handle a 61 second minute for leap seconds properly. If we went through and rewrote the--
Exective 1: What! You want to rewrite some of our software! We can't be wasting payroll dollars fixing software issues like this.
Executive 2: If only we could just get rid of this stupid leap second, we could avoid all this.
Executive 1: Hey, that's a good idea, let's get Congressman Schmoe on the phone and see if he can get a law passed or something.
later... Executive 1: Well, we got it done. No more leap seconds. Instaed there will be a leap hour in about 500 years. (laughing)
Development Head: But sir, then when the leap hour hits the software will go bonkers and--
Executive 1: So what? Are you going to be here in five hundred years?
Development Head: Well, no--
Executive 1: I wont either. So who cares! Go play with your slide rule and quit bothering me about the leap hour! Stupid clock people, why couldn't they just make the time correct to start with...
The real reason retailers don't want both formats going to market is...
1) People will complain about not being able to buy movies in one format or the other if the studio doesn't support that format, and the people they will complain to are the store personnel/management. This is because: a) these people are available to complain to, studio execs are not, much like people complain to the cable company about the violence on TV, and b) they actually believe the store is simply not carrying the movie in the format they want, the idea of formats being used in a marketting war between studios is beyond their comprehension.
2) Retailers don't want their shelf space of movies to double because they now have to carry both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD versions of films. Shelf space is expensive. This is also why they want packaging to be standardized (and probably exactly the same as current DVD packaging) None of them want to buy new shelving units, spend payroll money assembling and reorganizing their displays for the new shelving units, ect.
Slightly offtopic: Notice a DVD disc is the same size as an Audio CD? Is there any reason why they couldn't use CD jewelcases for DVD sales? No, but by using a differnt size box they get something that a) Movie posters will scale down to better to become DVD covers and b) People have to spend more money to get home entertainment furniture that fits DVD boxes verses keeping what they have that fits only CD's now.
Apple had about 12% market share when it began the PowerPC transition, and 5% afterward. I mean, yes, they made their transition, but it was certainly not "seamless" there was a major developer outcry, and they lost most of their customer base. I think it's debateable, therefore, how well it went.
Wow. Considering how many different "start" and "end" dates people will cite for the transtion from 68k to PowerPC, I think we need some more information as to what time period you're specifying for Apple losing 42% of it's marketshare. Is this the time from PowerPC being introduced in consumer markets till major apps were all PowerPC native? Till Apple stopped making 68k hardware? Or until major developers stopped making 68k versions of programs? Or until non-PowerPC machines were counted as obsolete for today's uses?
Feel free to cite studies that directly attribute the loss of marketshare completely to a "developer outcry". 68k code ran on PowerMacs. Nobody stuck a gun to the developers' heads and said they had to build PowerPC accelerated versions of code, and many makers of smaller utilities did not do so until they had to later on (like during Carbon-ation in preparation for OSX). Most did so because of the performance boost they got from it.
Also, during this same time frame, did any of the following occur?
*Wintel hardware got cheaper.
*PC gaming market exploded (not the Macintosh gaming market, but the PC game market).
*Windows got better/easier to use.
*Internet became more mainstream (and the browser wars started).
*Apple began losing education marketshare, as pressure built to pick cheaper hardware and Windows systems (because that's what they'll use in the "real world", goddarnit!).
*Consolidation in the software industry effecting development of certain programs/platforms.
I'm sure a few of these events overlap the time frame of the 68k/PPC switch and may have had a teensy hand in Mac market share decreasing from 12% to 5%, if it even did go down like that. At the moment, all you've done is throw out a figure with no chronological basis or source.
It's not hard to see Yahoo dropping support for their Dashboard widgets now that they have Konfabulator. The question is which one will become the better?
Konfabulator will be free and cross platform. Dashboard is part of OSX. Running both just seems real redundant to me. Konfabulator may attract a much larger following of developers simply because it's available to Windows users, and the fact Yahoo's widgets will at some point only run on Konfabulator (not that someone else could probably come up with an unoffical one).
