If this is meant to be funny, I apologize ahead of time.
I don't know about you, but I haven't seen a single retail box game (barring things requiring online accounts like WoW) that hasn't been cracked in some form, and yet they still trust their software with invasive, abrasive protection methods like Starforce. Even games that are solely online-playable are capable of being cracked to connect to alternative, privately-run server software (Phantasy Star Online, World of Warcraft, etc). Copy protection is a hurdle that generally takes maybe a few weeks at most to crack, and that's a reality. I haven't done it in a long time (right around the time I got a job and became able to pay for software), but that still seems to be the case. But big deal, people who own PS3's get to wait far longer than that to get their fix. And hell, if copy protection worked, Windows Vista should be uncrackable, given the loving care Microsoft put into the activation and authentication system. Such is not the case. Even WGA, their major weapon against piracy, can be bypassed in almost every regard. It's simply more work, and that's the same deal with pirating copy-protected games.
Only one problem: IE is still the largest single share of the browser market, and likely will be by the time IE8 hits the market, which means people like me (web developers) and Joe Average (end users) are very interested in how it's going to turn out, even if I don't actually use IE for anything other than testing purposes. When IE has a viable competitor in the market share category, then the heat will be on and the focus will shift. For now, not enough people use Firefox or other browsers, though the shift is in progress.
Agreed on 1024x768 (for me, it's native or bust, but my card can't always handle that). Disagree with the 60fps bit. 30fps does me quite well as a lower limit for almost anything (hi, NTSC!), and even 15 is playable to an extent unless there's a shitton of action going on. Anything lower is, yes, a slideshow, but 30-59fps is not a slideshow. If it is, perhaps you should lay off the coffee and Red Bulls.:P
AFAIK, Rogers in Canada is actually doing that. I'm a subscriber... Encrypted traffic causes slowdown everywhere on the net, including the torrents. If I do a torrent/unencrypted, it gets caught by the torrent filter, and my connection slows down again. Some tweaking makes it a little better, but it's difficult to deal with such a massive blow to my net speed (cut down to roughly 1/8th of its normal speed).
And how, exactly, is something that is supposedly barely audible, yet distinctively annoying, going to get these kids to leave during a smash/steal spree? Were I a youth listening to that, I'd be pissed the hell off. Were I a part of the target group, I'd be MORE inclined to go beat the crap out of the place than before. What's the point? Besides, who's to say that they don't use ear plugs or use an MP3 player/ear buds combination? No more high frequency noise, and you're back to the drawing board.
So what you're saying is that because groups of teens are doing these things, that all teens are responsible for it? This is just as stupid as saying that all Muslims are terrorists because the people who hijacked the jet liners on 9/11 were Muslim. This line of thinking is insane. Do something about the cause of the rampant violence at these age groups, don't treat them all as if they're criminals. I can't think of a worse thing to do to reduce crime rates! It would drive me, if I were a youth in the UK, presented with this sort of intolerance, to violence.
As I said before, even if they are being used to prevent this sort of thing, as has been pointed out elsewhere, this is about as annoying as going into the basement and leaving your alarm clock blaring. It's not immediately noticeable, but it's annoying. If they really, really wanted to bash something in or do a smash and grab, they wouldn't care about that noise in the slightest, especially if it's an on-demand thing (which it is). In fact, it would likely cause them to become even more violent, especially given knowledge that shops are doing this specifically to clear out entire groups of people of a particular age group. Hell, I'd feel inclined to beat up a shopkeep/shop if they decided that people of my age group were unsuitable to deal with and a danger to their business. Wouldn't you?
The same things happen here, too, probably to lesser extents, as the communities around here are likely far less densely-populated than those of the UK. Again, why not just let the shopkeep do his job? Why not, I don't know, spend more time with your kids? Why not increase funding to the education system? Why not find what the source of the dissatisfaction is and pull the plug there? Hell, to stoop to your level for a minute, why not beat the living daylights directly out of those who have actually done this sort of stuff? There's no need to include every single fucking person in the god damned age group just because there are groups of teens out there who are violent. Hell, why don't you just nuke Ireland, while you're at it? Doubly so the Northern part of it. I'm sure the entire populace is IRA, anyway, right?
