GPS tracking is definitely a very bad thing, but the cost of homeschooling just isn't that great. Here in California, it costs $0 to establish a private school. It only takes 10-20 minutes to fill out the paperwork, which can be done on paper, or can be filled out and submitted online. It just isn't a burden to do.
As a parent that has established a private school, and has a student body of 1 enrolled in that school, I don't have a problem with funding public schools. The reason is that as much as I believe home schooling will give many kids (particularly mine) a better education than a public school, I am not so delusional as to think that every parent is as concerned about their child as I am. Public school may not give a child what I would consider a "Good" education, but it will give them enough that most of them will be able to function in society. They will be able to read, write, and do basic math. Even if they don't do them well. We are almost at a good point right now, where those parents that care to give their child a better education can either home school or send their kids to a regular private school. Those parents that don't care (or believe public school is the best) will simple go with the default which is public school.
Having this minimal education supplied to every kid is a benefit to us all. Just as having roads in my city that I don't use is a benefit to us all. If you only made those with kids in the public schools pay for the schools, you would end up with almost identical funding as private schools. If you have the same funding as private schools, you remove the single benefit that public schools have over private schools, so you might as well shut down the public schools and only have private ones. I don't think this would be a good thing.
All that being said, I repeat, GPS tracking is a VERY BAD THING, and I would still like to see a major overhaul of the school system, as it is severely broken.
There is a simple solution for this for most people. Open a private school. Enroll your child in that school, and declare wherever they are to be the classroom at that time. I know it sounds like that wouldn't work, but it is done all the time, and it's popularity is increasing. You frequently will hear it being referred to as "Home Schooling".
Here in California, there is actually no such thing as "Home Schooling". We have mandatory education laws, and kids are required to go to school. So, when you hear someone is "Home Schooling" that is just a euphemism for "They are not sitting in a public, or large private school". Starting a private school in CA is free, and takes about 20 minutes to fill out a form on line with the state. So, my child for example is enrolled in a private school with a student body of 1, and a 2:1 teacher to student ratio.
Many schools see home "Home Schooling" as siphoning money away from them, and for a while we saw pretty aggressive behavior from public schools. As the popularity of home schooling has increased, many school districts have started to give up fighting it, and work it to steer more money into their coffers. Many districts have started what they call "Umbrella Programs". This means that the students are technically enrolled in the school, and are assigned to their homes as their classroom. Usually this involves a weekly meeting at the school to track the students work. In exchange for signing their kids up, the parent usually will get some supplies from the school. Those of us that open private schools pay 100% of the cost for schooling. By having the student technically enrolled in the school, the school get their paycheck from the state. I recently found out that some schools are even going so far as redefining a student that is out sick for more than 3 days as being "Home Schooled", and thus they report them as being in attendance. While I consider that to be highly unethical, from a pragmatic stand point, it is better than the school failing the student for getting sick.
The lawsuit is the school's 'Terrorist'. Public schools do not have ridiculous attendance requirements because of lawsuits. They have it because they get paid by attendence. This means that if a student skips the day, they get x dollars less that day. If the students parent decides that a week long trip to view the great museums in Europe, the school doesn't get paid for those days. If a student gets a cold, and the parent decides that infecting a bunch of other kids is a bad idea even if it isn't bad enough to go to the doctor, the school does get paid. So, the school counts them as "unexcused absences". That way they can school can use the threat of failing the student to force the kids to show up, even if it is not in the student's best interest. When a parent keeps the student out of class for legitimate reasons, and the school tries to fail them for it, responsible parents WOULD sue the school when that is what is neccessary to get action. You then get posts like the posts above claiming that the schools have these rules to prevent lawsuits.
Schools do NOT have to fail students for missing class.
Schools do NOT have to take responsibility for students that are not in school.
It's a sad pathetic victim society that believes you deserve respect for getting sick. Steve Jobs has enough money and power that he could easily have done plenty to earn respect for doing good or amazing things. Many people he does deserve it for what he has done with Apple.
For getting sick though... No, he does not deserve any respect for that.
I've never seen that, though I have seen a webpage with black on black. I didn't even see that in my CP/M - DOS days.
You may not have seen it, but it is a good example showing that your stance that all UIs are equal is false.
What's so confusing about that? Oh, I get it, it doesn't mean "go"?
