Theoretically most of the places where the BR tag is used it should be replaced with block elements like the P tag, and margins and/or padding specified in CSS where appropriate, but I've found a few spots on my own sites where I haven't been able to get consistent appearences between IE and other browsers without falling back on it.
Interesting point about the link header. As far as I remember, that's the preferred method to load a stylesheet, rather than @import.
By the way, I typed <br> 4 times in the course of writing this post. I won't taint my own website, but slashdot is fair game.
Longer range would be a bonus (article mentions 50% improvement), but why bother with a 600 Mbps standard? The vast majority of users are on 728 kbps DSL or 3 Mbps cable. Even most LAN's are 100 Mbps and will be for several years, at least. Even then, no one except the most specialized users would have any need to exceed 54 Mbps. Is this standard really worth the effort and expense, not just of drafting the standard, but also fielding compliant equipment?
You know, your comment echoes many of the things I've said in the past, and thought about saying more recently, but I've found that all it accomplishes is pissing off the environmentalists that like to make noise. The very fact that a person has doubts about global warming automatically makes them close-minded. Yet when a person sees data indicating the average global temperature has risen by approximately 1 degree in the last century and declares it to be irrefutably caused by increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emission in the last century, it's because they are being "open-minded" to the problems of the world. The best part, though, is how every single one of them is an expert on the topic, despite generally being unable to read a weather map.
Not that I outright deny the theory of global warming. I certainly don't deny that CO2 production has increased drastically. From the evidence that's been presented to me (quite frequently and emphatically from the global warming proponents), however, I do not believe there is sufficient evidence linking long term temperature trends to CO2 levels. Due to lack of solid disproof of the theory, it is prudent to continue to take limited steps to reduce pollution and investigate the issue, but I do not believe that the theorized changes due to long term temperature trends pose an imminent threat to humanity, and we have the ability to handle them if they do occur.
Where were the great minds of NASA to say "Wait...what is going to happen with the rocket parts we are leaving out there." We already knew of gravity and orbits, so the idea that perhaps the stuff would just fly away doesn't seem plausible.
They were occassionally standing around the coffee pot saying "Wait, eventually this is going to be a problem. The more stuff we put up there, the harder it's going to be to find an orbit that doesn't interfere with something elses orbit. Eventually we'll either have to start collecting it or carrying extra fuel so we can change orbits as needed." Then they did some math and found that it wouldn't be much more than a headache for near future, and even then it would still cost less (taxpayer dollars) to carry extra fuel to manuever with than to go up and retrieve it. It's seems we may have reached the point where de-orbiting is becoming worthwhile as that seems to be included in a lot of mission plans lately. For example, every proposal regarding the Hubble has included the necessity of de-orbiting it before its systems fail and that can't be done.
We believe consumers are already paying to support broadband access to the Internet through subscription fees and, as a result, consumers should have the freedom to use this connection without limitations
That pretty effectively sums up my thoughts on the matter. Hopefully we'll see some other big players follow suit, lest Bell think that it's worth trying to push through anyways.
Because with that little mass, it should Hawking radiate much faster than it can accrete matter, and therefore it would evaporate into a stream of photons long before it could gain enough mass to become self-sustaining. It's suspended in a particle accelerator for the 10^-27 seconds it exists. It's not even going to fall a hydrogen atom's atomic radius in that time, much less pull anything in. Consider the gravity of two gold atoms (g = G*M1*M2/r/r). You don't even notice the gravity between two people crammed together on a city bus with somewhere on the order of a mole times (6.02x10^23) as much mass.
$50,000 for a fusion splicer that can be used in the bottom of a muddy trench (at my last job, I think our benchtop models cost $20K) or $20 for a pair of crimpers? I'd wager repairing fiber is a lot more expensive. Heck, copper hardly even matters if it's clean or not. Either way, you're getting a couple of on-call guys each spending a couple hours getting gear together, driving to the site, doing the fixing, and testing and documenting the repair. Add that to the theoretical cost of down-time that accountants like to talk about, and half a million or so accidents can add up pretty quickly in value.