Seriously, what an American approach. I thought the British were better than that, and I'm sure that after this device, the useless stopgap that it is, is abolished, there will be a lot of reform to try and change this mess.
Who needs this device? Why protect from children, specifically? Are all children criminals? Are all Arabs terrorists? You're treading on dangerous ground.
No, it's not as simple as you put it, nor is it as simple as I'll put it. The problem is that parents don't really seem to care or be able to stop this sort of thing, and schooling isn't doing the trick, either. I'm not personally familiar with the education system in the UK, but I do know that things are diminishing in North America (the US at a faster pace, as I'm told) as the trend to completely spoil children and leave them to their own devices continues to rise.
The point of any crime prevention is to keep the crime from happening to begin with (hence the name). Since the easiest, most simple and fool-proof solution to that is to keep people from actually wanting to do whatever it is they're going to do, it's best to do it that way. Beating them back with a stick, putting buzzers that operate at a certain frequency on the side of the building, or any other method is a stopgap, short-term solution to a more vast problem, and considering that it targets innocent youths as well as children and infants, along with a certain percentage of adults, I find the concept to be atrocious. If you're of the belief that all people under a certain age are irresponsible ruffians, then you're no different than the ones you're trying to "defend" yourself against. Not to mention that any youth can go out and buy earplugs, or listen to an MP3 player, and be blissfully unaware of the noise here; Plus, if what you're saying is true, then why can't they just take the time to go smash the place up and grab what they can, anyway? These things don't actively repel kids, they annoy them gradually. Like one person said, it's like getting up and going in the basement while your alarm clock is still buzzing away. Perhaps instead of treating youths with immediate distrust and apprehension (especially with something so pathetically worthless), shop owners could, I don't know, actually mind their shops like they're supposed to. That is how they make their living, right? Or do they get paid per child flogged?
Do these businesses actively practice throwing people out of their shops, too? This sounds a lot like they're trying to alienate future customers for the sake of removing a threat posed by a portion of an entire group of people... Remember, too, that you were once a youth; How virtuous were you? If you were, then how would you like being treated this way for the actions of your peers?
You need to back off and take a good look at the situation. Directly attacking an age group is insane.
I dunno, I rarely play my Wii. It's usually the PC or the 360; There's not much in the way of really good, must-have games on the Wii that really pique my interest.
First of all, Windows has only recently gotten a GUI setup. When you go to install XP, you're greeted with... Text-based setup, on a very drab blue/gray scheme in a low resolution, which looks very ominous. Most of the time, even this is too much for typical users, since it's unfamiliar, looks nothing like what they're used to seeing, and has no mouse, nor buttons to click. I know I sound condescending, but nobody is taught these days to use the keyboard to prompt things along, even if it is on the screen.
The alternative setup CD for Ubuntu is actually pretty much the same as the XP install, except it asks you more questions that (hopefully) you should know, like the language of your keyboard, the time zone, and so on. Partitioning is basically the same as the Windows-based version at a basic level, and more powerful if you want to get into that. It doesn't ask you what kernel version you want, or if you want to compile certain modules or anything of that nature. It's basic, standard stuff that the GUI installer asks anyway, except in that ominous text-based format that XP seems to have been so successful with. There are only a few occasions where the LiveCD fails to begin with, so it's pretty much not an issue.
And what about when Windows is installed? You usually don't find much driver support. In fact, you'll be lucky if your NIC gets picked up to begin with, and if you don't have a driver CD, that means you're in trouble. For a typical user, this is appalling. I actually deal with this sort of thing a lot; "I reinstalled Windows and now my Internet doesn't work", and "I reinstalled Windows, but now I can't play any music", that sort of thing. Even somewhat knowledgeable users sometimes have no idea what a driver is or if they actually need one. Will Windows try to pick off the drivers automatically? Not really. Driver support in Windows XP is basically at a perpetual 2001 level, and probably will stay that way. If it's not picked up to begin with, not only will it not work, but it won't tell you what to look for, either. "PCI Device" in reference to a sound card or motherboard chipset device isn't helpful.
