Because some power users want all that space.
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Maxtor's 80GB Drive
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· Score: 1
When I got a computer with a 100MB HD over eight years ago, I thought that it would be more than I would ever need. Ditto my 16GB HD two years ago. Wrong! I was being short-sighted.
Now I am convinced that I will always be able to use all the space provided by the latest consumer hard drive offerings. What takes up so much space? Multimedia. I like to store and edit the stuff. Therefore, I need as much space as possible. 80GB is just one step along the way. (I'm not buying one, BTW. I just bought a Maxtor 40GB drive in January, and I'm holding out for maybe a 160GB HD.:) Sure, most people don't need anywhere near that amount of space (for the time being, at least). But things like high-capacity hard drives facilitate computing enjoyment for this power user.
Just wait... In a couple years, it will be commonplace. In a couple more, it will be absolutely paltry -- even for average users!:)
I did some checking yesterday, and couldn't find anyplace that was actually selling this new "80GB" Maxtor drive. I think it was The Register that said that pricing had not yet been announced. So when will these be available, and where? I'm just curious.
Correct me if I'm being naive, but can't a suspect easily circumvent a Carnivore tap on the suspect's ISP's mailserver by using an SMTP server other than the local ISP's server?
The spamming of the Internet has restricted outsiders from many mailservers, but there are still a lot of servers that will relay mail. And if it is/were technologically feasible to encrypt the session between the suspect and the random remote mailserver, then not even a capture of all ISP traffic would reveal the contents of the transaction. The FBI or other investigative entity would have to detect such relevent connections originating from the suspect's account and chase all over the Internet trying to procure logs and data.
I really hate this whole idea though and I wish they would have spent all that money on figuring out how to maximize the storage capacity of existing CD equipment (Like the new 99 minute! CDR's coming out soon - these use the thinner spiral of 80Min CD's along with a better and more reliable method of manufacturing the disc which allows for the media to be overburned reliably to 99 minutes.)
Whoa! Where can I find out more about these 99-minute CD-Rs? Will they be burnable by my existing CD-RW drive (8x4x32, purchased in March)? Will they play audio in normal CD players?
I now use 80-minute CD-Rs almost exclusively, but 80 minutes is not quite enough for my audio needs/wants. 99 minutes would be great, though. I'm really looking forward to this now...:)
nt 1 = "NT 3.51", nt 2 = "NT4", nt 3 = "W2000", so nt 4 = ?
IIRC, the first version of Windows NT was called version 3.1. I'm not sure if there was an NT 3.11, but 3.50, 3.51, and 4.0 followed. And of course, 5.0 (the third major version of NT) is called Windows 2000.
Why don't they want to split it up into several vertical lines: NT+development tools, 98+Office+EI, CE+extra's?
I wouldn't break up Microsoft along the lines you suggested, because I don't think that fragmentation of the OS among competing companies would be a good thing. Besides, Win9x/ME is near the end of its life cycle, and is well on its way to integration_with/ replacement_by the NT/2000 codebase in a future Windows release codenamed Whistler.
It would be nice to see the detachment of IE from the rest of the OS, but at this point it is so entangled that it might just be better to leave it with the OS company. After all, Netscape lost the browser war (at least on the Windows platform) a couple years ago, and adoption of Mozilla doesn't seem to depend much on IE's status anymore.
As for development tools, that's tough to say. Leaving them with the OS company could prove advantageous for developers, because the tools would have an easier time staying in sync with OS advancements. On the other hand, it might give further incentive to more fully open APIs and such if the devtools were in another company. I'm leaning toward the former.
If a breakup is to occur, then the Office suite should definitely be split away from the OS company. This app company could also take some server products like SQL Server. Other server products, like Systems Management Server, make better sense staying with the OS company. No more BackOffice, I guess.
Microsoft has brought about the demise of OS/2, WordPerfect, and Netscape, among others. This damage can't be undone, but perhaps measures can be taken to prevent future bogosities. I fear that whatever the government's final solution, it will not be both adequate and fair. Microsoft may escape serious punishment, or it may get really screwed. In the latter case, I guess what goes around comes around.
