Funny you should say that - I know that I keep my Blackberry and cheapo consumer GPS in the same jacket pocket, the GPS occasionally resets "for no apparent reason". Different pocket, no problem.
Just one data point, of course - and if I'm in row 35 or wherever I suspect I'm not that close to a GPS antenna.
Oops - I've even used it for looking up places in Canada before now. Although if you centre Google Maps on New Brunswick you could be forgiven for thinking that there's lots of places in Maine just over the fence but only two roads in New Brunswick (and no towns). Only if you zoom in to within the province do you see Fredricton et al.
Having said that I travelled through New Brunswick a few years ago and all I remember were the trees...
Sort of - the last time that I looked maps.google.com covers the US, UK and Japan. Google Earth is worldwide - although the resolution is pretty variable, and the placename search is a bit ropy at times.
For example, search for "Bulawayo" even when that's the only placename shown in Google Earth doesn't find anywhere of that name. Mapquest at least knows where the city is and shows major roads.
Looking at it from a Linux perspective, this is the area that Microsoft seems to be furthest behind to me (with the software on XP). The last time that I looked there were at least three "Windows Update" versions - "Windows Update" (which seems to be called "Microsoft Update" these days), "Office Update", and MBSA.
Even if these were consolidated into one I can't see the third-party suppliers letting Microsoft manage their updates the way that equivalent Linux suppliers let the Linux distributions do.
For example, Realplayer and MS Media Player don't exactly "play well together" - I can't see Real agreeing to be included in some MS equivalent of Yast or apt-get. The equivalent Linux media players need the distributions and the distributions need the software - it's a beneficial relationship that doesn't exist in the Microsoft world. Windows XP thinks that it can do everything (there was an interview a while back with someone from Microsoft claiming I think that "everyone talks about iLife but no-one talks about Scanners and Cameras Wizard") but it sometimes doesn't seem to recognise that sometimes other people can do a better job than you and if it's selling your OS - that's still good for you.
We've got 3rd-party applications as the standard for many things on Windows, how about a 3rd-party package manager? With a trustworthy name behind it it could make sense. It would have to be free at the point of use, though...
The point isn't that app X on Linux as "nearly as good" or "as good as" app Y on Windows, it's that, when it comes to hiring, there are people out there who know app Y but not app X.
App X has to be (a) better in some way (to get people to switch) and (b) easy to use by people familiar with app Y (to stop them giving up after 5 minutes).
If we're talking Internet radio, you've got other options. Just picking a few English speaking places for starters, you could try Ireland, South Africa, Australia or the UK. I'm sure that there's crap broadcast from all of these places (for any definition of crap, there certainly is in the UK), but there's non-crap too.
Internet Radio is only a "silly idea" when it's restricted to a wired network. It doesn't require a gaze that far into the future to see most electronics devices (where it makes sense - I'm not talking fridges here) to be internet connected.
Early in the previous century my granny (in the UK) had what I think was called I think "radio relay". It worked because a radio receiver was unfeasibly expensive for many people, but a box with a loudspeaker in it connected to a cable was a lot cheaper to rent. I think that there were exactly two radio stations at the time in the UK at the time and so it was easy to carry!
I don't think that they stayed around long as the price of receivers came down. The same will happen with "Internet radio" - the idea that something with a radio receiver in it should NOT have an internet connection will soon be pretty odd. There won't be "Broadcast, Satellite and Internet" radio, there'll just be "radio".
(for what it's worth, currently listening to RTE from Irelend in the UK)
I think last.fm's "similar artists" link is working the way that it is supposed to - it does what it says on the tin. The actual radio player works similarly to what it sounds like you want.
If you want to find new stuff, start the radio and select "discovery mode" off the settings menu - it'll only play stuff it hasn't played before.
If you hear something that you don't want to, hit "skip". It'll learn.
I suspect that what's happening here is that data from Audioscrobbler ("what tracks are like / liked by people who like other tracks") is there but the actual track that you're after isn't yet, for example:
If power's coming and going that often you need something. As well as handling short power-outs without any problems, even the consumer-level ones can provide some monitoring of the input voltage. If you're having trouble getting the cash signed off, "I can't start this machine without it" should help.
However, it does sound though like you need to get someone competent to check over the electricity supply. I'm not, and neither are you. I'm assuming that you're in the US (from the 120v comment) and I'm surprised that having outlets on three phases in one room in an office environment isn't against the building regulations over there. I suspect that all it needs is someone to plug a machine with dual PSUs into two different phases and a bit of dodgy wiring for some very interesting results.
If your boss won't stand the cost of that you might want to check out your health insurance plan.
> If ActiveX was off by default, how would people use Windows Update?
With Windows XP you'd have the "autoupdate" and "bits" services running all the time, and you'd have automatic updates set to download and install updates automatically. No need to browse to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ - just click "yes to reboot now" when prompted.