In Ubuntu, it's actually absurdly easy to figure out what's in the system, and get it installed once the system's running. Most of the time, the core hardware is picked up, which includes the NIC, and from there, at least you have a fighting chance. Use lspci or a GUI-based hardware information tool (provided in Ubuntu), and you know precisely what to look for. If there are no free drivers for a piece of hardware, but there exists a non-free driver, Ubuntu will ask you to if you want to install it, and then it does the work for you. Very rarely do you need to go fooling around with beta drivers, and no end user should have to install sshd to get their system up and running.
Linux has problems like any other OS; They simply lie in different areas. If you can't get X up and running, then you have a terminal to work with, where a technically-minded/Linux user can guide you through troubleshooting the issue. If GDI fails in a big way in Windows, it's a bluescreen and a reboot, resulting in a boot loop which Safe Mode may or may not be able to bypass.
No, it's not user friendly, but neither is Windows, or any kind of troubleshooting. Hell, if Windows were user friendly, I'd be out of work.
Yeah, but the problem is that IE7 is even more horrible than IE6, both on a usability standpoint and a web development standpoint. The former, because it's implemented sweeping changes in the UI that are frankly confusing to users used to the old IE5/6-style interface, and a lot of compatibility was broken between IE7 and IE6 (Quickbooks for one... Ugh). The latter because, let's be realistic here, while better than IE6's (and ironically, this is IE6's greatest strength), IE7's standards compliance blows. It renders pages almost completely differently than Mozilla, Safari, Konqueror and Opera, and can you perform specific fixes easily in IE7 by doing things like "xx:yy ! important; xx:yy;"? No, IE7 incorporates the ! important flag. Can you do a nonstandard "xx:yy; _xx:yy;" hack? No, it, as it should, ignores that. No, you have to get it with a script (usually server side, requiring more resources on the server, and if not, then Javascript, but what about all the NoScript nuts in this discussion who would no doubt turn JS off outright?), detect the browser version, and output dynamically based on whether it's IE7 or something else, which is a pain in the ass, especially when IE fights with the other browsers over where things should be placed and what size they should be, even if exact pixel values are used. There's no excuse for this, I'm sorry.
The only other problem with talking about IE7? Nobody I know cares about IE7. We still ship systems out from my workplace with IE6 on them, and leave it up to the user to install IE7, simply because it causes issues with web apps and even some programs, not to mention the headache when some Win98 user on his first XP machine all of a sudden can't find the "File" menu of his shiny new browser. IE6 is still very much in play on the internet, and IE7 is only really gaining ground at this point because it's now a critical update, not even requiring a valid XP license any more, not to mention it's the only way to go in Vista, which is pre-loaded on most new machines nowadays anyway.
If anything, Microsoft products aren't getting better at all, though I think the outlook is good for IE8 and Windows 7 (mind you, I was optimistic about Vista and its promised new features, virtually all of which except Aero and the Sidebar were canned). I personally feel, as someone who deals in this software on a daily basis, that Windows Vista, Office 2007, and IE7 are extremely weak forays into new UI designs that frankly aren't efficient nor pretty, and the same could be said of their performance. I could go on and on about Vista, and yes, it has its high points ("Find a Solution" is awesome functionality), but IE7, for me, is a total flop. Office 2007 is the same; I can't understand why, aside from "just because", they would change the interface so dramatically that anyone with familiarity with Office 2003 wouldn't be able to sit down and just do some work like normal. Even the key commands and shortcuts are different, and let's not get into the DOCX format. So instead of innovating (adding new features, expanding on old ones, etc), they basically crippled one of their main software suites. I personally believe all of this to be because of pressures from Apple and their departure from the "standard" UI design style, but none of this is really relevant.
I think that if they're going to make these sorts of changes, they may as well drop everything they've already built, create a completely different platform and code base for their products, and start from scratch, like Apple has done. It seems to have revitalized their OS, given the rabid fanboyism that surrounds it, so maybe Microsoft could stand to gain from it, too? It's not as though they have anything to lose - People will continue to buy their software regardless, if Windows ME and Vista are any indication.
