I sat in a meeting yesterday with "developers" who had never heard of Bachus-Naur form. I routinely confer with "programmers" who have never heard of a finite state machine. I work daily with "data architects" who have never heard of Dr. Codd or of normalization
You think that's bad? I just read a five hundred and thirty three word slashdot post by someone who's never heard of paragraphs.
Very true. But XP is pretty unlikly to take 23 seconds longer than Ubuntu to get me to the desktop. I must say I've never timed it, but I'm stil pretty sure it's faster to go from login prompt to desktop pn XP than it is on Ubuntu.
By the way, this is a fairly bog standard PC. 1.3 GHZ processor, 512 MB of RAM. It's two years old and it was hardly cutting edge when I built it.
This sounds, to me, like they will only support DRM capable formats
It supports PDF, TXT and HTML, among others. Plenty of scope for non-DRM'd files.
Whether or not anyone will sell you a book in a non DRM'd format is another quetsion, but if they will the chances are you'll be able to read it on this.
My main problem with it is that I can buy an awful lot of dead tree for 650 euros. I'm still waiting for a really good e-reader. I would be happy to pay somewhere around 150 pounds to get an A5 size tablet that I can read PDFs on. Wake me when that happens.
XP takes about 20 seconds to boot
In your dreams or when it blue screens.
I just did a quick test, on the machine I'm typing this on. Timing from the point I hit enter at the GRUB boot screen, XP takes 17 seconds to get to the log in screen. Ubuntu takes 40 seconds.
If you feel like replying to this, try something better than telling me I'm dreaming.
You can't blame the user. Apple, Sun and Linux don't have Windoze problems.
No they don't. But here's a question for you. If ninety percent of home users ran Linux, and spyware makers actually targeted it, and some joe sixpack downloaded a script which presented him with a dialog saying "insert root password here to see $celeb's tits", would it be the users fault then? Because I garuntee you, a lot of people would just hand over their passwords.
I've never had a virus or lost a file to a system failure.
Congratulations. In over a decade of using Windows, I've never had a virus, and I've never lost a file to system failure (well I have, but that was due to the HDD packing up. Hard to blame windows for that). Nor have I ever run a virus checker or firewall (aside from the built in one on my router).
I use Linux nowadays, and I do think the parent post was onto something. I have spent far longer configuring my Linux machines and finding apps and drivers than I ever did with Windows. I don't mind that, I enoy messing with software, but not everyone does.
Wow. What did you do? It took me all of two minutes the first time I used ndiswrapper. Seriously, it was two or three lines of commands that I copied and pasted, and I was done. Did you get instructions for the wrong distro or something?
Bully for you. I think you'll find some people do hit the odd snag when using NDIS Wrapper. Those are just the top three hits when I serached btw. I have no doubt that if I were to read all those threads throught to their conclusions, then yes the people involved got it working. But please accept that any hardware install requiring thirty four posts to a forum thread to get working is, in fact, a bitch.
Ah, so why didn't you just say that you have problems unmounting. Also, that's not a Linux problem, that's a bug in your distro or your music player
Well, I wasn't being specific about things in my original post, since I was just illustrating a point. I probably should have given a little more detail. for the record, I can say for sure it's not the music player, since it has the same problem whether the player is running or not, and I turned off auto play just to check. I expect you're right and it is peculiar to this distro (FC5), but really, I don't draw much distinction. I mean, if you're DVD drive didn;t work in XP Home, I doubt you'd be all too happy if MS told you "thats just a fault with the home distro, try pro instead". Besides, if someone tells me linux has superb hardware support, I don't want to hear ten minutes later "except that distro".
I researched it, and as I understand is at some point DVD-R technology changed and most most manufacturers made firmware upgrades to follow this change. The manufacturer of my burner however, did not. So my burner would no longer work with any new DVD-Rs
Now thats a new one on me. I've never heard of this before, might google it later (nothing to do at work atm). Just one thing I'm curious about though. If the problem is with the firmware, why would changing OS make any difference? I mean it's the same firmware.
Yes, I have generally found Linuxs OOTB hardware suppor to tbe superb, easily the best of any modern OS. I have also found several bits of kit down the years which have either been totally unsurported, or required hours of tweaking and arcane hacks to get working. ATM I have four bits of hardware that do not work properly. That's amazingly good, considering the lack of help from vendors. My tally of unsurported hardware in windows is nil.