Here in the UK there is (in my experience) considerable dissatisfaction with MS products. Maybe it's because of things like that unremovable "Network Neighborhood" icon...
Give Tweak UI a try. This handy little utility lets you customize things in Windows, including whether Network Neighborhood appears on your desktop. You can also reduce other Windows annoyances like the animated "Click here to begin" message that bumps into the Start menu when you log in. I highly recommend Tweak UI for anyone stuck using Windows.
You see Microsoft has a version 5 out there that really isn't better than Netscape 4.7. At least not by much.
Actually, IE5 is enormously better than Netscape 4.7. Though I prefer Netscape's UI, the fact remains that the Netscape 4.x rendering engine has not seen any significant change since 1997. Netscape 4.x does a miserable job with stylesheets, and is utterly clueless about XML. IE, on the other hand, seems to do quite well with these, even if it does not fully conform to the specs. I don't mean to imply that IE is better in every respect, but I am saying that under the hood, IE5 beats Netscape hands down.
It's a good thing that Mozilla will enable Netscape to catch up with and surpass IE5 in terms of under-the-hood excellence. However, I still think that skipping Netscape version 5 is a really bad idea. Although Mozilla is becoming quite capable and usable, it will be months before it is stable and feature-complete enough to release as Netscape 5.0.
I think that for Netscape to be so brash as to call its next browser version 6.0, the browser should be able to trounce IE 5.x by fully supporting CSS2 and XSL, among other things. It's not even close. Calling this well-intentioned-but-underdone browser "Netscape 6.0" will just set it up to be beaten by a superior IE 6.0. Netscape should just cut the crap and be honest about its version number, because otherwise it will just lose more credibility in the long run.
Yes, I agree that there is a very real possibility that advertisers will find a way of getting their messages to us even if we filter or opt out of banner ads.
I stopped using GeoCities when their pop-ups became unbearable. If a lot more websites resort to doing things more insidious and annoying than banner ads, we'll probably yearn for the good old days of waiting for banners to load so we can see a page.
As the web gets XMLified, I expect to see more nifty agent programs that can go out and distill content from the web. The thought has occurred to me, though, that sites may block these agents/bots in the same way that we can block their ads, just to try to force us to view their sites with approved programs that will show us ads. Two can play at this game.
XHTML is by and large compatible with existing browsers, if some simple guidelines are followed. Though it is not exactly backward-compatible with HTML, it comes very close, and you don't need to do much to convert a valid HTML 4.0 document to XHTML.
The reason I want to use XHTML is to add XML functionality to my web pages. This will be nothing grand -- at least in the beginning. I will probably start out with some RDF metadata.
XHTML might not be a thrilling DTD in itself, but its power lies in the fact that it is made of XML, so you can use other XML throughout your document without violating spec. IMHO, that's a pretty nice improvement over straight HTML. And XHTML has to be well-formed, which is a Good Thing.
Aside from changing the DOCTYPE and adding an XML declaration, all I had to do was make all elements and attributes lowercase, quote all attributes, and close all standalone tags (<br/>, <hr/>, <img src="tweet.jpg".../>, etc.). It only took a little further tweaking to make it display nicely in Netscape 4.7, IE 5, and even lynx!
Unfortunately, it seems that XHTML chokes Mac IE 4.5 (and presumably surrounding versions). That browser just displays the page source without rendering it. Since I want my site to be viewable by anybody on any platform (and IE5 is not yet out for Mac), I had to go back to HTML 4.0. Argh!
I really like XHTML so far, though, and will probably convert to it as soon as Mac IE supports it (4.5 users: tough luck). If you want to see one of my preliminary XHTML endeavors, go to moby.org's mailing list archives page. Try it with any browser. AFAIK, it works fine with almost all of them.
Messing with your inner ear? That sounds risky. I wouldn't want to be beta testing programs that use this technology. Couldn't it really jack you up if something goes wrong?
Viewing the ads is part of the "price" you pay to view the site itself. The fact that you (and i) are able to easily opt out is merely a demonstration of how easy it is for us to "steal"- and probably means we'll see more draconian measures in the future by webmasters to ensure that they get the number of banner-views they think they need.