Half way. Yes, when you put a green, yellow and red circle in a row, they take on a meaning. The other half is a plus, which universally means to add, as in make more. Shrinking a screen is simply wrong behavior for a green plus. Just as using a red X to play a video would be wrong behavior for a UI. You conveniently ignore the fact that you have been called out on your false claim about it's behavior. Are you still claiming that the the verifiable behavior of the green plus does not exist? Or are you trying to pretend that it's inconsistency has not been called out?
I have no idea what you're talking about. When I want to eject a drive I click on the triangle in Finder or keypress ctrl and click on the drive. I have never had a problem with either method. If you do that's your fault.
The fact that there are other ways to accomplish the task does not make using the same UI target as both a trash can and an eject button anything but crappy UI. It was bad UI design when it was first implemented, and it is bad UI design now.
I call you out for repeating a myth, which you happened to try to ignore,
I have a hard time understanding how Mac fans can keep repeating that myth. Are you guys aware that what you are saying is incorrect, or do you just hope that no one will call you out on it?
and your response is:
And I have a hard tyme understanding why Mac opponents are so rabid.
Of course fanbois of all stripes don't think things through, they have to start flamewars instead. Perhaps to boost their egos. Whatever, they have to flame and can't be constructive.
Well, I guess that sums it up. You consider anyone that would criticize OSX's bad UI and point out the truth when you make false claims as being a rabid Mac opponent.
Those are all person preferences. Some like you have problems with them but others may like them.
So, you hold the stance that there is no such thing as bad UI. It is all just a preference. I disagree. Some things are just preference. Like whether your wallpaper is a picture of a planet, a picture of a field, or a wash of brown. Somethings are not. Like using white text on a white background, having a green plus shrink a screen, or using the same UI target for the trashcan and eject.
And the so called "maximize" green button is not a maximize button at all, it resizes the current window to its optimal width and height [forevergeek.com].
Your link points to a strawman. The problem isn't that it doesn't maximize, the lack of which I do find to be a glaring omission as well. The problem is that it DOES NOT set the screen to 'optimum' size. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it shrinks the window. Sometimes it enlarges it. Sometimes it 'maximizes' it, and sometimes it puts the application into a completely different UI mode. Again. The green plus button DOES NOT put the window into 'optimum' size for the document. It that is it's intent, OSX is massively broken, and has been for a long time. I have a hard time understanding how Mac fans can keep repeating that myth. Are you guys aware that what you are saying is incorrect, or do you just hope that no one will call you out on it?
Nowadays, when you start dragging a removable disk, the trash can turns into an eject symbol. I still don't use it, it's easier to right click on the icon and select the "eject" option.
Still bad behavior. It is still the same target. Changing the icon doesn't fix it. This is clearly a case of a really bad UI decision even for it's time, but because Apple tries to foster an image of UI perfection, they simply cannot admit that it was a REALLY bad UI design. So, instead of just admitting that it was bad and getting rid of it, they "Enhance" it, and leave their system with eject and trash as being the same UI target. Which leaves us with my original claim that it is a poor UI element that was a bad design from the beginning.
It makes absolute sense given the Macintosh paradigm of window = document. You can still see the menu bar even when there are no documents open. Windows has the paradigm window = application which means that, to see the menu bar you must have always have a document open or an empty window.
Your going to have to supply a citation from Apple for me to buy that one. You are the first I have heard claim that. 100% of people who I have ever heard claim that the single menu was best, claimed that it was because of 'Fit's Law'. A meme with dubious validity to begin with. If your claim is correct, then I apparently missed just how bad the very paradigm of the Mac is. A chess game is not a document. Neither are a ton of other applications. That sounds like a pretty poor rationalization for keeping a UI design element in place when the advancement of hardware turns an asset into a liability.
It doesn't shrink the screen, or even the document window it is attached to necessarily. It always makes the window exactly big enough to show all the content of the document (or as much content as is possible given the size of the screen). This usually involves making the window bigger.