Please do understand that I am NOT bashing Linux. It's my desktop OS of choice. I just think that there are places where it still hasn't caught up with Windows, and hardware support is the single largest one, mainly due to the attitudes of vendors.
Tried it. Tried unmounting at a command prompt too. Like I said, I've learned to live with it. I suspect it's a one off thing with that version. I hardly ever need to put amusic CD in there anyway.
How was wireless a bitch? I wouldn't even call ndiswrapper a bitch, and that's the worst I've heard wireless taking. What problems did you have?
It was a bitch in as much as I have never used NDISWrapper before (the rest of my network is wired) and it took me 2 nights of playing around with it to get the wireless up and running. It works fine now, but given that the same PCMCIA card took less than 5 minutes to install under XP, I think that qualifies as a bitch.
What do you mean when say that the music cd has a data track? Doesn't that make it a data cd, not a music cd?
Most new music CDs (or at least, most of the ones I buy) now include some form of data content. When you put them in a Windows machine they auto play, and load a playback program. So, they have a data track on them.
When you say that the DVD drive plays up, what do you mean? Do you mean it starts up your DVD player and plays your music? That's an easy option to stop. Do you mean that it starts up a media player when you put in a data cd?
No, although it does start a CD player when I put a music CD in, even if it has one of those data tracks (out of curiosity, do you buy many CDs, and if so, which artists?). That's what it's meant to do. No, the annoying bit is when I want to get the CD out. It will not eject, either through hardware or software eject buttons. Attempting to manually unmount produces error messages, and the drive tray stays locked shut until I reset the laptop. I did start a thread about this on one of the support forums, and a few other people have had the same problem. Not a really big deal, since I mainly listen to my music as MP3s anyway.
Now I, personally, would rather keep a CDR with all my drivers backed than have to wade through comptibility lists and support forums every time I want a shiny new gadget. So for me, Window's universal support outweighs Linux's OOTB compatibility. Of course thats just a personal opinion. You don't mind research. I don't mind backing up drivers.
Having said all that, I still use linux almost exclusivly at home, because its many other advantages outweigh this one disadvantage.
I recently installed Linux on a laptop (Mepis 6, coincidently also in beta) and the sound works fine and the wireless was trivial to set up.
I recently installed Linux on a laptop (fedora 5) and the wireless was a complete bitch to set up, and the DVD drive plays up whenever I put a music CD with a data track in it. I certainly didn't have nearly the problems when I installed XP.
Aren't anecdotes great?
In truth, I really don't expect too much in terms of hardware support from any OS. Linux hardware support is better Out Of the Box (hereafter reffered to as ootb because I'm lazy), but that's partly because it has to be, since very few hardware vendors make linux drivers. Conversely, Windows OOTB support is abysmal, but that's not a problem because every vendor supports Windows.
In terms of drivers, both OS's have strengths and weaknesses. Linux ships with just about everything, but a few things just will not work, such as winmodems, some MP3 players, the USB ports on this sodding keyboard. Windows on the other hand ships with next to nothing, but everyhting will work. I would bet a mortage repayment it will be impossible to walk into PC world a year after Vista launches and buy a piece of hardware that won't work with it.
that's the thing with manga, you can go from reading a story about 5 frogs invading Earth (Keroro Gunsou) to a story about a guy who gets super powers from stealing panties and wearing them (Hentai Kamen) right to a war drama (various Gundam things). There's just more variety out there than in the Western side.
I mean thats the thing with western comics, you can go from reading a story about fairy tale charcters (fables), to a war drama (Fury : Peacemaker) to a story about bug exterminators (The Exterminators ) right to a story about the last man alive in a world made up only of women (y the last man) There's just more variety out there than in the Japanese side.
See what I did there? Remember, 95 percent of everyhting is crap. I'm not especially familiar with Japanese comics, but I dare bet that most of it is derivative rubbish. Just like most of everything, be it superhero comics, tv shows, movies or video games. I would further suggest that the stuff that gets translated and makes it across to the west is probably the cream of the crop.
