The article wasn't indicating that Firefox was eating away at Microsoft's market share. The increase is coming from other browsers - people who had switched off of IE prior to Firefox being released.
I think this goes to show that Firefox is reaching it's high point of getting all the geeks to convert. So, from this assumption and the article, I conclude that 7.86 percent of computer users are geeeks.
It would be great if one of the computer manufacturers, like HP, would start bundling Firefox with their shipping computers as the default browser.
So they never designed Windows to connect to other computers. Do they have plans to design it to play with others anytime soon? If you don't connect a Windows machine to another computer, it will perfectly safe from the internet.....
Taking care of it silently is still a solution to the problem. It may not be the best option. I never claimed that it was a perfect design, but was simply pointing out that there are systems that will generally keep the files on the disk in an unfragmented state when possible. On a disk, if the system gets too full, there most likely won't be a continuous block to write to, so of course it will be fragmented, but at a later time, it may be able to defrag that file.
Or course there is a time penalty for this, but it is rather small for a file less than 20 MB. And, it requires no user intervention - I don't have to manually take care of my system, it deals with it by itself as opposed to me manually running a defrag utility once in a while.
OS X optimizes when you install applications (or run them for the first time), but it does not defrag the disk. The optimizer is just doing a prebinding so shared libraries load faster, it isn't rearranging any files on the disk.
None of the Windows based ones, but I know OS X and I think Linux defrag on the fly. When you access a file that is fragmented and is less than 20 MB, it will defrag it. I've had my Mac for two years without ever defragging it and 99.7% of my files are fragmented less than 6 times (which doesn't really impact performance).
Windows, on the other hand, does none of this and gets fragmented rather quickly, which requires the user to manually defrag the disk occasionally.
I dislike hearing a song too often and I also like to hear my favorite songs more often, but also not repetitevly. So, I have set up 6 playlists that gives me what I think is a good mix of my songs. They are as follows: 1: rated 2 and 25 rated by least recently 2: rated 3 and 73 rated by least recently 3: rated 4 and 70 rated by least recently 4: rated 5 and 32 rated by least recently playlist is any of playlists 1, 2, 3, or 4 with live updating
The numbers (25, 73, 70, and 32) come from multiplying the number of songs in each category by the rating-1, so it is essentially the same as the "play higher rated songs" in PartyShuffle. I leave 1 rated songs for ones that I don't listen to very often. This way, I get a random selection of my music that does not repeat a song until I have more-or-less gone through the rest of them in that rating. And, it generally plays the 5 rated songs about 4 times more than the 1 rated songs.
I found that I do not like the random feature since it often will play one song significantly more than another song. Eventually, it would even out, but in the range of 20 times playing a song, there can be a large discrepancy and I haven't heard some songs in longer than I'd like.
Then the IT support didn't know how to lock down the systems. I would have banned the IT support and gotten some that knew what they were doing and could support more than one OS.
But, which one will crash more often or be more stable? My University has all the Windows machines do a restore from a disk image every few days to prevent them from getting viruses and spyware. Apparently, this is easier than preventing it all from getting on there in the first place.
With Linux, this wouldn't be necessary. I set up a bunch of Linux machines in an after school program and they have been running for almost a year without an OS installation. They are basically running the same as they were. The user settings get erased occasionally, but that is only because the students kept putting inappropriate pictures as the backgrounds. All the students are using OpenOffice fine and printing and everything they need to be doing. After a week or two of getting used to it, they barely notice they are using a different OS. And, in 5 years, these kids will probably be better equiped since they understand computers, not just Windows, and will be able to use whatever system is out there. I hope we still aren't using Windows XP in 5 years....
Go check on eBay...the current price of a similarly configured iBook is about $350 for a working on and about $150 for a broken one (for parts). Henrico county just threw out massive amounts of money by doing this. They should have had a public auction for the residents. This would have helped to offset the cost of their next set of computers.
And, I would like have seen how much the total cost of the Apple computers was after a market value sale and compare that to a similar deal with the Dells in four years. Somehow, I can't see people wetting themselves over a 4 year old Dell laptop for $50.
What are the three standards your school has changed to? That seems incredibly wasteful. I've been using 802.11 b/g for the past 4 years and it is compatible with just about all the devices I've come across. There was the whole Intel 802.11a that sucked, but not many people used that.
It sounds like your school is being very wasteful and not looking ahead at all.