This is what MS intended, and for someone with no idea what updates are (never mind what a particular update is for), it probably makes sense - same as it makes sense to control what your computer connects to and when if you know how to.
The ICL DRS300 (I saw them in around 1988, but I suspect the design was earlier) was like this, but not quite as B&O looking. Somehow the ICL cream livery (matching the 1970's paint scheme of many of the UK councils where many of them ended up) didn't quite carry it off.
It had a Z80 in it I think and ran CCPM / Concurrent DOS (possibly as an alternative to something else - it was all a long time ago). Horrible machine. I seem to remember that the language that we were using on it didn't have working serial port access (which was a drawback when you're trying to communicate with various RS232 connected devices around a factory) so we had to adapt one from elsewhere - I had never expected reading the back pages of the ZX Spectrum manual to ever come in useful.
Give him a break - if he works in a computer store chances are he could only recommend the home versions of McAfee or Norton, since that's probably all the shop stocks, and it might be career-limiting to suggest anything else. I haven't seen boxed product for anything else for ages.
It's probably worth mentioning at this point that there's McAfee and there's McAfee - I was a (happy) customer of the home version until a forced "upgrade" to version 8 (I'd only tried to renew the DAT download licence). McAfee 8 is reliant on IE (as was the home version of Norton last time I looked) and doesn't work if IE is configured in a way that I'd consider remotely secure. I was also unimpressed with the way that it tried to replace MS' security centre and impose its own, claiming that I was "unprotected" without McAfee firewall (in spite of a software firewall from another manufacturer). Uninstalling it is also "interesting" including stuff in the registry referring to temp directories (ugh).
However, the non-home version I've used for years with a business hat on and haven't had a major issue with. Minor stuff sure - but compared to some of the problems our customers have with the competition no reason to switch (yet).
If anyone is still fighting with the home edition I'd recommend checking here: http://forums.mcafeehelp.com/ It's an official forum (not eidely publicised) but does tolerate people raising pertinent issues.
"If I buy a video once, do I need to buy it again to watch it on another computer? No. Once you buy a video, you can download it to other computers up to several times."
As another example, Redhat 7.3 is still maintained, albeit not by Redhat any more. "New" stuff doesn't always work as binaries because of library dependancies, but there are people still building for it - a Spanish newspaper provides Firefox binaries (search for "firefox elmundo 1.0.7"). There's always the compile-it-yourself option, of course.
What about piggybacking Quicktime downloads?
on
iTunes is Malware?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Not sure that tracking purchases is really "malware", but I'm certainly not a fan of the way that the default Quicktime download is "QuickTime 7 with iTunes 6".
If I wanted iTunes I'd download it - I don't want it appearing on my PC because I installed something else. There is (or was last time that I needed it) a non-iTunes version that you can find after lots of hunting around, but it's sharp practice at least to make it available this way.
What would be even more useful would be if "story quality" could be reviewed after the event, without knowing who was the submitter - although this might be tricky where submitter and story and connected.
My guess is that someone not familiar with OS installers isn't going to see much of a difference in difficulty between the XP installer and a recent Linux distro.
Both have strengths and weaknesses (I was surprised, the first time that I saw the XP installer on recent hardware, how much the hardware manufacturer had to "wrap" it to make the drivers available).
Both XP and Suse 9.3 eventually used all hardware on my current laptop (apart from the modem under Linux), but both required a bit of persuasion to be optimised for the hardware. Suse had to be persuaded to use display settings that it didn't think would work; XP had to go "around the loop" a few times to find drivers for some other bits of hardware but got the display working OK first time.
Someone who has never used a computer before would have struggled with both, but someone who's used PCs for years (but never installed or upgraded an OS) would have been able to get both working with about the same degree of difficulty for each.
The most important "missing applications" for business are probably in-house written custom stuff - maybe an old Access database, an old VB program that does something or other, or some front-end to a vertical application that's only available for Windows.
In most cases it'd be possible to replace the functionality with something that's platform-independant, but if "everyone uses XYZ" and it isn't broken badly enough to throw it away then it'll keep being used and it's OS requirements will be a requirement for the new PCs in the business.
In the unlikely event that someone responds to your "offer" you might actually be disappointed - the last MP3 player that I saw that was "very similar looking" to the iPod Nano was at an airport in Singapore - named something like the "i-Poo 5000". It appeared to be a low capacity flash player.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny you should say that - I know that I keep my Blackberry and cheapo consumer GPS in the same jacket pocket, the GPS occasionally resets "for no apparent reason". Different pocket, no problem.
Just one data point, of course - and if I'm in row 35 or wherever I suspect I'm not that close to a GPS antenna.