I think you misinterpreted "gave their lives for". The founders of Canada certainly did give their lives for Canada's emergence as a nation, but they didn't pay the ultimate price for it. Canadian independence was gained by years of rallying, organizing, and debate, while the threat of an American invasion was imminent, and the Canadian founders worked for Canada well into their later years, notably John A. Macdonald, who spent more than half of his life in Canadian politics during and after its founding. Indeed, during the process of which and for decades after Canada was formed, Americans were performing raids on Canadian forts and settlements, and many lives were, indeed, lost. This also completely disregards the events that took place during the War of 1812.
Bah! We've had screenshots for years! Hell, we have videos! (Screen from 1999 (damned good for 1999), Video (1998) Video (2001) Video (2007)) What are you on about?
Generally, any taxpayer gives the police money for "no reason". Clearly, if you paid the police by the crime, there would likely be a rise in crime, if you get my drift. And if there weren't such a rise in crime, then we'd have no police.
I don't think that's a good idea, because it'll create a hell of a lot more work in the long run, even if it is one line. It's one line that shouldn't have to be there, and one line more that's going to take up space in the document (from a bandwidth point of view, though compression would help this). It would be a lot less work to retroactively fix the websites and applications that are currently IE-only (websites being a minority in this case (no self-respecting organization these days has an IE-only website); Apps would likely have someone maintaining them and thus capable of making the change trivially, profit or non) than to force all web developers to add this tag in the future from now til forever, just because IE6 didn't implement the DOCTYPE properly and is now broken.
It's almost like saying you'd need to add a meta tag to enable alpha transparent PNG's in IE8 because IE6's default behaviour was to blend it with whatever you set the Window colour to in the Display Properties dialogue. You shouldn't have to code things differently on a new browser to fix the bugs in the rendering of an old one. The old renderer should be brought out on a case-by-case basis, not by default. As for non-profit organizations, if things like the Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation can afford to get call centres to solicit donations over telephone, and if they can afford to build a website, they can afford to pay someone to spend an hour or two fixing their website/web apps for them.
All of this, of course, is also assuming that by the time IE8 is released, people will still be using IE6-based web apps in large numbers (unlikely, since IE7 has major departures from IE6's rendering scheme (which actually make it slightly better for standards, paving the way for the next step) and is currently being forced as an update, as per an article here yesterday), and will be willing to upgrade to the latest and greatest IE8 - And if they're not, it still assumes that by the time they do, they'll still be using those ancient apps). While chances are that there will be many organizations that will stick to older software (no newer equivalent, cost, etc), many more still would likely be using something else by then.
So again, who cares about IE6? It was the de-facto standard for several years, and now it's an old, dead horse that needs to be buried before it stinks up the web more than it already has. By the time IE8 is released, IE6 will be on the same page as IE4 is today. And how many people use IE4 now?
As has been said, it's trivial to put a line of code at the top of a document (especially if the header is a PHP include), and if standards push forward, this will only be necessary for older websites and web apps, which would then cease to be created further. Who codes for Netscape's version of HTML 3 these days?
Not only that, but things like Quickbooks, for example, which make use of the MS HTML rendering engine, could simply roll out a patch to automatically fix their HTML code (IE7 caused major issues with the way it rendered QB stuff, from what I've been told), which means no IT/web staff are needed. Those companies who would actually require that would either already have such a department/person, or have one who they can hire to do maybe an hour's work for them to fix it up. And again, if the header's just a PHP include (or in a CMS, a settings file of some sort), it's one change that needs to be made, site-wide.
Well, if standards compliance is going to break web apps, then why not just implement the new tag as a compatibility mode flag to activate the IE6/7 quirks mode instead of doing it the other way around? App devs can just add that meta tag to their web apps, and the rest of the world can code to a standard that doesn't involve MS.
