My cell provider having 37 million users, heavily advertising 3G even with the "network nightmare" 3G USB dongles has no issue with bandwidth, we are also overseas which means 100-200 ms ping response from American sites.
The GSM towers, routers etc. are really advanced devices of their own kind. They report everything including the bandwidth utilization. Even $30 el cheapo cable modem reports more than we actually need. Did you check the amount of data which is available via SNMP? Now imagine $100K, $200K cell tower.
Speaking of Arab TVs, the king of content delivery Akamai has took off Al Jazeera "from the air" (web) because of Sep. 11. That website of TV paid for the contract and they ended up without having a hosting provider. The TV, no matter what you hear about it is extremely mild, run by TV professionals, especially British (Ex BBC) and it is off the web just because it is "Arabic Owned" (UAE BTW) and they possibly had some mails from some idiots connecting that TV Network to Al Queda. (hopefully not @whitehouse.gov) It can't be financially motivated since Al Jazeera is considered as a very rich media company, run by some Arab Prince. These guys use Ikegami HD Cams as ordinary things while other TV stations (including CNN etc) struggle with Betacam SD in some cases.
If I was an American, I would be extremely alerted about the "net neutrality" discussions. That is Akamai doing it, imagine the rest... Like Murdoch buying some financially unstable Tier 0 network. Check the Tier 0 network owners, they are still recovering from dotcom crash...
Sadly, he works for AT&T who created the ultimate scalable state of art OS (and philosophy) UNIX. That AT&T in 1970s were doing things like that and now they whine about something which even a basic home user these days have knowledge about. Even home users started to do bandwidth planning especially for contract based subscriptions. If guy only cares about Youtube, Mail, Web, he gets 1Mbit line instead of 4-8+ MBit.
By targeting Apple iPhone and AT&T together, Verizon lost way too many potential customers. Industry rule is, never ever specifically target Apple since it is something like a cult. I know lots of people around me asking "So what the hell is Verizon and why they hate Apple?". I am thousands of kilometers away from USA, now that should be some real alerting thing.
AT&T could advertise involvement with UNIX (which many don't know), Verizon could inform people about why they have the largest coverage, why their speeds are so higher than the competition. All they do is childish "I do that, I do this" competition with lots of drama. iPhone is a damn UNIX device which is a fairly advanced smart phone in its own right, they should stop treating iPhone users or other smart phone/device users like bunch of rich morons.
Google really started to act like Microsoft, they are annoying their own customers and almost proud of it. Privacy organizations should sue them for this joke claiming to show what they know about you. It is just a freaking account control panel trick, nothing else. If it is _really_ what Google knows about a web surfer, their share price is not right and that should be investigated.
Note to Google (same thing I said to MS, Apple etc.): We aren't stupid.
I hate posting 2 line messages but if you look at http://www.phishtank.com/ which the data is community provided/validated and open, I have real bad feelings about the upcoming API. Hopefully they don't trust the general public to know what an API is while they keep clicking the links on spam mails they get.
I bet Opera, Mozilla guys and even Apple can drive their browser to insane speeds but they wouldn't do it. Why? Basically, they want CPU Arch and OS independency. Things and times are changing, ARM Linux and Symbian (with upcoming foundation release) aren't some "nerd fantasies" anymore. Everyone wants to stay compatible with them.
If I told you that Opera 9.5 mobile runs exactly, line by line, same C rendering engine as Opera Desktop, would you believe? That is the level of compatibility and being future ready. It already paid off for Opera ASA and Mozilla Mobile would have a huge market share if they maintained a Symbian S60 (high end) variant rendering engine just to stay ready for future.
I wasn't planning to use Chrome and I found out they don't even support PowerPC OS X. That is not the OS X maintainers fault who is a very capable coder, thing is full of X86 specific unportable code, that is the issue. You/They may laugh at "so 100(!) powerpc users won't have our browsers" but I see a very different issue with it, for the future.
Why did MS Struggle to code/keep Windows NT codebase perfectly compilable and running on a strange RISC CPU (i860 I guess) which nobody plans to use? They had to use preview boards or something, there weren't even any servers/workstations actually _using_ that CPU.
