I, for one, don't keep important mails on my GMail, immediately forwarding them to my "private" address. You should, too -- even if it's only for backup purposes.
Your Blu-Ray disc may deteriorate with time; and your player keys may be recalled after a few years because some hacker would break its DRM, and you won't be able to play the disc anymore because the new, Super-Traffic-Orange-Ray 5000Gb drives won't be backward-compatible.
On the other hand, a h.264 DRM-less rip of Lord of the Rings, stored on a properly backed-up drive (off-location and multiple copies), will be playable indefinitely. Well, at least until the VLC project, x264, and any other DRM-less codec will get prohibited by the law:)
Hear, hear! The crucial flaw in TFA is that "tech customers" who mod phones, care about Linux, read/. etc. are 5-10% at best; others just want a usable product. At present and in the near future, Apple's is more usable.
Frankly, the template "$COMPANY must open-source their $PRODUCT now, before they lose the $INDUSTRY dominance to $BUDDING_OPENSOURCE_ALTERNATIVE and go out of business" is overused far too often.
Methinks both you and OP confuse two kinds of products typically sold at supermarkets.
Standard products (snacks, coffee, whatever) have a unique ID as a barcode and don't include price. However, all products sold by weight (cheese, meats, bakery etc.) that are weighted by you or by store employee before you get to the cash register get a sticker with barcode that contains both item ID (store-specific) and price.
Assuming you live in a reasonably populated area, there are more than enough alternatives for any store. If some drone objects to your actions, speak to the manager, and if that doesn't help, never visit the store again. It is that simple.
Actually, it doesn't. CGA was used with standard 4:3 aspect ratio displays, although the pixels were not square. 1920*1200 is a wide screen (approximately 3:2 aspect ratio), so your 36 CGA screens will be somewhat distorted. Not that it matters, anyway:-)
The parent is right on the "multi-taskedness" of novice users. Having advised a few of those on usage of a computer, many of them start in a single-application mode, and close the first app if they need to do something else. For them, having several windows on the desktop is very confusing because it's not particularly easy to locate the active one, and minimizing an app to taskbar makes them believe the application has been closed, because they can't readily locate it on the desktop.
So, the novice users (and some of the pros) are single-threaded, and for them a 512-MB XP system would work quite nicely:)
A prior art to the "appearing targets nearby" would be Windows behavior since '95 when you couldn't drag and drop anything on a task bar button, you had to hover a bit on it holding the mouse and then the window itself (the "drop target") would raise to the desktop.
If you think that the interface is the reason why XP is so successful, you must be coming from the Mac world, as you are totally and completely wrong:)
Windows 2000, and XP after it, made a quantum leap towards relative stability and reliability of the Windows platform. Most peripherals started to work properly from the first try as driver model and manufacturers' experience improved, and BSOD's became a thing of the past -- I remember getting at least one BSOD daily in '98 days, but I don't remember my XP system hanging up or BSODing for at least a year now.
Why would I want to upgrade with all the Vista horror stories?
Let's see. Bus drivers have a responsibility for the lives of 50 people. Bus is more difficult to control than a car (dimensions, braking, etc.) and the driver has to comply with all the traffic regulations.
NASCAR drivers just zap around a circular track like 6-year-olds in their go-carts.
So it makes total sense that bus drivers be paid x3 the going rate for a NASCAR driver!
The industrial computing world has evolved its standards on small-size computers years ago. One particularly strong standard is PC/104, which offers 3.6 x 3.8" board size with ready solutions for extensibility (ISA in the original, PCI, and now even PCI-Express). It is supported by dozens of vendors and compatible extension boards are available for many purposes.
Another more recent standard is EPIC, which offers more board space (and more functionality) combined with PC/104 extensibility in a 4.5" by 6.5" package.
Both standards are for industrial use and therefore the products are long-lived and usually more stable than their consumer-oriented counterparts. Unfortunately, this also affects the prices, which puts those solutions out of range for everyone but the most wealthy hobbyists:)
Let me just add that laptops are quickly becoming the systems of choice for many people (who are not into hardcore gaming...) and that Apple's strengths play there really well.
On the other hand, laptops are costly, so (at least I) would be less likely to plunk down ten to twenty hundred dollars just to "see if this MacOS thingy works for me", and that without buying all the software I need for work.
Currently, my main machine is a Dell laptop running XP. Very cheap, quite ugly, works great:)
This is not necessarily true. I've never set foot on the shores of U.S. of A, but my English is much richer than the one heard on some of the American TV channels (MTV being the prime example - "and he was, like, so cool"...)
The mastery of any language depends on the effort invested into the language studies and the general education, not on the location of the individual.
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I, for one, don't keep important mails on my GMail, immediately forwarding them to my "private" address. You should, too -- even if it's only for backup purposes.
Your Blu-Ray disc may deteriorate with time; and your player keys may be recalled after a few years because some hacker would break its DRM, and you won't be able to play the disc anymore because the new, Super-Traffic-Orange-Ray 5000Gb drives won't be backward-compatible.
On the other hand, a h.264 DRM-less rip of Lord of the Rings, stored on a properly backed-up drive (off-location and multiple copies), will be playable indefinitely. Well, at least until the VLC project, x264, and any other DRM-less codec will get prohibited by the law :)
Now you can see why the metric system is 2.54 times superior... Especially in your case :)
Nintendo DS? :)
Since Apple is an U.S. company, they make Imperial buttloads of money. Metric buttloads are for Canadian companies.
