I disagree. The obvious sensible breakup would be to seperate MS into six units: consumer OS (Windows Millenium, WinCE) corporate OS (Windows NT) consumer products (games) corporate products (Office2000, developer apps) internet products (MSIE, ASP) hardware products (wing o' deth, etc) Or, alternatively, three units: operating systems (WinME, WinNT, WinCE) applications (Office, MSIE, etc) hardware (glo-mouse-a-lux, etc)
Either way, or nearly any other way you propose, they still have monopoly power. Windows isn't going to disappear any time soon. Office isn't going to suddenly vapourise. The only significant software at risk would be MSIE, and it's becoming so standards-compliant that it's almost worth using (oh, is my Opera bias showing?)
A broken-up Microsoft will still dominate the marketplace.
"Utilise" is spelled correctly. It's just that you're used to seeing the American spelling.
English. Gotta love it.
[As an aside, I wonder why American spelling is different than British. Were the news editors and authors in the new frontier all illiterate? Was it some sort of language rebellion, the Independence war not being enough for the colonists? Or perhaps they had speech impediments, and mistakenly pronounced words like "utilise" as "utilize"?]
Yah. It was a bit of a rant, but I think that at the core, it's basically true: those who haven't experienced the unregulated Internet don't know what they're missing, are all too accepting of the net "as-is" (which is to say, as it is when they first get access), and actively desire greater government interference so that they themselves aren't challenged to think for themselves.
The citizens of USA, Canada and bits of Europe are used to being spoon-fed by the government. We've all been trained to not question the system too deeply, to let the government be responsible for protecting us from our own stupidity, and can't imagine a life of not being coddled.
Little wonder it's influencing the (second-to-last) bastion of freedom. Last-last will be the space frontier: colonies in space will have an interesting opportunity to redefine the social and government norms.
Now, the far more interesting debate has nothing to do with the whys and wherefores of this situation:
It's in deciding how to challenge it, how to work around and through it, and how to get what we want while allowing the proles to have their safety.
Seriously, the "Internet" as I remember it from over a decade ago, was a small collection of a few thousands of interconnected Universities sharing EMail, a very small Usenet (in those days, one could actually read all of alt.sex... and enjoy actual conversations and discussions), and FTP.
It was mainly a closed system. No riff-raff public allowed in. Certainly no advertising or commercial business allowed. It was a community.
And then, all at about the same time, the Internet became open and Webified.
And that's when it died. When it became affordable, when Joe Moron could easily access it, when it became allowable to conduct commercial business...
One of the drawbacks to our computer age is a near-complete loss of history.
Almost everyone--and I mean that most literally: certainly there aren't more than a few hundred thousand people who date back to ARPANet days--has absolutely no clue why and how the Internet came to be.
All they are aware of is that it has pretty graphics, decent search engines, and you can buy porn from home.
They don't know that there are philosophical and moral battles being played out. They don't know about nor understand the EToy(s) issue; they don't blame the MPAA for wanting to stop theft of artist's songs; they want the government to put a stop to kiddypr0n; they've never known EMail without spam and don't even realize that it could be any different.
They watch network television, for cripes sake!
Face it: the lowest common denominator now has access to the Internet, and he actively *wants* the government to keep him safe and secure.
And those proles outnumber the geeks and old-timers ten thousand to one.
They demand a regulated net. They accept a commercially-driven net. They are afraid of freedom of expression.
They are afraid to step out of the tiny box they live their lives in and realize that when everyone pulls together, we can have a pretty damned special and hopeful world.
The telcos don't suckle at the government nipple. They didn't get money or support from them, beyond the initial massive giveaway of land rights for their transmission paths (in BC, mainly small areas to put up towers; they generally piggybacked the land lines on the electrical utility poles)--same as in the US.
What they did get is controlled. They couldn't fart or sneeze without needing clearance from the CRTC.
This guaranteed that everyone got a standard level of service at a standard level of pricing. It ensured that prices dropped as costs dropped. It ensured that as communities grew, party line service would become private line service. It ensured that when line quality was poor, the telco had to look after fixing it.
It was a good situation for the monopoly: they got a guaranteed, healthy income. And it was a good situation for the consumer: they got a good price on service with a guarantee of service.
Now that we have open competition, we have lower per-minute costs, but higher monthly lease costs; we have outrageously expensive repair fees; we have no guarantee of service.