Perhaps a $500 DSLR might not seem like the way to go for Nikon, but I wouldn't be surprised to see one of the smaller manufacturers like Kodak start selling one. Nikon and Canon still both have film SLR's on the market that retail for less than $300. Presumably then, there's customers out there who like having a full range of manual controls and interchangeable lenses. With as bulky and expensive as cameras like the Sony H1 are, you might as well have those features for the price you pay.
Even if a budget DSLR were a mediocre performer, I suspect the market would still survive. As a mountain biker, I often tell people not to bother with a full-suspension mountain bike for much less than $1500, because the quality of components in a hardtail for the same price generally allow them to do just as much but last longer, yet $700 full-suspension bikes continue to sell (as do the much cheaper toys at Walmart).
I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. For elementary data analysis, it's great. Got 1000 numbers and need the mean, standard deviation, and a histogram of the points? Piece of cake. Need to create simple, easy to style and control graphs? It does it fine. Want to create a table showing raw data, basic calculations performed on it, and final answers (whether for presentation or because it's helpful to see the data while you're working on it)? Excel makes it easy.
Want to perform a level crossing analysis on 24 hours of pressure data read at 100 Hz or generate hydraulic system and pump curves based on inputed parameters? Definitely don't use Excel.
It's not the ultimate tool, but it definitely does a lot more than add up dollar signs.
If you find Oracle, or Access, or PostgreSQL easier to use for manipulating small sets of primarily numerical data, feel free to use them. Honestly, though, I think there might be a reason why Excel is classified as a spreadsheet instead of a database.
From the summary, I thought the article was going to be about the way search engines tend to make proprietary information (that isn't properly secured) available to anyone.
What I got from that article is that really the ultimate problem is the competitors. The author's argument centered around the example that if a content creator offered a premium for a better search listing or invests in improving the quality of his site, his competitors could all do the same thing, and suddenly all of the companies have increased their costs without increasing their income, which works out well for the search company but crappy for them. Apparently then, the solution is to form monopolies so that companies don't have to deal with advertising costs.
While I understand the frustration to some degree, this is nothing new, just reformulated in a different medium. If McDonald's gets the brilliant idea to bid higher on TV ads so they can get more of the prime-time slots, what's to stop Burger King from doing the same? Then both have increased their expenses without increasing their sales (assuming the total market remains constant). The key, obviously, is to differentiate the product, service, or information you offer from that of your competitors, so that your customers find your offering more worthwhile.
In the meantime, the high margins earned by the search company spawn multiple competitors who see the high prices as an opportunity and undercut it significantly, often while offering new features that help searchers. Suddenly the content providers have new, cheaper methods to choose from and the market rebalances itself.
Today's Sesame Street lesson in basic economics is brought to you by the symbol $ and the color green.
I'm sure this is largely because I'm still new cannon fodder, but the few meetings I'm involved in (still below one per week) are directly relevant to my projects and I typically leave with the impression that I've learned something useful. I guess that puts me at the opposite end of the spectrum from you.
Granted, I shudder to think what life would be like running from one meeting to the next. I swear, the only thing I've ever seen my boss do outside of meetings is type agendas for or summaries of meetings. I have no idea how he manages to stay rational, friendly, and most surprisingly, focused. Regardless how useful a meeting is, if it goes on too long, I can't stay focused on it.
I prefer to think of it as my own form of mind control by denying other people opportunity to make the connection between me and the crazy iPod users. It sounds more evil that way. By the way, I also happen to think that Carharts are the best jeans, but I don't buy those either because they're ugly and not terribly comfortable. If I cared enough about portable media players that it would become a must-have, use-every-day item for me, I'm sure I'd think differently. In the meantime, I just like to waste electrons on/.
In addition to being cheap, Dell is very well known, is reasonably well-respected (not on Slashdot, of course), sells Windows machines (not always a good thing, but familiarity is a big plus), and makes the initial purchasing experience very easy and straight forward.
I swear about half of the Mac users I know bought their computer because it was white, because they like watching nifty taskbar thingy do its scrolling in OSX, or simply because Apple makes IPods. Yes, there were the added benefits of good system stability and lack of malware that targets their OS, but few people have actually said that hardware quality was a consideration (and plenty actually believe their systems are invulnerable to malice).
Apple does rely very heavily on image and aesthetics in their marketing and Dell relies very heavily on cutting cost, but there's plenty of other factors, too.
