Um... quite often in that story, the David-s are not even in the same business as the Goliath in question. Whenever does an urge by one to take someone else's job - without being able to do it - end in anything we can call progress, let alone something positive?
"Easiest target" is so right - but the "biggest" is not the "best", and the majority need not be a "cult" in itself; rather, it embodies a lack of one.
The cult is where the choice is. On the desktop side of things, Mac users chose to split with the "I use it because everyone's using it" majority, and now have a much better (and safer!) OS to be proud of. For the 'behind the scenes' cults, it all depends on trade: the *nix 'cults' know they're the majority in everything web and server - but the strength of their unity relies on the sheer weight of their knowledge (they almost have their own language for lord's sake) - quite the opposite of the 'collective delusion' sentiment of the Microsoft masses.
If you're still a Microsoft 'militant', you're either ignorant, working for the company or just plain cherry-picking mad. The Microsoft 'movement' is ignorance - forced or feigned.
Microsoft owes its fortune to ignorance. Gates saw a way to 'educate' first-time computer users to 'his' (not his own work, actually) platform through selling it to computer manufacturers - something the other 'cults' did not do. I would have no bone at all with this were Microsoft the best product out there - if they were, they would even qualify for a justifiable 'cult' status of their own (by those who chose to use it for its qualities) - but theirs has never been the best and, if they don't change their strategy, it never will be. Even if many tecnologically advanced countries may be wising up to the existence and quality of 'altrenate OS's', I don't see Microsoft changing anytime soon because of the fortune waiting in the hundreds of developing countries awaiting conquer in exactly the same way - through first-time user ignorance.
Microsoft is a culture of lemmings. The choice, thus the 'cult', lies elsewhere.
Sarkozy doesn't have a clear stance on anything at all. As someone watching most every move he has made since his first appearance as a Chiraq supporter (around 1997), his "discours" since then has been a sea of passive-voice platitudes geared to please the common public. He does pronounce himself clearly on a few issues such as immigration, yet does not provide a clear idea on how he intends to impliment his 'ideas'. These next months will be revealing about what this guy is really about.
...I also think it odd that anyone could call 'os x vs. vista' a "draw". Windows' security and compatibility issues aside, I use both for many desktop publishing functions - especially for beta testing - and nothing 'basic function' (printing, networking, etc) is as simple in Vista as it is in Os X. Take again the design issues ('non-similar' issues aside, and sorry, but default (and most-used) skins still looks rather 'playskool'), and I can't help but think 'biased article'.
This article is rather selective in its points of comparison. You really have to use all platforms before writing an analytical shoot-out between them. Or something that at least hopes to look like something the same.
You're in the exact same situation as I - I'm still using my circa-1996 Epson Stylus Photo EX. Prints super-A3 size, and works like a charm. Some ink-clone companies are lower in quality, but with a bit of research (and perhaps some trial and error) one can find a suitable brand. May I also point you to This earlier Slashdot Article.
What it comes down to (for me) is this - since I will never be using any store-bought printer for publication-quality prints, my printer works just fine for all my personal and layout needs. It's when one goes publication-end that one needs to pay more attention. Yet I wonder how much the "big guys" pay for ink?
The high price of ink cartriges is an abuse, and it is no coincidence that virtually all printers have, until now, followed the same practice at almost the same price level. I'm glad to see that trend break.
That would be: paperballots. There should be SOME sort of trace - and I don't see why they can't use computers to make the system better. For example, why not give each vote a unique ID number, and have the machine spit out a paper 'receit' with that tracking number - and the vote - printed on it? That would both reassure me - and confirm that I placed my vote correctly. And reassure me that, if worse came to worse, there'd be something 'real' to recount.
A note of irony to all this - do you know who makes most of the electronic banking machines for th BNP, one of the biggest banks in France? Diebold. There's one on every Paris mainstreet corner.
We're not all webmasters. As far as the end user is concerned, whatever works in his machine works, and more often than not he'll never see a 'broken' mainstream site - because any serious webmaster would not allow that to happen. All those who really know better is wait out the monopoly, deal in the meantime with those ignorant yet insistant check-weilding clients who would not have it any other way than the "IE way" (but perhaps in charging them more for it) - but I do have to say that being able to complain about the fact of it here to those actually interested does bring a wee nip of satisfaction : )
There's just one thing with my analogy: I don't quantify "money we perhaps could have made" with "losing money". I mean really losing money you can or have counted - losing existing customers and clients when they want to switch browsers - or OS's - for a big one.