Someone in Japan who who's only experience of western comics was Preacher, Sandman, Authority, the Filth, Hellboy, Fables, Alan Moores Swamp Thing, Sin City and, ooh, Green arrow : Archers Quest (just because you seem to hate superheroes ) would probably think western comics were all fantasticly well written, genre straddling experiemental masterpieces, pushing the boundries of the art form. Which is bullshit, of course. but I think claiming Japanese comics are as a rule better is also bullshit. You may be right in saying there are more "gems", simply becuase the Japanese market is bigger than the western one. obviously, the 5% of manga worth reading is more than the 5% of western stuff worth reading. But by just dismissing western comics, you're missing out on a ton of fantstic stuff.
No I would maintain its because well over 90 percent of them did'nt use it. Trust me, most of the users out there simply think the blue E IS the internet.
People complain about everything We had user complaints about everything, from "why do I have to be on the internet to do this?" (not kidding) to "why don't you give me a free copy of Office with my course?". But in all the time I worked there, I never had a single person ask why something did'nt work in firefox. I even had questions about Macs, but never about firefox.
I think you're at least partly right, most Firefox users are techsavy enough to know to use IE. But really, thats my point. The guy I replied to said standards compliance would help MS. I'm saying they don't have to comply with anything, because they are the standard. Web developers will continue to hack our pages to work in IE, and if something fails to render properly in FF, the firefox users know enough to open IE (unless they're Linux users, but who cares about communists? Joke).
So, in answer to the question in the article, yes IE7 will make a difference. It WILL become the most popular web browser, probably in around 18 months to 2 years after it's released. We will all hack our code to work in it, whether we like it or not, because it's what our customers use.
BTW, I use FF on Suse Linux. IE is just somehting I have to live with at work. But since I spend 8 hours a day at work, any new version of IE makes a huge difference to me.
Microsoft's refusal to come closer to a reasonable attempt at compliance with the latest accepted CSS standard will always create issues. What's astonishing to me is that they don't seem to realize that if they did, they could walk all over FF in the average consumer market (more than they are already, that is...).
Oh, you're so, so wrong. I used to work for a major provider of online training courses. We made everything from accountancy to basic literacy courses, all delivered online through a web based interface. With such a huge varity of courses, I think it's safe to say that the users of our stuff made up a decent cross section of the "average consumer market".
Now, our main web page was not, in any way, standards compliant, and rendered like an absolute dog in firefox. (I left 18 months ago, since when the site has been redesigned, but I just checked it still renders wrong in FF) All of our stuff was only tested, and only ran, in IE. And do you know how often someone complained to us that they couldn't access their course using firefox? Never. Not once. You know why? none of them used it. Firefox is used by only the more advanced and tech savy web surfers, and maybe a few Average Joes who have a techy friend that installed it for them. (My dad and my brother fall into the second group)
So whats the moral of that story? Am I saying standards compliance is irrelevant? Not exactly. What I'm saying, and this will be a vastly unpopular notion on Slashdot, is that IE IS the standard. It's what 80+ / 90+ (depending who you ask) of web surfers use. Our site looked awful in FF. No one cared. Of our clientel, most had never even heard of FF. If we had rebuilt it from the ground up, made it fully standards complient, and IE had been unable to render it, we would have been swamped with tech support calls telling us our site was broken.
IE7 will be the defacto standard in 2 or 3 years time, and we had all best learn to live with it.
I mean, what killer games are there for the xbox360 anyway? It seems it's all rehashed games with upgraded graphics.
What do you think you're going to get on PS3? I'll tell you what, Gran Turismo 5 (or whatever we're up to now), GTA $some_new_city, Tekkan 5 (or 6, or whatever) Madden 2007 and Generic First Person Shooter 9: The Shootening.
Which, to be honest, makes sense. If you're launching a new console, you want to have sequels to popular games in the launch line up to encourage the fans of those franchises to upgrade. It might not be what you or I want, but it does shift units.
Actually, I did read carefully. Unfortunately, he didn't write carefully.
by far most users chose http://www.emusic.com/ [emusic.com] because they use non-DRM-encumbered mp3.