I have seen the work has to be done rolling a Firefox update to clients on a large enterprise network, a truly large one. I really understand your feelings and in fact, I really wished a Mozilla foundation "suit" should see the amount of that work and compare it to IE update/domain level changes which absolutely looked like some basic computer game in comparison.
MS was evilly clever to roll out that IAK right when IE 4 shipped (or 3?), the companies, ISPs and large portals (Yahoo etc) loved that idea. How many years have passed? It is absolutely stunning that they expect companies to download some third party supplied MSI.
Look what Skype does, that mainly end user P2P phone company who doesn't really know enterprise: http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/skype/windows/business/ , I picked it immediately for a single laptop office. It would still have advantage like "repair" even on a single company machine.
In fact, the days where Apple admins and large home network users ask for a.package (think like MSI for OS X) has come already. Even with Apple's genius "drag&drop" install method became pain at homes with 5+ computers.
Android has potential and has a big backer but it is absolutely nothing in mobile market. Opera Mini, which is only a state of art J2ME client with server on the other side has no reason not to be available on Android in future.
40% of global mobile browsing is being done by Opera Mini and it doesn't ask anything rather than sticking with web standards as much as possible. My argument is perfectly valid against every single "lets do an iphone site" webmaster who ignores the REAL numbers. It is same for Android, Blackberry, Symbian S60 and especially J2ME Opera Mini. I would be surprised if they knew the true stealthy, gigantic market size of J2ME and S40.
Doesn't modern planes have both "digital" and old fashion wire controls which also helps computer to validate sanity? Perhaps they should have both and in case something makes no sense at all, it should do some logical choice based on the data?
ABS, ASR (and dozens more) like stuff gave the people wrong impression that their cars and even trucks/bus stuff they drive will save them from every kind of stupid mistake (like driving 140 km/h in city) they do.
Every time I see a bus driving at insane speeds and he won't be able to stop because of basic Newton principles, he has some "ABS" or "ASR" sticker at back. They should come with warnings like: "ABS doesn't mean you can drive 170km/h and your car will magically stop when you push the brake."
It is sad that ABS (using as its widely known) like technologies should have make things way more safer but because of PEBAAC factor you mention, they could be causing more harm than good.
You know what? Web developers act so surprised when you tell them Opera Mini is the most popular mobile browser on the planet. Not some "stat counter" stuff, professional companies will give you those stats. Last time I checked, it was like 40%.
So, when you ignore that fact and don't support Opera Mini and Nokia S60 browser (which is Webkit), support only iPhone with some m.something.com , you ignore about 100-150 million people who either has J2ME or Symbian/S40 in their hands, perhaps richer than iPhone users.
I don't try to be sarcastic. Each IE 6 losing its "default browser status" is good for MS especially for their image. They "won" the browser wars already, some developers working for their rivals can't dream about MS Windows without MS HTML engines/objects. Even Big Blue relies on IE in certain jobs so they need "IE 6 compatibility" mode.
IE 7 and 8 incompatibility/quirks serve in the place of IE 6 now, why should MS really bother? Outdated browser which is bad for their security/performance image is being replaced with Firefox which is just a browser, not an engine which can be used system wide.
Want to cause red alert at Redmond? Revive the Gecko and make sure even the most basic.NET developer can plug it to their application. Talk with companies who serve Fortune 500 to make Firefox administration kit. Release a freaking.MSI for God's sake... That is how you can bother MS with your stats.
Especially on Windows and with English language, it is not an excuse. Every scanner comes with OCR programs, at least in English. I did a 70 page manual translation back when Windows 3.1 was new so I know.
If you can take risk of re-compiling every X related app/library in case you give up in future, try the semi official/unofficial at http://xquartz.macosforge.org/ , it is newer than the Apple bundles. Install anything with the help of Fink/Macports like Konqueror from KDE 3 and see the amazing GUI speed, scroll speed, widget drawing speed.
I don't understand, as an OS X user, why a modern x.org on a good, supported hardware should be surprising to give better results. Also remember the insane things x.org has to do on OS X like using Aqua layer.
I will ask one thing as you seem to miss why HTML is not considered a print/distro format: "When did we have an embeddable font standard for HTML webpages?" as with Flash: "Is there a way to have a single file and infrastructure to show embedded videos in HTML5 form?"
They actually suggested people to use abandoned VP3 format for God's sake and the very same people have chosen TrueType (check why freetype exists) as font embedding format.
