I loved OS/2 also, and yes, I even used Warp 4.0 for a while. (In all honesty, Warp 4.0 was the first really "mature" OS/2 release in many ways. It finally added such things as alternate fonts that looked better on laptops with LCD panels, colored tabs for menus, and an all-around more "polished" look and feel.)
I don't think it's quite fair to change your opinion that it was "a really great OS" based on trying it 8 years later and finding it lacking.
Show me *any* OS that doesn't get updated or supported with new drivers for 8 years and still offers a user-friendly and pleasing experience when it's installed on modern hardware!
If anything, I think it's a testament to the quality put into OS/2 that people do still run it (on older hardware) in production environments, and at least a few people cared enough about it to try to keep it alive (as e/Comstation).
Ultimately though, this product was dead as soon as IBM declared it so. They only half-heartedly tried to get 3rd. parties to support the thing, even in its heyday. (IBM was trying to walk a thin line between pushing OS/2 and kissing Microsoft's butt. They still sold a lot of IBM servers with Windows NT workstation or server pre-loaded on them, don't forget!) Most vendors were probably somewhat happy to hear of OS/2's demise. One less thing to have to keep developing drivers for.....
Ehh... I dunno. I think companies should do what's usually done in these situations; offer a varied product line of similar devices, each with different feature sets.
You can't please "all of the people all of the time", of course - but trying to make one handheld do it all is a big mistake.
Cellphone makers haven't quite learned this advice either, as a general rule. I think that's why you still see a lot of people using really outdated phones. They just want to talk on the thing and place calls easily. They don't want a stinkin' camera in their phone, or a video arcade of cheezy games, nor do they really care if it functions as an internet terminal with an undersized display. Motorola didn't often have the feature-packed phones that others offered, but they remained good sellers because they kept their menus largely the same across product lines. People learned the Motorola menu structure (and liked only having a few buttons to navigate with), so they kept buying what they knew how to use efficiently.
Modularizing PDA components wirelessly leads to a lot of potential complexity and problems that I think are best avoided. (EG. More power consumption if all these pieces have to wirelessly chat with each other, and risk of interference breaking off communications intermittently.)
Yes, I'll second that! Although I've long since burnt myself out on the game - I vividly recall getting ahold of a copy of the original Civ right before Xmas.
I ended up staying up all Xmas eve and was shocked when my folks came in my room to wake me up, because people were downstairs opening their gifts!
I had a brief, but similar addiction when Civ II was released, but I got over it in a day or two. Civ III was nicely done too, but I only got the "bug" to play it continuously for about 1 day this last time....
I bought Silent Hill 2 due to some of the hype about it being so scary, etc.
All I found was frustration at the sluggish pace the character moved. All I can say is it's a good thing this game wasn't picked to bundle with the PS2 when it was new! It sure didn't showcase the performance of the console.
I'd try to attack a mutant, and it felt like you had to bang on the buttons 5 or 6 times to get him to take one swing with a stick.
I realize you could edit the MSDOS.SYS (or use a tool like TweakUI) and hack it so it starts at a command prompt.
Problem is, the MS-DOS, v7.0 running beneath it was not nearly refined enough to keep DOS a viable product. Microsoft was hell-bent on killing DOS, as you can see by the steps they took throughout Windows '9x updates to hide the DOS layer from plain view.
Finally, by Win2K, DOS was eliminated completely.
What I had in mind (among other things) was a DOS that automatically saw the total amount of RAM in a system and could auto-allocate any of it as EMS or XMS on demand, without need for loading device drivers in CONFIG.SYS to "manage" the memory. In fact, it seems like they could have designed it so conventional memory always appeared to still be a full 640K, no matter how many devices you told it to load into conventional. That way, all the old hassles of juggling device drivers around and running "memmaker" would vanish.
Hey! You're never too old to realize trading freedom for security is a bad idea!
I'm against terrorism as much as the next guy, but let's look at the facts here. Government is never going to release official documents giving true statistics on how often interception of secure communications resulted in capture of a terrorist.
Say they invade the privacy of 50,000 individuals, and mistakenly go after 25 people from this information. Finally, they get 2 terrorists. What do you think the news is going to say? I'd wager it'll trump up how "2 suspected terrorists were captured today, thanks to interception of emails between them and known Al Queida leaders."
It's not that you're receiving incorrect information/news. It's simply that it's filtered.