All in all, we've broken even: what we save in one area, we pay for in another.
What we have lost, though, is the control. The previously tame monopoly is now a mainly uncontrolled near-monopoly. Oh, joy.
As far as "lag behind the US" goes, I don't think you have a clue about the advanced state of our communications systems, and the decrepit state of your own.
You should go hang out in telecom newsgroups on Usenet for a while. You people are being seriously *screwed* by your communications providers. For gods sake, you still have mechanical switching stations, while we're getting fiber-to-home in new community developments.
Lag behind the States? How about Internet access, then? Every sizeable town, let alone city, in BC has access to ADSL -- look at Telus HS Access for details. And at a price that's *cheaper* than having a second line with dialup access.
Canada has a higher Internet usage, per capita, than the US. We have better access, more access and cheaper access than most of you.
You haven't a fucking clue. You actually believe the American superiority myth that your government pacifies you with.
Hey, it keeps you from every demanding something better.
Ignorance is bliss. Welcome to 1984, America-style.
Canada is a helluva lot more "rural" than America: while most of our population is concentrated along a 20-mile deep strip along the border, there's a bijillion little rinky-dink towns from there to the North Pole.
And yet everyone has same-priced, low-priced telephone access. In BC, you'd be hard pressed to locate a mechanical switch. And the telco policy here has been, for decades, to replace switches with the most current new technology -- none of the "shuffle our good stuff from the cities to the hicks" BS that the American utilities practice.
As a result, we have an incredibly wired nation. The percentage of our population with Internet access is among the highest in the world. Every sizeable city has xDSL and high-speed cable access. Something well over 75% of our white suburbanites have Internet access; and something between 30-40% of our less-advantaged urbanite dwellers are on the net.
These days, it would be difficult to find anyone south of the DEW line that doesn't have access to the Internet in one form or another. If it isn't in your home, it's at the library or the local coffee shop.
And at great prices: $20/mo for unlimited evening/weekend calling; $0.10/min if you're not on that plan; Telco-supplied Internet access for as low as $10/mo for modem access and $40/mo for unlimited xDSL or cable.
The reality is that the American telephone system is the shits. It wasn't well-regulated, and continues to be poorly managed, poorly regulated and you continue to accept it.
The bad news, from my perspective, is that now our CRTC (controlling agency) has allowed "free market competition", we've lost control. What used to be a tightly regulated, tamed monopoly is now cut free. Can't tell 'em what to do any more... which, in the end, is a bad thing: we seem to be paying the same as always, but without the guarantee of consumer-benefits-oriented control. Bummer.
Damn fine commentary, and I'd mark it up if I weren't replying.
I live in Vernon, BC, Canada. We have some of the right ideas: a wastewater effluent spray system that seems to be garnering worldwide attention; a proposal for a grey-water return system (dual water supply; water your lawn with grey water); and a good recycling program.
Specifically, we have a blue bag system that doesn't require sorting (though it still requires us to rinse containers). It accepts several types of plastic, paper and metal. Provincially, we have a bottle deposit system that's been expanded to include some non-glass containers. We pay an eco-tax on purchases of tires, batteries and paint; and are expected to return these to the recycling depot.
I do have some issues with the taxation end of things. Or, in political-speak, the "Eco Fee" structure. Gah.
Where I'd like to see this province go next is in offering recycling facilities for electronic equipment. There is a ton of poisons in every television, amplifier, computer and microwave. And the silly thing is, melting them down would probably pay back more than the cost of collection and recycling.
After that, I'd like to see some sort of Canada-wide mandate for manufacturers to be responsible for cradle-to-grave product ownership. As in Germany, where car manufacturers take their old vehicles back, break 'em down and recycle the parts.
This planet can sustain our billions and billions of people *IF* we get our act together and start thinking of the long-term benefits of re-use and recycling.
You can't overestimate stupidity. Even in PhD-level folk.
Our lake is one that contains land-locked (freshwater) salmon. Kokanee salmon. Special sort of fish. And disappearing all too rapidly.
Why?
Because some pointy-head -- the sort of person you claim will "stop and think" -- introduced a species of fresh-water shrimp to the lake to feed the fish. Well-fed fish wil reproduce more, and the population will grow.
Instead, those shrimp compete for the salmon's other food sources. To the point that they're dominating the food chain. And they tend to live more toward the surface than the salmon like to live. And salmon don't seem to particularly like eating shrimp.