That would be dandy if that is what it did, but it doesn't. Sometimes it goes full screen, sometimes it resizes to 'optimal', sometimes it shrinks the screen, and sometimes it completely reconfigures the layout of the application and puts it into a completely different UI mode. The functionality of the button it totally inconsistent, and frequently does exactly the opposite of what a green plus means. Every Apple apologist tries to make the claim that the green button is 'optimal size for the application'. I have a Mac right here on my desk that empirically proves that you and every other person that makes that claim is simply wrong. I would assume that you have a Mac, right? Go ahead and try it. Pick any application and open it. Now press the green plus. What happens? It either grew or shrank the screen. If it shrank, then you can now know that you were wrong. If it grew, press the green button again... I'll wait.... What happened? Ooooohhhh.... That's right. The screen shrank. Pressing the green button made your screen shrink.
Fit's law is a joke. In a best case scenario, the amount of time it would save is small enough to be statistical noise. For someone who has never touched a mouse before, you might see some benefit, but it only takes days for someone to become proficient enough with a mouse that it loses it's benefits. In multi screen modes you not only have the longer distance, but you also have to move to a second screen that is not necessarily the same size and shape. It also requires that you reorient your vision form one screen to another to find your place. After all, not every click is going to be in the corner. It also has the problem of the user having to figure out what window the menu applies to. That more than consumes the tiny amounts of time and effort that would be saved with Fit's Law. It could be argued that the saved real estate was worth the drawbacks of the single menu for all applications, but real estate is less valuable now than the benefit of clearly associating a menu with a window.
I don't know what you are talking about Linux requiring the movement of the mouse in specific patterns.
As for symbols, Windows has a picture of what it will do. One big window for full screen where you can see only one window. Two smaller windows for the mode that lets you see more than one windows. Clearly, there was at least an attempt to have icons that had some kind of association with what would happen. I personally think they did a perfectly fine job with them. OSX on the other hand used a symbol, that means exactly the opposite of what the button does half the time. Plus means add or more. There is never a case where a plus symbol should be used to shrink a screen. It is worse than arbitrary. It is wrong. A squiggly line, a # symbol, an picture of an apple, would all be fine if meaningless. A plus symbol is not meaningless, it is wrong. Then the color choice gets added to that. Apple is using Green, Yellow, and Red. When these colors are put together in a row, it is a reference to a stop light. The fact that red, the universal symbol for stop is used to close the window (some times the app, but that is a whole other UI screwup). Using Green along side of it in a Green Yellow Red combination assigns 'Go' to the color. That means the green plus has the symbol 'Go More' or 'Go Bigger'. That is simply not what the button does. The OSX symbol isn't "not easily interpretable". A green plus assigned to a window is very clearly marked. It is just that the button doesn't do what it is marked to do. Sure, you can learn that it is labeled badly, just as we can learn that hamburgers are not made with ham. It doesn't make it correct.
Not the web app that was just rolled out where I work. It sucks. But given that the admins couldn't properly support Domino/Notes, and would regularly disable features because they 'didn't understand it', I wouldn't be surprised if what I am now seeing isn't also a small subset of a much better application.
Don't kid yourself about OSX. You may like it, but it has it's own share of UI disasters. Some like having the Trash and Eject be the same UI target were a dumb idea from day one. Some, like having all of the menus at the top of the screen made sense when we were on low resolution single screen systems, but are detriments in multi-monitor high resolutions systems, and some of them are brand new bonehead decisions like choose to use a green plus for a button that will shrink the screen.
Intel VT and AMD-V are not even legitimate parts of a discussion on whether MS could have used emulation to maintain compatibility without having to 'taint' Windows 7 code with older versions. Looking this up, it seems that the XP Mode is exactly what I originally said they could do.
You are correct that the problems are not technical. MS has made business decisions to keep the old code in Windows 7.
Thus, I repeat my earlier statement that backwards compatibility is a red herring when discussing MS's design choices for Windows 7. They have nothing to do with each other.
For the same reason, the discusions about MS porting Windows to ARM must also take into consideration that MS has full software emulation of the x86, and they have Windows integration with their emulator. If MS does decide to port Windows to ARM, there is no reason that virtually 100% of the x86 code could not run on the ARM version of Windows. (With the obviouse performance hit).
Has ReplayTV stopped supplying guide data? I disconnected my ReplayTV last April when I cancellede my Satellite service. At that time they were still supplying the EPG.
