The cellular comment was just a top-off-the-head example, clearly poorly picked. To be pedantic, Cingular is owned by AT&T and BellSouth (which AT&T has announced intentions to by, but the merger may be blocked). For informational purposes, Verizon will probably buy Vodafone's share of Verizon Wireless soon, since it looks like Vodafone is getting out of CDMA markets. T-Mobile is owned by Deutche Telekom. I'm interested to see what will happen with players like Alltel and US Cellular. The ones that are really screwed in all of this seem to be the satellite providers. They might be able to provider internet access, but not a kind suitable for VOIP, latency is way too high.
Well, let's see, there are at least half a dozen IP phone companies that have national reach. Interestingly, none of them had to lay their own fiber networks, other companies did it for them and now they purchased or leased portions of these networks. And no, not all of these are owned by traditional telcos. Level 3 Communications, for example, provides the network for Packet8/8x8 and (funnily enough) AT&T CallVantage!
Most markets don't react overnight. Eventually if the consumer is dissatisfied with the current provider(s) and is willing to pay the price necessary to provide the type of service they do want, then someone will come along to provide it. Why? Because said person will make money, self interest, pure and simple. I don't trust people blindly, but I do trust their self interest blindly.
The world of AT&T 20 years ago had huge barriers to entry (building out the network). Now multipe networks capable of handling similar levels of information exist. Cable companies have this infrastructure, you can buy or rent fiber from a variety of sources.
I wasn't saying that cellular or IP made things magically cheaper. I was saying that competition from new mediums will tend to drive prices lower.
The telecom's are far from a monopoly and I'll tell you why they are merging, survival. What is a telecom has expanded, the Internet broadened the term. A telecom is just someone with a pipe capable of delivering data. You can deliver almost any service over IP, so anyone who can carry IP traffic is a telecom. Suddenly Comcast and TimeWarner are as much a telecom as AT&T, SBC, or Verizon. Now the prize is also much bigger, its not just voice traffic, its voice, internet, and media (TV, radio, and movies). Bigger prize makes bigger companies because they need more resource to try to win. And more competition is, guess what, great for consumers! This is why we get IP phones for next to nothing, cellular with free long distance. If it were 20 years ago, I'd pay thousands of dollars a month talking to friends around the country, but not with my trusty cell phone.
Also, you're wrong that monopolies are always bad for consumers. A monopoly in an industry with low barriers to entry is great for consumers, because the monopolist has to try really hard to keep it, and they have the resources to continously improve the product. Monopolies in industries with high barriers to entry usually are harmful.
I have no personal protest against Wal-Mart, I don't shop there, but for other reasons. Neither do I expect that me personally not shopping there will topple the corporation, that would be stupid. The only thing I dislike is when people complain about the way a company acts and then continues to buy that company's crap. Don't like it or who makes it, don't buy it and if there are enough people and/or they are willing to pay enough someone "nice" will make crap you do like.
However, my chances of deciding the election will increase if people like you don't vote, so feel free not to. Something you seem to discount is margins of victory contributing to or detracting from an elected official's power. If you win by a slim margin you have far less political capital than if you win by a landslide. So, even if your candidate loses the election, merely voting for him/her epxresses your opinion to the winner.
Of course, this is really a technical anachronism of the system. I'll eat your shoe if the electors for a state ever vote against the popular vote of that state.
Then you can not complain about what they do. This is the tradeoff you've decided to make, nothing wrong with that, just don't complain about the consequences. I personally have no issue with Wal-Mart. I owned their stock ten years ago, and got out before it turned into a flat line. I don't shop there, I think their stores are cluttered, the parking lot is a nightmare, and "customer service" is a joke. This is the choice I've made, and I am poorer for it, I have no complaint.
A good example is the fact that I would love to buy a high quality, american made, Rubbermaid product.
Part of this sentence is missing, it should be "A good example is the fact that I would love to buy a high quality, american made, Rubbermaid product, for a price comparable to Gladware." You can still get the product you want, it just costs more than you want to spend.
The problem with the capitalist view is that those with money have more opportunity to make more money and therefor have more control over the economy. Personally I would like everyones vote to be worth the same amount, but in the pure capitalist system, the rich get more votes than the poor.
If we accept that people give you money for something that they consider to be good (a chair, fixing your car, etc) then those who have contributed the most goods to the economy will have the most money. (If you give your money in exchange for things you consider to be bad or harmful, then we can have no discussion.) In this case, what does having a lot of money mean? Its means you've done many things that people approve of and think are the right thing to do. Now you have a lot of money, you are successful, you possess the ability to see right from wrong and produce things that are good. Who would you rather have effecting the system most? Those who know how and do produce things or those who do not and can not?
What I think is the government needs more control over retail monsters like Walmart.