So the fish stocks are now declining even more rapidly.
And all because someone with a bright idea convinced everyone that he'd stopped and thought about it all...
My town uses a wastewater irrigation treatment system, which is fairly world-reknown. The basic idea is that our sewage is treated ("digested") at a sewage treatment plant... but instead of sending the outflow to our lake, it's pumped up into the back hills, where is enters a holding pond and is then distributed to spray irrigation systems.
The effluent is free of harmful organisms by this point, although I have doubts regarding its cleanliness in terms of heavy metals and whatnot.
We have a large grove of poplar that is a testbed for accelerated growth. These trees are becoming lumber-ready many years earlier than they would be without the effluent fertilizer.
Our town's next step is to start using a grey-water return system in new developments. Read it here: dual water supply
I wish I could find some links for you all, but this town, so advanced in its treatment of shit, seems to be right clueless about the Web.
The article states "this shift reflects the increased popularity of "dilution" laws over the last several decades, culminating with the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995. Under this rule, it is illegal to produce, say, Microsoft brand ramen noodles, even though that other Microsoft isn't in the noodle business, lest the lousiness of your pasta undermine the software company's reputation."
Which leads one to wonder when the Linux community will rise up in arms over the abuses of its trademark, perpetrated by certain IPO-hoax distributors and laundry detergent companies.
Yes, this is mildly troll-like. But, do think: the whole LinuxOne debacle could have been settled by pressing a trademark case against them.
Perhaps Disney does have some sort of right to expect everlasting control over its mouse character. It has, after all, put a helluva lot of resources toward developing it. It doesn't make sense that someone else should be able to poach their success.
And, yet, the cases of fanfic being shut down, and that goofy R&R Museum case... but if the building shape isn't "owned" by them, then does that mean I can start making candies with a hole in the middle? Seems to me that Lifesavers has put enough work into publicizing "the one with a hole in the middle" to own it. And yet... can Michelin make the same claim for tires?
It's a very sticky issue all around, and there are *no* clear answers. Consider Microsoft using the Linux name... even those claiming no trademarks should ever be allowed would probably have a tough time swallowing that bitter pill!
For the past two years, I've been dying to buy a MiniDisc package.
One (1) MiniDisc Recorder/Player -- capable of recording compressed voice at AM, FM and CD quality (so that I can get 1 to 10 *hours* transcription recording) with variable-speed playback
One (1) Car Audio deck -- capable of playing back my audio MDs
One (1) Home Audio deck -- capable of ripping CD to MD, with options for AM/FM/CD quality. If I'm out downhill skiing, I frankly don't really care if I'm getting CD quality sound... I'm not actually gonna be listening all that closely to the music!
One (1) megapixel Digital Camera -- saving its pix to the MD.
One (1) Computer Interface -- capable of storing data and creating music MDs... and reading my pix, playing my transcriptions, playing my music, whatever.
Hell, I'd be happy to pay a fair schwack o' change for that package.
Good god, I had no idea that story submissions could be so important to someone's sense of self-worth, or security, or whateverthehellitis that makes it so traumatizing for you.
Perhaps you'd be better off if you didn't bother submitting stories any more. It appears that, for you, the costs far outweigh any advantage.
Wonderful amount of acceptance, and even praise, for the US government being sleazy!
Ironic, though, that there is endless wailing and gnashing of teeth whenever it's revealed that the government does just as much spying on its own people.
Hey, you can't have your cake and eat it, too.
Whatever the government does outside its borders, it does the same thing inside. s'fact.
If you had a fscking clue, you'd understand that having the scroll bar on the LEFT side would be a helluva lot more useable. After all, that's usually where you're looking as you scroll to find something. It's where paragraphs start. It's where the index is. It only makes sense to put the scrollbar near where you usually look. Look up "Fitt's Law."
And, again, if you had half a fscking clue, you'd realise that if your pinheaded physical-world analogy were to hold true, moving the scrollbar down would have to move the CONTENT down. "O look, you move paper down by pulling it toward yourself."
In fact, if you had *any* clue, you'd realize that if modeling computer GUIs on real-world interactions was a good thing, then Apple's horrendous "let's pretend it's really a Bang and Olufsen!" QuickTime interface wouldn't have been roundly denigrated by the HCI community.