If a converstion tool is made to transfer Dashboard Widgets to Konfabulator Widgets, you may soon see people moving over to Konfabulator. Will the original third party product find itself overbearing the one in your system you can't remove (for Mac users)? Then again, Dashboard widgets run as separate processes (each one) so an empty dashboard prolly uses little if any system resources. It's also a possibility someone will write a converstion tool to move Konfabulator Widgets back to Dashboard.
It will be interesting to see how much malicious widgets become a problem on the Windows side once Konfabulator becomes free and adopted more widely.
I can rearrange and remove toolbar buttons in Thunderbird just fine. You just right click on the toolbar, choose "Customize..." and you get a palatte. You can drag a button down to the palatte to remove it from the bar.
I dunno, maybe they fear their business might actually be irreparably damaged? That's not a good thing, you know.
I'll say. Who wants their legitimate business to be associated with badly written software responsible for the majority of the world's computing troubles.
[Must be a marvel of engineering...]...with only a single pedal for both acceleration and braking...
There's an amusement park in my area with these.
They are small cars (look a little like miniture Model-T's, I think they use go cart engies in them). Anyway, there's a course of a half mile or so where the cars run on a rail with limited manuveability (one rail down the middle of track, gliders on the left and right underside edge of the car to keep it from completely leaving the track). The cars only have one pedal. You push down to accelate (not a high range of speed, this is a kiddie ride), and when you take your foot completely off the gas a brake applies.
Here is the #1 obsitcale I think Mozilla has to overcome. If Mozilla fucks up something, what recourse does a user have? Since Mozilla is given for free, you can't sue. Now, if IE fuckes up a computer, and someone gets pissed off enough, they can sue Microsoft, saying the user PAID money for a product and trusted that product.
No they can't, the EULA they agreed to when they started using IE says so.
I know nobody that has sued Microsoft. But there is some security in knowing it came from a real company.
A false sense of security, but yes there is. It not like Microsoft's code is somehow inheritantly "better" or "safer" because it's coders are getting paid for their work (many people here would say it's exactly the opposite). But due to the pig-headedness of corporate culture, this is believed. This mindset one of the things OSS needs to overcome to really make it in the corporate environment.
On a side note: What makes something a "real company"? Are you saying if Mozilla became incorporated this would be all different?
Or maybe I should write this another way. What if the development group of Mozilla gets together one night for beers. They decide they have had it with freeloaders, they are pissed off, so they will write in some small virus into their software. How many people would get infected before they would know? And if you did get infected, what could you do? You got Mozialla for free.
Uh, it's illegal to produce and distribute malicious code. You would call the A.G.
I have a shed in the backyard. I let you put your lawnmower back there for free. I do something stupid, the shed burns down. The guy who owns the lawnmower is screwed, nothing he can do. But if he pays me money, even only $5 or something small, and I destroy what is his, he can get the value of his property back. I now have a responsibility to care for his property, and that responsibility did not exist before.
Only if the agreement said you were taking responsibilty. I have a vehicle in storage in another state. It is not stored in a proper warehouse (where they take possession of your property and it is insured by them and everything), this is just a guy who owns a big building and he rents out spaces for people to store their classic cars in. In my contract, I have to maintain registration and insurance on the car while it is in his storage. The reason being if my vehicle rolls on it's own into a cherried-out '70 Dodge Challenger, he is not responsible for the damages, I am. I'm pretty sure if the building collapsed on itself and wrecked ALL our cars I wouldn't be getting any compansation for my squashed car, even though I pay $60 a month to him. Why? Because my contract says he holds no liability (if I remember right, I haven't read through the contract in a few years).
Slashdot Mirror
Is this going to affect games or OpenGL Apps? If so, SOMEONE in gaming will come out with some sort of patch or solution. That, or Vista will be boycotted by many.