"Stealing" is a harsh way to put it. What about people who browse the web with auto-load images turned off? I see nothing wrong with processing downloaded code and data as the user or administrator sees fit. People should in no way be obligated to endure ads or any other objectionable content.
The Internet is a public network. By putting up websites and serving requested information to users, site owners are freely offering and releasing information. Users may then store, process, act upon, or discard that information as they see fit. The fact that many sites are sustained by revenue from ads should not deprive users of those basic, reasonable rights.
In any case, I think that it is less ethical to covertly track and profile people than for people to set up their software to not request ads or accept cookies. People don't exist for the sole purpose of generating revenue.
Version numbering used to be simple and sensible, but lately -- in the Windows world, at least -- it has become incomprehensible. It used to be that you'd have the major-point-minor version. Since some minor versions amounted to tweaks and bugfixes, they would increment the version by 0.01.
Now observe what has happened with Microsoft products. Microsoft started using years instead of version numbers in its product names, but did so inconsistently. Instead of Windows 96, it was Windows 95 OSR 2. Instead of Windows 99, it was Windows 98 Second Edition. But it gets worse...
Windows NT 4.0 has undergone some very significant updates that certainly merit at least new minor version numbers. A lot of NT software won't even run without these enhancements and bug fixes. But instead of calling it Windows NT 4.3 or at least 4.06, we have Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6.
Internet Explorer versions are the most baffling. Various schemes are mixed and matched, so we end up with things like IE 4.01 SP2, which is slightly different than the other IE 4.01 SP2 that was released before. And the version number embedded in the software is some crazy dotted quad beginning with 4.72! (I probably erred a bit on the exact version and service pack numbers in the preceding example, but I am not making this up!) The latest nonbeta IE is 5.01, but when I check its version number, it says 5.00.2919.6307! Why not 5.01?!
I suspect that this confusion may ultimately be part of a long-term plan of intentional deception. From Microsoft's point of view (as I see it), users should be kept out of system internals. In fact, operations should be so transparent that one will not and should not know whether something is coming from the local hard drive or from an Internet connection to Redmond. Both good and evil updates will be quietly slipstreamed through users' always-on broadband connections.
Already, Microsoft Outlook hides the email addresses of email and newsgroup messages, showing only names like "John Q. Random". Though it is possible to find the return address via a troublesome multistep process, I have found no way to disable this misfeature in any of the option dialogs. Sure, these are just small annoyances. The end result is that users will have even less of a clue how the systems their livelihoods depend on works. Although I'm for intuitive interfaces and ease-of-use, I deplore the dumbing down of people.
I think the future holds some corrections. Namely, the use of codenames or other product names in place of major version numbers. It seems that at this rate, the world may see Microsoft Windows 2003 Professional OEM Service Release 2.0 Service Pack 3. But I think it will probably be more like Microsoft Windows Neptune Server, and if you want to scrounge around in DLLs, you can find out each component's version number.
Over the past couple years, hundreds of emails have piled up that I should have replied to and handled in some way, but I didn't because I was both busy and lazy. At the same time, I've been accumulating quite a few books about things I want to learn. They sit on a shelf or the floor, mostly unread. Sometimes I look at all that I am supposed to be doing and want to do, and it's just overwhelming. My time management is severely lacking. The dawn of the 2000s (with the 3rd millennium / 21st century now less than a year away) provides an excellent opportunity to get my life in order.
I've given some thought to how I can learn and do more while enjoying a less chaotic life. Rather than just semipassively dealing with things as they come, I need to set specific goals and outline incremental steps toward their achievement. These steps should be mapped into a timetable that I will make a sincere effort to follow. This will not and should not be rigid, but should allow flexibility and changes as appropriate. I'm not going hard-line on myself -- just trying to apportion my time in an optimal manner.
Here's an example of how I intend to work this: I would like to learn Perl in the first half of this year. I own O'Reilly's Learning Perl book, which has 19 chapters. I'm in chapter 2. All I need to do is read at least three chapters per month (trying for one a week), and I should have enough basic skills to make my website more dynamic. It's easy to allocate an hour here and there for a trivial chunk of reading. What's important is that I stick to it.