In any case, I'm a firm believer in giving people the tools they need to accomplish a task, and letting them take charge of their own destinies. Opportunistic encryption is certainly a nice "tool" to add to the computer toolbox.
Right now, the biggest problem we face with encryption tools is automatic suspicion we're doing "something bad/wrong" just because we use it. If it gets rolled into OS's as a default option, that silly argument vanishes.
That's crazy! Plenty of people establish IPSec connections all the time as part of the default configuration for remote VPN access into corporate LANs.
Any ISP that sees IPSec traffic and thinks you're hacking is #1, spending entirely too much time snooping around what you're doing online, and #2, is clueless and not worthy of your monthly payment.
I'd certainly not make a statement that "this will never work" based on unknowledgeable ISPs.
If it catches on, the ISP's will quickly learn about it anyway....
Hey, I've been saying since the first release of Windows 3.0 -- if you're working solely with text, you're going to be better off in a text environment!
In a way, I think Windows took a step backwards when they eliminated MS-DOS and made Windows the whole OS. I mean, getting rid of the old 16-bit DOS code made sense, but things might have been more flexible if they just put some work into a major DOS upgrade - and made Windows '9x launch from DOS optionally, like Win 3.x did.
Look at all the work MS had to put into making the DOS compatibility layer run as many older apps as possible. Instead of that, I would have preferred a Win environment with no "DOS commnand prompt" or "DOS box" of any kind. If you want to run DOS apps, you just do it without typing "win" to start Windows up.
The GUI does make things easier for *desktop publishing*, where you're working with multiple fonts and graphics interspersed with your text. For "typewriter simulating", like most offices still do with their computers, a GUI is just needless overhead!
Sometimes, it really does amaze me that the computer industry is so worked up over what to do with recycling of old systems and all the computers getting thrown in the garbage - yet they act like getting more use out of the older ones isn't possibly an option.
I'm currently working for a small company that reclaims and refurbishes old Apple Mac systems (everything from the black and white 9" screen SE's and Classics to the first generation of PowerMacs). People give the things to us for free all the time, since they're written off as useless junk. In fact, we're able to get them configured as pretty nice little "starter" systems for students, small children, and public-access machines for the elderly in retirement homes.
Some of the best "classic" games and educational titles of all time ran on these computers, and there's no reason a 3 or 4 year old kid today won't find them just as exciting as kids did back when these machines first came out!
Remember Oregon Trail? How about KidPix, Print Shop Deluxe, Lode Runner, Prince of Persia, and all the Scholastic educational games/software?
For the older folks, there's plenty of great freeware and shareware: monopoly, GNU chess (who even needs a color screen for chess?), backgammon, card games, Shanghai (the matching tile game), and much more.
Claris Works runs quite well on the old Macs too, and gives students a real inexpensive solution for typing papers, not to mention simple spreadsheets.
At some point in time, I plan on putting together a nice system build for old DOS machines too, full of kids' games and educational titles - and see if we can't give some old 8088's and 286/386 machines a new life too.
Those old systems were built like tanks compared to what's offered today. Look at how heavy a real IBM keyboard (or machine) is! Small children aren't going to break one of those as easily as they will some cheap eMachines mini-tower.
Actually, the recording industry was quoted (by ZDNet) as saying they went along with this largely as an experiment. They knew Apple only had a small market share, so it's an easy way to offer a new service in a limited, controlled way to see how it does.
As some folks pointed out though, the Mac community may not really be representative of the general public. For one thing, Mac users are disproportionately interested in the media, liberal arts, music production, etc. A case could be made that folks oriented towards these fields would be more likely than average to feel like they need to pay for the music they listen to, to support the artists and producers.
Where (I think) things will get interesting is when Apple completes work on a version of the iTunes software for Windows. (They're running a "want ad" right now, trying to hire a senior software engineer to write this app for them.)
When this comes about, it will certainly put pressure on any other paid music download sites. I'd imagine they'll demand parity with the relaxed rules/restrictions on use granted to Apple for their online store.
Did they discuss "all in one" wireless routers?
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I recently was paid to get a wireless network working (as well as fix some shared Internet connectivity problems in general) for a client.
When I arrived, I found out the client had everything running through a Belkin firewall/router device with built in 802.1g wi-fi. (It was attached to an external DSL modem via ethernet cable.)