Well since you said it, I'll reply. I don't have one and I don't want one. I'm not a music on the go type person. The only reason I would consider getting one is if my car stereo had an input jack, because swapping CD's while driving isn't the best thing in the world. I guess an FM transmitter might work too, but FM quality doesn't quite match a direct connection.
Even if I did decide I needed an MP3 player, the iPod would be one of the last ones I'd consider getting. Don't misunderstand me here, the iPod seems like a great piece of hardware with an excellent interface, probably the best in its class. It seems everywhere I go, though, I see goofy yuppies and over-exuberant teenagers with the white earbuds stuck inside their heads making over-exagerated head bobs like life is one big iPod commercial. They make their iPods into a status symbol like they used to (or still do) with their cell phones and Jetta's or Cooper Minis. I'm simply not going to risk being associated with that "corporate consumer whore" crowd.
I suppose this is the point where somebody who does own an iPod gets offended and assumes that I was calling everybody with an iPod a corporate consume whore and chimes in about how I don't get it. In which case, they missed the point of my rant and it's probably safe to assume that they really are corporate consumer whores.
I work a little bit with PLC's, and a few of the more advanced models follow a similar concept. You have a base module with the processor, core chips, and the power supply, then you add on functionality. With the PLC's, it's typically things like extra input or output modules or high speed counters. The reason it's economical to build the high-end PLC's this way, is because the applications are very different. Some may need 2 or 3 digital inputs and outputs. Some may need 40, with some of the channels being analog, as well as additional power supplies, relays, and ethernet connectivity. They all mount to a common chassis connection to the processor module, like this bookshelf idea.
With computers, however, there tends to be a fairly standard package containing the processor and motherboard, hard drive, ram, CD-ROM, and video, network and sound cards. You generally do not see drastic changes from this setup, and when you do, it's almost always with a PNP peripheral, like USB or firewire devices.
Interesting point. On the other hand, it would be hard to establish a first claim on any portion of the spectrum for private parties, so it seems like the FCC should be the body to regulate it. I suppose it ultimately comes down to auctioning the spectrum off to the companies that manage it or paying the FCC's operating costs from taxes. However, the article did sound like the FCC was forcing Verizon to give up their claim on the spectrum.
That confused me at first too. By the way, the article doesn't say, but I'm assuming this band would be used for relaying the data from the plane to ground, not for users inside the plane. Can anybody confirm this?
It seems to me they'd either want to use 2.4 GHz inside the plane so people can use their existing 802.11G equipment, or else ethernet to keep extra RF signals to a minimum intensity. Of course, ethernet wiring to every seat would add a notable amount of weight, and given that it costs somewhere on the order of $50/year in fuel to lift every extra pound of mass, that probably wouldn't be very attractive to the airlines.
$25 for one day sounds pretty pricey, but I don't doubt plenty of people, especially on long trans-oceanic flights, would pay for it. Then they can charge another $25 for an hour of access to a 110 VAC outlet when your batteries start to die.
Aren't most microwave ovens already in 900 MHz range allocated for general, low power, civillian use? Or at least close, because it seems to me they always caused interference with 802.11b sets.
Regarding "stuff that's not ours," do you propose that instead of the FCC regulating RF use in the United States that it would be better if the entire EM spectrum were one big free for all?
Actually, the auto-completing "@hotmail.com" was worse in some ways because the javascript onload function would mess up my typing anytime I started before the page finished loading, so I'd have to start all over again.
I also forgot to include how stupid it was to have a "home" page for an email account in my original rant. Why can't signing into hotMAIL take me to my mail instead of requiring me to load another whole page (pain in the butt for those times when I have to use dial-up) then click the mail tab to get my mail? Like I said, though, I only use it for spam and mailing lists, so I'm really just complaining to complain. If I really cared I'd start signing up for lists with some other free email account.
Yet despite the talented people working on Hotmail, they still fall flat on their face in two apparently challenging areas:
1.) Logging in. You would think that since I already typed hotmail.com in the address bar, I wouldn't have to type "@hotmail.com" in the log-in form, but alas, the solution has aluded them. In fact, it seems to have escaped them altogether, since it used to be that way. Apparently having seperate hotmail.com and msnmail.com, storing a cookie, or even just having a radio button is beyond the limits of their servers. The extra 12 characters I have to type wouldn't bug me so much, except for the fact that there's no logical reason for it.