Since the SIM card is issued by the carrier, the carrier will completely control whether you can use this card or not. They will also know exactly where this card is sending data. There is no way that this scheme can bypass the carrier for access to Facebook if the carrier doesn't want it to. If the carrier does want to give you access to Facebook for free, they can do that using normal data systems. Carriers also customize both smartphone and feature phone software, so they could include Facebook if they wanted, and could support the feature better that way. The only phones this could effect in any way are 'dumb phones', and I suspect that 'dumb phone' users, are not clambering for Facebook on their phone.
SIM cards are great for phone identities. I loved that when I dropped my Nexus One, I could borrow my son's myTouch and just replace his SIM card with mine to make the phone mine while I waited for my Nexus One to be replaced. That is a great feature. The rest of the features of SIM cards are too late being implemented to be really useful, or have been superseded by data capabilities.
The SIM card news I want to hear is that Google is going to start issuing SIM cards to anyone that asks so that you can use the market in any device, whether it has ever been connected to a cellular network or not.
~4 years ago, Wells Fargo cut off my online access because I wouldn't click the "I Agree" button to their new terms that included a clause agreeing to stop recieving paper statements. If a major bank like Wells Fargo would deny access because you still want paper statments, it is certainly reasonable to assume that they would consider denying access over some Trusted Computing scheme.
Wrong. Backward compatibility is a red herring. MS bought VirtualPC, so they have a PC emulator. MS could have very easily written Windows 7 with zero compatibility to any previous version, ported their VM to it, modified the UI so that appeared integrated (like VMWare's Unity) and included a copy of WinXP. This would have allowed MS to start with a completely clean slate security wise, while still keeping their OS 99.9% backwards compatible.
MS obviously does not consider backward compatibility a defining feature for many users anyway. After all, XP mode is only available with the business versions of Windows 7. Most copies of Windows sold to consumers have copies of Windows that have specifically and intentionally left out a great deal of XP compatibility that MS is sitting on the code for.
So, No. Backward compatibility has NOTHING to do with any security problems Windows may or may not have.
You also don't start out in the real world. That is why they call it 'training'. I presume this new system will be benificial, and I can already think of areas where this could be improved that the old system is incompatible with, but the old system with it's 'full information' viewing has some real benefits in helping people see how the different parts fit together.
This is much like using a map. In the real world, you don't get to see the whole city at once, but a map that only shows first person views is not real useful compared to one that shows the entire city.
I think it is a third option. At some point, we will see someone break out with a 'Home Server' VMs have gotten good enough that 99% of home users would be just fine running on a shared home system. There is still some work that needs to be done concerning video, but that could be addressed. If a real usable remote desktop could be standardized (RDP is windows only, and VNC has speed issues as will as missing functionality), we could see thin clients being integrated into monitors and TVs. You might even see the last bits of TV/Monitor convergence from that. The phone would then be just another client on the Home Server. There would be a couple of tasks that you might still want to have running locally on a portable device, like playing music when you don't have cell coverage, but most of the heavy lifting could be done on the server.
This would mean that when you are out and about, and want to use a public, or business KVM, you would plug your phone into the KVM, and would be sitting at your personal desktop.
Of course, that would require them to be sure that ARM isn't going to end up fast enough to run in their desktop computers. As much as I am not a huge fan of Apple's products, one thing Apple has successfully pulled off, not once, but TWICE, is a migration to a new processor architecture.
but the support was dropped when it turned out that a software emulator was faster
You say that like it is a bad thing. Other than a performance hit compared to native, what is the down side of emulation? Before you say that the having an abstraction layer between the application and the hardware, please keep in mind that every major OS today is loaded with abstraction layers, so that argument will need something more than 'it's faster to not have the abstraction.'
If Arm could produce a processor that could run x86 code through emulation at even the speeds of an Atom processor, it would be a reasonable solution to running x86 software.
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GPS tracking is definitely a very bad thing, but the cost of homeschooling just isn't that great. Here in California, it costs $0 to establish a private school. It only takes 10-20 minutes to fill out the paperwork, which can be done on paper, or can be filled out and submitted online. It just isn't a burden to do.
As a parent that has established a private school, and has a student body of 1 enrolled in that school, I don't have a problem with funding public schools. The reason is that as much as I believe home schooling will give many kids (particularly mine) a better education than a public school, I am not so delusional as to think that every parent is as concerned about their child as I am. Public school may not give a child what I would consider a "Good" education, but it will give them enough that most of them will be able to function in society. They will be able to read, write, and do basic math. Even if they don't do them well. We are almost at a good point right now, where those parents that care to give their child a better education can either home school or send their kids to a regular private school. Those parents that don't care (or believe public school is the best) will simple go with the default which is public school.