Sorry to sound cynical, but boycotted by who?
People who read Slashdot? Wow, yeah, that will get Microsoft's attention. A group made up disproportionately by people who don't use Windows to begin with are going to boycott the next version!
Everyday consumers don't know anything about what DirectX/OpenGL do, this point will mean nothing to them.
Gamers who do know about this sort of stuff will just stop buying the OpenGL version of games in their neverending quest for better framerates if they run Vista.
>>>The dust jacket of a book that was to be sold in-store was recently altered because a Tesco buyer did not like it.
>>That's a bit silly, really. It leads to bland stuff that has been toned down to not offend anybody. Sure, if it offends a whole bunch of people, it might make sense to alter it, but one person?
>I think you misread the article. The Tesco buyer is a Tesco employee who buys for Tesco. It wasn't a customer buying from Tesco who complained.
Even if he did misinterpret what a "Tesco buyer" is the comment is still correct. The Tesco buyer is one person and because they in their personal judgement did not like the book jacket it was altered. It's still one person making judgements for many.
A couple of weeks later I went to California and tried to do the same. It took them more 45 minutes to set me up on Cingular. And then USD$10 didn't even last me a week of very light usage. What a rip-off. I used a third of that with heavier usage in the UK. I think billing by the second versus minute is one of the biggest issues.
I think most of your problems with cellular pricing in the U.S. haven't been with competition, but with the collective agreement of lack of competition.
Many people who have experienced prepaid mobile service in the U.K. come here and wonder why things are so much more complicated. Why does one have to by prepaid minutes cards and only use certain models of phones instead of just buying a plain cell phone and putting in a prepaid SIM from your choice of company? Why are all handsets locked to their providers when first bought? And why is there no per-second billing? There is not technical issue preventing these from happening (at least in GSM provider's cases). Why does the consumer pay for all incoming and outgoing calls (unlike landline phone where the initiator of the call pays for LD usage)?
The reason is the mobile companies have actively refused to do business this way because they make more money in their current methods and seem to all be in an agreement to do business this way, after all if any of them adopted these methods that carrier would be at a competitive advantage, by everyone following these rules they all profit.
There used to be per-second billing with a few companies in the U.S. (I remember one called Arial). What happened to them? Guess.
The new company was bought out by the established major wireless companies region by region, who then discontinued the per second billing plans and waited out the customers who were grandfathered in with the old plans, either by enticing them to take new plans that didn't include the per second billing (which I'm sure they didn't mention loudly at the time of sale) or simply letting them leave the service. It worked because the big wireless telcos all worked togther so there was no per-second company to turn to after that.
When I first signed on with T-Mobile, I got a plan where the first minute of incoming calls was free (so any incoming call lasting one minute or less didn't cost me any of my airtime "bucket"). Gee? Why isn't that available now? Because T-Mobile and other wireless companies realized many calls require less than a minute.
"Oh. Hi Mom!"
"Yeah I'm at the park"
"Can I stay out till 11:30"
"11:00?"
"Alright, thanks mom."
"Yeah, I'll walk the dog when I get home"
"Bye"
So they all got rid of their free-incoming-minute plans to keep things "level" between carriers. I still have mine because I have simply not changed plans.
the flip side of the coin
The issue to me, is that these lines are on public property, and in public airspace... Would another company be allowed to build poles and run lines right next the current lines?
The problem is this requires lots of inital investment and with you being the new guy in town, getting customers away from the incombant is tough.
There's a company called RCN that did just that. Ran a separate fiber/coax network over areas that already had existing ones (Adelphia, Comcast, TW are the existing companies in their space). The company was in bankruptcy court a year or so ago, because they were unable to keep up on the debts they incurred from building the network (not enough customres had signed on to cover the costs). But they seem to be making process to getting out of it after some restructuring.
As one marketting manager of a broadband company told me recently, it's actually cheaper to buy an ISP than start a new one. This is why nobody is making their own infastructure.