Oops - I've even used it for looking up places in Canada before now. Although if you centre Google Maps on New Brunswick you could be forgiven for thinking that there's lots of places in Maine just over the fence but only two roads in New Brunswick (and no towns). Only if you zoom in to within the province do you see Fredricton et al.
Having said that I travelled through New Brunswick a few years ago and all I remember were the trees...
Sort of - the last time that I looked maps.google.com covers the US, UK and Japan. Google Earth is worldwide - although the resolution is pretty variable, and the placename search is a bit ropy at times.
For example, search for "Bulawayo" even when that's the only placename shown in Google Earth doesn't find anywhere of that name. Mapquest at least knows where the city is and shows major roads.
Looking at it from a Linux perspective, this is the area that Microsoft seems to be furthest behind to me (with the software on XP). The last time that I looked there were at least three "Windows Update" versions - "Windows Update" (which seems to be called "Microsoft Update" these days), "Office Update", and MBSA.
Even if these were consolidated into one I can't see the third-party suppliers letting Microsoft manage their updates the way that equivalent Linux suppliers let the Linux distributions do.
For example, Realplayer and MS Media Player don't exactly "play well together" - I can't see Real agreeing to be included in some MS equivalent of Yast or apt-get. The equivalent Linux media players need the distributions and the distributions need the software - it's a beneficial relationship that doesn't exist in the Microsoft world. Windows XP thinks that it can do everything (there was an interview a while back with someone from Microsoft claiming I think that "everyone talks about iLife but no-one talks about Scanners and Cameras Wizard") but it sometimes doesn't seem to recognise that sometimes other people can do a better job than you and if it's selling your OS - that's still good for you.
We've got 3rd-party applications as the standard for many things on Windows, how about a 3rd-party package manager? With a trustworthy name behind it it could make sense. It would have to be free at the point of use, though...
The point isn't that app X on Linux as "nearly as good" or "as good as" app Y on Windows, it's that, when it comes to hiring, there are people out there who know app Y but not app X.
App X has to be (a) better in some way (to get people to switch) and (b) easy to use by people familiar with app Y (to stop them giving up after 5 minutes).
You've just described mainstream radio in the US.
If we're talking Internet radio, you've got other options. Just picking a few English speaking places for starters, you could try Ireland, South Africa, Australia or the UK. I'm sure that there's crap broadcast from all of these places (for any definition of crap, there certainly is in the UK), but there's non-crap too.
Internet Radio is only a "silly idea" when it's restricted to a wired network. It doesn't require a gaze that far into the future to see most electronics devices (where it makes sense - I'm not talking fridges here) to be internet connected.
Early in the previous century my granny (in the UK) had what I think was called I think "radio relay". It worked because a radio receiver was unfeasibly expensive for many people, but a box with a loudspeaker in it connected to a cable was a lot cheaper to rent. I think that there were exactly two radio stations at the time in the UK at the time and so it was easy to carry!
I don't think that they stayed around long as the price of receivers came down. The same will happen with "Internet radio" - the idea that something with a radio receiver in it should NOT have an internet connection will soon be pretty odd. There won't be "Broadcast, Satellite and Internet" radio, there'll just be "radio".
(for what it's worth, currently listening to RTE from Irelend in the UK)
I think last.fm's "similar artists" link is working the way that it is supposed to - it does what it says on the tin. The actual radio player works similarly to what it sounds like you want.
If you want to find new stuff, start the radio and select "discovery mode" off the settings menu - it'll only play stuff it hasn't played before.
If you hear something that you don't want to, hit "skip". It'll learn.
I suspect that what's happening here is that data from Audioscrobbler ("what tracks are like / liked by people who like other tracks") is there but the actual track that you're after isn't yet, for example:
+ of+Old+England
http://www.last.fm/music/Les+Barker/_/Hard+Cheese
Ones that are have a "preview" button, like this one:
http://www.last.fm/music/Runrig/_/Ribhinn+Donn
(to take the example of what happens to be playing at the moment).
...but it is now back (and has been for a few hours).
Not because there's inherently anything wrong with it, but the framework download is 23Mb and therefore isn't exactly "fairly small".
Of course, if you can guarantee that the framework will already be there everywhere you're going to install, then it's not an issue.
If power's coming and going that often you need something. As well as handling short power-outs without any problems, even the consumer-level ones can provide some monitoring of the input voltage. If you're having trouble getting the cash signed off, "I can't start this machine without it" should help.
However, it does sound though like you need to get someone competent to check over the electricity supply. I'm not, and neither are you. I'm assuming that you're in the US (from the 120v comment) and I'm surprised that having outlets on three phases in one room in an office environment isn't against the building regulations over there. I suspect that all it needs is someone to plug a machine with dual PSUs into two different phases and a bit of dodgy wiring for some very interesting results.