I completely disagree. I think Daylight Saving Time is the answer for the whole year. Why are we only on it during the summer? Why can't we 'save' time year 'round? Below is a list of the 1st of each month for 2005. First time listed is the current system (in parentheses are always on DST). Keep in mind that almost everyone is awake between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM, yet going off DST makes it dark then. Not everyone is awake between 7:00 AM and 8:00 AM. March, April, November, and December are very good examples.
Janurary 1st: Sun Rise: 7:18am (8:18am) Sun Set: 4:29pm (5:29pm)
February 1st: Sun Rise: 7:03am (8:03am) Sun Set: 5:04pm (6:04pm)
March 1st: Sun Rise: 6:25am (7:25am) Sun Set: 5:39pm (6:39pm)
April 1st: Sun Rise: 5:33am (6:33am) Sun Set: 6:15pm (7:15pm)
Move clocks forward one hour - on DST May 1st: Sun Rise: 5:46am (5:46am) Sun Set: 7:48pm (7:48pm)
June 1st: Sun Rise: 5:17am (5:17am) Sun Set: 8:18pm (8:18pm)
July 1st: Sun Rise: 5:18am (5:18am) Sun Set: 8:29pm (8:29pm)
August 1st: Sun Rise: 5:43am (5:43am) Sun Set: 8:09pm (8:09pm)
September 1st: Sun Rise: 6:15am (6:15am) Sun Set: 7:25pm (7:25pm)
October 1st: Sun Rise: 6:46am (6:46am) Sun Set: 6:33pm (6:33pm)
Move clocks back one hour - off DST November 1st: Sun Rise: 6:22am (7:22am) Sun Set: 4:45pm (5:45pm)
December 1st: Sun Rise: 6:58am (7:58am) Sun Set: 4:20pm (5:20pm)
The only difference comes during the winter (since this would always be on DST). We essentially lose an hour in the winter and gain it in the late afternoon. Not everyone wakes up before 8:00 and I can't think of a single person who would go to bed before 6:00 PM, so everyone is gaining access to the late afternoon/early evening light and only some people are losing the morning light (many people are still asleep). Why aren't we on Daylight Saving Time all year? I would prefer that much more than having it. We wouldn't have to mess with changing clocks or (re)programming our devices and we'd have more light in the early evening.
More options in browsers will be better for everyone.
If more people use Firefox, it's possible that more people will try to hack it, but that means less people hacking IE. So, any hack that does come out will probably not affect everyone. Software diversity is very important to preventing systems from going down. I can't believe people rely solely on one OS to do their stuff - a virus comes out and everything is messed up. I would rather have a backup running a different OS that could be swapped in or better yet, a mix of multiple OSes. Same with browsers - have multiple ones and everyone ends up more secure.
I would like a TV show composed of the best commercials of the week/month (without some stupid commentator). Use TiVo to vote on them through the week and during the show - I bet a lot of people would probably watch it.
I don't mind commercials - some of them are fun. There are definitely some really stupid ones and they all tend to get pretty repetitive. But, with a show of the user selected best and most recent commercials, it would constantly be changing.
And, the maximize and close button are touching again - what happened to the space that XP had? How many times do you close a window when you meant to maximize it?
Not only moving the close button, but now some of the apps have the menus in bizarra places, like IE. On the Mac, I know they'll be in the top left. On current Windows and Linux, I know they'll be just below the window title bar. In Longhorn, they might be just below the title bar (Windows Media Player), they might be a little further down on the left (IE), they might not exist (Control Panels), or they might be in the middle car below the title bar (file browser). It's going to take more than a few seconds to find the menus for each program.
The DOS prompt still has to display "ADMINI~1" - why can't it display longer names?
Windows Home = $100~
Windows Pro = $130~
Windows Longhorn = Unknown
Playstation 2 = ~$120
PS 2 Game X = $20-$50
You don't have to reboot and one person in your house can play a game while someone else is surfing the web. And, no compatibility issues to deal with....
Why can't you just sort it on the client side in a manner that suits you. In Safari RSS, I can sort by new, date, source, or title and I can search them. That gives me all the flexibility I need. Why publish a list in an RSS feed? It would be easier and better formatted in html anyway.
Why are they only releasing it in Windows Media? Why not go with something that has a better compression algorithm like H.264 or DivX 6? I'll pass on the large file sizes for small resolution video.
I've had a similar experience with Fedora Core 3 and WinXP. I was installing both on 4 computers from Dell. Installing Fedora was very easy and came with a whole bunch of applications, which saves a huge amount of time later when I have to install them. I had it installed (including Matlab and Mathmatica) and fully updated within 2 hours and it only took two reboots.