Before I get a dozen posts saying "wtf are you saying Caldrea for" that was a typo.
You have to admit, given the trading and changing of names of the parties involved one can get mixed up pretty quickly. But I do know who I was talking about, really.
Yeah, it was a silly mistake. I meant Novell.
Ah, yes. A mistake on my part.
I actually meant "Novell" instead of "Caldera" in every instance in that post.
Once thing nice about cell phones is you don't have to worry about the premium phone service in those premium hotels that costs an arm and a leg just to make a local call, chances are the mobile is cheaper
Every hotel I've been at (including "premium" ones) have free local calls.
However, the fact I am staying at this hotel means I am far from home, making all my cell phone calls roaming calls, and calls to anywhere local (relative to the hotel) long-distance (as far as the cell phone company is concerned) on top of that.
According to dictionar.com premium means, among other things " Something offered free or at a reduced price as an inducement to buy something else.". What's the problem if someone gets "premium" content for free then?
Perhaps the problem is the premium content was not being offered for free in this case? But was available at a "reduced price", which the individual did not pay?
Completely disagree. If SCO is bankrupt without the funds in question, and those funds do belong to Novell, then Novell stands to lose considerably if/when SCO goes bankrupt anyway.
I thought the whole reason it was requested they be put in a trust was so if SCO loses another case and has to pay damages, or decides to throw in the towel and declare bankruptcy, the money would be there for Caldera if they are in fact entitled to it.
The money is supposed to be in dipute. If it is already a given fact the money is Caldera's, why would Caldera ask it be put into a trust instead of just handed over to them? Since SCO is the other party in the dispute it would not be right to have them surrender the money if it would cause the company to collapse. What if SCO was in fact the rightful reciever of said funds (not saying I agree with it, just making a point). Because SCO would collapse without the money they would be unable to prove their case, and Caldera would be winning by default. Thus, an arrangement where the money is "ear-marked" so to speak, so SCO cannot gobble it up while it is in dispute, but where they are able to continue their case*, is needed.
* - It occurs to me this is how patent infringment cases should be played out when it comes to legal fees. If legal council was not paid until the time of verdict, and the plaintif was forced to pay the defendants legal bills if they lost the case, this would prevent the legal precident being set where the party with the most money simply delays until the other party cannot continue to fight the case in court, caving under financial pressure.
Of corse, how would the lawyer make a living is he was devoting all his time to a client and couldn't get paid till a settlement is reached or a trial is completed?
Is that $20k non-refundable?
I'd like to see what happens to people who put their money down and then can't make the other $180,000, or if the space tourism idea doesn't fly in the end (pun not intended).
fp?
Frat houses all over the world could soon be linked up in massive online drinking games...
This may look like a stupid observation, but aren't the majority of Frat boy in college, the therefore under twenty-one and not legally able to drink?
I mean, I know it may be common knowledge that people involved in Fraterities like to drink, and do so quite a bit, but any company/individual setting up activities that involve drinking at residences were the majority of occupants are underage seems to be asking for trouble either from "promoting underage drinking" to "wrongful death from alcohol poisoning".
So the real question here (to me, at least) is this: what do the leap second problems tell us about how software is developed?
Are people not thinking about leap seconds when they write code? Or are they thinking about them, but not testing the leap second cases properly? What's going on?
Seems to me this is nothing more than a money-saving exercise taken to enormous levels.
Exectutive 1: This leap-second things is messing with all our computer systems and causeing havoc for our business.
Development Head: It's because the code is not made to handle a 61 second minute for leap seconds properly. If we went through and rewrote the--
Exective 1: What! You want to rewrite some of our software! We can't be wasting payroll dollars fixing software issues like this.
Executive 2: If only we could just get rid of this stupid leap second, we could avoid all this.
Executive 1: Hey, that's a good idea, let's get Congressman Schmoe on the phone and see if he can get a law passed or something.
later...