2.) Logging out. The msn.com page that you're redirected to when you log out ranks almost as low as the AOL page that pops up when you log into AIM (a seperate problem that can be solved by using GAIM) as far as usefullness. The pointless crap they pass of as news on that site drives me up the wall (TomKat Wedding Colors to Include Fuscia, Poll: Will an asteroid hit the earth in 2029? blah blah blah). All I want to do is delete my spam, but I have to put up with this in order to do it.
With crap like that, I'm often tempted to ditch hotmail. If they can't take being a dust bin for email lists that I don't care about seriously, I see no reason why I should bother to use their 250 mB of email storage. Oh wait, it's free...right.
Actually, an aspiring musician I once talked to who was friends the guys of Smashing Pumpkins (the chain broke down into: a friend of a friend of a friend, but who's counting), told me that artists don't really make much money from their CD's because the record companies take most of it. The concert tours are what make them rich. Consider who the wealthiest artists are. It's the ones with really successful concerts like U2, Paul McCartney, etc. The ones who rise and fade, like Paula Abdul, make a bit of money, blow it all really fast, and spend the rest of their life looking for lame gigs that earn them money based on their past glory.
What I'm trying to say in so many words, is that relying on the concerts for income will not end the presence of super rich artists. It could end the reign of the record giants, though, and that is why it's "A Bad Thing" (TM).
...and don't do stupid things. Like the guy in the Prizm today who came screaming through a light that turned red several full seconds earlier at 30 miles an hour as I was just pulling into the intersection on my green. He pulled off a tricky turn for a car with a soft suspension and probably got where he was going before I did, but I would still call myself the better driver.
In what way was Symantec trying to do harm here? As the article says, the hidden directory is a protected folder used to help prevent legitimate files from being deleted. Heck, Windows itself hides its system files by default (not in the same manner, granted) to keep stupid users from deleting all those DLL's that clutter up the hard drive. Please note that the installation of Symantec products takes place with the user's permission. Although hiding the directory may be a somewhat unsettling inclusion in that great "OK" button, it appears it was done with good intent. Symantec may not produce a very effective product, but they haven't sunk to Sony's lows here.
To truly compare somebody with Sony, you're going to have to find me an example of a company that installs software, not only without notification, but without any permission whatsoever. If you want to go even further, it should be software that intentionally disables features of your operating system and is potentially exploitable by malicious people. I think even 180solutions has given in and accepted inclusion into the EULA's of the products their software is bundled with.
One final word. The article described the hidden folder as a "rootkit-like" feature, not a complete rootkit.
Slashdot Mirror
Theoretically most of the places where the BR tag is used it should be replaced with block elements like the P tag, and margins and/or padding specified in CSS where appropriate, but I've found a few spots on my own sites where I haven't been able to get consistent appearences between IE and other browsers without falling back on it.
Interesting point about the link header. As far as I remember, that's the preferred method to load a stylesheet, rather than @import.
By the way, I typed <br> 4 times in the course of writing this post. I won't taint my own website, but slashdot is fair game.
Longer range would be a bonus (article mentions 50% improvement), but why bother with a 600 Mbps standard? The vast majority of users are on 728 kbps DSL or 3 Mbps cable. Even most LAN's are 100 Mbps and will be for several years, at least. Even then, no one except the most specialized users would have any need to exceed 54 Mbps. Is this standard really worth the effort and expense, not just of drafting the standard, but also fielding compliant equipment?
You know, your comment echoes many of the things I've said in the past, and thought about saying more recently, but I've found that all it accomplishes is pissing off the environmentalists that like to make noise. The very fact that a person has doubts about global warming automatically makes them close-minded. Yet when a person sees data indicating the average global temperature has risen by approximately 1 degree in the last century and declares it to be irrefutably caused by increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emission in the last century, it's because they are being "open-minded" to the problems of the world. The best part, though, is how every single one of them is an expert on the topic, despite generally being unable to read a weather map.