I really think that'd be the best way to go, and you'd probably agree that this isn't an anti-ms rhetoric. I code HTML, too, and I really think that if IE8 can do ACTUAL standards compliance, that should be the default. I shouldn't have to put a tag on my document saying that Firefox should render the site differently than Opera, so I shouldn't have to put a tag on my document saying that IE8 needs to render it a certain way, either. Legacy is unimportant, in my opinion (just try using IE4 to browse the net), and so instead of having a tag to depart from it, the tag should instead be a tag to go into "Legacy" mode. Hell, using the tag like that, it might be possible to look at rendering those Frontpage sites the same way across platforms.
Exactly! I'm glad at least someone works the same way I do with web development. It just makes sense to code to the standard, though it's really difficult to get IE7 to do what you want it to do, in the meantime. However, pretty much every website I've coded looks and acts identically in every browser I've tried (Konqueror, Safari, Opera, Firefox, IE6, IE7, Galeon...), even with a good deal of javascript and CSS to work with. It's in my mind unacceptable to have a broken website on any reasonably up-to-date browser, especially for the corporate world.
More compatibility = more audience. It also means more work, however, but far less work than making something for, say, IE6 and THEN expanding it to other browsers. That would be a nightmare. Of course, many people still use Frontpage... Actually, a local computer shop used Frontpage for their layout, and while actually not bad in terms of visual design (save for the layout changing width on every page), they even use the Frontpage "dynamic" buttons, and there's a few lines out of place in Konqueror. In IE6, there's more top spacing for the buttons, which suggests it was made for IE6 specifically (or someone just used the Frontpage view and forgot about testing). Ugh. You should've seen the prototype.
So, it is not cruel when one does not "appreciate" or "experience" pain? You could then sedate a person to the point of being incapable of doing either in order to morally kill them?
Here we go again! Simple-minded people say simple-minded things... OK, so based on that argument, and considering we're talking about 14 day old embryos, then given a certain amount of gray area, you're saying that every time you either:
A: Ejaculate into a Kleenex, or B: Dump the contents of your uterus into the toilet... You're killing a living being (or in the case of sperm, millions) and/or killing a potential living being?
You know what? You're right! That would mean a hell of a lot more copulation for everyone on Slashdot! Hell, most of the world!
Round everyone up! Time for the orgies to begin! In the name of animal/human rights! =D
Slashdot Mirror
If this is meant to be funny, I apologize ahead of time.
I don't know about you, but I haven't seen a single retail box game (barring things requiring online accounts like WoW) that hasn't been cracked in some form, and yet they still trust their software with invasive, abrasive protection methods like Starforce. Even games that are solely online-playable are capable of being cracked to connect to alternative, privately-run server software (Phantasy Star Online, World of Warcraft, etc). Copy protection is a hurdle that generally takes maybe a few weeks at most to crack, and that's a reality. I haven't done it in a long time (right around the time I got a job and became able to pay for software), but that still seems to be the case. But big deal, people who own PS3's get to wait far longer than that to get their fix. And hell, if copy protection worked, Windows Vista should be uncrackable, given the loving care Microsoft put into the activation and authentication system. Such is not the case. Even WGA, their major weapon against piracy, can be bypassed in almost every regard. It's simply more work, and that's the same deal with pirating copy-protected games.
Point is, it's pointless, like TA says.
Neither. They're both alphas. =D
Most awesome thing anyone's ever said, ever. Thank you.
Only one problem: IE is still the largest single share of the browser market, and likely will be by the time IE8 hits the market, which means people like me (web developers) and Joe Average (end users) are very interested in how it's going to turn out, even if I don't actually use IE for anything other than testing purposes. When IE has a viable competitor in the market share category, then the heat will be on and the focus will shift. For now, not enough people use Firefox or other browsers, though the shift is in progress.
Agreed on 1024x768 (for me, it's native or bust, but my card can't always handle that). Disagree with the 60fps bit. 30fps does me quite well as a lower limit for almost anything (hi, NTSC!), and even 15 is playable to an extent unless there's a shitton of action going on. Anything lower is, yes, a slideshow, but 30-59fps is not a slideshow. If it is, perhaps you should lay off the coffee and Red Bulls. :P
I know I shouldn't be doing this, and it's offtopic even for this little tirade, but...
