I sit next to some rather large windows, but we keep the blinds down most of the day because the light tends to get in people's eyes, reflect from their screens, or is just too damned hot.
And of course the room is big enough that even if all the blinds were up, there still wouldn't be enough light in most of the room, so we have to have the lights on anyway.
hmmm...I hadn't thought of doing that, it might be worth trying.
I use IMP at the moment when I use someone else's machine and can't just use Thunderbird or Mozilla Mail, but IMP's interface definitely has room for improvement. I wonder how long before apps like IMP or Squirrelmail start imitating GMail's interface?
your own server lets you do what the hell you want, and POP3 is a horrble mail protocol from a user's point of view. (IMAP is horrible from a developer point of view, but that's beside the point)
when Gmail does IMAP it'll be interesting to those of us with our own servers, but only a little.
You cannot ever disable completely the ability to run unsigned code, as for the signing to be effective you have to consider self signed code to be unsigned too, which means that you're effectively requiring people to pay money to a CA just so they can develop their little applet.
The best they can do is show the security warning dialogue, and tell the user exactly which protected functions the applet desires access to.
Also, I'd point out that a "Stupid" user is probably completely unaware that there is a sandbox for applets in the first place, so they're doubly stupid as they're not assuming "oh it's java it can't hurt me"
> This is much more like software patents, where we get frustrated with the fact that we're not allowed to copy what somebody already invented. Generally speaking copying is allowed.
No, the issue with software patents is that most of the patents are for things so trivial that anyone could (and probably has) independantly develop them.
A software patent on an application that is suffiently innovative, non trivial and non obvious is no better or worse than a patent on a physical invention, it's just that in the world of software patents, the patent examiners seem to have no clue and assume that anything someone has done with a computer must be worthy of patenting.
If you have any other problem with software patents then it's not software patents you have a problem with, it's patents in general.
But back to the Super Suffle. It looks almost identical to the iPod Shuffle, and it has an extremely similar name - "xxx Shuffle" I've never heard of another MP3 player called "Shuffle" so it's certainly not a generic term.
I think it well and truly satisfies the "Confusingly similar" requirement. Similar to copyright, trademarks don't _need_ to be registered to be protected under trademark law. I guess the real issue here is whether or not they will try to sell it in a market that has trademark laws that will allow Apple to sue them.
The grandparent was talking about using it as a dektop machine, not a server. A 1GHz machine (even single processor) is perfectly suitable for most desktop tasks - in fact, a machine _half_ that speed would still be fine. He also said that having two processors would make it nice and responsive. Which it would.
At no point did he claim it would run as fast as a 2Ghz single processor machine, you made that bit up yourself.
There might well be a single word he could have used to save himself a character, but "Hire some proof readers" is still a perfectly valid English sentence that contains only English words, all correctly spelt (unless I've typoed them in the process) and that has pretty much the same meaning as "Hire some proofreaders."
mine currently has 2GB, and it was purchased last year.....
so > 4G won't be all that far away.
But apart from that, there's more advantages to Athlon64 than the AMD64 instructions (which you're not going to be able to take advantage of right now anyway unless you're running Linux).
Phoenix when it was originally developed was intended as an alternative not an upgrade to Mozilla, an alternative to an all in one browser / mail suite. If it was an upgrade to anything, it was an upgrade to the Netscape 4.0.x standalone browser (not to be confused with the 4.5 communicator suite), or the browser only component of Mozilla.
Windows 95 and OS X were intended as upgrades, and intended to do everything that their predecessors did, as well as adding needed improvements.
Phoenix / Firebird / Firefox was never intended to do everything that Mozilla could do, so it would never suit the needs of someone that wanted a suite of integrated internet applications.
And the only users Firefox during the Phoenix or Firebird times started pulling away from Mozilla were those that _already knew_ about Mozilla, but for whatever reason decided they wanted only a lightweight browser. There was no significant migration from IE to Phoenix or Firebird, because at that time the application was not mature enough, so those suggesting alternative browsers would suggest Mozilla, which was stable by that point.
I'm not disputing that Firefox offers something that Mozilla doesn't provide, but you seem to be saying that there's no reason why Firefox can't be made to provide everything Mozilla does, which is silly, because if that were to happen, we'd go through the whole cycle again.
Let Firefox be Firefox, and let Mozilla be Mozilla, they are two independant code bases with different developers that have different goals, and there's no reason why both cannot co-exist.
Firefox is not an improvement on Mozilla, it is _different_ to Mozilla, a difference that some people happen to prefer. Personally I believe that if the Mozilla suite had a catchy name like 'Firefox' and was marketed as heavily as Firefox was, it'd be just as popular with non technical ex IE users, but we'll never know whether that's true.