I'll probably read several books concurrently so I don't get bored or frustrated with one while another one like Java beckons enticingly. No log jams here.:)
I'm not limiting this time management approach to just books, either. There are some things I seriously need to work on IRL. Exercise is just one of these. I've found it hard to drag myself to a nearby health club for a few minutes every week. Well, I'm going to step it up, because a healthy body leads to a healthy mind... or at least a better lifestyle.
But the point of this message is that I believe that self-discipline is the key to achieving goals and making the most of the time and resources God has given us.
Microsith is a great parody site, and I highly recommend that you check it out if you haven't already. Visit all of its sub-pages, too -- not just the main page. They left me in stiches. Also, I'm afraid I couldn't resist the urge to post the following pun-riddled drivel in its user feedback area:
Darth Insidious vs. Luke Warmweather
Together, we can ruin the galaxy as FUDder and stung! Never will another Dagobah without a BSODomy! Always trust ActiveXterminator control from Microsith? [OK]
(EULAgree that the Linus in the sand.)
Kenobi-have, baby, yeah! You don't need to see my processor identification. But I want to transmit my applications this year and be the best X Windows pilot in the galaxy! I must learn the ways of Open Force and become a Jedix Knight.
The above was changed ever-so-slightly from my original Microsith post, so I guess that makes it Service Pack 1.;)
Perhaps such a patent can serve to prevent businesses and other organizations from making use of such technology, at least in the US. Or maybe it allows the NSA to pick up some bonus revenue.
I have always designed my web pages to work with all browsers. And Netscape has always been my browser of choice, because it was the best. Though it lacks nifty features like IE's rebars, I really like the Netscape Communicator 4.x interface. I find bookmark handling in particular easier to deal with in Netscape than in IE.
Unfortunately, Netscape dropped the ball, and stopped improving their browser engine after Communicator 4.0 was released in June 1997. Though it wasn't standards-compliant then, I fully expected Netscape to remedy that as soon as possible. They never did. In fact, I've never even heard them say that they were working on full HTML 4.0 support.
Instead, Netscape has wasted time with side projects, first trying to push (no pun intended) its ill-fated Netcaster client, then its portal site, and then all kinds of useless junk like AOL Instant Messenger and the Shop button.
Meanwhile, Microsoft wasn't just relying on bundling IE with every conceivable piece of Windows software. IE4 was released with a solid lead over Netscape in HTML and CSS support. While Netscape's ill-named SmartUpdate was and still is broken and difficult to use, IE4 introduced Windows Update, which makes installations, upgrades, and add-ons a snap.
Now IE5 is the undisputed best web browser. Under the hood, it is so far superior to any other browser that there is no contest. To initiate an exodus from IE, Mozilla will have to be fully compliant with HTML, CSS2, XML, and be amazing to boot. And it will need to be released soon.
As for Netscape, I am resigned to its crushing defeat. Over a year ago, it was already clear that it lost the browser war. People have waited patiently since 1997, but there is still no sign that Netscape 5 is forthcoming, let alone any indication that it will be as good as IE5.
Unless there is a dramatic reversal in this situation, I think you can expect to see more and more Netscape holdouts give up and start writing web pages to today's standards, whether Navigator can deal with them or not. I am unhappy about this state of affairs, but that's just the way it is. Netscape stood still while the world kept on turning.
Re:"Free Press" has nothing to do with freedom any
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More on the MS "X-Box"
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So true! But wouldn't MS name it something like Active Toaster?
make the doom mod a remote shutdown and restart utility. Map the machines onto your homegrown map and wander the halls. Once you enter a "machine" that room loads and the processes come howling.
"It's time to Administrate!!" *pumps shotgun*
And don't forget the sequel -- Administrator 2: Judgement Daemon
why does the average person here need something this fast?
Although for me disk capacity & speed are the greatest computing bottlenecks, I would have no problem putting 1100 MHz to good use compressing MP3s and running software DVD. Also, just think of all the RC5 key checking you could do for distributed.net!
Thanks for the link. The talk.origins site is quite interesting, and is going to take quite awhile to read. It is all quite slanted toward macro-evolution as an indisputable fact.
But macro-evolution is disputed. Check out the other side of the debate at trueorigin.org. This site has rebuttals to many of the talk.origins FAQs, and seems no less interesting or worth reading.