On the other hand, actually installing Windows was very easy, but what happened next was where the extra time is. There was no video, ethernet, or sound driver installed. Now, this is the Windows XP disk that ships from Dell for that particular model of computer. I used a different computer to get the drivers and put them onto the machine. Each one required a reboot. It then connected to the internet. As I was downloading the updates, it got infected with a virus. I realized that a firewall and antivirus software should be the first things to install, even before the ethernet driver. Once I got that cleared off, I started installing all the updates - this takes a long time since about 6 of them require that they are installed alone, so I had to reboot the machine another 6 times. So, I finally had the computer updated after about 5 hours, but there was no software installed. It took another hour to get Office, Matlab, & Mathmatica installed.
So, I don't know if I agree with 10 times easier to install, but I definitely think it takes Fedora about 1/5 the time to install AND setup as Windows XP.
Also, Fedora iss a constantly updated OS. Windows XP is 4 years old. It's had some massive patches applied to attempt to make it a secure OS, but that is about it. What new features are there? I think this article is right on. He is comparing the most recent version of Windows to the most recent version of Fedora. Why are so many people stuck on a 4 year old OS.
What is it with you people that get upset when people like to have a little bit of quiet?
I can have nice conversations in my lab with people a few feet from me and most people are not bothered because they do not hear us talking more than about 10 feet away. But, whenever someone answers a cell phone, they are inevitably much louder and people on the other side of the lab (30-40 feet away) can hear them.
Conversations on planes are at an acceptable level right now, but with people talking three times louder, it is going to be a real nuissance. And people are going to be much more inclined to talk more since they will be able to talk to people they know. As it is now, as soon as the plane lands, the noise level gets much louder with everyone turning on their phones and talking. I can hear people on the other side of the plane telling their friends and families that they'll be at baggage claim 3 in 10 minutes.
Human beings are becoming dependent on technology and this is preventing natural selection from running it's course. Take a baby that is born with a genetic disease. 100 years ago, this baby would have died before it could pass on it's genes, but now, with modern technology, this baby can live to an age where it can pass on it's genes. Now, this genetic disease is passed on to future generations where each generation needs some sort of treatment in order to survive.
Mutations are constantly being introduced into the human race. Natural selection should allow the beneficial ones to survive and prevent the bad ones from being passed on to the next generation. Modern medicine is actually helping these unhealthy genes continue down through the generations.
I thought widgets only ran when the computer was in Dashboard - otherwise they are not given any resources. So, it won't eliminate the issues, but it will severely mitigate them since it can't continuously monitor your activities.
People need to be careful of whatever they download from the web, regardless of the OS they are on. I don't think that is ever going to change.
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The article wasn't indicating that Firefox was eating away at Microsoft's market share. The increase is coming from other browsers - people who had switched off of IE prior to Firefox being released.
I think this goes to show that Firefox is reaching it's high point of getting all the geeks to convert. So, from this assumption and the article, I conclude that 7.86 percent of computer users are geeeks.
It would be great if one of the computer manufacturers, like HP, would start bundling Firefox with their shipping computers as the default browser.
So they never designed Windows to connect to other computers. Do they have plans to design it to play with others anytime soon? If you don't connect a Windows machine to another computer, it will perfectly safe from the internet.....
Taking care of it silently is still a solution to the problem. It may not be the best option. I never claimed that it was a perfect design, but was simply pointing out that there are systems that will generally keep the files on the disk in an unfragmented state when possible. On a disk, if the system gets too full, there most likely won't be a continuous block to write to, so of course it will be fragmented, but at a later time, it may be able to defrag that file.
Or course there is a time penalty for this, but it is rather small for a file less than 20 MB. And, it requires no user intervention - I don't have to manually take care of my system, it deals with it by itself as opposed to me manually running a defrag utility once in a while.
For more info about OS X on-the-fly defraging, check out: http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/29/190237 There is a lot of discussion about it in various places.
None of the Windows based ones, but I know OS X and I think Linux defrag on the fly. When you access a file that is fragmented and is less than 20 MB, it will defrag it. I've had my Mac for two years without ever defragging it and 99.7% of my files are fragmented less than 6 times (which doesn't really impact performance).
Windows, on the other hand, does none of this and gets fragmented rather quickly, which requires the user to manually defrag the disk occasionally.