Having this minimal education supplied to every kid is a benefit to us all. Just as having roads in my city that I don't use is a benefit to us all. If you only made those with kids in the public schools pay for the schools, you would end up with almost identical funding as private schools. If you have the same funding as private schools, you remove the single benefit that public schools have over private schools, so you might as well shut down the public schools and only have private ones. I don't think this would be a good thing.
All that being said, I repeat, GPS tracking is a VERY BAD THING, and I would still like to see a major overhaul of the school system, as it is severely broken.
There is a simple solution for this for most people. Open a private school. Enroll your child in that school, and declare wherever they are to be the classroom at that time. I know it sounds like that wouldn't work, but it is done all the time, and it's popularity is increasing. You frequently will hear it being referred to as "Home Schooling".
Here in California, there is actually no such thing as "Home Schooling". We have mandatory education laws, and kids are required to go to school. So, when you hear someone is "Home Schooling" that is just a euphemism for "They are not sitting in a public, or large private school". Starting a private school in CA is free, and takes about 20 minutes to fill out a form on line with the state. So, my child for example is enrolled in a private school with a student body of 1, and a 2:1 teacher to student ratio.
Many schools see home "Home Schooling" as siphoning money away from them, and for a while we saw pretty aggressive behavior from public schools. As the popularity of home schooling has increased, many school districts have started to give up fighting it, and work it to steer more money into their coffers. Many districts have started what they call "Umbrella Programs". This means that the students are technically enrolled in the school, and are assigned to their homes as their classroom. Usually this involves a weekly meeting at the school to track the students work. In exchange for signing their kids up, the parent usually will get some supplies from the school. Those of us that open private schools pay 100% of the cost for schooling. By having the student technically enrolled in the school, the school get their paycheck from the state. I recently found out that some schools are even going so far as redefining a student that is out sick for more than 3 days as being "Home Schooled", and thus they report them as being in attendance. While I consider that to be highly unethical, from a pragmatic stand point, it is better than the school failing the student for getting sick.
You are correct.
The lawsuit is the school's 'Terrorist'. Public schools do not have ridiculous attendance requirements because of lawsuits. They have it because they get paid by attendence. This means that if a student skips the day, they get x dollars less that day. If the students parent decides that a week long trip to view the great museums in Europe, the school doesn't get paid for those days. If a student gets a cold, and the parent decides that infecting a bunch of other kids is a bad idea even if it isn't bad enough to go to the doctor, the school does get paid. So, the school counts them as "unexcused absences". That way they can school can use the threat of failing the student to force the kids to show up, even if it is not in the student's best interest. When a parent keeps the student out of class for legitimate reasons, and the school tries to fail them for it, responsible parents WOULD sue the school when that is what is neccessary to get action. You then get posts like the posts above claiming that the schools have these rules to prevent lawsuits.
Schools do NOT have to fail students for missing class.
Schools do NOT have to take responsibility for students that are not in school.
It's a sad pathetic victim society that believes you deserve respect for getting sick. Steve Jobs has enough money and power that he could easily have done plenty to earn respect for doing good or amazing things. Many people he does deserve it for what he has done with Apple.
For getting sick though... No, he does not deserve any respect for that.
I've never seen that, though I have seen a webpage with black on black. I didn't even see that in my CP/M - DOS days.
You may not have seen it, but it is a good example showing that your stance that all UIs are equal is false.
What's so confusing about that? Oh, I get it, it doesn't mean "go"?
Half way. Yes, when you put a green, yellow and red circle in a row, they take on a meaning. The other half is a plus, which universally means to add, as in make more. Shrinking a screen is simply wrong behavior for a green plus. Just as using a red X to play a video would be wrong behavior for a UI. You conveniently ignore the fact that you have been called out on your false claim about it's behavior. Are you still claiming that the the verifiable behavior of the green plus does not exist? Or are you trying to pretend that it's inconsistency has not been called out?
I have no idea what you're talking about. When I want to eject a drive I click on the triangle in Finder or keypress ctrl and click on the drive. I have never had a problem with either method. If you do that's your fault.