I recommend that both sites be checked out. For the record, I am a Christian who believes that God created everything, including life. I don't know literally how He did it, but I'm not afraid of investigating the evidence and ideas put forth by both creationists and evolutionists. I doubt that anyone is 100% correct.
Make me your world dictator... (just a suggestion)
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UN Proposes Email Tax
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If the UN were to impose a worldwide tax on anything, then it would be grossly overstepping its bounds. The sovereignty of national governments would be effectively usurped, and the UN would become world dictator. The Internet that we now so freely enjoy would be the catalyst.
This grave concern supercedes all of the other technical and common sense reasons why such a tax would be an Extremely Bad Thing.
Besides, the way I see it, the communications revolution is happening extremely quickly, and doesn't need a few hundred billion dollars to help it along. In just a matter of decades, the Internet will complete its journey from obscurity to ubiquity.
How about ensuring basic necessities and rights for all people before shoving eCommerce and eDictatorship down our throats?
Slashdot Mirror
Now I am convinced that I will always be able to use all the space provided by the latest consumer hard drive offerings. What takes up so much space? Multimedia. I like to store and edit the stuff. Therefore, I need as much space as possible. 80GB is just one step along the way. (I'm not buying one, BTW. I just bought a Maxtor 40GB drive in January, and I'm holding out for maybe a 160GB HD. :) Sure, most people don't need anywhere near that amount of space (for the time being, at least). But things like high-capacity hard drives facilitate computing enjoyment for this power user.
Just wait... In a couple years, it will be commonplace. In a couple more, it will be absolutely paltry -- even for average users! :)
I did some checking yesterday, and couldn't find anyplace that was actually selling this new "80GB" Maxtor drive. I think it was The Register that said that pricing had not yet been announced. So when will these be available, and where? I'm just curious.
Correct me if I'm being naive, but can't a suspect easily circumvent a Carnivore tap on the suspect's ISP's mailserver by using an SMTP server other than the local ISP's server?
The spamming of the Internet has restricted outsiders from many mailservers, but there are still a lot of servers that will relay mail. And if it is/were technologically feasible to encrypt the session between the suspect and the random remote mailserver, then not even a capture of all ISP traffic would reveal the contents of the transaction. The FBI or other investigative entity would have to detect such relevent connections originating from the suspect's account and chase all over the Internet trying to procure logs and data.
Whoa! Where can I find out more about these 99-minute CD-Rs? Will they be burnable by my existing CD-RW drive (8x4x32, purchased in March)? Will they play audio in normal CD players?
I now use 80-minute CD-Rs almost exclusively, but 80 minutes is not quite enough for my audio needs/wants. 99 minutes would be great, though. I'm really looking forward to this now... :)
IIRC, the first version of Windows NT was called version 3.1. I'm not sure if there was an NT 3.11, but 3.50, 3.51, and 4.0 followed. And of course, 5.0 (the third major version of NT) is called Windows 2000.
Sorry for the off-topic post.
I wouldn't break up Microsoft along the lines you suggested, because I don't think that fragmentation of the OS among competing companies would be a good thing. Besides, Win9x/ME is near the end of its life cycle, and is well on its way to integration_with/ replacement_by the NT/2000 codebase in a future Windows release codenamed Whistler.
It would be nice to see the detachment of IE from the rest of the OS, but at this point it is so entangled that it might just be better to leave it with the OS company. After all, Netscape lost the browser war (at least on the Windows platform) a couple years ago, and adoption of Mozilla doesn't seem to depend much on IE's status anymore.
As for development tools, that's tough to say. Leaving them with the OS company could prove advantageous for developers, because the tools would have an easier time staying in sync with OS advancements. On the other hand, it might give further incentive to more fully open APIs and such if the devtools were in another company. I'm leaning toward the former.
If a breakup is to occur, then the Office suite should definitely be split away from the OS company. This app company could also take some server products like SQL Server. Other server products, like Systems Management Server, make better sense staying with the OS company. No more BackOffice, I guess.