Just because your lukewarm mind can make absurd connections between real-world and GUI-world interface elements DOES NOT mean that there is a connection, nor that there should be one.
Oh, what bullshit. There's no paradigm linkage between the two. In fact, I'll wager most people flip a page by its *EDGE*, not the corner.
It's one of the few examples you pulled out of the air, based on silly thinking. Care to explain, next, why the maximize button is so close to the close button that it's a three-pixel slipup to hit the wrong button? Care to explain, then, why the menubar is not set to the top edge of the screen, where it's impossible to overshoot it when mousing?
Windows does not have a particularly good UI design. It is, at best, an attempt to do a GUI by doing the opposite to what Macintosh did, to avoid losing the look-and-feel lawsuits.
There are some 21 ways to leave your application...
Just hit the ALT-F4, jack, Try a ALT-F-X, stan, and then try ALT-F-C (in Explorer), ALT-F-Q, clicking the boxed-X, clicking the application icon in the top left and pressing ALT-C, clicking the menubar>File>Exit, menubar>File>Close (in Explorer), menubar>File>Quit (in some real idiotic programs), and let's not forget CTRL-ALT-DEL, selecting the program and pressing (or clicking!) ALT-E/End Task!
Well, you get the idea. Once you go through all the possibilities of mouseclicks and keypresses, there are over twenty ways to close an application.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree. The obvious sensible breakup would be to seperate MS into six units:
consumer OS (Windows Millenium, WinCE)
corporate OS (Windows NT)
consumer products (games)
corporate products (Office2000, developer apps)
internet products (MSIE, ASP)
hardware products (wing o' deth, etc)
Or, alternatively, three units:
operating systems (WinME, WinNT, WinCE)
applications (Office, MSIE, etc)
hardware (glo-mouse-a-lux, etc)
Either way, or nearly any other way you propose, they still have monopoly power. Windows isn't going to disappear any time soon. Office isn't going to suddenly vapourise. The only significant software at risk would be MSIE, and it's becoming so standards-compliant that it's almost worth using (oh, is my Opera bias showing?)
A broken-up Microsoft will still dominate the marketplace.
--
Difference is only in how buzzy the s/z is, to my ear. The zed version is a "harder" (harsher?) sound.
I could be out to lunch. After all, as a kid I used to pronounce it "Burger King: Home of the Whooper."
Most embarassing.
--
"Utilise" is spelled correctly. It's just that you're used to seeing the American spelling.
English. Gotta love it.
[As an aside, I wonder why American spelling is different than British. Were the news editors and authors in the new frontier all illiterate? Was it some sort of language rebellion, the Independence war not being enough for the colonists? Or perhaps they had speech impediments, and mistakenly pronounced words like "utilise" as "utilize"?]
--
Yah. It was a bit of a rant, but I think that at the core, it's basically true: those who haven't experienced the unregulated Internet don't know what they're missing, are all too accepting of the net "as-is" (which is to say, as it is when they first get access), and actively desire greater government interference so that they themselves aren't challenged to think for themselves.
The citizens of USA, Canada and bits of Europe are used to being spoon-fed by the government. We've all been trained to not question the system too deeply, to let the government be responsible for protecting us from our own stupidity, and can't imagine a life of not being coddled.
Little wonder it's influencing the (second-to-last) bastion of freedom. Last-last will be the space frontier: colonies in space will have an interesting opportunity to redefine the social and government norms.
Now, the far more interesting debate has nothing to do with the whys and wherefores of this situation:
It's in deciding how to challenge it, how to work around and through it, and how to get what we want while allowing the proles to have their safety.
--
"...as usual our favorite author is inserting his personal bias where he claims to be reporting fact."
What makes you think Jon claims to be anything but an Op-Ed reporter?
Smells like a straw-man argument you be making.
--
Long live the Internet.
Seriously, the "Internet" as I remember it from over a decade ago, was a small collection of a few thousands of interconnected Universities sharing EMail, a very small Usenet (in those days, one could actually read all of alt.sex... and enjoy actual conversations and discussions), and FTP.
It was mainly a closed system. No riff-raff public allowed in. Certainly no advertising or commercial business allowed. It was a community.
And then, all at about the same time, the Internet became open and Webified.
And that's when it died. When it became affordable, when Joe Moron could easily access it, when it became allowable to conduct commercial business...
One of the drawbacks to our computer age is a near-complete loss of history.