The fact that there are other ways to accomplish the task does not make using the same UI target as both a trash can and an eject button anything but crappy UI. It was bad UI design when it was first implemented, and it is bad UI design now. I call you out for repeating a myth, which you happened to try to ignore,
I have a hard time understanding how Mac fans can keep repeating that myth. Are you guys aware that what you are saying is incorrect, or do you just hope that no one will call you out on it?
and your response is:
And I have a hard tyme understanding why Mac opponents are so rabid. Of course fanbois of all stripes don't think things through, they have to start flamewars instead. Perhaps to boost their egos. Whatever, they have to flame and can't be constructive.
Well, I guess that sums it up. You consider anyone that would criticize OSX's bad UI and point out the truth when you make false claims as being a rabid Mac opponent.
Those are all person preferences. Some like you have problems with them but others may like them.
So, you hold the stance that there is no such thing as bad UI. It is all just a preference. I disagree. Some things are just preference. Like whether your wallpaper is a picture of a planet, a picture of a field, or a wash of brown. Somethings are not. Like using white text on a white background, having a green plus shrink a screen, or using the same UI target for the trashcan and eject.
And the so called "maximize" green button is not a maximize button at all, it resizes the current window to its optimal width and height [forevergeek.com].
Your link points to a strawman. The problem isn't that it doesn't maximize, the lack of which I do find to be a glaring omission as well. The problem is that it DOES NOT set the screen to 'optimum' size. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it shrinks the window. Sometimes it enlarges it. Sometimes it 'maximizes' it, and sometimes it puts the application into a completely different UI mode. Again. The green plus button DOES NOT put the window into 'optimum' size for the document. It that is it's intent, OSX is massively broken, and has been for a long time. I have a hard time understanding how Mac fans can keep repeating that myth. Are you guys aware that what you are saying is incorrect, or do you just hope that no one will call you out on it?
Yeah, that has to be the case for my sentence to make any sense.
Nowadays, when you start dragging a removable disk, the trash can turns into an eject symbol. I still don't use it, it's easier to right click on the icon and select the "eject" option.
Still bad behavior. It is still the same target. Changing the icon doesn't fix it. This is clearly a case of a really bad UI decision even for it's time, but because Apple tries to foster an image of UI perfection, they simply cannot admit that it was a REALLY bad UI design. So, instead of just admitting that it was bad and getting rid of it, they "Enhance" it, and leave their system with eject and trash as being the same UI target. Which leaves us with my original claim that it is a poor UI element that was a bad design from the beginning.
It makes absolute sense given the Macintosh paradigm of window = document. You can still see the menu bar even when there are no documents open. Windows has the paradigm window = application which means that, to see the menu bar you must have always have a document open or an empty window.
Your going to have to supply a citation from Apple for me to buy that one. You are the first I have heard claim that. 100% of people who I have ever heard claim that the single menu was best, claimed that it was because of 'Fit's Law'. A meme with dubious validity to begin with. If your claim is correct, then I apparently missed just how bad the very paradigm of the Mac is. A chess game is not a document. Neither are a ton of other applications. That sounds like a pretty poor rationalization for keeping a UI design element in place when the advancement of hardware turns an asset into a liability.
It doesn't shrink the screen, or even the document window it is attached to necessarily. It always makes the window exactly big enough to show all the content of the document (or as much content as is possible given the size of the screen). This usually involves making the window bigger.
That would be dandy if that is what it did, but it doesn't. Sometimes it goes full screen, sometimes it resizes to 'optimal', sometimes it shrinks the screen, and sometimes it completely reconfigures the layout of the application and puts it into a completely different UI mode. The functionality of the button it totally inconsistent, and frequently does exactly the opposite of what a green plus means. Every Apple apologist tries to make the claim that the green button is 'optimal size for the application'. I have a Mac right here on my desk that empirically proves that you and every other person that makes that claim is simply wrong. I would assume that you have a Mac, right? Go ahead and try it. Pick any application and open it. Now press the green plus. What happens? It either grew or shrank the screen. If it shrank, then you can now know that you were wrong. If it grew, press the green button again... I'll wait.... What happened? Ooooohhhh.... That's right. The screen shrank. Pressing the green button made your screen shrink.