At one point the Mozilla Foundation thought they might abandon Mozilla, but then they found out that a lot of people don't _want_ to abandon it, and so they changed their minds and stated that Mozilla would continue to be actively developed for the forseable future.
Some in the open-source community thought Mozilla would abandon the full suite, but foundation spokesman Bart Decrem said Mozilla remains committed to it. Mozilla is expected to publish this week an updated development roadmap that confirms plans for future development of the suite, he said.
There's only a couple of developers working on Firefox, but there's an entire community of developers working on Mozilla.
Mozilla and Firefox have mutually incompatible goals as far as interface and user experience go, so you can't just 'Fix Firefox' to include what the Mozilla developers are missing. And if you did manage to do that, you'd waste a year or more to recreate Mozilla when it already exists right now.
"Ready for the desktop" is a phrase that must die. if it's not "Ready for the desktop" then how can I have been using it on the desktop for 8 years?
Yes those issues are important and are a significant barrier to entry for some (many), the grandparaent was not denying that. But "ready for the desktop" is such a massive generalisation that it is a completely meaningless phrase.
Actually, I'm a C programmer who now writes Java. As such I have completely avoided any taint implicit in operator overloading, and have managed to keep reference equality and logical equality as separate concepts;)
By the way, I predict that leaving out the braces may have the consequence that a future edit may overlook that fact and introduce a bug, resulting in the lesson learnt that clarity is sometimes preferable to brevity.
Obviously if you never learn from your mistakes, you'll never get better, but lots of bad code _can_ result in good code as long as you actually learn from your mistakes.
(To the pedants - yes I know that nothing happens if the code is good above, and that there's likely to be errors in it regardless, but it's a stupid code analogy of a real world concept for the purpose of illustration only...WTF do you expect?)
They are also sending gaming reviews to India now. or they are sending gaming reviews to India now too. or they are sending gaming reviews to India now as well.
I don't know whether or not it's "correct" but sticking also on the end of a sentence makes for a very clumsy sounding sentence. A simple rule is, if it's dificult to say, or dificult to establish what it is that is being said, then you should probably find another way to say it. If it's easy to say, and the meaning is clear, then it's probably ok.
I get the feeling that C programmers probably prefer the look of Java, because they don't have any C++ preconcieved ideas, and non keyword operators that they're not familiar with make them nervous (at least that's how it is with me).
speech is action. you cannot speak without performing an action. Every action you do and every word you say has a consequence. No one has freedom from consequences. "Shall Make no law...." etc does not and should not prevent people or organisations from reacting to the words you had the freedom to say. They have the right to react as much as you have the right to speak, and they also have to expect consequences for their reactions. If there is an issue with firing people for blogging, then it is not a Freedom of Speech issue, it is an Unfair Dismissal issue. That is because freedom of speech as defined in the constitution is only relevant in the context of the government passing laws - allowing you to say what you like about the government without fear of recrimination _from the government_.
The one I'm using right now (bought in 2003) appears to have normal cursor key layout, but adds an "F Lock" key next to the function keys - that's probably the most annoying thing, because the function keys now have things like "help", "undo", "redo" and stuff on them and they don't send the standard F1-F12 key signals unless you turn on F-Lock. And F-Lock is always off by default, something you invariably forget until you've pressed F5 to refresh something and stared in bewilderment at the new window opening up.
The other annoying thing is the layout of the page navigation and insert / delete keys above the cursors keys.
yes that's _three_ functions on each of the top two buttons, and no indication of how you actually select each function. And the delete key is twice as high. I could probably have lived with Sroll lock being compressed onto another key, and with the page navigation and insert delete being 2x3 instead of 3x2 if they'd kept delete single sized and put insert next to it (or above or below) where it belongs, but this layout is just ridiculous. I can never remember exaclty how to use the insert on the print screen/ sys request button, and it's annoying to have to turn off numlock to use the one on the numeric pad.
I would say that WinFS would be exactly like what you describe in 2 -
it would be integrated at a low enough level than when you call fopen(), write() etc, that it's WinFS that gets called - before passing the actual data through to the filesystem. This would have the advantage that there would need to be no time consuming indexing period. Or alternatively, rather than indexing on the fly it could just add the new / modified file to a queue to be indexed when the machine is idle, so as to avoid too much overhead on individual writes.
I have no idea how WinFS is _actually_ implemented, but I'd say that some variation on the above is likely as they already have an slocate + updatedb style search tool - the Windows Indexing Service.