I work with PDFs a lot, especially on OS X. I am telling you from an OS which you can have 60 KB 1080p screenshots in PDF in some circumstances: Whoever did that "text as image" trick, he is a complete moron.
One of the reasons that PDF took off is exactly embedding fonts used in a document so it will appear as pixel perfect on client machines.
As last resort (and a good practice), you can embed unformatted pure text of the entire PDF in your PDF file. PDF, like Quicktime Mov is one of the formats where people doesn't use the features and bitch about the size of client etc.
If you look around, every single Apple computer, device (ipod/iphone) is actively indexing every single PDF thrown at them, instantly and keep database of it.
It is the famous "Spotlight" technology. They don't even need to look at Google, some of them have same kind of indexing technology (minus relation) running on their laptops.
One should check the TFA relations with MS. I am sure something will come up.
Adobe ships Flash/PDF readers/plugins to: Windows, OS X, Symbian (in some form), Linux, *BSD and various, uncountable tiny platforms. iPhone/iPod does not count because of obvious reasons.
Lets see what MS Silverlight ships to: Windows/Intel Mac. Damn thing is so tied to Windows that they couldn't even convert/ship the V2 for PPC Macs or they simply abandoned them. (like we cared!)
MS XPS format and viewer is the answer to PDF which, some people who didn't use Windows have never, ever heard of. It is that Windows centric. Despise all rude attempts by MS (adding XPS printer without etc), it has never, ever took off.
What we need is, something combines ODF and PDF. You can add binary file to PDF document like some layer. ROM LogicWare, less known Office (Papyrus) developer does it right now. The files are both PDF and their own edit format, transparent to PDF readers and NOT a hack.
Of course, people will spend time "omg flash, pdf, Adobe is slow" flaming rather than finding a solution to a real problem. Asking government to use Flash is really absurd but the real one to blame here is MS and open source based large companies. If they have no alternative, Adobe will suggest PDF of course. What else they should use? MS XPS?
FW1600/3200 will be good for couple of purposes, not for ordinary users cheap Taiwan "backup" disks or portable disks. It was always the case for FW400/800 too, it is just rich Apple owners wanting better quality with lower (or non existent) CPU overhead opted in for Firewire or dual (USB2/FW) drives.
Firewire is a must for TV stations, audio engineering products, professional photography, in field workers. Obviously, while there is need, especially Sony PROFESSIONAL (gotta use CAPS on/.) will ship the products. They won't put all their money to FW1600/3200, they of course know the issues with Firewire and why it won't replace Joe Sixpack's USB2 (3) drive. I use FW800 drive for actual data, 2 of them in software raid configuration, for SD editing but my "time machine" backup drive is in fact, set of 2 USB2 drives with software RAID mirroring.
What you must understand is, it doesn't make producers "less bright". It is a different World with very different (sometimes crazy) needs. You wouldn't need 300MB (yes, MB) per second stable bandwidth for data but a 2K/4K movie editor can't do his job without it. So, there comes SCSI and some idiot out there will sure compare it to SATA2/3.
I love their attitude of being a purist, totally free, politically free distro... Oh wait! They allowed Mono junk to their distro for a simple note taking app right?
If you owned a firewire 800 disk drive, you would be smiling like me now.
When FW1600/3200 gets out of door, it will be same endless saga again since they will beat USB 3 too. They should also check the load on host CPU while doing those USB 3 speeds. Intel's standard is still host (CPU) controlled. Surprised a bit?
Interestingly, the seem way more liberal than USA. At least I see some sponsors branding (HP etc.) at their mission control center.
I wouldn't be surprised if they also start to put ads on the rockets they launch.
About the cheapness: It is in their military culture. I remember reading Su-27 simulator manual saying "Using afterburner while taking off is not accepted as a good practice in Soviet AF". Or that el cheapo T tanks beating amazingly expensive, huge German Tiger tanks just because they are better designed and can be fixed even by a farmer having ordinary tools.
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My cell provider having 37 million users, heavily advertising 3G even with the "network nightmare" 3G USB dongles has no issue with bandwidth, we are also overseas which means 100-200 ms ping response from American sites.