Not only was it a pre-installed 'first impression'; it was a pre-installed only impression. How do you expect a first-time user to know what 'better' is if he's never used another browser? Once that user has learned how to use that browser, how can one convince him (he that sees only the front-end function of a website, not the code behind) that there are better browsers, and convince him to switch? There are more than a few instincts at play here.
I do understand the 'majority of browsers are IE' argument - that figures in even in a company's financial decisions - but this has nothing to do with the quality of the browser. With the increasing amount of 'other' browsers climbing, there may come a time where a company may actually lose money by taking the 'IE only' option. In any case, companies are already losing money because of IE, because of all the time (and bug research) it takes for webmasters to make a website look the same in all browsers. I'm talking from experience.
...the beauty with Firefox is that its non-standard functions are but a second layer on top of the usual standards - all the widespread standards still work as they should in all browsers. The same is not the case for IE - even some of the simplest CSS functions behave differently therein.
I think it has more to do with a 'chain of ignorance' - your boss feels 'safer' if his customers to use what he knows how to use. Throw in the webmaster's 'site bid' ticket that must appeal to that same 'safe' feeling... to get the website project. Any way you look at it, obliging a fault is not a reasoned step forward, it's a tenacious grip on the past by one who has still no experience or understanding of what 'better' is.
You're joking, right? I like the irony. If MS were the hands-down best in everything they do, one could have little argument to choose another browser - but this is far from the case. So we should bend to a half-rate bug-filled e'er-changing technological whims of single company - just because 'everyone is doing it' - just as they want us to? Please.
The only reason MS is where it is today is because it shipped for free with every PC - a move targeting both on people's laziness and the ignorance of first-time users. This is their real talent - understanding how consumers buy computers - not how they use computers. One cannot ask web-developers, intent on finding a reasoned approach to web technology, to bend to a dominating company's 'market values' - especially when their product falls short of all acceptable standards.
One thing is certain: You're doing exactly what Microsoft wants you to do. What's odder: you seem to be enjoying it. No matter, to each his own, but I know very few webmasters who would 'impose' IE - most I know spend most of their time pulling their hair out because of it.
With that thought in mind, I wonder if there's some way to calculate how much money IE has lost webmasters trying to make their websites look the same in both IE and web-standards compliant browssers?
In one way or another, we'll have a majority. A screaming-weemie heebie-jeebie "thou shalt hear me above all others", or another yo. I'm part o' consensus, hear me out if I"m the majority solution.
Um. I began by commenting on the endoctrination angle of the "adware patent", but got distracted by the OS itself. I meant to say that Microsoft are whizzes at endoctrination, and most likely have many experts well-versed in human behaviour and human conditioning. MS until used their expertise to their own benefit (their own OS), but since their product my become not as successful, now they're selling their expertise to sell those of others.
In other words, indoctrination is MS's first and formost trade.
Microsoft owes perhaps all of its success to indoctrination (Windows pre-installed in every PC sold), and this is just more of the same, but blatently. We seem to be approaching an age where more OS's will work on more computers (think Mac/Intel), and MS is just preparing for that: a less-profitable but just-as-effective means of getting first dibs on human computer-using habits, as a first-time user and a free OS becomes a paying customer when he's "trained" and its update time. Same method, just added sleaze.
This is nothing new though. There are many companies notorious for the "get 'em young' approach through in-school endoctrination - Colgate is a better-known example, with their free but branded "dental hygene information kits" that gave just as much space to the benefits of their own product (over all others) as they did actual advice on tooth care.
Slashdot Mirror
Um... quite often in that story, the David-s are not even in the same business as the Goliath in question. Whenever does an urge by one to take someone else's job - without being able to do it - end in anything we can call progress, let alone something positive?
Isn't using Microsoft products the very definition of self-flagellation?
"Easiest target" is so right - but the "biggest" is not the "best", and the majority need not be a "cult" in itself; rather, it embodies a lack of one.