Almost everyone--and I mean that most literally: certainly there aren't more than a few hundred thousand people who date back to ARPANet days--has absolutely no clue why and how the Internet came to be.
All they are aware of is that it has pretty graphics, decent search engines, and you can buy porn from home.
They don't know that there are philosophical and moral battles being played out. They don't know about nor understand the EToy(s) issue; they don't blame the MPAA for wanting to stop theft of artist's songs; they want the government to put a stop to kiddypr0n; they've never known EMail without spam and don't even realize that it could be any different.
They watch network television, for cripes sake!
Face it: the lowest common denominator now has access to the Internet, and he actively *wants* the government to keep him safe and secure.
And those proles outnumber the geeks and old-timers ten thousand to one.
They demand a regulated net. They accept a commercially-driven net. They are afraid of freedom of expression.
They are afraid to step out of the tiny box they live their lives in and realize that when everyone pulls together, we can have a pretty damned special and hopeful world.
The Internet is dead.
Long live the Internet.
--
The telcos don't suckle at the government nipple. They didn't get money or support from them, beyond the initial massive giveaway of land rights for their transmission paths (in BC, mainly small areas to put up towers; they generally piggybacked the land lines on the electrical utility poles)--same as in the US.
What they did get is controlled. They couldn't fart or sneeze without needing clearance from the CRTC.
This guaranteed that everyone got a standard level of service at a standard level of pricing. It ensured that prices dropped as costs dropped. It ensured that as communities grew, party line service would become private line service. It ensured that when line quality was poor, the telco had to look after fixing it.
It was a good situation for the monopoly: they got a guaranteed, healthy income. And it was a good situation for the consumer: they got a good price on service with a guarantee of service.
Now that we have open competition, we have lower per-minute costs, but higher monthly lease costs; we have outrageously expensive repair fees; we have no guarantee of service.
All in all, we've broken even: what we save in one area, we pay for in another.
What we have lost, though, is the control. The previously tame monopoly is now a mainly uncontrolled near-monopoly. Oh, joy.
As far as "lag behind the US" goes, I don't think you have a clue about the advanced state of our communications systems, and the decrepit state of your own.
You should go hang out in telecom newsgroups on Usenet for a while. You people are being seriously *screwed* by your communications providers. For gods sake, you still have mechanical switching stations, while we're getting fiber-to-home in new community developments.
Lag behind the States? How about Internet access, then? Every sizeable town, let alone city, in BC has access to ADSL -- look at Telus HS Access for details. And at a price that's *cheaper* than having a second line with dialup access.
Canada has a higher Internet usage, per capita, than the US. We have better access, more access and cheaper access than most of you.
You haven't a fucking clue. You actually believe the American superiority myth that your government pacifies you with.
Hey, it keeps you from every demanding something better.
Ignorance is bliss. Welcome to 1984, America-style.
--
Oh, give us all a break.
Canada is a helluva lot more "rural" than America: while most of our population is concentrated along a 20-mile deep strip along the border, there's a bijillion little rinky-dink towns from there to the North Pole.
And yet everyone has same-priced, low-priced telephone access. In BC, you'd be hard pressed to locate a mechanical switch. And the telco policy here has been, for decades, to replace switches with the most current new technology -- none of the "shuffle our good stuff from the cities to the hicks" BS that the American utilities practice.
As a result, we have an incredibly wired nation. The percentage of our population with Internet access is among the highest in the world. Every sizeable city has xDSL and high-speed cable access. Something well over 75% of our white suburbanites have Internet access; and something between 30-40% of our less-advantaged urbanite dwellers are on the net.
These days, it would be difficult to find anyone south of the DEW line that doesn't have access to the Internet in one form or another. If it isn't in your home, it's at the library or the local coffee shop.
And at great prices: $20/mo for unlimited evening/weekend calling; $0.10/min if you're not on that plan; Telco-supplied Internet access for as low as $10/mo for modem access and $40/mo for unlimited xDSL or cable.
The reality is that the American telephone system is the shits. It wasn't well-regulated, and continues to be poorly managed, poorly regulated and you continue to accept it.
The bad news, from my perspective, is that now our CRTC (controlling agency) has allowed "free market competition", we've lost control. What used to be a tightly regulated, tamed monopoly is now cut free. Can't tell 'em what to do any more... which, in the end, is a bad thing: we seem to be paying the same as always, but without the guarantee of consumer-benefits-oriented control. Bummer.