Microsoft has brought about the demise of OS/2, WordPerfect, and Netscape, among others. This damage can't be undone, but perhaps measures can be taken to prevent future bogosities. I fear that whatever the government's final solution, it will not be both adequate and fair. Microsoft may escape serious punishment, or it may get really screwed. In the latter case, I guess what goes around comes around.
Give Tweak UI a try. This handy little utility lets you customize things in Windows, including whether Network Neighborhood appears on your desktop. You can also reduce other Windows annoyances like the animated "Click here to begin" message that bumps into the Start menu when you log in. I highly recommend Tweak UI for anyone stuck using Windows.
Actually, IE5 is enormously better than Netscape 4.7. Though I prefer Netscape's UI, the fact remains that the Netscape 4.x rendering engine has not seen any significant change since 1997. Netscape 4.x does a miserable job with stylesheets, and is utterly clueless about XML. IE, on the other hand, seems to do quite well with these, even if it does not fully conform to the specs. I don't mean to imply that IE is better in every respect, but I am saying that under the hood, IE5 beats Netscape hands down.
It's a good thing that Mozilla will enable Netscape to catch up with and surpass IE5 in terms of under-the-hood excellence. However, I still think that skipping Netscape version 5 is a really bad idea. Although Mozilla is becoming quite capable and usable, it will be months before it is stable and feature-complete enough to release as Netscape 5.0.
I think that for Netscape to be so brash as to call its next browser version 6.0, the browser should be able to trounce IE 5.x by fully supporting CSS2 and XSL, among other things. It's not even close. Calling this well-intentioned-but-underdone browser "Netscape 6.0" will just set it up to be beaten by a superior IE 6.0. Netscape should just cut the crap and be honest about its version number, because otherwise it will just lose more credibility in the long run.
Yes, I agree that there is a very real possibility that advertisers will find a way of getting their messages to us even if we filter or opt out of banner ads.
I stopped using GeoCities when their pop-ups became unbearable. If a lot more websites resort to doing things more insidious and annoying than banner ads, we'll probably yearn for the good old days of waiting for banners to load so we can see a page.
As the web gets XMLified, I expect to see more nifty agent programs that can go out and distill content from the web. The thought has occurred to me, though, that sites may block these agents/bots in the same way that we can block their ads, just to try to force us to view their sites with approved programs that will show us ads. Two can play at this game.
XHTML is by and large compatible with existing browsers, if some simple guidelines are followed. Though it is not exactly backward-compatible with HTML, it comes very close, and you don't need to do much to convert a valid HTML 4.0 document to XHTML.
The reason I want to use XHTML is to add XML functionality to my web pages. This will be nothing grand -- at least in the beginning. I will probably start out with some RDF metadata.
XHTML might not be a thrilling DTD in itself, but its power lies in the fact that it is made of XML, so you can use other XML throughout your document without violating spec. IMHO, that's a pretty nice improvement over straight HTML. And XHTML has to be well-formed, which is a Good Thing.
A week and a half ago, I began converting my site from HTML 4.0 to XHTML 1.0. Thanks to the W3C's validator, it was pretty easy to do.
Aside from changing the DOCTYPE and adding an XML declaration, all I had to do was make all elements and attributes lowercase, quote all attributes, and close all standalone tags (<br/>, <hr/>, <img src="tweet.jpg" ... />, etc.). It only took a little further tweaking to make it display nicely in Netscape 4.7, IE 5, and even lynx!
Unfortunately, it seems that XHTML chokes Mac IE 4.5 (and presumably surrounding versions). That browser just displays the page source without rendering it. Since I want my site to be viewable by anybody on any platform (and IE5 is not yet out for Mac), I had to go back to HTML 4.0. Argh!
I really like XHTML so far, though, and will probably convert to it as soon as Mac IE supports it (4.5 users: tough luck). If you want to see one of my preliminary XHTML endeavors, go to moby.org's mailing list archives page. Try it with any browser. AFAIK, it works fine with almost all of them.
Messing with your inner ear? That sounds risky. I wouldn't want to be beta testing programs that use this technology. Couldn't it really jack you up if something goes wrong?
"Stealing" is a harsh way to put it. What about people who browse the web with auto-load images turned off? I see nothing wrong with processing downloaded code and data as the user or administrator sees fit. People should in no way be obligated to endure ads or any other objectionable content.