If he wanted to make the point the point you suggest he did, he should have written something like:
Most of the users who choose emusic do so because their MP3s are not encumbered with DRM
Now to be fair, he could have meant to say that. But he didn't. Maybe the guy isn't a native English speaker, but I am, and I read that sentence as "most people use e-music".
Well, it's just that by far most users chose http://www.emusic.com/ because they use non-DRM-encumbered mp3.
Really? Most users? So I take it they'v sold more songs than itunes? Could you provide a source to some reliable figures proving this to be the case? Or could it be that you're spouting complete and utter bullshit? Yes, I think it could.
Ok, I have a a bet for you. I bet that somewhere in that box you will have found a CD, which, when inserted into a Windows PC, will autorun a program with a prompt for installing drivers. I'll further bet that some sort of manual, be it PDF or dead tree, was included, which walks you step by step through the process.
Re:GNOME's audio backend GStreamer to use DRM
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A Look at GNOME 2.14
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Install the codec. Now it works. Hmmm...very similar.
No, not similar. Ignore for a moment the fact that joe sixpack probably bought a PC with windows pre-installed, and most OEMs include some sort of DVD player software these days. No, lets say Joe sticks a DVD in his computer and it won't play. Off he goes to best buy, to pick up a copy of Power DVD (or whatever). He brings it home, sticks it in the drive, and IT WORKS. No dependencies, it just works.
Compare that to Linux, where in order to get DVD playback working he will either have to manually resolve dependencies, or edit his repositories for whatever package management sytem he uses. Assuming of course he can find either a repository or an RPM download site that hosts them, and further assuming he even knows what the fuck he's looking for (CSS? LibDVDread?).
I'm typing this on a Suse box, and yes I can watch DVDs on it, but there is absolutly no way on gods earth my Dad could get DVD playback working on a bare Suse install. On windows, I expect he could.
See, I think you're rather missing the point. I'm all in favour of Iran having nukes. I think it would stabilise the region, and I'll tell you why.
Currently, the greatest threat to the stability of the middle east is the US. This is not a troll. What do you think is more likely to happen in the next two years:
a) US invades Iran
b)Iran invades Israel.
Please note, I'm not saying either will happen, just asking which one is more likely.
Now option B is out of the question, and option A would become out of the question if Iran had nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons guarantee your invincibility, right up until the moment you use them, at which point they guarantee your destruction. The US would never attack a nuclear armed Iran, because if the leadership of that country believed they were done for anyway, they would probably launch a nuclear strike on Israel, or on the invading US forces. Similarly, Iran would never launch a first strike against the US or Israel, even by proxy of a terrorist organisation, because the US would wipe the whole country from the face of the earth in retaliation.
And before you try and tell me Mutually Assured Destruction does not work, come up with another credible explanation for the US and USSR not going tho war for 50 years.
The simple fact is that US is country most likely to go to war in the middle east at the moment, and the best way to restrain them is to give Iran nuclear weapons. Oh of course there's bound to be the "do you want religious extremists to have the bomb" argument trotted out, but really that describes the US government just as well as the Iranian one (Bush is on record as saying he believes God wanted him to attack Iraq ) besides, at various points during the cold war the USSR and the PRC were led by leaders who were clearly insane, and even they never launched a nuclear war (funny story, before the PRC had nukes, the Chinese government believed that a in the event a nuclear war, a communist utopia would rise from the ashes of the destroyed capitalist system. Once they got nukes of they're own, they never put the idea to the test. MAD in action).
You've got to understand the economies of scale behind that, though.
Well, I know next to nothing about the durg industry or ecomonics, but I'm not bad at maths, so lets try and understand that economy of scale.
lets split the diffrence and say 300,000 MS cases.
300,000 * 400 = $120,000,000
And they take it once a week right? so 52 shots a year.
120,000,000* 52 = $6,240,000,000
6.2 billion dollars a year. And thats just US sufferers. Thats 31 billion dollars over a 5 year period.
Like I said, I know nothing about the drugs industry, so I don't know whether that's profiteering or not. How much money would have been spent bringing the drug to market?
Re:Nintendo is in trouble with the Revolution
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Nintendo's New Look
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Slashdot Mirror
I sat in a meeting yesterday with "developers" who had never heard of Bachus-Naur form. I routinely confer with "programmers" who have never heard of a finite state machine. I work daily with "data architects" who have never heard of Dr. Codd or of normalization
You think that's bad? I just read a five hundred and thirty three word slashdot post by someone who's never heard of paragraphs.