The cult is where the choice is. On the desktop side of things, Mac users chose to split with the "I use it because everyone's using it" majority, and now have a much better (and safer!) OS to be proud of. For the 'behind the scenes' cults, it all depends on trade: the *nix 'cults' know they're the majority in everything web and server - but the strength of their unity relies on the sheer weight of their knowledge (they almost have their own language for lord's sake) - quite the opposite of the 'collective delusion' sentiment of the Microsoft masses.
If you're still a Microsoft 'militant', you're either ignorant, working for the company or just plain cherry-picking mad. The Microsoft 'movement' is ignorance - forced or feigned.
Microsoft owes its fortune to ignorance. Gates saw a way to 'educate' first-time computer users to 'his' (not his own work, actually) platform through selling it to computer manufacturers - something the other 'cults' did not do. I would have no bone at all with this were Microsoft the best product out there - if they were, they would even qualify for a justifiable 'cult' status of their own (by those who chose to use it for its qualities) - but theirs has never been the best and, if they don't change their strategy, it never will be. Even if many tecnologically advanced countries may be wising up to the existence and quality of 'altrenate OS's', I don't see Microsoft changing anytime soon because of the fortune waiting in the hundreds of developing countries awaiting conquer in exactly the same way - through first-time user ignorance.
Microsoft is a culture of lemmings. The choice, thus the 'cult', lies elsewhere.
"Ceiling Height May Affects Problem-Solving Skills"
Whoever wrote that headline must have a low ceiling.
Sarkozy doesn't have a clear stance on anything at all. As someone watching most every move he has made since his first appearance as a Chiraq supporter (around 1997), his "discours" since then has been a sea of passive-voice platitudes geared to please the common public. He does pronounce himself clearly on a few issues such as immigration, yet does not provide a clear idea on how he intends to impliment his 'ideas'. These next months will be revealing about what this guy is really about.
"Doesn't it just bug you, a guy can be CEO, so stupid and yet worth billions?"
Doesn't it bug you that the millions that make Balmer his billions cannot be anything but stupider?
Being an authority on how the ignorant behave around computers doesn't make one an effective maker of useful (and functional) computer software.
It's pompous to smack pompous pompous-people smackers.
SMACK.
Perhaps a spanking would be more fitting?
...I also think it odd that anyone could call 'os x vs. vista' a "draw". Windows' security and compatibility issues aside, I use both for many desktop publishing functions - especially for beta testing - and nothing 'basic function' (printing, networking, etc) is as simple in Vista as it is in Os X. Take again the design issues ('non-similar' issues aside, and sorry, but default (and most-used) skins still looks rather 'playskool'), and I can't help but think 'biased article'.
This article is rather selective in its points of comparison. You really have to use all platforms before writing an analytical shoot-out between them. Or something that at least hopes to look like something the same.
You're in the exact same situation as I - I'm still using my circa-1996 Epson Stylus Photo EX. Prints super-A3 size, and works like a charm. Some ink-clone companies are lower in quality, but with a bit of research (and perhaps some trial and error) one can find a suitable brand. May I also point you to This earlier Slashdot Article.
What it comes down to (for me) is this - since I will never be using any store-bought printer for publication-quality prints, my printer works just fine for all my personal and layout needs. It's when one goes publication-end that one needs to pay more attention. Yet I wonder how much the "big guys" pay for ink?
The high price of ink cartriges is an abuse, and it is no coincidence that virtually all printers have, until now, followed the same practice at almost the same price level. I'm glad to see that trend break.
That would be: paperballots. There should be SOME sort of trace - and I don't see why they can't use computers to make the system better. For example, why not give each vote a unique ID number, and have the machine spit out a paper 'receit' with that tracking number - and the vote - printed on it? That would both reassure me - and confirm that I placed my vote correctly. And reassure me that, if worse came to worse, there'd be something 'real' to recount.
A note of irony to all this - do you know who makes most of the electronic banking machines for th BNP, one of the biggest banks in France? Diebold. There's one on every Paris mainstreet corner.
"I think that the hatred of vista will largely subside once people actually use it.
You know, I spent thirty years saying the same about the Mac.
Stupid != ignorant.