It only takes one bullet, no matter the size, to have you require some wipes and a body bag.
I'm totally pinned down to Rogers and Bell Aliant here in Newfoundland. Can't switch, it's basically price-fixing here.
AFAIK, Rogers in Canada is actually doing that. I'm a subscriber... Encrypted traffic causes slowdown everywhere on the net, including the torrents. If I do a torrent/unencrypted, it gets caught by the torrent filter, and my connection slows down again. Some tweaking makes it a little better, but it's difficult to deal with such a massive blow to my net speed (cut down to roughly 1/8th of its normal speed).
And how, exactly, is something that is supposedly barely audible, yet distinctively annoying, going to get these kids to leave during a smash/steal spree? Were I a youth listening to that, I'd be pissed the hell off. Were I a part of the target group, I'd be MORE inclined to go beat the crap out of the place than before. What's the point? Besides, who's to say that they don't use ear plugs or use an MP3 player/ear buds combination? No more high frequency noise, and you're back to the drawing board.
This is the most asinine argument ever.
So what you're saying is that because groups of teens are doing these things, that all teens are responsible for it? This is just as stupid as saying that all Muslims are terrorists because the people who hijacked the jet liners on 9/11 were Muslim. This line of thinking is insane . Do something about the cause of the rampant violence at these age groups, don't treat them all as if they're criminals. I can't think of a worse thing to do to reduce crime rates! It would drive me, if I were a youth in the UK, presented with this sort of intolerance, to violence.
As I said before, even if they are being used to prevent this sort of thing, as has been pointed out elsewhere, this is about as annoying as going into the basement and leaving your alarm clock blaring. It's not immediately noticeable, but it's annoying. If they really, really wanted to bash something in or do a smash and grab, they wouldn't care about that noise in the slightest, especially if it's an on-demand thing (which it is). In fact, it would likely cause them to become even more violent, especially given knowledge that shops are doing this specifically to clear out entire groups of people of a particular age group. Hell, I'd feel inclined to beat up a shopkeep/shop if they decided that people of my age group were unsuitable to deal with and a danger to their business. Wouldn't you?
The same things happen here, too, probably to lesser extents, as the communities around here are likely far less densely-populated than those of the UK. Again, why not just let the shopkeep do his job? Why not, I don't know, spend more time with your kids? Why not increase funding to the education system? Why not find what the source of the dissatisfaction is and pull the plug there? Hell, to stoop to your level for a minute, why not beat the living daylights directly out of those who have actually done this sort of stuff? There's no need to include every single fucking person in the god damned age group just because there are groups of teens out there who are violent. Hell, why don't you just nuke Ireland, while you're at it? Doubly so the Northern part of it. I'm sure the entire populace is IRA, anyway, right?
Seriously, what an American approach. I thought the British were better than that, and I'm sure that after this device, the useless stopgap that it is, is abolished, there will be a lot of reform to try and change this mess.
Who needs this device? Why protect from children, specifically? Are all children criminals? Are all Arabs terrorists? You're treading on dangerous ground.
No, it's not as simple as you put it, nor is it as simple as I'll put it. The problem is that parents don't really seem to care or be able to stop this sort of thing, and schooling isn't doing the trick, either. I'm not personally familiar with the education system in the UK, but I do know that things are diminishing in North America (the US at a faster pace, as I'm told) as the trend to completely spoil children and leave them to their own devices continues to rise.