The GSM towers, routers etc. are really advanced devices of their own kind. They report everything including the bandwidth utilization. Even $30 el cheapo cable modem reports more than we actually need. Did you check the amount of data which is available via SNMP? Now imagine $100K, $200K cell tower.
Speaking of Arab TVs, the king of content delivery Akamai has took off Al Jazeera "from the air" (web) because of Sep. 11. That website of TV paid for the contract and they ended up without having a hosting provider. The TV, no matter what you hear about it is extremely mild, run by TV professionals, especially British (Ex BBC) and it is off the web just because it is "Arabic Owned" (UAE BTW) and they possibly had some mails from some idiots connecting that TV Network to Al Queda. (hopefully not @whitehouse.gov) It can't be financially motivated since Al Jazeera is considered as a very rich media company, run by some Arab Prince. These guys use Ikegami HD Cams as ordinary things while other TV stations (including CNN etc) struggle with Betacam SD in some cases.
http://news.cnet.com/1200-1035-995546.html
If I was an American, I would be extremely alerted about the "net neutrality" discussions. That is Akamai doing it, imagine the rest... Like Murdoch buying some financially unstable Tier 0 network. Check the Tier 0 network owners, they are still recovering from dotcom crash...
Sadly, he works for AT&T who created the ultimate scalable state of art OS (and philosophy) UNIX. That AT&T in 1970s were doing things like that and now they whine about something which even a basic home user these days have knowledge about. Even home users started to do bandwidth planning especially for contract based subscriptions. If guy only cares about Youtube, Mail, Web, he gets 1Mbit line instead of 4-8+ MBit.
By targeting Apple iPhone and AT&T together, Verizon lost way too many potential customers. Industry rule is, never ever specifically target Apple since it is something like a cult. I know lots of people around me asking "So what the hell is Verizon and why they hate Apple?". I am thousands of kilometers away from USA, now that should be some real alerting thing.
AT&T could advertise involvement with UNIX (which many don't know), Verizon could inform people about why they have the largest coverage, why their speeds are so higher than the competition. All they do is childish "I do that, I do this" competition with lots of drama. iPhone is a damn UNIX device which is a fairly advanced smart phone in its own right, they should stop treating iPhone users or other smart phone/device users like bunch of rich morons.
Google really started to act like Microsoft, they are annoying their own customers and almost proud of it. Privacy organizations should sue them for this joke claiming to show what they know about you. It is just a freaking account control panel trick, nothing else. If it is _really_ what Google knows about a web surfer, their share price is not right and that should be investigated.
Note to Google (same thing I said to MS, Apple etc.): We aren't stupid.
I hate posting 2 line messages but if you look at http://www.phishtank.com/ which the data is community provided/validated and open, I have real bad feelings about the upcoming API. Hopefully they don't trust the general public to know what an API is while they keep clicking the links on spam mails they get.
I bet Opera, Mozilla guys and even Apple can drive their browser to insane speeds but they wouldn't do it. Why? Basically, they want CPU Arch and OS independency. Things and times are changing, ARM Linux and Symbian (with upcoming foundation release) aren't some "nerd fantasies" anymore. Everyone wants to stay compatible with them.
If I told you that Opera 9.5 mobile runs exactly, line by line, same C rendering engine as Opera Desktop, would you believe? That is the level of compatibility and being future ready. It already paid off for Opera ASA and Mozilla Mobile would have a huge market share if they maintained a Symbian S60 (high end) variant rendering engine just to stay ready for future.
I wasn't planning to use Chrome and I found out they don't even support PowerPC OS X. That is not the OS X maintainers fault who is a very capable coder, thing is full of X86 specific unportable code, that is the issue. You/They may laugh at "so 100(!) powerpc users won't have our browsers" but I see a very different issue with it, for the future.
Why did MS Struggle to code/keep Windows NT codebase perfectly compilable and running on a strange RISC CPU (i860 I guess) which nobody plans to use? They had to use preview boards or something, there weren't even any servers/workstations actually _using_ that CPU.
I have seen the work has to be done rolling a Firefox update to clients on a large enterprise network, a truly large one. I really understand your feelings and in fact, I really wished a Mozilla foundation "suit" should see the amount of that work and compare it to IE update/domain level changes which absolutely looked like some basic computer game in comparison.