Slashdot Mirror
actually, it's spelt right -look it up. (I had to).
Microsoft are _not_ rewriting windows.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if Longhorn identified as Windows NT 5.2 (or 5.3 if 2003 already has 5.2).
They're doing a whole bunch with the UI, and of course there's the WinFS stuff, but underneath, it's still NT.
The fact that I don't want to?
the light comes in the wrong way.
I sit next to some rather large windows, but we keep the blinds down most of the day because the light tends to get in people's eyes, reflect from their screens, or is just too damned hot.
And of course the room is big enough that even if all the blinds were up, there still wouldn't be enough light in most of the room, so we have to have the lights on anyway.
hmmm...I hadn't thought of doing that, it might be worth trying.
I use IMP at the moment when I use someone else's machine and can't just use Thunderbird or Mozilla Mail, but IMP's interface definitely has room for improvement.
I wonder how long before apps like IMP or Squirrelmail start imitating GMail's interface?
your own server lets you do what the hell you want, and POP3 is a horrble mail protocol from a user's point of view. (IMAP is horrible from a developer point of view, but that's beside the point)
when Gmail does IMAP it'll be interesting to those of us with our own servers, but only a little.
You cannot ever disable completely the ability to run unsigned code, as for the signing to be effective you have to consider self signed code to be unsigned too, which means that you're effectively requiring people to pay money to a CA just so they can develop their little applet.
The best they can do is show the security warning dialogue, and tell the user exactly which protected functions the applet desires access to.
Also, I'd point out that a "Stupid" user is probably completely unaware that there is a sandbox for applets in the first place, so they're doubly stupid as they're not assuming "oh it's java it can't hurt me"
> This is much more like software patents, where we get frustrated with the fact that we're not allowed to copy what somebody already invented. Generally speaking copying is allowed.
No, the issue with software patents is that most of the patents are for things so trivial that anyone could (and probably has) independantly develop them.
A software patent on an application that is suffiently innovative, non trivial and non obvious is no better or worse than a patent on a physical invention, it's just that in the world of software patents, the patent examiners seem to have no clue and assume that anything someone has done with a computer must be worthy of patenting.
If you have any other problem with software patents then it's not software patents you have a problem with, it's patents in general.
But back to the Super Suffle.
It looks almost identical to the iPod Shuffle, and it has an extremely similar name - "xxx Shuffle"
I've never heard of another MP3 player called "Shuffle" so it's certainly not a generic term.
I think it well and truly satisfies the "Confusingly similar" requirement.
Similar to copyright, trademarks don't _need_ to be registered to be protected under trademark law.
I guess the real issue here is whether or not they will try to sell it in a market that has trademark laws that will allow Apple to sue them.
what the hell does that have to do with anything?
The grandparent was talking about using it as a dektop machine, not a server.
A 1GHz machine (even single processor) is perfectly suitable for most desktop tasks - in fact, a machine _half_ that speed would still be fine.
He also said that having two processors would make it nice and responsive.
Which it would.
At no point did he claim it would run as fast as a 2Ghz single processor machine, you made that bit up yourself.
There might well be a single word he could have used to save himself a character, but "Hire some proof readers" is still a perfectly valid English sentence that contains only English words, all correctly spelt (unless I've typoed them in the process) and that has pretty much the same meaning as "Hire some proofreaders."
There's a difference between making Firefox their premier product, and abandoning Mozilla.
However, having seen the latest slashdot headline, it seems abandonment is the route they've chosen to take afterall, which is a pity...
mine currently has 2GB, and it was purchased last year.....
so > 4G won't be all that far away.
But apart from that, there's more advantages to Athlon64 than the AMD64 instructions (which you're not going to be able to take advantage of right now anyway unless you're running Linux).
No, that's not true at all.
Phoenix when it was originally developed was intended as an alternative not an upgrade to Mozilla, an alternative to an all in one browser / mail suite.
If it was an upgrade to anything, it was an upgrade to the Netscape 4.0.x standalone browser (not to be confused with the 4.5 communicator suite), or the browser only component of Mozilla.
Windows 95 and OS X were intended as upgrades, and intended to do everything that their predecessors did, as well as adding needed improvements.
Phoenix / Firebird / Firefox was never intended to do everything that Mozilla could do, so it would never suit the needs of someone that wanted a suite of integrated internet applications.
And the only users Firefox during the Phoenix or Firebird times started pulling away from Mozilla were those that _already knew_ about Mozilla, but for whatever reason decided they wanted only a lightweight browser.
There was no significant migration from IE to Phoenix or Firebird, because at that time the application was not mature enough, so those suggesting alternative browsers would suggest Mozilla, which was stable by that point.