Hear, hear! The crucial flaw in TFA is that "tech customers" who mod phones, care about Linux, read /. etc. are 5-10% at best; others just want a usable product. At present and in the near future, Apple's is more usable.
Frankly, the template "$COMPANY must open-source their $PRODUCT now, before they lose the $INDUSTRY dominance to $BUDDING_OPENSOURCE_ALTERNATIVE and go out of business" is overused far too often.
Tell the CEO those privileges are intended for his admin assistants only. The CEO is rightfully entitled to "Power User".
Globally, yes. But, for example, in (formerly Soviet) Russia, Opera usage is at 3rd place with 5.77%, more than Firefox: http://globalstats.hotlog.ru/
If Slashdot moderators had ever worked with government procurement, the parent would have been +4 Informative instead.
Actually, they do, in a way: the first search result (or one of the top ones) for many queries on Google would be the page on Wikipedia.
Methinks both you and OP confuse two kinds of products typically sold at supermarkets. Standard products (snacks, coffee, whatever) have a unique ID as a barcode and don't include price. However, all products sold by weight (cheese, meats, bakery etc.) that are weighted by you or by store employee before you get to the cash register get a sticker with barcode that contains both item ID (store-specific) and price.
Assuming you live in a reasonably populated area, there are more than enough alternatives for any store. If some drone objects to your actions, speak to the manager, and if that doesn't help, never visit the store again. It is that simple.
However, this is the reality in many places.
Now, is the right thing for the Linux comminity to turn away from even trying to support these unfortunate sysadmins just because they're amateurs?
You might be up there for a while, but trust me, at the end you're going down.
Why are they doing that? On a C64, the blue screen always appears as soon as you boot!
Actually, it doesn't. CGA was used with standard 4:3 aspect ratio displays, although the pixels were not square. 1920*1200 is a wide screen (approximately 3:2 aspect ratio), so your 36 CGA screens will be somewhat distorted. Not that it matters, anyway :-)
The parent is right on the "multi-taskedness" of novice users. Having advised a few of those on usage of a computer, many of them start in a single-application mode, and close the first app if they need to do something else. For them, having several windows on the desktop is very confusing because it's not particularly easy to locate the active one, and minimizing an app to taskbar makes them believe the application has been closed, because they can't readily locate it on the desktop.
:)
So, the novice users (and some of the pros) are single-threaded, and for them a 512-MB XP system would work quite nicely
A prior art to the "appearing targets nearby" would be Windows behavior since '95 when you couldn't drag and drop anything on a task bar button, you had to hover a bit on it holding the mouse and then the window itself (the "drop target") would raise to the desktop.
Isn't "obeying the law" supposed to be implied? I find it very funny (and strange) that it takes the top spot in a business mission statement.
"In the year 2007, we've became 15% better at obeying the law! *a round of shareholder applause*"
If you think that the interface is the reason why XP is so successful, you must be coming from the Mac world, as you are totally and completely wrong :)
Windows 2000, and XP after it, made a quantum leap towards relative stability and reliability of the Windows platform. Most peripherals started to work properly from the first try as driver model and manufacturers' experience improved, and BSOD's became a thing of the past -- I remember getting at least one BSOD daily in '98 days, but I don't remember my XP system hanging up or BSODing for at least a year now.
Why would I want to upgrade with all the Vista horror stories?
Let's see. Bus drivers have a responsibility for the lives of 50 people. Bus is more difficult to control than a car (dimensions, braking, etc.) and the driver has to comply with all the traffic regulations.
NASCAR drivers just zap around a circular track like 6-year-olds in their go-carts.
So it makes total sense that bus drivers be paid x3 the going rate for a NASCAR driver!
The industrial computing world has evolved its standards on small-size computers years ago. One particularly strong standard is PC/104, which offers 3.6 x 3.8" board size with ready solutions for extensibility (ISA in the original, PCI, and now even PCI-Express). It is supported by dozens of vendors and compatible extension boards are available for many purposes. Another more recent standard is EPIC, which offers more board space (and more functionality) combined with PC/104 extensibility in a 4.5" by 6.5" package. Both standards are for industrial use and therefore the products are long-lived and usually more stable than their consumer-oriented counterparts. Unfortunately, this also affects the prices, which puts those solutions out of range for everyone but the most wealthy hobbyists :)
Not bad, but my personal favourite comes from a set of rollerskating knee pads: "these pads do not protect any body part they don't cover" :)
Let me just add that laptops are quickly becoming the systems of choice for many people (who are not into hardcore gaming...) and that Apple's strengths play there really well.
:)
On the other hand, laptops are costly, so (at least I) would be less likely to plunk down ten to twenty hundred dollars just to "see if this MacOS thingy works for me", and that without buying all the software I need for work.
Currently, my main machine is a Dell laptop running XP. Very cheap, quite ugly, works great
This is not necessarily true. I've never set foot on the shores of U.S. of A, but my English is much richer than the one heard on some of the American TV channels (MTV being the prime example - "and he was, like, so cool"...)
The mastery of any language depends on the effort invested into the language studies and the general education, not on the location of the individual.