--
I hereby declare my genetic resources to be open source, and will cheerfully assist any human female that wishes to make use of them.
Oh... sorry, dear, I didn't know you were reading over my shoulder.
I hereby rescind my previous decision re: my genetic resources...
--
Damn fine commentary, and I'd mark it up if I weren't replying.
I live in Vernon, BC, Canada. We have some of the right ideas: a wastewater effluent spray system that seems to be garnering worldwide attention; a proposal for a grey-water return system (dual water supply; water your lawn with grey water); and a good recycling program.
Specifically, we have a blue bag system that doesn't require sorting (though it still requires us to rinse containers). It accepts several types of plastic, paper and metal. Provincially, we have a bottle deposit system that's been expanded to include some non-glass containers. We pay an eco-tax on purchases of tires, batteries and paint; and are expected to return these to the recycling depot.
I do have some issues with the taxation end of things. Or, in political-speak, the "Eco Fee" structure. Gah.
Where I'd like to see this province go next is in offering recycling facilities for electronic equipment. There is a ton of poisons in every television, amplifier, computer and microwave. And the silly thing is, melting them down would probably pay back more than the cost of collection and recycling.
After that, I'd like to see some sort of Canada-wide mandate for manufacturers to be responsible for cradle-to-grave product ownership. As in Germany, where car manufacturers take their old vehicles back, break 'em down and recycle the parts.
This planet can sustain our billions and billions of people *IF* we get our act together and start thinking of the long-term benefits of re-use and recycling.
--
Yup, bits of it all exist.
Now I want the whole enchilada in one comprehensive, compatible, co-operative package.
--
You can't overestimate stupidity. Even in PhD-level folk.
Our lake is one that contains land-locked (freshwater) salmon. Kokanee salmon. Special sort of fish. And disappearing all too rapidly.
Why?
Because some pointy-head -- the sort of person you claim will "stop and think" -- introduced a species of fresh-water shrimp to the lake to feed the fish. Well-fed fish wil reproduce more, and the population will grow.
Instead, those shrimp compete for the salmon's other food sources. To the point that they're dominating the food chain. And they tend to live more toward the surface than the salmon like to live. And salmon don't seem to particularly like eating shrimp.
So the fish stocks are now declining even more rapidly.
And all because someone with a bright idea convinced everyone that he'd stopped and thought about it all...
--
The effluent is free of harmful organisms by this point, although I have doubts regarding its cleanliness in terms of heavy metals and whatnot.
We have a large grove of poplar that is a testbed for accelerated growth. These trees are becoming lumber-ready many years earlier than they would be without the effluent fertilizer.
Our town's next step is to start using a grey-water return system in new developments. Read it here: dual water supply
I wish I could find some links for you all, but this town, so advanced in its treatment of shit, seems to be right clueless about the Web.
--
The article states "this shift reflects the increased popularity of "dilution" laws over the last several decades, culminating with the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995. Under this rule, it is illegal to produce, say, Microsoft brand ramen noodles, even though that other Microsoft isn't in the noodle business, lest the lousiness of your pasta undermine the software company's reputation."
Which leads one to wonder when the Linux community will rise up in arms over the abuses of its trademark, perpetrated by certain IPO-hoax distributors and laundry detergent companies.
Yes, this is mildly troll-like. But, do think: the whole LinuxOne debacle could have been settled by pressing a trademark case against them.
Perhaps Disney does have some sort of right to expect everlasting control over its mouse character. It has, after all, put a helluva lot of resources toward developing it. It doesn't make sense that someone else should be able to poach their success.
And, yet, the cases of fanfic being shut down, and that goofy R&R Museum case... but if the building shape isn't "owned" by them, then does that mean I can start making candies with a hole in the middle? Seems to me that Lifesavers has put enough work into publicizing "the one with a hole in the middle" to own it. And yet... can Michelin make the same claim for tires?
It's a very sticky issue all around, and there are *no* clear answers. Consider Microsoft using the Linux name... even those claiming no trademarks should ever be allowed would probably have a tough time swallowing that bitter pill!
--
For the past two years, I've been dying to buy a MiniDisc package.