Very true. But XP is pretty unlikly to take 23 seconds longer than Ubuntu to get me to the desktop. I must say I've never timed it, but I'm stil pretty sure it's faster to go from login prompt to desktop pn XP than it is on Ubuntu.
By the way, this is a fairly bog standard PC. 1.3 GHZ processor, 512 MB of RAM. It's two years old and it was hardly cutting edge when I built it.
This sounds, to me, like they will only support DRM capable formats
It supports PDF, TXT and HTML, among others. Plenty of scope for non-DRM'd files.
Whether or not anyone will sell you a book in a non DRM'd format is another quetsion, but if they will the chances are you'll be able to read it on this.
My main problem with it is that I can buy an awful lot of dead tree for 650 euros. I'm still waiting for a really good e-reader. I would be happy to pay somewhere around 150 pounds to get an A5 size tablet that I can read PDFs on. Wake me when that happens.
XP takes about 20 seconds to boot In your dreams or when it blue screens.
I just did a quick test, on the machine I'm typing this on. Timing from the point I hit enter at the GRUB boot screen, XP takes 17 seconds to get to the log in screen. Ubuntu takes 40 seconds.
If you feel like replying to this, try something better than telling me I'm dreaming.
Are paragraphs a tool of communism as well?
Here's a FM for you to read.
You can't blame the user. Apple, Sun and Linux don't have Windoze problems.
No they don't. But here's a question for you. If ninety percent of home users ran Linux, and spyware makers actually targeted it, and some joe sixpack downloaded a script which presented him with a dialog saying "insert root password here to see $celeb's tits", would it be the users fault then? Because I garuntee you, a lot of people would just hand over their passwords.
I've never had a virus or lost a file to a system failure.
Congratulations. In over a decade of using Windows, I've never had a virus, and I've never lost a file to system failure (well I have, but that was due to the HDD packing up. Hard to blame windows for that). Nor have I ever run a virus checker or firewall (aside from the built in one on my router).
I use Linux nowadays, and I do think the parent post was onto something. I have spent far longer configuring my Linux machines and finding apps and drivers than I ever did with Windows. I don't mind that, I enoy messing with software, but not everyone does.
Wow. What did you do? It took me all of two minutes the first time I used ndiswrapper. Seriously, it was two or three lines of commands that I copied and pasted, and I was done. Did you get instructions for the wrong distro or something?
Bully for you. I think you'll find some people do hit the odd snag when using NDIS Wrapper. Those are just the top three hits when I serached btw. I have no doubt that if I were to read all those threads throught to their conclusions, then yes the people involved got it working. But please accept that any hardware install requiring thirty four posts to a forum thread to get working is, in fact, a bitch.
Ah, so why didn't you just say that you have problems unmounting. Also, that's not a Linux problem, that's a bug in your distro or your music player
Well, I wasn't being specific about things in my original post, since I was just illustrating a point. I probably should have given a little more detail. for the record, I can say for sure it's not the music player, since it has the same problem whether the player is running or not, and I turned off auto play just to check. I expect you're right and it is peculiar to this distro (FC5), but really, I don't draw much distinction. I mean, if you're DVD drive didn;t work in XP Home, I doubt you'd be all too happy if MS told you "thats just a fault with the home distro, try pro instead". Besides, if someone tells me linux has superb hardware support, I don't want to hear ten minutes later "except that distro".
I researched it, and as I understand is at some point DVD-R technology changed and most most manufacturers made firmware upgrades to follow this change. The manufacturer of my burner however, did not. So my burner would no longer work with any new DVD-Rs
Now thats a new one on me. I've never heard of this before, might google it later (nothing to do at work atm). Just one thing I'm curious about though. If the problem is with the firmware, why would changing OS make any difference? I mean it's the same firmware.
Yes, I have generally found Linuxs OOTB hardware suppor to tbe superb, easily the best of any modern OS. I have also found several bits of kit down the years which have either been totally unsurported, or required hours of tweaking and arcane hacks to get working. ATM I have four bits of hardware that do not work properly. That's amazingly good, considering the lack of help from vendors. My tally of unsurported hardware in windows is nil.