The Internet is a public network. By putting up websites and serving requested information to users, site owners are freely offering and releasing information. Users may then store, process, act upon, or discard that information as they see fit. The fact that many sites are sustained by revenue from ads should not deprive users of those basic, reasonable rights.
In any case, I think that it is less ethical to covertly track and profile people than for people to set up their software to not request ads or accept cookies. People don't exist for the sole purpose of generating revenue.
Version numbering used to be simple and sensible, but lately -- in the Windows world, at least -- it has become incomprehensible. It used to be that you'd have the major-point-minor version. Since some minor versions amounted to tweaks and bugfixes, they would increment the version by 0.01.
Now observe what has happened with Microsoft products. Microsoft started using years instead of version numbers in its product names, but did so inconsistently. Instead of Windows 96, it was Windows 95 OSR 2. Instead of Windows 99, it was Windows 98 Second Edition. But it gets worse...
Windows NT 4.0 has undergone some very significant updates that certainly merit at least new minor version numbers. A lot of NT software won't even run without these enhancements and bug fixes. But instead of calling it Windows NT 4.3 or at least 4.06, we have Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6.
Internet Explorer versions are the most baffling. Various schemes are mixed and matched, so we end up with things like IE 4.01 SP2, which is slightly different than the other IE 4.01 SP2 that was released before. And the version number embedded in the software is some crazy dotted quad beginning with 4.72! (I probably erred a bit on the exact version and service pack numbers in the preceding example, but I am not making this up!) The latest nonbeta IE is 5.01, but when I check its version number, it says 5.00.2919.6307! Why not 5.01?!
I suspect that this confusion may ultimately be part of a long-term plan of intentional deception. From Microsoft's point of view (as I see it), users should be kept out of system internals. In fact, operations should be so transparent that one will not and should not know whether something is coming from the local hard drive or from an Internet connection to Redmond. Both good and evil updates will be quietly slipstreamed through users' always-on broadband connections.
Already, Microsoft Outlook hides the email addresses of email and newsgroup messages, showing only names like "John Q. Random". Though it is possible to find the return address via a troublesome multistep process, I have found no way to disable this misfeature in any of the option dialogs. Sure, these are just small annoyances. The end result is that users will have even less of a clue how the systems their livelihoods depend on works. Although I'm for intuitive interfaces and ease-of-use, I deplore the dumbing down of people.
I think the future holds some corrections. Namely, the use of codenames or other product names in place of major version numbers. It seems that at this rate, the world may see Microsoft Windows 2003 Professional OEM Service Release 2.0 Service Pack 3. But I think it will probably be more like Microsoft Windows Neptune Server, and if you want to scrounge around in DLLs, you can find out each component's version number.
Over the past couple years, hundreds of emails have piled up that I should have replied to and handled in some way, but I didn't because I was both busy and lazy. At the same time, I've been accumulating quite a few books about things I want to learn. They sit on a shelf or the floor, mostly unread. Sometimes I look at all that I am supposed to be doing and want to do, and it's just overwhelming. My time management is severely lacking. The dawn of the 2000s (with the 3rd millennium / 21st century now less than a year away) provides an excellent opportunity to get my life in order.
:)
I've given some thought to how I can learn and do more while enjoying a less chaotic life. Rather than just semipassively dealing with things as they come, I need to set specific goals and outline incremental steps toward their achievement. These steps should be mapped into a timetable that I will make a sincere effort to follow. This will not and should not be rigid, but should allow flexibility and changes as appropriate. I'm not going hard-line on myself -- just trying to apportion my time in an optimal manner.
Here's an example of how I intend to work this: I would like to learn Perl in the first half of this year. I own O'Reilly's Learning Perl book, which has 19 chapters. I'm in chapter 2. All I need to do is read at least three chapters per month (trying for one a week), and I should have enough basic skills to make my website more dynamic. It's easy to allocate an hour here and there for a trivial chunk of reading. What's important is that I stick to it.
I'll probably read several books concurrently so I don't get bored or frustrated with one while another one like Java beckons enticingly. No log jams here.