The point of any crime prevention is to keep the crime from happening to begin with (hence the name). Since the easiest, most simple and fool-proof solution to that is to keep people from actually wanting to do whatever it is they're going to do, it's best to do it that way. Beating them back with a stick, putting buzzers that operate at a certain frequency on the side of the building, or any other method is a stopgap, short-term solution to a more vast problem, and considering that it targets innocent youths as well as children and infants, along with a certain percentage of adults, I find the concept to be atrocious. If you're of the belief that all people under a certain age are irresponsible ruffians, then you're no different than the ones you're trying to "defend" yourself against. Not to mention that any youth can go out and buy earplugs, or listen to an MP3 player, and be blissfully unaware of the noise here; Plus, if what you're saying is true, then why can't they just take the time to go smash the place up and grab what they can, anyway? These things don't actively repel kids, they annoy them gradually. Like one person said, it's like getting up and going in the basement while your alarm clock is still buzzing away. Perhaps instead of treating youths with immediate distrust and apprehension (especially with something so pathetically worthless), shop owners could, I don't know, actually mind their shops like they're supposed to. That is how they make their living, right? Or do they get paid per child flogged?
Do these businesses actively practice throwing people out of their shops, too? This sounds a lot like they're trying to alienate future customers for the sake of removing a threat posed by a portion of an entire group of people... Remember, too, that you were once a youth; How virtuous were you? If you were, then how would you like being treated this way for the actions of your peers?
You need to back off and take a good look at the situation. Directly attacking an age group is insane .
I dunno, I rarely play my Wii. It's usually the PC or the 360; There's not much in the way of really good, must-have games on the Wii that really pique my interest.
First of all, Windows has only recently gotten a GUI setup. When you go to install XP, you're greeted with... Text-based setup, on a very drab blue/gray scheme in a low resolution, which looks very ominous. Most of the time, even this is too much for typical users, since it's unfamiliar, looks nothing like what they're used to seeing, and has no mouse, nor buttons to click. I know I sound condescending, but nobody is taught these days to use the keyboard to prompt things along, even if it is on the screen.
The alternative setup CD for Ubuntu is actually pretty much the same as the XP install, except it asks you more questions that (hopefully) you should know, like the language of your keyboard, the time zone, and so on. Partitioning is basically the same as the Windows-based version at a basic level, and more powerful if you want to get into that. It doesn't ask you what kernel version you want, or if you want to compile certain modules or anything of that nature. It's basic, standard stuff that the GUI installer asks anyway, except in that ominous text-based format that XP seems to have been so successful with. There are only a few occasions where the LiveCD fails to begin with, so it's pretty much not an issue.
And what about when Windows is installed? You usually don't find much driver support. In fact, you'll be lucky if your NIC gets picked up to begin with, and if you don't have a driver CD, that means you're in trouble. For a typical user, this is appalling. I actually deal with this sort of thing a lot; "I reinstalled Windows and now my Internet doesn't work", and "I reinstalled Windows, but now I can't play any music", that sort of thing. Even somewhat knowledgeable users sometimes have no idea what a driver is or if they actually need one. Will Windows try to pick off the drivers automatically? Not really. Driver support in Windows XP is basically at a perpetual 2001 level, and probably will stay that way. If it's not picked up to begin with, not only will it not work, but it won't tell you what to look for, either. "PCI Device" in reference to a sound card or motherboard chipset device isn't helpful.
In Ubuntu, it's actually absurdly easy to figure out what's in the system, and get it installed once the system's running. Most of the time, the core hardware is picked up, which includes the NIC, and from there, at least you have a fighting chance. Use lspci or a GUI-based hardware information tool (provided in Ubuntu), and you know precisely what to look for. If there are no free drivers for a piece of hardware, but there exists a non-free driver, Ubuntu will ask you to if you want to install it, and then it does the work for you. Very rarely do you need to go fooling around with beta drivers, and no end user should have to install sshd to get their system up and running.
Linux has problems like any other OS; They simply lie in different areas. If you can't get X up and running, then you have a terminal to work with, where a technically-minded/Linux user can guide you through troubleshooting the issue. If GDI fails in a big way in Windows, it's a bluescreen and a reboot, resulting in a boot loop which Safe Mode may or may not be able to bypass.
No, it's not user friendly, but neither is Windows, or any kind of troubleshooting. Hell, if Windows were user friendly, I'd be out of work.