Not that I outright deny the theory of global warming. I certainly don't deny that CO2 production has increased drastically. From the evidence that's been presented to me (quite frequently and emphatically from the global warming proponents), however, I do not believe there is sufficient evidence linking long term temperature trends to CO2 levels. Due to lack of solid disproof of the theory, it is prudent to continue to take limited steps to reduce pollution and investigate the issue, but I do not believe that the theorized changes due to long term temperature trends pose an imminent threat to humanity, and we have the ability to handle them if they do occur.
Because with that little mass, it should Hawking radiate much faster than it can accrete matter, and therefore it would evaporate into a stream of photons long before it could gain enough mass to become self-sustaining. It's suspended in a particle accelerator for the 10^-27 seconds it exists. It's not even going to fall a hydrogen atom's atomic radius in that time, much less pull anything in. Consider the gravity of two gold atoms (g = G*M1*M2/r/r). You don't even notice the gravity between two people crammed together on a city bus with somewhere on the order of a mole times (6.02x10^23) as much mass.
$50,000 for a fusion splicer that can be used in the bottom of a muddy trench (at my last job, I think our benchtop models cost $20K) or $20 for a pair of crimpers? I'd wager repairing fiber is a lot more expensive. Heck, copper hardly even matters if it's clean or not. Either way, you're getting a couple of on-call guys each spending a couple hours getting gear together, driving to the site, doing the fixing, and testing and documenting the repair. Add that to the theoretical cost of down-time that accountants like to talk about, and half a million or so accidents can add up pretty quickly in value.
Perhaps a $500 DSLR might not seem like the way to go for Nikon, but I wouldn't be surprised to see one of the smaller manufacturers like Kodak start selling one. Nikon and Canon still both have film SLR's on the market that retail for less than $300. Presumably then, there's customers out there who like having a full range of manual controls and interchangeable lenses. With as bulky and expensive as cameras like the Sony H1 are, you might as well have those features for the price you pay.
Even if a budget DSLR were a mediocre performer, I suspect the market would still survive. As a mountain biker, I often tell people not to bother with a full-suspension mountain bike for much less than $1500, because the quality of components in a hardtail for the same price generally allow them to do just as much but last longer, yet $700 full-suspension bikes continue to sell (as do the much cheaper toys at Walmart).
I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. For elementary data analysis, it's great. Got 1000 numbers and need the mean, standard deviation, and a histogram of the points? Piece of cake. Need to create simple, easy to style and control graphs? It does it fine. Want to create a table showing raw data, basic calculations performed on it, and final answers (whether for presentation or because it's helpful to see the data while you're working on it)? Excel makes it easy.
Want to perform a level crossing analysis on 24 hours of pressure data read at 100 Hz or generate hydraulic system and pump curves based on inputed parameters? Definitely don't use Excel.
It's not the ultimate tool, but it definitely does a lot more than add up dollar signs.
If you find Oracle, or Access, or PostgreSQL easier to use for manipulating small sets of primarily numerical data, feel free to use them. Honestly, though, I think there might be a reason why Excel is classified as a spreadsheet instead of a database.
From the summary, I thought the article was going to be about the way search engines tend to make proprietary information (that isn't properly secured) available to anyone. What I got from that article is that really the ultimate problem is the competitors. The author's argument centered around the example that if a content creator offered a premium for a better search listing or invests in improving the quality of his site, his competitors could all do the same thing, and suddenly all of the companies have increased their costs without increasing their income, which works out well for the search company but crappy for them. Apparently then, the solution is to form monopolies so that companies don't have to deal with advertising costs.
While I understand the frustration to some degree, this is nothing new, just reformulated in a different medium. If McDonald's gets the brilliant idea to bid higher on TV ads so they can get more of the prime-time slots, what's to stop Burger King from doing the same? Then both have increased their expenses without increasing their sales (assuming the total market remains constant). The key, obviously, is to differentiate the product, service, or information you offer from that of your competitors, so that your customers find your offering more worthwhile.
In the meantime, the high margins earned by the search company spawn multiple competitors who see the high prices as an opportunity and undercut it significantly, often while offering new features that help searchers. Suddenly the content providers have new, cheaper methods to choose from and the market rebalances itself.
Today's Sesame Street lesson in basic economics is brought to you by the symbol $ and the color green.
I'm sure this is largely because I'm still new cannon fodder, but the few meetings I'm involved in (still below one per week) are directly relevant to my projects and I typically leave with the impression that I've learned something useful. I guess that puts me at the opposite end of the spectrum from you.