Please do understand that I am NOT bashing Linux. It's my desktop OS of choice. I just think that there are places where it still hasn't caught up with Windows, and hardware support is the single largest one, mainly due to the attitudes of vendors.
Tried it. Tried unmounting at a command prompt too. Like I said, I've learned to live with it. I suspect it's a one off thing with that version. I hardly ever need to put amusic CD in there anyway.
How was wireless a bitch? I wouldn't even call ndiswrapper a bitch, and that's the worst I've heard wireless taking. What problems did you have?
It was a bitch in as much as I have never used NDISWrapper before (the rest of my network is wired) and it took me 2 nights of playing around with it to get the wireless up and running. It works fine now, but given that the same PCMCIA card took less than 5 minutes to install under XP, I think that qualifies as a bitch.
What do you mean when say that the music cd has a data track? Doesn't that make it a data cd, not a music cd?
Most new music CDs (or at least, most of the ones I buy) now include some form of data content. When you put them in a Windows machine they auto play, and load a playback program. So, they have a data track on them.
When you say that the DVD drive plays up, what do you mean? Do you mean it starts up your DVD player and plays your music? That's an easy option to stop. Do you mean that it starts up a media player when you put in a data cd?
No, although it does start a CD player when I put a music CD in, even if it has one of those data tracks (out of curiosity, do you buy many CDs, and if so, which artists?). That's what it's meant to do. No, the annoying bit is when I want to get the CD out. It will not eject, either through hardware or software eject buttons. Attempting to manually unmount produces error messages, and the drive tray stays locked shut until I reset the laptop. I did start a thread about this on one of the support forums, and a few other people have had the same problem. Not a really big deal, since I mainly listen to my music as MP3s anyway.
Now I, personally, would rather keep a CDR with all my drivers backed than have to wade through comptibility lists and support forums every time I want a shiny new gadget. So for me, Window's universal support outweighs Linux's OOTB compatibility. Of course thats just a personal opinion. You don't mind research. I don't mind backing up drivers.
Having said all that, I still use linux almost exclusivly at home, because its many other advantages outweigh this one disadvantage.
I recently installed Linux on a laptop (Mepis 6, coincidently also in beta) and the sound works fine and the wireless was trivial to set up.
I recently installed Linux on a laptop (fedora 5) and the wireless was a complete bitch to set up, and the DVD drive plays up whenever I put a music CD with a data track in it. I certainly didn't have nearly the problems when I installed XP.
Aren't anecdotes great? In truth, I really don't expect too much in terms of hardware support from any OS. Linux hardware support is better Out Of the Box (hereafter reffered to as ootb because I'm lazy), but that's partly because it has to be, since very few hardware vendors make linux drivers. Conversely, Windows OOTB support is abysmal, but that's not a problem because every vendor supports Windows.
In terms of drivers, both OS's have strengths and weaknesses. Linux ships with just about everything, but a few things just will not work, such as winmodems, some MP3 players, the USB ports on this sodding keyboard. Windows on the other hand ships with next to nothing, but everyhting will work. I would bet a mortage repayment it will be impossible to walk into PC world a year after Vista launches and buy a piece of hardware that won't work with it.
Funny you should mention Wanted, thats what my sig is from.
that's the thing with manga, you can go from reading a story about 5 frogs invading Earth (Keroro Gunsou) to a story about a guy who gets super powers from stealing panties and wearing them (Hentai Kamen) right to a war drama (various Gundam things). There's just more variety out there than in the Western side.
I mean thats the thing with western comics, you can go from reading a story about fairy tale charcters (fables), to a war drama (Fury : Peacemaker) to a story about bug exterminators (The Exterminators ) right to a story about the last man alive in a world made up only of women (y the last man) There's just more variety out there than in the Japanese side.
See what I did there? Remember, 95 percent of everyhting is crap. I'm not especially familiar with Japanese comics, but I dare bet that most of it is derivative rubbish. Just like most of everything, be it superhero comics, tv shows, movies or video games. I would further suggest that the stuff that gets translated and makes it across to the west is probably the cream of the crop.