It struck me that unless I'm missing something, these combo wi-fi bases/routers are inherently limiting in how much security they can offer the user. (EG. You can't really place the wireless clients behind some sort of a VPN tunnel with authentication if the other end of the wi-fi connection is managed by integrated firmware in the router itself, right?)
I ended up enabling 128-bit WEP for the guy, as well as disabling "broadcasting" of the existance of the router/w-fi base, but couldn't see much else to do beyond those measures.
Yep! I think many people who haven't recently tried using a temp. agency falsely assume they have plenty of assignments to hand out to all takers.
When I was unemployed for about 6 months, I tried a number of temp. agencies, and had really poor results. I didn't even limit myself to I.T. type jobs either. I told them I'd accept data entry or pretty much any job using typing/computer skills.
One firm placed me on a "data entry" assignment, but it turned out to actually involve medical claims processing/eligibility - with relatively little data entry. In the first week, we realized that of the 50 or 60 people they'd brought in for the assignment, they really only planned to test us for a little while to find out who could do all the paperwork the fastest (with the least errors), and offer permanent jobs to 5 or 6 of us. The rest, they'd just let go.
I tried my best, but I just wasn't one of the top 5 quickest people there, so I got the axe in no time. Funny, but the temp. agency that got me this first job had absolutely no interest in placing me anywhere else after that.
No, I don't "discount all studies", simply because it's possible to create fradulent ones. I simply question them, and demand better than cursory summaries of their findings before I'm willing to accept them.
My basic point was (I think) similar to what you're saying, actually. This study may well have been correct when it was done, but times have changed. The average "beginning computer user" of today has likely started out using a 2 or 3 button mouse on a PC at the local library, a friend's house, or at work/school. Holding down a "modifier" key on a keyboard is going to be awkward and non-intuitive for them. (It's not like Apple even labels the mouse with any indicator of which keyboard key works with it!)
And ok, perhaps I should have worded my comment about OS X better. OS X is based on BSD Unix, and Apple themselves even offer an X11 environment to run on top of it. X11 is most definitely more user-friendly with a multi-button mouse. X11 is also something that was never fathomed to be part of the Apple Mac equation back when this study was performed.
There is a difference though. AIDS is largely spread by infected individuals performing unsafe practices that lead to infecting others.
In a number of cases, people with AIDS are known to have been consciously trying their best to infect as many others as possible, in some sort of misguided retaliation for getting the disease.
You're not going to be innocently standing by someone infected with the AIDS virus and catch it from them.
While I do believe it's important to continue with AIDS research, I also can see how there would be a more pressing desire to find a quick cure for a disease that people are catching simply by breathing it in.
Yeah, no kidding! I find that extremely frustrating, because I have a Linux web server running 24 hours/7 days here at home, and it could easily be crunching some data for UD while it sits, mostly idle.
Those of us, like myself, who have EasyNews subscriptions, like to use the UD client because it lets you earn gigs. of download credit for every X number of days of processing you do.
Bleah.... you can find a study (or create one) to prove just about anything.
Nowdays, I'm not at all convinced the 1-button mouse idea makes sense. It may have been ok when Apple first got started with the Mac. (Back then, a number of computers had one-button mice. I had a Tandy Color Computer with a 1 button mouse, for example.)
The X environment is really designed around and optimized for multi-button mice. Since Apple now uses OS X, they really need to offer 2 or 3 button mice to match the operating system.
Any time you "dumb down" an interface, you can make the argument that it makes using it less "error-prone", but that's not always the whole story. If my keyboard had half the number of keys it has now, users would hit incorrect keys less often too. That doesn't mean it would be a good idea to sell keyboards with half the number of keys on them!
I often see Apple software working around the 1-button mouse limitation by having the user hold the button down for more than 1 or 2 seconds. A menu box will then change to show a secondary set of selections. To me, this is not only unintuitive (why would a user assume that holding the button down longer would change the menu choices?), but it's a time-waster. It takes a fraction of a second to click a second button, instead of holding down the only button for a while.
When Microsoft gets worked up enough about a technology to start publically attacking it, you know it's got something going for it.
Most of the time, Microsoft pretends competing products simply don't exist, and they ignore them, or they attempt to buy them out and re-brand them as their own.
Like it or hate it, Microsoft is the dominant market force right now, just as IBM once was before MS. Linux presents a threat that companies like Microsoft never had to deal with before. "How do you compete with a freely distributed product that's arguably superior to yours?"
Well, the first thing that comes to mind is to attack it with propaganda. Discredit it. Cast doubt and uncertainty, so its potential users are scared away from it.