One (1) MiniDisc Recorder/Player -- capable of recording compressed voice at AM, FM and CD quality (so that I can get 1 to 10 *hours* transcription recording) with variable-speed playback
One (1) Car Audio deck -- capable of playing back my audio MDs
One (1) Home Audio deck -- capable of ripping CD to MD, with options for AM/FM/CD quality. If I'm out downhill skiing, I frankly don't really care if I'm getting CD quality sound... I'm not actually gonna be listening all that closely to the music!
One (1) megapixel Digital Camera -- saving its pix to the MD.
One (1) Computer Interface -- capable of storing data and creating music MDs... and reading my pix, playing my transcriptions, playing my music, whatever.
Hell, I'd be happy to pay a fair schwack o' change for that package.
--
Good god, I had no idea that story submissions could be so important to someone's sense of self-worth, or security, or whateverthehellitis that makes it so traumatizing for you.
Perhaps you'd be better off if you didn't bother submitting stories any more. It appears that, for you, the costs far outweigh any advantage.
--
Wonderful amount of acceptance, and even praise, for the US government being sleazy!
Ironic, though, that there is endless wailing and gnashing of teeth whenever it's revealed that the government does just as much spying on its own people.
Hey, you can't have your cake and eat it, too.
Whatever the government does outside its borders, it does the same thing inside. s'fact.
--
I should rather think that *EVERYTHING* we eat takes more energy to feed(/grow) than we get.
Otherwise, there'd be excess energy created out of nothing.
'struth that, for plants, a lot of that energy is from the sun... but fact remains that the plant took in more energy than it's giving out to us.
S'what I think, anyway.
--
If you had a fscking clue, you'd understand that having the scroll bar on the LEFT side would be a helluva lot more useable. After all, that's usually where you're looking as you scroll to find something. It's where paragraphs start. It's where the index is. It only makes sense to put the scrollbar near where you usually look. Look up "Fitt's Law."
And, again, if you had half a fscking clue, you'd realise that if your pinheaded physical-world analogy were to hold true, moving the scrollbar down would have to move the CONTENT down. "O look, you move paper down by pulling it toward yourself."
In fact, if you had *any* clue, you'd realize that if modeling computer GUIs on real-world interactions was a good thing, then Apple's horrendous "let's pretend it's really a Bang and Olufsen!" QuickTime interface wouldn't have been roundly denigrated by the HCI community.
Just because your lukewarm mind can make absurd connections between real-world and GUI-world interface elements DOES NOT mean that there is a connection, nor that there should be one.
Twit.
--
I'm afraid my twisted mind always sees the "____ For Dummies" titles and reads it as "_____ for F@ckwits"...
As in,
Breathing for F@ckwits.
SendMail Configuration for F@ckwits.
etc.
I do hope no one is overly traumatized by my language. I wouldn't use the @ except that then I'd just traumatize those who are offended by 'Fuck'...
Opps. Just can't win...
--
Oh, what bullshit. There's no paradigm linkage between the two. In fact, I'll wager most people flip a page by its *EDGE*, not the corner.
It's one of the few examples you pulled out of the air, based on silly thinking. Care to explain, next, why the maximize button is so close to the close button that it's a three-pixel slipup to hit the wrong button? Care to explain, then, why the menubar is not set to the top edge of the screen, where it's impossible to overshoot it when mousing?
Windows does not have a particularly good UI design. It is, at best, an attempt to do a GUI by doing the opposite to what Macintosh did, to avoid losing the look-and-feel lawsuits.
--
Apple's HUI guidelines are here. Well worth the read.
--
There are some 21 ways to leave your application...
Just hit the ALT-F4, jack,
Try a ALT-F-X, stan,
and then try ALT-F-C (in Explorer), ALT-F-Q, clicking the boxed-X, clicking the application icon in the top left and pressing ALT-C, clicking the menubar>File>Exit, menubar>File>Close (in Explorer), menubar>File>Quit (in some real idiotic programs), and let's not forget CTRL-ALT-DEL, selecting the program and pressing (or clicking!)
ALT-E/End Task!
Well, you get the idea. Once you go through all the possibilities of mouseclicks and keypresses, there are over twenty ways to close an application.
It's horrendous.
--
Why do you consider .com to be strictly an American TLD?
--
Hell with that! *REAL* overclocking was desoldering one's 6809 CPU and replacing it with the 6309(?)!
(actually, i may be blowing smoke here... i never did do this, but i *think* i recall seeing plans to...)
--