Someone in Japan who who's only experience of western comics was Preacher, Sandman, Authority, the Filth, Hellboy, Fables, Alan Moores Swamp Thing, Sin City and, ooh, Green arrow : Archers Quest (just because you seem to hate superheroes ) would probably think western comics were all fantasticly well written, genre straddling experiemental masterpieces, pushing the boundries of the art form. Which is bullshit, of course. but I think claiming Japanese comics are as a rule better is also bullshit. You may be right in saying there are more "gems", simply becuase the Japanese market is bigger than the western one. obviously, the 5% of manga worth reading is more than the 5% of western stuff worth reading. But by just dismissing western comics, you're missing out on a ton of fantstic stuff.
This usually leads to other, more sensual things. Like bug catching. With sexy results
Captain Brannigan, is that you?
No I would maintain its because well over 90 percent of them did'nt use it. Trust me, most of the users out there simply think the blue E IS the internet.
People complain about everything We had user complaints about everything, from "why do I have to be on the internet to do this?" (not kidding) to "why don't you give me a free copy of Office with my course?". But in all the time I worked there, I never had a single person ask why something did'nt work in firefox. I even had questions about Macs, but never about firefox.
I think you're at least partly right, most Firefox users are techsavy enough to know to use IE. But really, thats my point. The guy I replied to said standards compliance would help MS. I'm saying they don't have to comply with anything, because they are the standard. Web developers will continue to hack our pages to work in IE, and if something fails to render properly in FF, the firefox users know enough to open IE (unless they're Linux users, but who cares about communists? Joke).
So, in answer to the question in the article, yes IE7 will make a difference. It WILL become the most popular web browser, probably in around 18 months to 2 years after it's released. We will all hack our code to work in it, whether we like it or not, because it's what our customers use.
BTW, I use FF on Suse Linux. IE is just somehting I have to live with at work. But since I spend 8 hours a day at work, any new version of IE makes a huge difference to me.
Microsoft's refusal to come closer to a reasonable attempt at compliance with the latest accepted CSS standard will always create issues. What's astonishing to me is that they don't seem to realize that if they did, they could walk all over FF in the average consumer market (more than they are already, that is...).
Oh, you're so, so wrong. I used to work for a major provider of online training courses. We made everything from accountancy to basic literacy courses, all delivered online through a web based interface. With such a huge varity of courses, I think it's safe to say that the users of our stuff made up a decent cross section of the "average consumer market".
Now, our main web page was not, in any way, standards compliant, and rendered like an absolute dog in firefox. (I left 18 months ago, since when the site has been redesigned, but I just checked it still renders wrong in FF) All of our stuff was only tested, and only ran, in IE. And do you know how often someone complained to us that they couldn't access their course using firefox? Never. Not once. You know why? none of them used it. Firefox is used by only the more advanced and tech savy web surfers, and maybe a few Average Joes who have a techy friend that installed it for them. (My dad and my brother fall into the second group)
So whats the moral of that story? Am I saying standards compliance is irrelevant? Not exactly. What I'm saying, and this will be a vastly unpopular notion on Slashdot, is that IE IS the standard. It's what 80+ / 90+ (depending who you ask) of web surfers use. Our site looked awful in FF. No one cared. Of our clientel, most had never even heard of FF. If we had rebuilt it from the ground up, made it fully standards complient, and IE had been unable to render it, we would have been swamped with tech support calls telling us our site was broken.
IE7 will be the defacto standard in 2 or 3 years time, and we had all best learn to live with it.
3) Should I ever want to discuss something illegal I would either use GPG through email or encrypted IM anyway.
I prefer to discuss all my illegal activities using the RL protocol.
I mean, what killer games are there for the xbox360 anyway? It seems it's all rehashed games with upgraded graphics.
What do you think you're going to get on PS3? I'll tell you what, Gran Turismo 5 (or whatever we're up to now), GTA $some_new_city, Tekkan 5 (or 6, or whatever) Madden 2007 and Generic First Person Shooter 9: The Shootening.
Which, to be honest, makes sense. If you're launching a new console, you want to have sequels to popular games in the launch line up to encourage the fans of those franchises to upgrade. It might not be what you or I want, but it does shift units.