That's exactly what we're seeing here - and I think it illustrates the foothold that Linux is getting in the marketplace.
Well, one would hope that the good folks at NASA have a little more scientific background than you did as a child trying to whack ants with a glass bottle.
I suspect this is, as usual, a case of the news media not really understanding/grasping the whole story. They hear something about a "bunker buster missle" and the moon, and immediately say "NASA wants to blast the moon with missles!"
As another Slashdot reader already posted, the plan appeared to actually be using a few of these missles as an easy way to implant monitoring devices beneath the moon's surface. (Sounds a lot cheaper and more effective than trying to fly some sort of drilling/mining equipment there to get the job done, don't you think?)
The biggest reason those cards weren't "wildly successful" was their price, if I recall correctly.
In the heyday of these offerings, it was about the same price to buy a complete, seperate PC system. Many folks said "Where's the logic in adding PC support to my Mac when I can own a full PC system for the same money?"
The only market they really captured was the niche of people wanting to run both PC and Mac applications, but not willing to give up any more space in their home or workplace for another computer.
Also, these devices were still add-on cards, which always lack some of the integration of having the compatibility truly "built in" to the system. The beauty of a PC, in many ways, is the "box of slots" nature of the thing. You have thousands of possibilities in the way of PCI, AGP (or in the past, ISA or EISA) cards. Want a special purpose graphics card? Just buy it and drop it in! Special high-speed serial ports for a multi-line BBS system, perhaps? Just buy a "Digiboard" and get 8 or more ports. With a PC on a card, you're limited to what's actually on the card itself, or what it's able to use on the Mac's own board.
While I'm not so sure Apple has any interest in going the "PC compatibility" route again - I do think it would be a much different story if the compatibility was truly on the motherboard.
I absolutely agree with you, but just for the record - I've found these web sites like dslreports that claim to report how far you are from the telco central office are often inaccurate.
Where I live, for example, it still tells me I'm about 14,000 feet from the C.O. so DSL performance will be iffy at best.
Actually, a remote station was installed right by my house, about a year ago, so DSL works great for me. Apparently, these web sites don't have updated information about the remote stations the telcos often set up to extend the range of DSL-capable subscribers.
I'm not qualified to speak for the knowledge and credentials of the developers of the popular p2p file sharing programs. Are you?
In any case, I think there's plenty of issues with the de-facto standard protocols that have been in use for years (such as ftp). (Security is a prime one, to the point where you have to run half the stuff through ssh just to ensure people don't sniff your logins.)
p2p software, like everything else, will evolve as it's used.
Re: You'd be surprised.... some aren't!
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I just looked at Postal 2, for example, and it say quite clearly that any unauthorized level creation for the game is strictly prohibited.
For a game based on an Unreal engine, it's hard to believe they're being so short-sighted.... but I guess they figure the entire "value" in their product is in the creative way they changed the characters and gameplay.
Actually, I think you *do* get it - and unfortunately, many folks seem to be overlooking the obvious in their quest for a higher-tech and more convenient lifestyle.
There simply won't be any more guarantee that any of us are really who we claim to be, just because we hold a "smartcard" that identifies us as being a certain person.
In fact, most banks/lenders currently require 3 forms of I.D. to do such things as open a new checking account. That's because the closest thing to a guarantee of identity they have is forcing you to provide multiple proofs. Putting all the proverbial eggs in one basket, as a smartcard does, doesn't make much sense to me.
Exactly! The U.S. federal government seems to be trying to side-step much of this issue by paying people on published pay-scales. Everyone is able to look up the salary, within a few thousand dollars, that is earned by anyone with a specific rank.
I've never understood why more private businesses didn't work the same way - unless like you say, it's merely to make it easier to underpay specific people/departments, or to allow unequal pay for equally qualified employees.
As for the "ethical" question of whether or not I'd look at a file containing "confidential" salaries - I think the answer depends on where this file was placed. (EG. If it's on Human Resource's private file share on a server, and I can only view it by logging in with a user account I'm not supposed to have - then no. I'm not going to do that. If they screw up and copy the file into *my* personal folder, then yeah - I'm taking a look at it. It's *their* problem if they screwed up and gave me access to it.) I would not, however, ever redistribute such a document, if it was marked classified/confidential. That's clearly an act that's asking to get fired or disciplined over.