MS was evilly clever to roll out that IAK right when IE 4 shipped (or 3?), the companies, ISPs and large portals (Yahoo etc) loved that idea. How many years have passed? It is absolutely stunning that they expect companies to download some third party supplied MSI.
Look what Skype does, that mainly end user P2P phone company who doesn't really know enterprise:
http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/skype/windows/business/ , I picked it immediately for a single laptop office. It would still have advantage like "repair" even on a single company machine.
In fact, the days where Apple admins and large home network users ask for a .package (think like MSI for OS X) has come already. Even with Apple's genius "drag&drop" install method became pain at homes with 5+ computers.
Android has potential and has a big backer but it is absolutely nothing in mobile market. Opera Mini, which is only a state of art J2ME client with server on the other side has no reason not to be available on Android in future.
40% of global mobile browsing is being done by Opera Mini and it doesn't ask anything rather than sticking with web standards as much as possible. My argument is perfectly valid against every single "lets do an iphone site" webmaster who ignores the REAL numbers. It is same for Android, Blackberry, Symbian S60 and especially J2ME Opera Mini. I would be surprised if they knew the true stealthy, gigantic market size of J2ME and S40.
Doesn't modern planes have both "digital" and old fashion wire controls which also helps computer to validate sanity? Perhaps they should have both and in case something makes no sense at all, it should do some logical choice based on the data?
ABS, ASR (and dozens more) like stuff gave the people wrong impression that their cars and even trucks/bus stuff they drive will save them from every kind of stupid mistake (like driving 140 km/h in city) they do.
Every time I see a bus driving at insane speeds and he won't be able to stop because of basic Newton principles, he has some "ABS" or "ASR" sticker at back. They should come with warnings like: "ABS doesn't mean you can drive 170km/h and your car will magically stop when you push the brake."
It is sad that ABS (using as its widely known) like technologies should have make things way more safer but because of PEBAAC factor you mention, they could be causing more harm than good.
You know what? Web developers act so surprised when you tell them Opera Mini is the most popular mobile browser on the planet. Not some "stat counter" stuff, professional companies will give you those stats. Last time I checked, it was like 40%.
So, when you ignore that fact and don't support Opera Mini and Nokia S60 browser (which is Webkit), support only iPhone with some m.something.com , you ignore about 100-150 million people who either has J2ME or Symbian/S40 in their hands, perhaps richer than iPhone users.
I don't try to be sarcastic. Each IE 6 losing its "default browser status" is good for MS especially for their image. They "won" the browser wars already, some developers working for their rivals can't dream about MS Windows without MS HTML engines/objects. Even Big Blue relies on IE in certain jobs so they need "IE 6 compatibility" mode.
IE 7 and 8 incompatibility/quirks serve in the place of IE 6 now, why should MS really bother? Outdated browser which is bad for their security/performance image is being replaced with Firefox which is just a browser, not an engine which can be used system wide.
Want to cause red alert at Redmond? Revive the Gecko and make sure even the most basic .NET developer can plug it to their application. Talk with companies who serve Fortune 500 to make Firefox administration kit. Release a freaking .MSI for God's sake... That is how you can bother MS with your stats.
Especially on Windows and with English language, it is not an excuse. Every scanner comes with OCR programs, at least in English. I did a 70 page manual translation back when Windows 3.1 was new so I know.
Of course, here are the true free software: http://jocr.sourceforge.net/ and recent Google (taken back to life) http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/
Even if you are home user, thanks to Spotlight and various Windows/Linux local engines, it is really good idea to keep text in pdf files.
If you can take risk of re-compiling every X related app/library in case you give up in future, try the semi official/unofficial at http://xquartz.macosforge.org/ , it is newer than the Apple bundles. Install anything with the help of Fink/Macports like Konqueror from KDE 3 and see the amazing GUI speed, scroll speed, widget drawing speed.
I don't understand, as an OS X user, why a modern x.org on a good, supported hardware should be surprising to give better results. Also remember the insane things x.org has to do on OS X like using Aqua layer.
I will ask one thing as you seem to miss why HTML is not considered a print/distro format: "When did we have an embeddable font standard for HTML webpages?" as with Flash: "Is there a way to have a single file and infrastructure to show embedded videos in HTML5 form?"
They actually suggested people to use abandoned VP3 format for God's sake and the very same people have chosen TrueType (check why freetype exists) as font embedding format.