Granted, I shudder to think what life would be like running from one meeting to the next. I swear, the only thing I've ever seen my boss do outside of meetings is type agendas for or summaries of meetings. I have no idea how he manages to stay rational, friendly, and most surprisingly, focused. Regardless how useful a meeting is, if it goes on too long, I can't stay focused on it.
I prefer to think of it as my own form of mind control by denying other people opportunity to make the connection between me and the crazy iPod users. It sounds more evil that way. By the way, I also happen to think that Carharts are the best jeans, but I don't buy those either because they're ugly and not terribly comfortable. If I cared enough about portable media players that it would become a must-have, use-every-day item for me, I'm sure I'd think differently. In the meantime, I just like to waste electrons on /.
In addition to being cheap, Dell is very well known, is reasonably well-respected (not on Slashdot, of course), sells Windows machines (not always a good thing, but familiarity is a big plus), and makes the initial purchasing experience very easy and straight forward.
I swear about half of the Mac users I know bought their computer because it was white, because they like watching nifty taskbar thingy do its scrolling in OSX, or simply because Apple makes IPods. Yes, there were the added benefits of good system stability and lack of malware that targets their OS, but few people have actually said that hardware quality was a consideration (and plenty actually believe their systems are invulnerable to malice).
Apple does rely very heavily on image and aesthetics in their marketing and Dell relies very heavily on cutting cost, but there's plenty of other factors, too.
Well since you said it, I'll reply. I don't have one and I don't want one. I'm not a music on the go type person. The only reason I would consider getting one is if my car stereo had an input jack, because swapping CD's while driving isn't the best thing in the world. I guess an FM transmitter might work too, but FM quality doesn't quite match a direct connection.
Even if I did decide I needed an MP3 player, the iPod would be one of the last ones I'd consider getting. Don't misunderstand me here, the iPod seems like a great piece of hardware with an excellent interface, probably the best in its class. It seems everywhere I go, though, I see goofy yuppies and over-exuberant teenagers with the white earbuds stuck inside their heads making over-exagerated head bobs like life is one big iPod commercial. They make their iPods into a status symbol like they used to (or still do) with their cell phones and Jetta's or Cooper Minis. I'm simply not going to risk being associated with that "corporate consumer whore" crowd.
I suppose this is the point where somebody who does own an iPod gets offended and assumes that I was calling everybody with an iPod a corporate consume whore and chimes in about how I don't get it. In which case, they missed the point of my rant and it's probably safe to assume that they really are corporate consumer whores.
I work a little bit with PLC's, and a few of the more advanced models follow a similar concept. You have a base module with the processor, core chips, and the power supply, then you add on functionality. With the PLC's, it's typically things like extra input or output modules or high speed counters. The reason it's economical to build the high-end PLC's this way, is because the applications are very different. Some may need 2 or 3 digital inputs and outputs. Some may need 40, with some of the channels being analog, as well as additional power supplies, relays, and ethernet connectivity. They all mount to a common chassis connection to the processor module, like this bookshelf idea.
With computers, however, there tends to be a fairly standard package containing the processor and motherboard, hard drive, ram, CD-ROM, and video, network and sound cards. You generally do not see drastic changes from this setup, and when you do, it's almost always with a PNP peripheral, like USB or firewire devices.
Interesting point. On the other hand, it would be hard to establish a first claim on any portion of the spectrum for private parties, so it seems like the FCC should be the body to regulate it. I suppose it ultimately comes down to auctioning the spectrum off to the companies that manage it or paying the FCC's operating costs from taxes. However, the article did sound like the FCC was forcing Verizon to give up their claim on the spectrum.
That confused me at first too. By the way, the article doesn't say, but I'm assuming this band would be used for relaying the data from the plane to ground, not for users inside the plane. Can anybody confirm this?
It seems to me they'd either want to use 2.4 GHz inside the plane so people can use their existing 802.11G equipment, or else ethernet to keep extra RF signals to a minimum intensity. Of course, ethernet wiring to every seat would add a notable amount of weight, and given that it costs somewhere on the order of $50/year in fuel to lift every extra pound of mass, that probably wouldn't be very attractive to the airlines.