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I loved OS/2 also, and yes, I even used Warp 4.0 for a while. (In all honesty, Warp 4.0 was the first really "mature" OS/2 release in many ways. It finally added such things as alternate fonts that looked better on laptops with LCD panels, colored tabs for menus, and an all-around more "polished" look and feel.)
I don't think it's quite fair to change your opinion that it was "a really great OS" based on trying it 8 years later and finding it lacking.
Show me *any* OS that doesn't get updated or supported with new drivers for 8 years and still offers a user-friendly and pleasing experience when it's installed on modern hardware!
If anything, I think it's a testament to the quality put into OS/2 that people do still run it (on older hardware) in production environments, and at least a few people cared enough about it to try to keep it alive (as e/Comstation).
Ultimately though, this product was dead as soon as IBM declared it so. They only half-heartedly tried to get 3rd. parties to support the thing, even in its heyday. (IBM was trying to walk a thin line between pushing OS/2 and kissing Microsoft's butt. They still sold a lot of IBM servers with Windows NT workstation or server pre-loaded on them, don't forget!) Most vendors were probably somewhat happy to hear of OS/2's demise. One less thing to have to keep developing drivers for.....
Ehh... I dunno. I think companies should do what's usually done in these situations; offer a varied product line of similar devices, each with different feature sets.
You can't please "all of the people all of the time", of course - but trying to make one handheld do it all is a big mistake.
Cellphone makers haven't quite learned this advice either, as a general rule. I think that's why you still see a lot of people using really outdated phones. They just want to talk on the thing and place calls easily. They don't want a stinkin' camera in their phone, or a video arcade of cheezy games, nor do they really care if it functions as an internet terminal with an undersized display. Motorola didn't often have the feature-packed phones that others offered, but they remained good sellers because they kept their menus largely the same across product lines. People learned the Motorola menu structure (and liked only having a few buttons to navigate with), so they kept buying what they knew how to use efficiently.
Modularizing PDA components wirelessly leads to a lot of potential complexity and problems that I think are best avoided. (EG. More power consumption if all these pieces have to wirelessly chat with each other, and risk of interference breaking off communications intermittently.)
Yes, I'll second that! Although I've long since burnt myself out on the game - I vividly recall getting ahold of a copy of the original Civ right before Xmas.
I ended up staying up all Xmas eve and was shocked when my folks came in my room to wake me up, because people were downstairs opening their gifts!
I had a brief, but similar addiction when Civ II was released, but I got over it in a day or two. Civ III was nicely done too, but I only got the "bug" to play it continuously for about 1 day this last time....
Ick!
I bought Silent Hill 2 due to some of the hype about it being so scary, etc.
All I found was frustration at the sluggish pace the character moved. All I can say is it's a good thing this game wasn't picked to bundle with the PS2 when it was new! It sure didn't showcase the performance of the console.
I'd try to attack a mutant, and it felt like you had to bang on the buttons 5 or 6 times to get him to take one swing with a stick.
No, Win '9x was NOT designed as I wished it was.
I realize you could edit the MSDOS.SYS (or use a tool like TweakUI) and hack it so it starts at a command prompt.
Problem is, the MS-DOS, v7.0 running beneath it was not nearly refined enough to keep DOS a viable product. Microsoft was hell-bent on killing DOS, as you can see by the steps they took throughout Windows '9x updates to hide the DOS layer from plain view.
Finally, by Win2K, DOS was eliminated completely.
What I had in mind (among other things) was a DOS that automatically saw the total amount of RAM in a system and could auto-allocate any of it as EMS or XMS on demand, without need for loading device drivers in CONFIG.SYS to "manage" the memory. In fact, it seems like they could have designed it so conventional memory always appeared to still be a full 640K, no matter how many devices you told it to load into conventional. That way, all the old hassles of juggling device drivers around and running "memmaker" would vanish.
Hey! You're never too old to realize trading freedom for security is a bad idea!
I'm against terrorism as much as the next guy, but let's look at the facts here. Government is never going to release official documents giving true statistics on how often interception of secure communications resulted in capture of a terrorist.
Say they invade the privacy of 50,000 individuals, and mistakenly go after 25 people from this information. Finally, they get 2 terrorists. What do you think the news is going to say? I'd wager it'll trump up how "2 suspected terrorists were captured today, thanks to interception of emails between them and known Al Queida leaders."
It's not that you're receiving incorrect information/news. It's simply that it's filtered.