I work with PDFs a lot, especially on OS X. I am telling you from an OS which you can have 60 KB 1080p screenshots in PDF in some circumstances: Whoever did that "text as image" trick, he is a complete moron.
One of the reasons that PDF took off is exactly embedding fonts used in a document so it will appear as pixel perfect on client machines.
As last resort (and a good practice), you can embed unformatted pure text of the entire PDF in your PDF file. PDF, like Quicktime Mov is one of the formats where people doesn't use the features and bitch about the size of client etc.
If you look around, every single Apple computer, device (ipod/iphone) is actively indexing every single PDF thrown at them, instantly and keep database of it.
It is the famous "Spotlight" technology. They don't even need to look at Google, some of them have same kind of indexing technology (minus relation) running on their laptops.
One should check the TFA relations with MS. I am sure something will come up.
Adobe ships Flash/PDF readers/plugins to: Windows, OS X, Symbian (in some form), Linux, *BSD and various, uncountable tiny platforms. iPhone/iPod does not count because of obvious reasons.
Lets see what MS Silverlight ships to: Windows/Intel Mac. Damn thing is so tied to Windows that they couldn't even convert/ship the V2 for PPC Macs or they simply abandoned them. (like we cared!)
MS XPS format and viewer is the answer to PDF which, some people who didn't use Windows have never, ever heard of. It is that Windows centric. Despise all rude attempts by MS (adding XPS printer without etc), it has never, ever took off.
What we need is, something combines ODF and PDF. You can add binary file to PDF document like some layer. ROM LogicWare, less known Office (Papyrus) developer does it right now. The files are both PDF and their own edit format, transparent to PDF readers and NOT a hack.
Of course, people will spend time "omg flash, pdf, Adobe is slow" flaming rather than finding a solution to a real problem. Asking government to use Flash is really absurd but the real one to blame here is MS and open source based large companies. If they have no alternative, Adobe will suggest PDF of course. What else they should use? MS XPS?
FW1600/3200 will be good for couple of purposes, not for ordinary users cheap Taiwan "backup" disks or portable disks. It was always the case for FW400/800 too, it is just rich Apple owners wanting better quality with lower (or non existent) CPU overhead opted in for Firewire or dual (USB2/FW) drives.
Firewire is a must for TV stations, audio engineering products, professional photography, in field workers. Obviously, while there is need, especially Sony PROFESSIONAL (gotta use CAPS on /.) will ship the products. They won't put all their money to FW1600/3200, they of course know the issues with Firewire and why it won't replace Joe Sixpack's USB2 (3) drive. I use FW800 drive for actual data, 2 of them in software raid configuration, for SD editing but my "time machine" backup drive is in fact, set of 2 USB2 drives with software RAID mirroring.
What you must understand is, it doesn't make producers "less bright". It is a different World with very different (sometimes crazy) needs. You wouldn't need 300MB (yes, MB) per second stable bandwidth for data but a 2K/4K movie editor can't do his job without it. So, there comes SCSI and some idiot out there will sure compare it to SATA2/3.
I love their attitude of being a purist, totally free, politically free distro... Oh wait! They allowed Mono junk to their distro for a simple note taking app right?
If Mozilla organization had some vision and asked themselves "why does companies choose MS/IBM (Lotus) based solutions instead of us?".
Yea, all uses a browser now and check their gmail/hotmail, that is how companies etc. work these days right?
Every single final version of browser out there even including IE has some feature like "tab recovery". Guess the reason for it?
If you owned a firewire 800 disk drive, you would be smiling like me now.
When FW1600/3200 gets out of door, it will be same endless saga again since they will beat USB 3 too. They should also check the load on host CPU while doing those USB 3 speeds. Intel's standard is still host (CPU) controlled. Surprised a bit?
Interestingly, the seem way more liberal than USA. At least I see some sponsors branding (HP etc.) at their mission control center.
I wouldn't be surprised if they also start to put ads on the rockets they launch.
About the cheapness: It is in their military culture. I remember reading Su-27 simulator manual saying "Using afterburner while taking off is not accepted as a good practice in Soviet AF". Or that el cheapo T tanks beating amazingly expensive, huge German Tiger tanks just because they are better designed and can be fixed even by a farmer having ordinary tools.