Actually, I did read carefully. Unfortunately, he didn't write carefully.
by far most users chose http://www.emusic.com/ [emusic.com] because they use non-DRM-encumbered mp3.
If he wanted to make the point the point you suggest he did, he should have written something like:
Most of the users who choose emusic do so because their MP3s are not encumbered with DRM
Now to be fair, he could have meant to say that. But he didn't. Maybe the guy isn't a native English speaker, but I am, and I read that sentence as "most people use e-music".
Well, it's just that by far most users chose http://www.emusic.com/ because they use non-DRM-encumbered mp3.
Really? Most users? So I take it they'v sold more songs than itunes? Could you provide a source to some reliable figures proving this to be the case? Or could it be that you're spouting complete and utter bullshit? Yes, I think it could.
Ok, I have a a bet for you. I bet that somewhere in that box you will have found a CD, which, when inserted into a Windows PC, will autorun a program with a prompt for installing drivers. I'll further bet that some sort of manual, be it PDF or dead tree, was included, which walks you step by step through the process.
Install the codec. Now it works. Hmmm...very similar.
No, not similar. Ignore for a moment the fact that joe sixpack probably bought a PC with windows pre-installed, and most OEMs include some sort of DVD player software these days. No, lets say Joe sticks a DVD in his computer and it won't play. Off he goes to best buy, to pick up a copy of Power DVD (or whatever). He brings it home, sticks it in the drive, and IT WORKS. No dependencies, it just works.
Compare that to Linux, where in order to get DVD playback working he will either have to manually resolve dependencies, or edit his repositories for whatever package management sytem he uses. Assuming of course he can find either a repository or an RPM download site that hosts them, and further assuming he even knows what the fuck he's looking for (CSS? LibDVDread?).
I'm typing this on a Suse box, and yes I can watch DVDs on it, but there is absolutly no way on gods earth my Dad could get DVD playback working on a bare Suse install. On windows, I expect he could.
See, I think you're rather missing the point. I'm all in favour of Iran having nukes. I think it would stabilise the region, and I'll tell you why.
Currently, the greatest threat to the stability of the middle east is the US. This is not a troll. What do you think is more likely to happen in the next two years:
a) US invades Iran
b)Iran invades Israel.
Please note, I'm not saying either will happen, just asking which one is more likely.
Now option B is out of the question, and option A would become out of the question if Iran had nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons guarantee your invincibility, right up until the moment you use them, at which point they guarantee your destruction. The US would never attack a nuclear armed Iran, because if the leadership of that country believed they were done for anyway, they would probably launch a nuclear strike on Israel, or on the invading US forces. Similarly, Iran would never launch a first strike against the US or Israel, even by proxy of a terrorist organisation, because the US would wipe the whole country from the face of the earth in retaliation.
And before you try and tell me Mutually Assured Destruction does not work, come up with another credible explanation for the US and USSR not going tho war for 50 years.
The simple fact is that US is country most likely to go to war in the middle east at the moment, and the best way to restrain them is to give Iran nuclear weapons. Oh of course there's bound to be the "do you want religious extremists to have the bomb" argument trotted out, but really that describes the US government just as well as the Iranian one (Bush is on record as saying he believes God wanted him to attack Iraq ) besides, at various points during the cold war the USSR and the PRC were led by leaders who were clearly insane, and even they never launched a nuclear war (funny story, before the PRC had nukes, the Chinese government believed that a in the event a nuclear war, a communist utopia would rise from the ashes of the destroyed capitalist system. Once they got nukes of they're own, they never put the idea to the test. MAD in action).
You've got to understand the economies of scale behind that, though.
Well, I know next to nothing about the durg industry or ecomonics, but I'm not bad at maths, so lets try and understand that economy of scale.
lets split the diffrence and say 300,000 MS cases.
300,000 * 400 = $120,000,000
And they take it once a week right? so 52 shots a year.
120,000,000* 52 = $6,240,000,000
6.2 billion dollars a year. And thats just US sufferers. Thats 31 billion dollars over a 5 year period.
Like I said, I know nothing about the drugs industry, so I don't know whether that's profiteering or not. How much money would have been spent bringing the drug to market?
Digital TV != high definition.
I'm so sick of pointing that out.