In any case, I'm a firm believer in giving people the tools they need to accomplish a task, and letting them take charge of their own destinies. Opportunistic encryption is certainly a nice "tool" to add to the computer toolbox.
Right now, the biggest problem we face with encryption tools is automatic suspicion we're doing "something bad/wrong" just because we use it. If it gets rolled into OS's as a default option, that silly argument vanishes.
That's crazy! Plenty of people establish IPSec connections all the time as part of the default configuration for remote VPN access into corporate LANs.
Any ISP that sees IPSec traffic and thinks you're hacking is #1, spending entirely too much time snooping around what you're doing online, and #2, is clueless and not worthy of your monthly payment.
I'd certainly not make a statement that "this will never work" based on unknowledgeable ISPs.
If it catches on, the ISP's will quickly learn about it anyway....
Hey, I've been saying since the first release of Windows 3.0 -- if you're working solely with text, you're going to be better off in a text environment!
In a way, I think Windows took a step backwards when they eliminated MS-DOS and made Windows the whole OS. I mean, getting rid of the old 16-bit DOS code made sense, but things might have been more flexible if they just put some work into a major DOS upgrade - and made Windows '9x launch from DOS optionally, like Win 3.x did.
Look at all the work MS had to put into making the DOS compatibility layer run as many older apps as possible. Instead of that, I would have preferred a Win environment with no "DOS commnand prompt" or "DOS box" of any kind. If you want to run DOS apps, you just do it without typing "win" to start Windows up.
The GUI does make things easier for *desktop publishing*, where you're working with multiple fonts and graphics interspersed with your text. For "typewriter simulating", like most offices still do with their computers, a GUI is just needless overhead!
Sometimes, it really does amaze me that the computer industry is so worked up over what to do with recycling of old systems and all the computers getting thrown in the garbage - yet they act like getting more use out of the older ones isn't possibly an option.
I'm currently working for a small company that reclaims and refurbishes old Apple Mac systems (everything from the black and white 9" screen SE's and Classics to the first generation of PowerMacs). People give the things to us for free all the time, since they're written off as useless junk. In fact, we're able to get them configured as pretty nice little "starter" systems for students, small children, and public-access machines for the elderly in retirement homes.
Some of the best "classic" games and educational titles of all time ran on these computers, and there's no reason a 3 or 4 year old kid today won't find them just as exciting as kids did back when these machines first came out!
Remember Oregon Trail? How about KidPix, Print Shop Deluxe, Lode Runner, Prince of Persia, and all the Scholastic educational games/software?
For the older folks, there's plenty of great freeware and shareware: monopoly, GNU chess (who even needs a color screen for chess?), backgammon, card games, Shanghai (the matching tile game), and much more.
Claris Works runs quite well on the old Macs too, and gives students a real inexpensive solution for typing papers, not to mention simple spreadsheets.
At some point in time, I plan on putting together a nice system build for old DOS machines too, full of kids' games and educational titles - and see if we can't give some old 8088's and 286/386 machines a new life too.
Those old systems were built like tanks compared to what's offered today. Look at how heavy a real IBM keyboard (or machine) is! Small children aren't going to break one of those as easily as they will some cheap eMachines mini-tower.
Actually, the recording industry was quoted (by ZDNet) as saying they went along with this largely as an experiment. They knew Apple only had a small market share, so it's an easy way to offer a new service in a limited, controlled way to see how it does.
As some folks pointed out though, the Mac community may not really be representative of the general public. For one thing, Mac users are disproportionately interested in the media, liberal arts, music production, etc. A case could be made that folks oriented towards these fields would be more likely than average to feel like they need to pay for the music they listen to, to support the artists and producers.
Where (I think) things will get interesting is when Apple completes work on a version of the iTunes software for Windows. (They're running a "want ad" right now, trying to hire a senior software engineer to write this app for them.)
When this comes about, it will certainly put pressure on any other paid music download sites. I'd imagine they'll demand parity with the relaxed rules/restrictions on use granted to Apple for their online store.
I recently was paid to get a wireless network working (as well as fix some shared Internet connectivity problems in general) for a client.
When I arrived, I found out the client had everything running through a Belkin firewall/router device with built in 802.1g wi-fi. (It was attached to an external DSL modem via ethernet cable.)
It struck me that unless I'm missing something, these combo wi-fi bases/routers are inherently limiting in how much security they can offer the user. (EG. You can't really place the wireless clients behind some sort of a VPN tunnel with authentication if the other end of the wi-fi connection is managed by integrated firmware in the router itself, right?)