Yep, that is what we are on. I does work on Firefox, as well as Chrome, and funnily enough, it work just the same running in a tab in Lotus Notes.
Yes, that's it the parent posters point. Launching the application using the keyboard is a pain unless you basically use the GUI as if it were a CLI.
Fit's law is a joke. In a best case scenario, the amount of time it would save is small enough to be statistical noise. For someone who has never touched a mouse before, you might see some benefit, but it only takes days for someone to become proficient enough with a mouse that it loses it's benefits. In multi screen modes you not only have the longer distance, but you also have to move to a second screen that is not necessarily the same size and shape. It also requires that you reorient your vision form one screen to another to find your place. After all, not every click is going to be in the corner. It also has the problem of the user having to figure out what window the menu applies to. That more than consumes the tiny amounts of time and effort that would be saved with Fit's Law. It could be argued that the saved real estate was worth the drawbacks of the single menu for all applications, but real estate is less valuable now than the benefit of clearly associating a menu with a window.
I don't know what you are talking about Linux requiring the movement of the mouse in specific patterns.
As for symbols, Windows has a picture of what it will do. One big window for full screen where you can see only one window. Two smaller windows for the mode that lets you see more than one windows. Clearly, there was at least an attempt to have icons that had some kind of association with what would happen. I personally think they did a perfectly fine job with them. OSX on the other hand used a symbol, that means exactly the opposite of what the button does half the time. Plus means add or more. There is never a case where a plus symbol should be used to shrink a screen. It is worse than arbitrary. It is wrong. A squiggly line, a # symbol, an picture of an apple, would all be fine if meaningless. A plus symbol is not meaningless, it is wrong. Then the color choice gets added to that. Apple is using Green, Yellow, and Red. When these colors are put together in a row, it is a reference to a stop light. The fact that red, the universal symbol for stop is used to close the window (some times the app, but that is a whole other UI screwup). Using Green along side of it in a Green Yellow Red combination assigns 'Go' to the color. That means the green plus has the symbol 'Go More' or 'Go Bigger'. That is simply not what the button does. The OSX symbol isn't "not easily interpretable". A green plus assigned to a window is very clearly marked. It is just that the button doesn't do what it is marked to do. Sure, you can learn that it is labeled badly, just as we can learn that hamburgers are not made with ham. It doesn't make it correct.
Not the web app that was just rolled out where I work. It sucks. But given that the admins couldn't properly support Domino/Notes, and would regularly disable features because they 'didn't understand it', I wouldn't be surprised if what I am now seeing isn't also a small subset of a much better application.
Don't kid yourself about OSX. You may like it, but it has it's own share of UI disasters. Some like having the Trash and Eject be the same UI target were a dumb idea from day one. Some, like having all of the menus at the top of the screen made sense when we were on low resolution single screen systems, but are detriments in multi-monitor high resolutions systems, and some of them are brand new bonehead decisions like choose to use a green plus for a button that will shrink the screen.
02/03 - Microsoft bought VirtualPC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Virtual_PC#Microsoft_Virtual_PC_2004_and_2007
11/05 - Intel-VT introduced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization#AMD_virtualization_.28AMD-V.29
05/06 - AMD-V introduced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_virtualization#AMD_virtualization_.28AMD-V.29
02/07 - Microsoft added support for hardware virtualization: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Virtual_PC#Microsoft_Virtual_PC_2004_and_2007
Intel VT and AMD-V are not even legitimate parts of a discussion on whether MS could have used emulation to maintain compatibility without having to 'taint' Windows 7 code with older versions. Looking this up, it seems that the XP Mode is exactly what I originally said they could do.
You are correct that the problems are not technical. MS has made business decisions to keep the old code in Windows 7.
Thus, I repeat my earlier statement that backwards compatibility is a red herring when discussing MS's design choices for Windows 7. They have nothing to do with each other.
For the same reason, the discusions about MS porting Windows to ARM must also take into consideration that MS has full software emulation of the x86, and they have Windows integration with their emulator. If MS does decide to port Windows to ARM, there is no reason that virtually 100% of the x86 code could not run on the ARM version of Windows. (With the obviouse performance hit).
Has ReplayTV stopped supplying guide data? I disconnected my ReplayTV last April when I cancellede my Satellite service. At that time they were still supplying the EPG.