Executive 1: Well, we got it done. No more leap seconds. Instaed there will be a leap hour in about 500 years. (laughing)
Development Head: But sir, then when the leap hour hits the software will go bonkers and--
Executive 1: So what? Are you going to be here in five hundred years?
Development Head: Well, no--
Executive 1: I wont either. So who cares! Go play with your slide rule and quit bothering me about the leap hour! Stupid clock people, why couldn't they just make the time correct to start with...
The real reason retailers don't want both formats going to market is...
1) People will complain about not being able to buy movies in one format or the other if the studio doesn't support that format, and the people they will complain to are the store personnel/management. This is because: a) these people are available to complain to, studio execs are not, much like people complain to the cable company about the violence on TV, and b) they actually believe the store is simply not carrying the movie in the format they want, the idea of formats being used in a marketting war between studios is beyond their comprehension.
2) Retailers don't want their shelf space of movies to double because they now have to carry both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD versions of films. Shelf space is expensive. This is also why they want packaging to be standardized (and probably exactly the same as current DVD packaging) None of them want to buy new shelving units, spend payroll money assembling and reorganizing their displays for the new shelving units, ect.
Slightly offtopic:
Notice a DVD disc is the same size as an Audio CD? Is there any reason why they couldn't use CD jewelcases for DVD sales? No, but by using a differnt size box they get something that a) Movie posters will scale down to better to become DVD covers and b) People have to spend more money to get home entertainment furniture that fits DVD boxes verses keeping what they have that fits only CD's now.
Apple had about 12% market share when it began the PowerPC transition, and 5% afterward. I mean, yes, they made their transition, but it was certainly not "seamless" there was a major developer outcry, and they lost most of their customer base. I think it's debateable, therefore, how well it went.
Wow. Considering how many different "start" and "end" dates people will cite for the transtion from 68k to PowerPC, I think we need some more information as to what time period you're specifying for Apple losing 42% of it's marketshare. Is this the time from PowerPC being introduced in consumer markets till major apps were all PowerPC native? Till Apple stopped making 68k hardware? Or until major developers stopped making 68k versions of programs? Or until non-PowerPC machines were counted as obsolete for today's uses?
Feel free to cite studies that directly attribute the loss of marketshare completely to a "developer outcry". 68k code ran on PowerMacs. Nobody stuck a gun to the developers' heads and said they had to build PowerPC accelerated versions of code, and many makers of smaller utilities did not do so until they had to later on (like during Carbon-ation in preparation for OSX). Most did so because of the performance boost they got from it.
Also, during this same time frame, did any of the following occur?
*Wintel hardware got cheaper.
*PC gaming market exploded (not the Macintosh gaming market, but the PC game market).
*Windows got better/easier to use.
*Internet became more mainstream (and the browser wars started).
*Apple began losing education marketshare, as pressure built to pick cheaper hardware and Windows systems (because that's what they'll use in the "real world", goddarnit!).
*Consolidation in the software industry effecting development of certain programs/platforms.
I'm sure a few of these events overlap the time frame of the 68k/PPC switch and may have had a teensy hand in Mac market share decreasing from 12% to 5%, if it even did go down like that. At the moment, all you've done is throw out a figure with no chronological basis or source.
The Suite has been dropped by Mozilla. So I guess it wont ever get fixed now.
Just Kidding.
Seriously, though. Expect this bug to be around till the Seamonkey team gets going full steam now.
It's not hard to see Yahoo dropping support for their Dashboard widgets now that they have Konfabulator. The question is which one will become the better?
Konfabulator will be free and cross platform. Dashboard is part of OSX. Running both just seems real redundant to me. Konfabulator may attract a much larger following of developers simply because it's available to Windows users, and the fact Yahoo's widgets will at some point only run on Konfabulator (not that someone else could probably come up with an unoffical one).