I ended up enabling 128-bit WEP for the guy, as well as disabling "broadcasting" of the existance of the router/w-fi base, but couldn't see much else to do beyond those measures.
Yep! I think many people who haven't recently tried using a temp. agency falsely assume they have plenty of assignments to hand out to all takers.
When I was unemployed for about 6 months, I tried a number of temp. agencies, and had really poor results. I didn't even limit myself to I.T. type jobs either. I told them I'd accept data entry or pretty much any job using typing/computer skills.
One firm placed me on a "data entry" assignment, but it turned out to actually involve medical claims processing/eligibility - with relatively little data entry. In the first week, we realized that of the 50 or 60 people they'd brought in for the assignment, they really only planned to test us for a little while to find out who could do all the paperwork the fastest (with the least errors), and offer permanent jobs to 5 or 6 of us. The rest, they'd just let go.
I tried my best, but I just wasn't one of the top 5 quickest people there, so I got the axe in no time. Funny, but the temp. agency that got me this first job had absolutely no interest in placing me anywhere else after that.
No, I don't "discount all studies", simply because it's possible to create fradulent ones. I simply question them, and demand better than cursory summaries of their findings before I'm willing to accept them.
My basic point was (I think) similar to what you're saying, actually. This study may well have been correct when it was done, but times have changed. The average "beginning computer user" of today has likely started out using a 2 or 3 button mouse on a PC at the local library, a friend's house, or at work/school. Holding down a "modifier" key on a keyboard is going to be awkward and non-intuitive for them. (It's not like Apple even labels the mouse with any indicator of which keyboard key works with it!)
And ok, perhaps I should have worded my comment about OS X better. OS X is based on BSD Unix, and Apple themselves even offer an X11 environment to run on top of it. X11 is most definitely more user-friendly with a multi-button mouse. X11 is also something that was never fathomed to be part of the Apple Mac equation back when this study was performed.
There is a difference though. AIDS is largely spread by infected individuals performing unsafe practices that lead to infecting others.
In a number of cases, people with AIDS are known to have been consciously trying their best to infect as many others as possible, in some sort of misguided retaliation for getting the disease.
You're not going to be innocently standing by someone infected with the AIDS virus and catch it from them.
While I do believe it's important to continue with AIDS research, I also can see how there would be a more pressing desire to find a quick cure for a disease that people are catching simply by breathing it in.
Yeah, no kidding! I find that extremely frustrating, because I have a Linux web server running 24 hours/7 days here at home, and it could easily be crunching some data for UD while it sits, mostly idle.
Those of us, like myself, who have EasyNews subscriptions, like to use the UD client because it lets you earn gigs. of download credit for every X number of days of processing you do.
Bleah.... you can find a study (or create one) to prove just about anything.
Nowdays, I'm not at all convinced the 1-button mouse idea makes sense. It may have been ok when Apple first got started with the Mac. (Back then, a number of computers had one-button mice. I had a Tandy Color Computer with a 1 button mouse, for example.)
The X environment is really designed around and optimized for multi-button mice. Since Apple now uses OS X, they really need to offer 2 or 3 button mice to match the operating system.
Any time you "dumb down" an interface, you can make the argument that it makes using it less "error-prone", but that's not always the whole story. If my keyboard had half the number of keys it has now, users would hit incorrect keys less often too. That doesn't mean it would be a good idea to sell keyboards with half the number of keys on them!
I often see Apple software working around the 1-button mouse limitation by having the user hold the button down for more than 1 or 2 seconds. A menu box will then change to show a secondary set of selections. To me, this is not only unintuitive (why would a user assume that holding the button down longer would change the menu choices?), but it's a time-waster. It takes a fraction of a second to click a second button, instead of holding down the only button for a while.
All you have to do is run a porn site. The porn people still pat each other on the back and throw web-site award parties in California.
Nobody else can justify the expense these days.
When Microsoft gets worked up enough about a technology to start publically attacking it, you know it's got something going for it.
Most of the time, Microsoft pretends competing products simply don't exist, and they ignore them, or they attempt to buy them out and re-brand them as their own.
Like it or hate it, Microsoft is the dominant market force right now, just as IBM once was before MS. Linux presents a threat that companies like Microsoft never had to deal with before. "How do you compete with a freely distributed product that's arguably superior to yours?"