I'm not disputing that Firefox offers something that Mozilla doesn't provide, but you seem to be saying that there's no reason why Firefox can't be made to provide everything Mozilla does, which is silly, because if that were to happen, we'd go through the whole cycle again.
Let Firefox be Firefox, and let Mozilla be Mozilla, they are two independant code bases with different developers that have different goals, and there's no reason why both cannot co-exist.
At one point the Mozilla Foundation thought they might abandon Mozilla, but then they found out that a lot of people don't _want_ to abandon it, and so they changed their minds and stated that Mozilla would continue to be actively developed for the forseable future.
a 10 second google search found this - There's only a couple of developers working on Firefox, but there's an entire community of developers working on Mozilla.
Mozilla and Firefox have mutually incompatible goals as far as interface and user experience go, so you can't just 'Fix Firefox' to include what the Mozilla developers are missing. And if you did manage to do that, you'd waste a year or more to recreate Mozilla when it already exists right now.
you took the time to make a post about a missing N on the end of a word in a .sig that has 'U' and 'WHT' in it??
Try Blood Bowl
you missed the point of the post.
"Ready for the desktop" is a phrase that must die.
if it's not "Ready for the desktop" then how can I have been using it on the desktop for 8 years?
Yes those issues are important and are a significant barrier to entry for some (many), the grandparaent was not denying that.
But "ready for the desktop" is such a massive generalisation that it is a completely meaningless phrase.
Actually, I'm a C programmer who now writes Java. ;)
As such I have completely avoided any taint implicit in operator overloading, and have managed to keep reference equality and logical equality as separate concepts
By the way, I predict that leaving out the braces may have the consequence that a future edit may overlook that fact and introduce a bug, resulting in the lesson learnt that clarity is sometimes preferable to brevity.
There were services available on the web far before Microsoft tried to redefine the meaning of "web service".
There's nothing in the writeup that suggests anything was meant other than a service available via the web.
(To the pedants - yes I know that nothing happens if the code is good above, and that there's likely to be errors in it regardless, but it's a stupid code analogy of a real world concept for the purpose of illustration only...WTF do you expect?)
no.
They are also sending gaming reviews to India now.
or they are sending gaming reviews to India now too.
or they are sending gaming reviews to India now as well.
I don't know whether or not it's "correct" but sticking also on the end of a sentence makes for a very clumsy sounding sentence.
A simple rule is, if it's dificult to say, or dificult to establish what it is that is being said, then you should probably find another way to say it.
If it's easy to say, and the meaning is clear, then it's probably ok.
It's the C++isms of C# that bug me.
I get the feeling that C programmers probably prefer the look of Java, because they don't have any C++ preconcieved ideas, and non keyword operators that they're not familiar with make them nervous (at least that's how it is with me).
Whereas C# makes C++ developers feel at home....
speech is action. you cannot speak without performing an action.
Every action you do and every word you say has a consequence.
No one has freedom from consequences. "Shall Make no law...." etc does not and should not prevent people or organisations from reacting to the words you had the freedom to say. They have the right to react as much as you have the right to speak, and they also have to expect consequences for their reactions.
If there is an issue with firing people for blogging, then it is not a Freedom of Speech issue, it is an Unfair Dismissal issue. That is because freedom of speech as defined in the constitution is only relevant in the context of the government passing laws - allowing you to say what you like about the government without fear of recrimination _from the government_.
The other annoying thing is the layout of the page navigation and insert / delete keys above the cursors keys.
instead of the normal layout ofyou now have -yes that's _three_ functions on each of the top two buttons, and no indication of how you actually select each function.
And the delete key is twice as high.
I could probably have lived with Sroll lock being compressed onto another key, and with the page navigation and insert delete being 2x3 instead of 3x2 if they'd kept delete single sized and put insert next to it (or above or below) where it belongs, but this layout is just ridiculous.
I can never remember exaclty how to use the insert on the print screen/ sys request button, and it's annoying to have to turn off numlock to use the one on the numeric pad.
I would say that WinFS would be exactly like what you describe in 2 -
it would be integrated at a low enough level than when you call fopen(), write() etc, that it's WinFS that gets called - before passing the actual data through to the filesystem.
This would have the advantage that there would need to be no time consuming indexing period. Or alternatively, rather than indexing on the fly it could just add the new / modified file to a queue to be indexed when the machine is idle, so as to avoid too much overhead on individual writes.
I have no idea how WinFS is _actually_ implemented, but I'd say that some variation on the above is likely as they already have an slocate + updatedb style search tool - the Windows Indexing Service.