And the authorities cannot can never identify Anonymous because as soon as they do, the individual is no longer anonymous.
Huh, leaving note is vandalism? Apparently my wife vandalized my kitchen table just this morning.
Seriously, while that certainly could be called harassment, calling it 'vandalism' is an out and out lie.
Since the SIM card is issued by the carrier, the carrier will completely control whether you can use this card or not. They will also know exactly where this card is sending data. There is no way that this scheme can bypass the carrier for access to Facebook if the carrier doesn't want it to. If the carrier does want to give you access to Facebook for free, they can do that using normal data systems. Carriers also customize both smartphone and feature phone software, so they could include Facebook if they wanted, and could support the feature better that way. The only phones this could effect in any way are 'dumb phones', and I suspect that 'dumb phone' users, are not clambering for Facebook on their phone.
SIM cards are great for phone identities. I loved that when I dropped my Nexus One, I could borrow my son's myTouch and just replace his SIM card with mine to make the phone mine while I waited for my Nexus One to be replaced. That is a great feature. The rest of the features of SIM cards are too late being implemented to be really useful, or have been superseded by data capabilities.
The SIM card news I want to hear is that Google is going to start issuing SIM cards to anyone that asks so that you can use the market in any device, whether it has ever been connected to a cellular network or not.
~4 years ago, Wells Fargo cut off my online access because I wouldn't click the "I Agree" button to their new terms that included a clause agreeing to stop recieving paper statements. If a major bank like Wells Fargo would deny access because you still want paper statments, it is certainly reasonable to assume that they would consider denying access over some Trusted Computing scheme.
Maybe we have just been shopping on the wrong sites. After all, all that business that used to be on Craigs list must have gone somewhere...
Wrong. Backward compatibility is a red herring. MS bought VirtualPC, so they have a PC emulator. MS could have very easily written Windows 7 with zero compatibility to any previous version, ported their VM to it, modified the UI so that appeared integrated (like VMWare's Unity) and included a copy of WinXP. This would have allowed MS to start with a completely clean slate security wise, while still keeping their OS 99.9% backwards compatible.
MS obviously does not consider backward compatibility a defining feature for many users anyway. After all, XP mode is only available with the business versions of Windows 7. Most copies of Windows sold to consumers have copies of Windows that have specifically and intentionally left out a great deal of XP compatibility that MS is sitting on the code for.
So, No. Backward compatibility has NOTHING to do with any security problems Windows may or may not have.
You also don't start out in the real world. That is why they call it 'training'. I presume this new system will be benificial, and I can already think of areas where this could be improved that the old system is incompatible with, but the old system with it's 'full information' viewing has some real benefits in helping people see how the different parts fit together.
This is much like using a map. In the real world, you don't get to see the whole city at once, but a map that only shows first person views is not real useful compared to one that shows the entire city.
I think it is a third option. At some point, we will see someone break out with a 'Home Server' VMs have gotten good enough that 99% of home users would be just fine running on a shared home system. There is still some work that needs to be done concerning video, but that could be addressed. If a real usable remote desktop could be standardized (RDP is windows only, and VNC has speed issues as will as missing functionality), we could see thin clients being integrated into monitors and TVs. You might even see the last bits of TV/Monitor convergence from that. The phone would then be just another client on the Home Server. There would be a couple of tasks that you might still want to have running locally on a portable device, like playing music when you don't have cell coverage, but most of the heavy lifting could be done on the server.
This would mean that when you are out and about, and want to use a public, or business KVM, you would plug your phone into the KVM, and would be sitting at your personal desktop.
Of course, that would require them to be sure that ARM isn't going to end up fast enough to run in their desktop computers. As much as I am not a huge fan of Apple's products, one thing Apple has successfully pulled off, not once, but TWICE, is a migration to a new processor architecture.
but the support was dropped when it turned out that a software emulator was faster
You say that like it is a bad thing. Other than a performance hit compared to native, what is the down side of emulation? Before you say that the having an abstraction layer between the application and the hardware, please keep in mind that every major OS today is loaded with abstraction layers, so that argument will need something more than 'it's faster to not have the abstraction.'
If Arm could produce a processor that could run x86 code through emulation at even the speeds of an Atom processor, it would be a reasonable solution to running x86 software.