Well, the first thing that comes to mind is to attack it with propaganda. Discredit it. Cast doubt and uncertainty, so its potential users are scared away from it.
That's exactly what we're seeing here - and I think it illustrates the foothold that Linux is getting in the marketplace.
Well, one would hope that the good folks at NASA have a little more scientific background than you did as a child trying to whack ants with a glass bottle.
I suspect this is, as usual, a case of the news media not really understanding/grasping the whole story. They hear something about a "bunker buster missle" and the moon, and immediately say "NASA wants to blast the moon with missles!"
As another Slashdot reader already posted, the plan appeared to actually be using a few of these missles as an easy way to implant monitoring devices beneath the moon's surface. (Sounds a lot cheaper and more effective than trying to fly some sort of drilling/mining equipment there to get the job done, don't you think?)
The biggest reason those cards weren't "wildly successful" was their price, if I recall correctly.
In the heyday of these offerings, it was about the same price to buy a complete, seperate PC system. Many folks said "Where's the logic in adding PC support to my Mac when I can own a full PC system for the same money?"
The only market they really captured was the niche of people wanting to run both PC and Mac applications, but not willing to give up any more space in their home or workplace for another computer.
Also, these devices were still add-on cards, which always lack some of the integration of having the compatibility truly "built in" to the system. The beauty of a PC, in many ways, is the "box of slots" nature of the thing. You have thousands of possibilities in the way of PCI, AGP (or in the past, ISA or EISA) cards. Want a special purpose graphics card? Just buy it and drop it in! Special high-speed serial ports for a multi-line BBS system, perhaps? Just buy a "Digiboard" and get 8 or more ports. With a PC on a card, you're limited to what's actually on the card itself, or what it's able to use on the Mac's own board.
While I'm not so sure Apple has any interest in going the "PC compatibility" route again - I do think it would be a much different story if the compatibility was truly on the motherboard.
I absolutely agree with you, but just for the record - I've found these web sites like dslreports that claim to report how far you are from the telco central office are often inaccurate.
Where I live, for example, it still tells me I'm about 14,000 feet from the C.O. so DSL performance will be iffy at best.
Actually, a remote station was installed right by my house, about a year ago, so DSL works great for me. Apparently, these web sites don't have updated information about the remote stations the telcos often set up to extend the range of DSL-capable subscribers.
I'm not qualified to speak for the knowledge and credentials of the developers of the popular p2p file sharing programs. Are you?
In any case, I think there's plenty of issues with the de-facto standard protocols that have been in use for years (such as ftp). (Security is a prime one, to the point where you have to run half the stuff through ssh just to ensure people don't sniff your logins.)
p2p software, like everything else, will evolve as it's used.
I just looked at Postal 2, for example, and it say quite clearly that any unauthorized level creation for the game is strictly prohibited.
.... but I guess they figure the entire "value" in their product is in the creative way they changed the characters and gameplay.
For a game based on an Unreal engine, it's hard to believe they're being so short-sighted
Actually, I think you *do* get it - and unfortunately, many folks seem to be overlooking the obvious in their quest for a higher-tech and more convenient lifestyle.
There simply won't be any more guarantee that any of us are really who we claim to be, just because we hold a "smartcard" that identifies us as being a certain person.
In fact, most banks/lenders currently require 3 forms of I.D. to do such things as open a new checking account. That's because the closest thing to a guarantee of identity they have is forcing you to provide multiple proofs. Putting all the proverbial eggs in one basket, as a smartcard does, doesn't make much sense to me.
Exactly! The U.S. federal government seems to be trying to side-step much of this issue by paying people on published pay-scales. Everyone is able to look up the salary, within a few thousand dollars, that is earned by anyone with a specific rank.
I've never understood why more private businesses didn't work the same way - unless like you say, it's merely to make it easier to underpay specific people/departments, or to allow unequal pay for equally qualified employees.
As for the "ethical" question of whether or not I'd look at a file containing "confidential" salaries - I think the answer depends on where this file was placed. (EG. If it's on Human Resource's private file share on a server, and I can only view it by logging in with a user account I'm not supposed to have - then no. I'm not going to do that. If they screw up and copy the file into *my* personal folder, then yeah - I'm taking a look at it. It's *their* problem if they screwed up and gave me access to it.) I would not, however, ever redistribute such a document, if it was marked classified/confidential. That's clearly an act that's asking to get fired or disciplined over.