I'm not limiting this time management approach to just books, either. There are some things I seriously need to work on IRL. Exercise is just one of these. I've found it hard to drag myself to a nearby health club for a few minutes every week. Well, I'm going to step it up, because a healthy body leads to a healthy mind... or at least a better lifestyle.
But the point of this message is that I believe that self-discipline is the key to achieving goals and making the most of the time and resources God has given us.
Happy 2000!
I should have said Service Probe 1.
:)
Laugh, people. It's funny!
The above was changed ever-so-slightly from my original Microsith post, so I guess that makes it Service Pack 1.
Perhaps such a patent can serve to prevent businesses and other organizations from making use of such technology, at least in the US. Or maybe it allows the NSA to pick up some bonus revenue.
I have always designed my web pages to work with all browsers. And Netscape has always been my browser of choice, because it was the best. Though it lacks nifty features like IE's rebars, I really like the Netscape Communicator 4.x interface. I find bookmark handling in particular easier to deal with in Netscape than in IE.
Unfortunately, Netscape dropped the ball, and stopped improving their browser engine after Communicator 4.0 was released in June 1997. Though it wasn't standards-compliant then, I fully expected Netscape to remedy that as soon as possible. They never did. In fact, I've never even heard them say that they were working on full HTML 4.0 support.
Instead, Netscape has wasted time with side projects, first trying to push (no pun intended) its ill-fated Netcaster client, then its portal site, and then all kinds of useless junk like AOL Instant Messenger and the Shop button.
Meanwhile, Microsoft wasn't just relying on bundling IE with every conceivable piece of Windows software. IE4 was released with a solid lead over Netscape in HTML and CSS support. While Netscape's ill-named SmartUpdate was and still is broken and difficult to use, IE4 introduced Windows Update, which makes installations, upgrades, and add-ons a snap.
Now IE5 is the undisputed best web browser. Under the hood, it is so far superior to any other browser that there is no contest. To initiate an exodus from IE, Mozilla will have to be fully compliant with HTML, CSS2, XML, and be amazing to boot. And it will need to be released soon.
As for Netscape, I am resigned to its crushing defeat. Over a year ago, it was already clear that it lost the browser war. People have waited patiently since 1997, but there is still no sign that Netscape 5 is forthcoming, let alone any indication that it will be as good as IE5.
Unless there is a dramatic reversal in this situation, I think you can expect to see more and more Netscape holdouts give up and start writing web pages to today's standards, whether Navigator can deal with them or not. I am unhappy about this state of affairs, but that's just the way it is. Netscape stood still while the world kept on turning.
So true! But wouldn't MS name it something like Active Toaster ?
:)
Although for me disk capacity & speed are the greatest computing bottlenecks, I would have no problem putting 1100 MHz to good use compressing MP3s and running software DVD. Also, just think of all the RC5 key checking you could do for distributed.net!
It might even make Win2K run at a decent clip. ;)
Thanks for the link. The talk.origins site is quite interesting, and is going to take quite awhile to read. It is all quite slanted toward macro-evolution as an indisputable fact.
But macro-evolution is disputed. Check out the other side of the debate at trueorigin.org. This site has rebuttals to many of the talk.origins FAQs, and seems no less interesting or worth reading.
I recommend that both sites be checked out. For the record, I am a Christian who believes that God created everything, including life. I don't know literally how He did it, but I'm not afraid of investigating the evidence and ideas put forth by both creationists and evolutionists. I doubt that anyone is 100% correct.
If the UN were to impose a worldwide tax on anything, then it would be grossly overstepping its bounds. The sovereignty of national governments would be effectively usurped, and the UN would become world dictator. The Internet that we now so freely enjoy would be the catalyst.
This grave concern supercedes all of the other technical and common sense reasons why such a tax would be an Extremely Bad Thing.
Besides, the way I see it, the communications revolution is happening extremely quickly, and doesn't need a few hundred billion dollars to help it along. In just a matter of decades, the Internet will complete its journey from obscurity to ubiquity.
How about ensuring basic necessities and rights for all people before shoving eCommerce and eDictatorship down our throats?
I have long been curious as to why not all of the RFCs are available. In particular, I would like to see RFC 1. Why is it nowhere to be found?
Help/insights, anyone?