$25 for one day sounds pretty pricey, but I don't doubt plenty of people, especially on long trans-oceanic flights, would pay for it. Then they can charge another $25 for an hour of access to a 110 VAC outlet when your batteries start to die.
Aren't most microwave ovens already in 900 MHz range allocated for general, low power, civillian use? Or at least close, because it seems to me they always caused interference with 802.11b sets.
Regarding "stuff that's not ours," do you propose that instead of the FCC regulating RF use in the United States that it would be better if the entire EM spectrum were one big free for all?
Actually, the auto-completing "@hotmail.com" was worse in some ways because the javascript onload function would mess up my typing anytime I started before the page finished loading, so I'd have to start all over again.
I also forgot to include how stupid it was to have a "home" page for an email account in my original rant. Why can't signing into hotMAIL take me to my mail instead of requiring me to load another whole page (pain in the butt for those times when I have to use dial-up) then click the mail tab to get my mail? Like I said, though, I only use it for spam and mailing lists, so I'm really just complaining to complain. If I really cared I'd start signing up for lists with some other free email account.
Yet despite the talented people working on Hotmail, they still fall flat on their face in two apparently challenging areas:
1.) Logging in. You would think that since I already typed hotmail.com in the address bar, I wouldn't have to type "@hotmail.com" in the log-in form, but alas, the solution has aluded them. In fact, it seems to have escaped them altogether, since it used to be that way. Apparently having seperate hotmail.com and msnmail.com, storing a cookie, or even just having a radio button is beyond the limits of their servers. The extra 12 characters I have to type wouldn't bug me so much, except for the fact that there's no logical reason for it.
2.) Logging out. The msn.com page that you're redirected to when you log out ranks almost as low as the AOL page that pops up when you log into AIM (a seperate problem that can be solved by using GAIM) as far as usefullness. The pointless crap they pass of as news on that site drives me up the wall (TomKat Wedding Colors to Include Fuscia, Poll: Will an asteroid hit the earth in 2029? blah blah blah). All I want to do is delete my spam, but I have to put up with this in order to do it.
With crap like that, I'm often tempted to ditch hotmail. If they can't take being a dust bin for email lists that I don't care about seriously, I see no reason why I should bother to use their 250 mB of email storage. Oh wait, it's free...right.
Actually, an aspiring musician I once talked to who was friends the guys of Smashing Pumpkins (the chain broke down into: a friend of a friend of a friend, but who's counting), told me that artists don't really make much money from their CD's because the record companies take most of it. The concert tours are what make them rich. Consider who the wealthiest artists are. It's the ones with really successful concerts like U2, Paul McCartney, etc. The ones who rise and fade, like Paula Abdul, make a bit of money, blow it all really fast, and spend the rest of their life looking for lame gigs that earn them money based on their past glory.
What I'm trying to say in so many words, is that relying on the concerts for income will not end the presence of super rich artists. It could end the reign of the record giants, though, and that is why it's "A Bad Thing" (TM).
Or the music industry could continue to view declining sales as evidence of rampant piracy and push harder in the wrong direction.
...and don't do stupid things. Like the guy in the Prizm today who came screaming through a light that turned red several full seconds earlier at 30 miles an hour as I was just pulling into the intersection on my green. He pulled off a tricky turn for a car with a soft suspension and probably got where he was going before I did, but I would still call myself the better driver.
In what way was Symantec trying to do harm here? As the article says, the hidden directory is a protected folder used to help prevent legitimate files from being deleted. Heck, Windows itself hides its system files by default (not in the same manner, granted) to keep stupid users from deleting all those DLL's that clutter up the hard drive. Please note that the installation of Symantec products takes place with the user's permission. Although hiding the directory may be a somewhat unsettling inclusion in that great "OK" button, it appears it was done with good intent. Symantec may not produce a very effective product, but they haven't sunk to Sony's lows here.
To truly compare somebody with Sony, you're going to have to find me an example of a company that installs software, not only without notification, but without any permission whatsoever. If you want to go even further, it should be software that intentionally disables features of your operating system and is potentially exploitable by malicious people. I think even 180solutions has given in and accepted inclusion into the EULA's of the products their software is bundled with.
One final word. The article described the hidden folder as a "rootkit-like" feature, not a complete rootkit.