Careful, by saying this you are saying that you want the government to decide for you where is the right and wrong place to shop. In an ideal world the views of government are a perfect reflection of the views of the public. Firstly, this is rarely true. Secondly, you have no place deciding where the right place for anyone to shop is. This type government assigned morality is dangerous. This belief that you have a right to tell others what they should or should not do with their own money is wrong, evil even. Money is a resource just like any other, what other resources of mine do you think you should control? What's next, you'll tell me what books I should buy with my money (a resource) and in what time (another resource) I should read them?
I can _try_ and fail to arrange a boycott, and I can do a lot of other things that will probably have no bearing on the store. Morons will continue to shop there whether you do or not, regardless of their policies
And morons will get just what they deserve in the end, don't be one of them.
Instead you have change the habits of the entire buying public
I can not control you, I can not control the masses. I do not wish to control you, I do not wish to control the "buying public". They should be free to do as they wish, just as I am. I have no desire to waste my resources on the uneducated or illogical. Saying that I need to change the habits of the buying public somehow implies that I must make people act against their will. I have no desire to do this. I may think that they are stupid and lack the ability to think, but that does not give me the right, ability, or desire to compel or trick them into acting against their will. Exactly that section of the public that believes what Wal-Mart believes should shop there, and give Wal-Mart their buying power.
You probably subscribe to the "your vote matters" fallacy. Nothing is more silly. Only votes in mass matter. Single votes do not.
To believe that your opinion does not matter and that you can not control your life is the first realization one makes on the path to self destruction because you believe you lack control in a general sense. First you believe you hold no control over politics, then you believe you hold no control over whether you are hired or fired, then you believe you have no control over what choices you make, then you believe you have no control over your anything, and finally you cease to be, either literally or you exist as walking death unable to muster the courage to get rid of the walking. You have exactly as much control over the world as your resources (money, talent, and intelligence) will buy you.
Wal-Mart doesn't get "their" power from some magical source, it gets it from us, the consumers, exercising our choice of where to shop. If you don't like how much Wal-Mart influences what producers produce, DON'T SHOP THERE. If you're willing to trade their influence over certain products for lower prices on them, then do. The world's victim mentality really pisses me off. If you don't like the values that Wal-Mart promotes, stop giving them the ability to advance them by not giving them your money. Capitalism only works if you vote with your dollars/pesos/euros/yuan (okay, I'm not going to list currencies of all the countries where Wal-Mart operates).
Its not. As far as your server is concerned, there is no difference. What is AJAX? Its a way to send an HTTP request without changing the page displayed in the browser. From the server point of view, an HTTP request is an HTTP request is an HTTP request. Rule #1 of web applications, trust no parameter. I spend probably 20% of my time validating parameters in one way or the other. Let's say we're talking about a forum and you receive a delete request along with a post id. First, validate the post ID. Then validate that this post belongs to the user (assuming you're using something like the Tomcat Realms session management system). I mean, these are basics and AJAX doesn't change the way the game is played. It provides a different path for submitting HTTP requests, but it doesn't provide a fundamentally different HTTP request.
You assume you can explain virtualization to a superintendent or god forbid, a principal. Dual booting they can barely comprehend, virtualization might just cause their brains to liquify. Its not always what's cheapest or what's best, sometimes its what people can manage to wrap their heads around.
Uhh, yeah, let's see, why don't you guess:
1) ActiveX controls will continue to work unchanged
2) ActiveX controls for java, flash, quicktime, and others will stop working as expected, breaking millions of websites on IE.
I mean, you'd have to be insane to think that number 2 was true...oh wait, it is!
By not supporting IE, I mean not providing support for non-standard behavior that IE has. However just saying, "Sorry, we don't support 85% of the world." is dangous. There are a lot of days I want to do it though.
From,
A Camino (Mac) and Firefox (Linux) User
I think it is fine. My initial concern came from here, when I saw the list of DTHML events disabled when ActiveX controls are disabled. I think they are referring to the fact that the ActiveX element itself won't generate these events. Not that these events will be unavailable in general.
By the way XMLHttpRequest objects won't be affected by this change, as they are not elements that the user interacts with throught he GUI.
Ummm no, it means that I believe some JavaScript events are actually implement in IE by using ActiveX. So when you write an onclick() handler, the flow of control passes through ActiveX. I support IE at all, only because I have to, and in fact my company has discussed dropping IE support completely now that Firefox market and mind share is getting higher.
Aren't there a good number of JavaScript events that are handled through ActiveX on IE, for example onblur() and onclick()? I hope that I'm wrong or else I've got a lot of JS recoding to do, I hate JS.