If your boss won't stand the cost of that you might want to check out your health insurance plan.
> If ActiveX was off by default, how would people use Windows Update?
With Windows XP you'd have the "autoupdate" and "bits" services running all the time, and you'd have automatic updates set to download and install updates automatically. No need to browse to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ - just click "yes to reboot now" when prompted.
This is what MS intended, and for someone with no idea what updates are (never mind what a particular update is for), it probably makes sense - same as it makes sense to control what your computer connects to and when if you know how to.
The ICL DRS300 (I saw them in around 1988, but I suspect the design was earlier) was like this, but not quite as B&O looking. Somehow the ICL cream livery (matching the 1970's paint scheme of many of the UK councils where many of them ended up) didn't quite carry it off.
It had a Z80 in it I think and ran CCPM / Concurrent DOS (possibly as an alternative to something else - it was all a long time ago). Horrible machine. I seem to remember that the language that we were using on it didn't have working serial port access (which was a drawback when you're trying to communicate with various RS232 connected devices around a factory) so we had to adapt one from elsewhere - I had never expected reading the back pages of the ZX Spectrum manual to ever come in useful.
Give him a break - if he works in a computer store chances are he could only recommend the home versions of McAfee or Norton, since that's probably all the shop stocks, and it might be career-limiting to suggest anything else. I haven't seen boxed product for anything else for ages.
It's probably worth mentioning at this point that there's McAfee and there's McAfee - I was a (happy) customer of the home version until a forced "upgrade" to version 8 (I'd only tried to renew the DAT download licence). McAfee 8 is reliant on IE (as was the home version of Norton last time I looked) and doesn't work if IE is configured in a way that I'd consider remotely secure. I was also unimpressed with the way that it tried to replace MS' security centre and impose its own, claiming that I was "unprotected" without McAfee firewall (in spite of a software firewall from another manufacturer). Uninstalling it is also "interesting" including stuff in the registry referring to temp directories (ugh).
However, the non-home version I've used for years with a business hat on and haven't had a major issue with. Minor stuff sure - but compared to some of the problems our customers have with the competition no reason to switch (yet).
If anyone is still fighting with the home edition I'd recommend checking here: http://forums.mcafeehelp.com/
It's an official forum (not eidely publicised) but does tolerate people raising pertinent issues.
The download link for most of the random free stuff requires Javascript - maybe that's the problem?
"If I buy a video once, do I need to buy it again to watch it on another computer?
No. Once you buy a video, you can download it to other computers up to several times."
I wonder how many "several" is?
As another example, Redhat 7.3 is still maintained, albeit not by Redhat any more. "New" stuff doesn't always work as binaries because of library dependancies, but there are people still building for it - a Spanish newspaper provides Firefox binaries (search for "firefox elmundo 1.0.7"). There's always the compile-it-yourself option, of course.
Not sure that tracking purchases is really "malware", but I'm certainly not a fan of the way that the default Quicktime download is "QuickTime 7 with iTunes 6".
If I wanted iTunes I'd download it - I don't want it appearing on my PC because I installed something else. There is (or was last time that I needed it) a non-iTunes version that you can find after lots of hunting around, but it's sharp practice at least to make it available this way.
Excellent idea.
What would be even more useful would be if "story quality" could be reviewed after the event, without knowing who was the submitter - although this might be tricky where submitter and story and connected.
My guess is that someone not familiar with OS installers isn't going to see much of a difference in difficulty between the XP installer and a recent Linux distro.
Both have strengths and weaknesses (I was surprised, the first time that I saw the XP installer on recent hardware, how much the hardware manufacturer had to "wrap" it to make the drivers available).
Both XP and Suse 9.3 eventually used all hardware on my current laptop (apart from the modem under Linux), but both required a bit of persuasion to be optimised for the hardware. Suse had to be persuaded to use display settings that it didn't think would work; XP had to go "around the loop" a few times to find drivers for some other bits of hardware but got the display working OK first time.
Someone who has never used a computer before would have struggled with both, but someone who's used PCs for years (but never installed or upgraded an OS) would have been able to get both working with about the same degree of difficulty for each.
The most important "missing applications" for business are probably in-house written custom stuff - maybe an old Access database, an old VB program that does something or other, or some front-end to a vertical application that's only available for Windows.
In most cases it'd be possible to replace the functionality with something that's platform-independant, but if "everyone uses XYZ" and it isn't broken badly enough to throw it away then it'll keep being used and it's OS requirements will be a requirement for the new PCs in the business.
In the unlikely event that someone responds to your "offer" you might actually be disappointed - the last MP3 player that I saw that was "very similar looking" to the iPod Nano was at an airport in Singapore - named something like the "i-Poo 5000". It appeared to be a low capacity flash player.
...and it's not even written by Jack Schofield.
Pass the sick bag, Alice.