If a converstion tool is made to transfer Dashboard Widgets to Konfabulator Widgets, you may soon see people moving over to Konfabulator. Will the original third party product find itself overbearing the one in your system you can't remove (for Mac users)? Then again, Dashboard widgets run as separate processes (each one) so an empty dashboard prolly uses little if any system resources. It's also a possibility someone will write a converstion tool to move Konfabulator Widgets back to Dashboard.
It will be interesting to see how much malicious widgets become a problem on the Windows side once Konfabulator becomes free and adopted more widely.
Or you could just move the button to a different location...
A bug for what program?
I can rearrange and remove toolbar buttons in Thunderbird just fine. You just right click on the toolbar, choose "Customize..." and you get a palatte. You can drag a button down to the palatte to remove it from the bar.
I dunno, maybe they fear their business might actually be irreparably damaged? That's not a good thing, you know.
I'll say. Who wants their legitimate business to be associated with badly written software responsible for the majority of the world's computing troubles.
: )
Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble claims the site may not perform at full capacity until Monday.
So I suppose us visiting it wouldn't be such a good idea. I can see the posting now:
"Slashdot Crashes Earth"
[Must be a marvel of engineering...] ...with only a single pedal for both acceleration and braking...
There's an amusement park in my area with these.
They are small cars (look a little like miniture Model-T's, I think they use go cart engies in them). Anyway, there's a course of a half mile or so where the cars run on a rail with limited manuveability (one rail down the middle of track, gliders on the left and right underside edge of the car to keep it from completely leaving the track). The cars only have one pedal. You push down to accelate (not a high range of speed, this is a kiddie ride), and when you take your foot completely off the gas a brake applies.
Here is the #1 obsitcale I think Mozilla has to overcome. If Mozilla fucks up something, what recourse does a user have? Since Mozilla is given for free, you can't sue. Now, if IE fuckes up a computer, and someone gets pissed off enough, they can sue Microsoft, saying the user PAID money for a product and trusted that product.
No they can't, the EULA they agreed to when they started using IE says so.
I know nobody that has sued Microsoft. But there is some security in knowing it came from a real company.
A false sense of security, but yes there is. It not like Microsoft's code is somehow inheritantly "better" or "safer" because it's coders are getting paid for their work (many people here would say it's exactly the opposite). But due to the pig-headedness of corporate culture, this is believed. This mindset one of the things OSS needs to overcome to really make it in the corporate environment.
On a side note: What makes something a "real company"? Are you saying if Mozilla became incorporated this would be all different?
Or maybe I should write this another way. What if the development group of Mozilla gets together one night for beers. They decide they have had it with freeloaders, they are pissed off, so they will write in some small virus into their software. How many people would get infected before they would know? And if you did get infected, what could you do? You got Mozialla for free.
Uh, it's illegal to produce and distribute malicious code. You would call the A.G.
I have a shed in the backyard. I let you put your lawnmower back there for free. I do something stupid, the shed burns down. The guy who owns the lawnmower is screwed, nothing he can do. But if he pays me money, even only $5 or something small, and I destroy what is his, he can get the value of his property back. I now have a responsibility to care for his property, and that responsibility did not exist before.
Only if the agreement said you were taking responsibilty. I have a vehicle in storage in another state. It is not stored in a proper warehouse (where they take possession of your property and it is insured by them and everything), this is just a guy who owns a big building and he rents out spaces for people to store their classic cars in. In my contract, I have to maintain registration and insurance on the car while it is in his storage. The reason being if my vehicle rolls on it's own into a cherried-out '70 Dodge Challenger, he is not responsible for the damages, I am. I'm pretty sure if the building collapsed on itself and wrecked ALL our cars I wouldn't be getting any compansation for my squashed car, even though I pay $60 a month to him. Why? Because my contract says he holds no liability (if I remember right, I haven't read through the contract in a few years).
What's the point of creating a government department to fight international piracy that only has jurisdiction in the United States?
The only pirates they can go after are American citizens.