We're not all webmasters. As far as the end user is concerned, whatever works in his machine works, and more often than not he'll never see a 'broken' mainstream site - because any serious webmaster would not allow that to happen. All those who really know better is wait out the monopoly, deal in the meantime with those ignorant yet insistant check-weilding clients who would not have it any other way than the "IE way" (but perhaps in charging them more for it) - but I do have to say that being able to complain about the fact of it here to those actually interested does bring a wee nip of satisfaction : )
There's just one thing with my analogy: I don't quantify "money we perhaps could have made" with "losing money". I mean really losing money you can or have counted - losing existing customers and clients when they want to switch browsers - or OS's - for a big one.
Not only was it a pre-installed 'first impression'; it was a pre-installed only impression. How do you expect a first-time user to know what 'better' is if he's never used another browser? Once that user has learned how to use that browser, how can one convince him (he that sees only the front-end function of a website, not the code behind) that there are better browsers, and convince him to switch? There are more than a few instincts at play here.
I do understand the 'majority of browsers are IE' argument - that figures in even in a company's financial decisions - but this has nothing to do with the quality of the browser. With the increasing amount of 'other' browsers climbing, there may come a time where a company may actually lose money by taking the 'IE only' option. In any case, companies are already losing money because of IE, because of all the time (and bug research) it takes for webmasters to make a website look the same in all browsers. I'm talking from experience.
...the beauty with Firefox is that its non-standard functions are but a second layer on top of the usual standards - all the widespread standards still work as they should in all browsers. The same is not the case for IE - even some of the simplest CSS functions behave differently therein.
I think it has more to do with a 'chain of ignorance' - your boss feels 'safer' if his customers to use what he knows how to use. Throw in the webmaster's 'site bid' ticket that must appeal to that same 'safe' feeling... to get the website project. Any way you look at it, obliging a fault is not a reasoned step forward, it's a tenacious grip on the past by one who has still no experience or understanding of what 'better' is.
You're joking, right? I like the irony. If MS were the hands-down best in everything they do, one could have little argument to choose another browser - but this is far from the case. So we should bend to a half-rate bug-filled e'er-changing technological whims of single company - just because 'everyone is doing it' - just as they want us to? Please. The only reason MS is where it is today is because it shipped for free with every PC - a move targeting both on people's laziness and the ignorance of first-time users. This is their real talent - understanding how consumers buy computers - not how they use computers. One cannot ask web-developers, intent on finding a reasoned approach to web technology, to bend to a dominating company's 'market values' - especially when their product falls short of all acceptable standards.
One thing is certain: You're doing exactly what Microsoft wants you to do. What's odder: you seem to be enjoying it. No matter, to each his own, but I know very few webmasters who would 'impose' IE - most I know spend most of their time pulling their hair out because of it.
With that thought in mind, I wonder if there's some way to calculate how much money IE has lost webmasters trying to make their websites look the same in both IE and web-standards compliant browssers?
April Fool's !!!!
In one way or another, we'll have a majority. A screaming-weemie heebie-jeebie "thou shalt hear me above all others", or another yo. I'm part o' consensus, hear me out if I"m the majority solution.
Um. I began by commenting on the endoctrination angle of the "adware patent", but got distracted by the OS itself. I meant to say that Microsoft are whizzes at endoctrination, and most likely have many experts well-versed in human behaviour and human conditioning. MS until used their expertise to their own benefit (their own OS), but since their product my become not as successful, now they're selling their expertise to sell those of others.
In other words, indoctrination is MS's first and formost trade.
Microsoft owes perhaps all of its success to indoctrination (Windows pre-installed in every PC sold), and this is just more of the same, but blatently. We seem to be approaching an age where more OS's will work on more computers (think Mac/Intel), and MS is just preparing for that: a less-profitable but just-as-effective means of getting first dibs on human computer-using habits, as a first-time user and a free OS becomes a paying customer when he's "trained" and its update time. Same method, just added sleaze.
This is nothing new though. There are many companies notorious for the "get 'em young' approach through in-school endoctrination - Colgate is a better-known example, with their free but branded "dental hygene information kits" that gave just as much space to the benefits of their own product (over all others) as they did actual advice on tooth care.
...although the reaction to some of these should be: "get real".