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The cellular comment was just a top-off-the-head example, clearly poorly picked. To be pedantic, Cingular is owned by AT&T and BellSouth (which AT&T has announced intentions to by, but the merger may be blocked). For informational purposes, Verizon will probably buy Vodafone's share of Verizon Wireless soon, since it looks like Vodafone is getting out of CDMA markets. T-Mobile is owned by Deutche Telekom. I'm interested to see what will happen with players like Alltel and US Cellular. The ones that are really screwed in all of this seem to be the satellite providers. They might be able to provider internet access, but not a kind suitable for VOIP, latency is way too high.
Well, let's see, there are at least half a dozen IP phone companies that have national reach. Interestingly, none of them had to lay their own fiber networks, other companies did it for them and now they purchased or leased portions of these networks. And no, not all of these are owned by traditional telcos. Level 3 Communications, for example, provides the network for Packet8/8x8 and (funnily enough) AT&T CallVantage!
Most markets don't react overnight. Eventually if the consumer is dissatisfied with the current provider(s) and is willing to pay the price necessary to provide the type of service they do want, then someone will come along to provide it. Why? Because said person will make money, self interest, pure and simple. I don't trust people blindly, but I do trust their self interest blindly.
The world of AT&T 20 years ago had huge barriers to entry (building out the network). Now multipe networks capable of handling similar levels of information exist. Cable companies have this infrastructure, you can buy or rent fiber from a variety of sources.
I wasn't saying that cellular or IP made things magically cheaper. I was saying that competition from new mediums will tend to drive prices lower.
The great thing about merging two incompetent companies is they usually collapse faster and make room for someone who can do what the customer wants.
The telecom's are far from a monopoly and I'll tell you why they are merging, survival. What is a telecom has expanded, the Internet broadened the term. A telecom is just someone with a pipe capable of delivering data. You can deliver almost any service over IP, so anyone who can carry IP traffic is a telecom. Suddenly Comcast and TimeWarner are as much a telecom as AT&T, SBC, or Verizon. Now the prize is also much bigger, its not just voice traffic, its voice, internet, and media (TV, radio, and movies). Bigger prize makes bigger companies because they need more resource to try to win. And more competition is, guess what, great for consumers! This is why we get IP phones for next to nothing, cellular with free long distance. If it were 20 years ago, I'd pay thousands of dollars a month talking to friends around the country, but not with my trusty cell phone. Also, you're wrong that monopolies are always bad for consumers. A monopoly in an industry with low barriers to entry is great for consumers, because the monopolist has to try really hard to keep it, and they have the resources to continously improve the product. Monopolies in industries with high barriers to entry usually are harmful.
You owe me a hundred dollars.
I have no personal protest against Wal-Mart, I don't shop there, but for other reasons. Neither do I expect that me personally not shopping there will topple the corporation, that would be stupid. The only thing I dislike is when people complain about the way a company acts and then continues to buy that company's crap. Don't like it or who makes it, don't buy it and if there are enough people and/or they are willing to pay enough someone "nice" will make crap you do like.
However, my chances of deciding the election will increase if people like you don't vote, so feel free not to. Something you seem to discount is margins of victory contributing to or detracting from an elected official's power. If you win by a slim margin you have far less political capital than if you win by a landslide. So, even if your candidate loses the election, merely voting for him/her epxresses your opinion to the winner.
Of course, this is really a technical anachronism of the system. I'll eat your shoe if the electors for a state ever vote against the popular vote of that state.
Then you can not complain about what they do. This is the tradeoff you've decided to make, nothing wrong with that, just don't complain about the consequences. I personally have no issue with Wal-Mart. I owned their stock ten years ago, and got out before it turned into a flat line. I don't shop there, I think their stores are cluttered, the parking lot is a nightmare, and "customer service" is a joke. This is the choice I've made, and I am poorer for it, I have no complaint.
A good example is the fact that I would love to buy a high quality, american made, Rubbermaid product.
Part of this sentence is missing, it should be "A good example is the fact that I would love to buy a high quality, american made, Rubbermaid product, for a price comparable to Gladware." You can still get the product you want, it just costs more than you want to spend.
The problem with the capitalist view is that those with money have more opportunity to make more money and therefor have more control over the economy. Personally I would like everyones vote to be worth the same amount, but in the pure capitalist system, the rich get more votes than the poor.
If we accept that people give you money for something that they consider to be good (a chair, fixing your car, etc) then those who have contributed the most goods to the economy will have the most money. (If you give your money in exchange for things you consider to be bad or harmful, then we can have no discussion.) In this case, what does having a lot of money mean? Its means you've done many things that people approve of and think are the right thing to do. Now you have a lot of money, you are successful, you possess the ability to see right from wrong and produce things that are good. Who would you rather have effecting the system most? Those who know how and do produce things or those who do not and can not?
Defeatism is a great policy. That way you never claim responsibility for failure.
What I think is the government needs more control over retail monsters like Walmart.