I dislike hearing a song too often and I also like to hear my favorite songs more often, but also not repetitevly. So, I have set up 6 playlists that gives me what I think is a good mix of my songs. They are as follows:
1: rated 2 and 25 rated by least recently
2: rated 3 and 73 rated by least recently
3: rated 4 and 70 rated by least recently
4: rated 5 and 32 rated by least recently
playlist is any of playlists 1, 2, 3, or 4 with live updating
The numbers (25, 73, 70, and 32) come from multiplying the number of songs in each category by the rating-1, so it is essentially the same as the "play higher rated songs" in PartyShuffle. I leave 1 rated songs for ones that I don't listen to very often. This way, I get a random selection of my music that does not repeat a song until I have more-or-less gone through the rest of them in that rating. And, it generally plays the 5 rated songs about 4 times more than the 1 rated songs.
I found that I do not like the random feature since it often will play one song significantly more than another song. Eventually, it would even out, but in the range of 20 times playing a song, there can be a large discrepancy and I haven't heard some songs in longer than I'd like.
Then the IT support didn't know how to lock down the systems. I would have banned the IT support and gotten some that knew what they were doing and could support more than one OS.
But, which one will crash more often or be more stable? My University has all the Windows machines do a restore from a disk image every few days to prevent them from getting viruses and spyware. Apparently, this is easier than preventing it all from getting on there in the first place.
With Linux, this wouldn't be necessary. I set up a bunch of Linux machines in an after school program and they have been running for almost a year without an OS installation. They are basically running the same as they were. The user settings get erased occasionally, but that is only because the students kept putting inappropriate pictures as the backgrounds. All the students are using OpenOffice fine and printing and everything they need to be doing. After a week or two of getting used to it, they barely notice they are using a different OS. And, in 5 years, these kids will probably be better equiped since they understand computers, not just Windows, and will be able to use whatever system is out there. I hope we still aren't using Windows XP in 5 years....
Go check on eBay...the current price of a similarly configured iBook is about $350 for a working on and about $150 for a broken one (for parts). Henrico county just threw out massive amounts of money by doing this. They should have had a public auction for the residents. This would have helped to offset the cost of their next set of computers.
And, I would like have seen how much the total cost of the Apple computers was after a market value sale and compare that to a similar deal with the Dells in four years. Somehow, I can't see people wetting themselves over a 4 year old Dell laptop for $50.
What are the three standards your school has changed to? That seems incredibly wasteful. I've been using 802.11 b/g for the past 4 years and it is compatible with just about all the devices I've come across. There was the whole Intel 802.11a that sucked, but not many people used that.
It sounds like your school is being very wasteful and not looking ahead at all.
I completely disagree. I think Daylight Saving Time is the answer for the whole year. Why are we only on it during the summer? Why can't we 'save' time year 'round? Below is a list of the 1st of each month for 2005. First time listed is the current system (in parentheses are always on DST). Keep in mind that almost everyone is awake between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM, yet going off DST makes it dark then. Not everyone is awake between 7:00 AM and 8:00 AM. March, April, November, and December are very good examples.
Janurary 1st:
Sun Rise: 7:18am (8:18am)
Sun Set: 4:29pm (5:29pm)
February 1st:
Sun Rise: 7:03am (8:03am)
Sun Set: 5:04pm (6:04pm)
March 1st:
Sun Rise: 6:25am (7:25am)
Sun Set: 5:39pm (6:39pm)
April 1st:
Sun Rise: 5:33am (6:33am)
Sun Set: 6:15pm (7:15pm)
Move clocks forward one hour - on DST
May 1st:
Sun Rise: 5:46am (5:46am)
Sun Set: 7:48pm (7:48pm)
June 1st:
Sun Rise: 5:17am (5:17am)
Sun Set: 8:18pm (8:18pm)
July 1st:
Sun Rise: 5:18am (5:18am)
Sun Set: 8:29pm (8:29pm)
August 1st:
Sun Rise: 5:43am (5:43am)
Sun Set: 8:09pm (8:09pm)
September 1st:
Sun Rise: 6:15am (6:15am)
Sun Set: 7:25pm (7:25pm)
October 1st:
Sun Rise: 6:46am (6:46am)
Sun Set: 6:33pm (6:33pm)
Move clocks back one hour - off DST
November 1st:
Sun Rise: 6:22am (7:22am)
Sun Set: 4:45pm (5:45pm)
December 1st:
Sun Rise: 6:58am (7:58am)
Sun Set: 4:20pm (5:20pm)
The only difference comes during the winter (since this would always be on DST). We essentially lose an hour in the winter and gain it in the late afternoon. Not everyone wakes up before 8:00 and I can't think of a single person who would go to bed before 6:00 PM, so everyone is gaining access to the late afternoon/early evening light and only some people are losing the morning light (many people are still asleep). Why aren't we on Daylight Saving Time all year? I would prefer that much more than having it. We wouldn't have to mess with changing clocks or (re)programming our devices and we'd have more light in the early evening.
If more people use Firefox, it's possible that more people will try to hack it, but that means less people hacking IE. So, any hack that does come out will probably not affect everyone. Software diversity is very important to preventing systems from going down. I can't believe people rely solely on one OS to do their stuff - a virus comes out and everything is messed up. I would rather have a backup running a different OS that could be swapped in or better yet, a mix of multiple OSes. Same with browsers - have multiple ones and everyone ends up more secure.
I don't mind commercials - some of them are fun. There are definitely some really stupid ones and they all tend to get pretty repetitive. But, with a show of the user selected best and most recent commercials, it would constantly be changing.
Not only moving the close button, but now some of the apps have the menus in bizarra places, like IE. On the Mac, I know they'll be in the top left. On current Windows and Linux, I know they'll be just below the window title bar. In Longhorn, they might be just below the title bar (Windows Media Player), they might be a little further down on the left (IE), they might not exist (Control Panels), or they might be in the middle car below the title bar (file browser). It's going to take more than a few seconds to find the menus for each program.
The DOS prompt still has to display "ADMINI~1" - why can't it display longer names?
PS 2 Game X = $20-$50
You don't have to reboot and one person in your house can play a game while someone else is surfing the web. And, no compatibility issues to deal with....
Why can't you just sort it on the client side in a manner that suits you. In Safari RSS, I can sort by new, date, source, or title and I can search them. That gives me all the flexibility I need. Why publish a list in an RSS feed? It would be easier and better formatted in html anyway.
Why are they only releasing it in Windows Media? Why not go with something that has a better compression algorithm like H.264 or DivX 6? I'll pass on the large file sizes for small resolution video.
On the other hand, actually installing Windows was very easy, but what happened next was where the extra time is. There was no video, ethernet, or sound driver installed. Now, this is the Windows XP disk that ships from Dell for that particular model of computer. I used a different computer to get the drivers and put them onto the machine. Each one required a reboot. It then connected to the internet. As I was downloading the updates, it got infected with a virus. I realized that a firewall and antivirus software should be the first things to install, even before the ethernet driver. Once I got that cleared off, I started installing all the updates - this takes a long time since about 6 of them require that they are installed alone, so I had to reboot the machine another 6 times. So, I finally had the computer updated after about 5 hours, but there was no software installed. It took another hour to get Office, Matlab, & Mathmatica installed.
So, I don't know if I agree with 10 times easier to install, but I definitely think it takes Fedora about 1/5 the time to install AND setup as Windows XP.
Also, Fedora iss a constantly updated OS. Windows XP is 4 years old. It's had some massive patches applied to attempt to make it a secure OS, but that is about it. What new features are there? I think this article is right on. He is comparing the most recent version of Windows to the most recent version of Fedora. Why are so many people stuck on a 4 year old OS.
What is it with you people that get upset when people like to have a little bit of quiet?
I can have nice conversations in my lab with people a few feet from me and most people are not bothered because they do not hear us talking more than about 10 feet away. But, whenever someone answers a cell phone, they are inevitably much louder and people on the other side of the lab (30-40 feet away) can hear them.
Conversations on planes are at an acceptable level right now, but with people talking three times louder, it is going to be a real nuissance. And people are going to be much more inclined to talk more since they will be able to talk to people they know.
As it is now, as soon as the plane lands, the noise level gets much louder with everyone turning on their phones and talking. I can hear people on the other side of the plane telling their friends and families that they'll be at baggage claim 3 in 10 minutes.
Mutations are constantly being introduced into the human race. Natural selection should allow the beneficial ones to survive and prevent the bad ones from being passed on to the next generation. Modern medicine is actually helping these unhealthy genes continue down through the generations.
I thought widgets only ran when the computer was in Dashboard - otherwise they are not given any resources. So, it won't eliminate the issues, but it will severely mitigate them since it can't continuously monitor your activities. People need to be careful of whatever they download from the web, regardless of the OS they are on. I don't think that is ever going to change.