Careful, by saying this you are saying that you want the government to decide for you where is the right and wrong place to shop. In an ideal world the views of government are a perfect reflection of the views of the public. Firstly, this is rarely true. Secondly, you have no place deciding where the right place for anyone to shop is. This type government assigned morality is dangerous. This belief that you have a right to tell others what they should or should not do with their own money is wrong, evil even. Money is a resource just like any other, what other resources of mine do you think you should control? What's next, you'll tell me what books I should buy with my money (a resource) and in what time (another resource) I should read them?
I can _try_ and fail to arrange a boycott, and I can do a lot of other things that will probably have no bearing on the store. Morons will continue to shop there whether you do or not, regardless of their policies
And morons will get just what they deserve in the end, don't be one of them.
Instead you have change the habits of the entire buying public
I can not control you, I can not control the masses. I do not wish to control you, I do not wish to control the "buying public". They should be free to do as they wish, just as I am. I have no desire to waste my resources on the uneducated or illogical. Saying that I need to change the habits of the buying public somehow implies that I must make people act against their will. I have no desire to do this. I may think that they are stupid and lack the ability to think, but that does not give me the right, ability, or desire to compel or trick them into acting against their will. Exactly that section of the public that believes what Wal-Mart believes should shop there, and give Wal-Mart their buying power.
You probably subscribe to the "your vote matters" fallacy. Nothing is more silly. Only votes in mass matter. Single votes do not.
To believe that your opinion does not matter and that you can not control your life is the first realization one makes on the path to self destruction because you believe you lack control in a general sense. First you believe you hold no control over politics, then you believe you hold no control over whether you are hired or fired, then you believe you have no control over what choices you make, then you believe you have no control over your anything, and finally you cease to be, either literally or you exist as walking death unable to muster the courage to get rid of the walking. You have exactly as much control over the world as your resources (money, talent, and intelligence) will buy you.
Wal-Mart doesn't get "their" power from some magical source, it gets it from us, the consumers, exercising our choice of where to shop. If you don't like how much Wal-Mart influences what producers produce, DON'T SHOP THERE. If you're willing to trade their influence over certain products for lower prices on them, then do. The world's victim mentality really pisses me off. If you don't like the values that Wal-Mart promotes, stop giving them the ability to advance them by not giving them your money. Capitalism only works if you vote with your dollars/pesos/euros/yuan (okay, I'm not going to list currencies of all the countries where Wal-Mart operates).
Its not. As far as your server is concerned, there is no difference. What is AJAX? Its a way to send an HTTP request without changing the page displayed in the browser. From the server point of view, an HTTP request is an HTTP request is an HTTP request. Rule #1 of web applications, trust no parameter. I spend probably 20% of my time validating parameters in one way or the other. Let's say we're talking about a forum and you receive a delete request along with a post id. First, validate the post ID. Then validate that this post belongs to the user (assuming you're using something like the Tomcat Realms session management system). I mean, these are basics and AJAX doesn't change the way the game is played. It provides a different path for submitting HTTP requests, but it doesn't provide a fundamentally different HTTP request.
You assume you can explain virtualization to a superintendent or god forbid, a principal. Dual booting they can barely comprehend, virtualization might just cause their brains to liquify. Its not always what's cheapest or what's best, sometimes its what people can manage to wrap their heads around.
Although, that would really be "moooff", not moo, if it were the ghost of Clarus.
Awww man, you beat me to it!
Congratulations, I could have told you that. This is why I'm glad not to be in IT support any more.
Uhh, yeah, let's see, why don't you guess: 1) ActiveX controls will continue to work unchanged 2) ActiveX controls for java, flash, quicktime, and others will stop working as expected, breaking millions of websites on IE. I mean, you'd have to be insane to think that number 2 was true...oh wait, it is!
By not supporting IE, I mean not providing support for non-standard behavior that IE has. However just saying, "Sorry, we don't support 85% of the world." is dangous. There are a lot of days I want to do it though. From, A Camino (Mac) and Firefox (Linux) User
I think it is fine. My initial concern came from here, when I saw the list of DTHML events disabled when ActiveX controls are disabled. I think they are referring to the fact that the ActiveX element itself won't generate these events. Not that these events will be unavailable in general. By the way XMLHttpRequest objects won't be affected by this change, as they are not elements that the user interacts with throught he GUI.
Ummm no, it means that I believe some JavaScript events are actually implement in IE by using ActiveX. So when you write an onclick() handler, the flow of control passes through ActiveX. I support IE at all, only because I have to, and in fact my company has discussed dropping IE support completely now that Firefox market and mind share is getting higher.
Aren't there a good number of JavaScript events that are handled through ActiveX on IE, for example onblur() and onclick()? I hope that I'm wrong or else I've got a lot of JS recoding to do, I hate JS.