Yeah, but the problem is that IE7 is even more horrible than IE6, both on a usability standpoint and a web development standpoint. The former, because it's implemented sweeping changes in the UI that are frankly confusing to users used to the old IE5/6-style interface, and a lot of compatibility was broken between IE7 and IE6 (Quickbooks for one... Ugh). The latter because, let's be realistic here, while better than IE6's (and ironically, this is IE6's greatest strength), IE7's standards compliance blows. It renders pages almost completely differently than Mozilla, Safari, Konqueror and Opera, and can you perform specific fixes easily in IE7 by doing things like "xx:yy ! important; xx:yy;"? No, IE7 incorporates the ! important flag. Can you do a nonstandard "xx:yy; _xx:yy;" hack? No, it, as it should, ignores that. No, you have to get it with a script (usually server side, requiring more resources on the server, and if not, then Javascript, but what about all the NoScript nuts in this discussion who would no doubt turn JS off outright?), detect the browser version, and output dynamically based on whether it's IE7 or something else, which is a pain in the ass, especially when IE fights with the other browsers over where things should be placed and what size they should be, even if exact pixel values are used. There's no excuse for this, I'm sorry.
The only other problem with talking about IE7? Nobody I know cares about IE7. We still ship systems out from my workplace with IE6 on them, and leave it up to the user to install IE7, simply because it causes issues with web apps and even some programs, not to mention the headache when some Win98 user on his first XP machine all of a sudden can't find the "File" menu of his shiny new browser. IE6 is still very much in play on the internet, and IE7 is only really gaining ground at this point because it's now a critical update, not even requiring a valid XP license any more, not to mention it's the only way to go in Vista, which is pre-loaded on most new machines nowadays anyway.
If anything, Microsoft products aren't getting better at all, though I think the outlook is good for IE8 and Windows 7 (mind you, I was optimistic about Vista and its promised new features, virtually all of which except Aero and the Sidebar were canned). I personally feel, as someone who deals in this software on a daily basis, that Windows Vista, Office 2007, and IE7 are extremely weak forays into new UI designs that frankly aren't efficient nor pretty, and the same could be said of their performance. I could go on and on about Vista, and yes, it has its high points ("Find a Solution" is awesome functionality), but IE7, for me, is a total flop. Office 2007 is the same; I can't understand why, aside from "just because", they would change the interface so dramatically that anyone with familiarity with Office 2003 wouldn't be able to sit down and just do some work like normal. Even the key commands and shortcuts are different, and let's not get into the DOCX format. So instead of innovating (adding new features, expanding on old ones, etc), they basically crippled one of their main software suites. I personally believe all of this to be because of pressures from Apple and their departure from the "standard" UI design style, but none of this is really relevant.
I think that if they're going to make these sorts of changes, they may as well drop everything they've already built, create a completely different platform and code base for their products, and start from scratch, like Apple has done. It seems to have revitalized their OS, given the rabid fanboyism that surrounds it, so maybe Microsoft could stand to gain from it, too? It's not as though they have anything to lose - People will continue to buy their software regardless, if Windows ME and Vista are any indication.
I think you misinterpreted "gave their lives for". The founders of Canada certainly did give their lives for Canada's emergence as a nation, but they didn't pay the ultimate price for it. Canadian independence was gained by years of rallying, organizing, and debate, while the threat of an American invasion was imminent, and the Canadian founders worked for Canada well into their later years, notably John A. Macdonald, who spent more than half of his life in Canadian politics during and after its founding. Indeed, during the process of which and for decades after Canada was formed, Americans were performing raids on Canadian forts and settlements, and many lives were, indeed, lost. This also completely disregards the events that took place during the War of 1812.
Bah! We've had screenshots for years! Hell, we have videos! (Screen from 1999 (damned good for 1999), Video (1998) Video (2001) Video (2007)) What are you on about?
Generally, any taxpayer gives the police money for "no reason". Clearly, if you paid the police by the crime, there would likely be a rise in crime, if you get my drift. And if there weren't such a rise in crime, then we'd have no police.
I didn't know you could strap a 747 to your crotch. Wow, you've got skills.
I don't think that's a good idea, because it'll create a hell of a lot more work in the long run, even if it is one line. It's one line that shouldn't have to be there, and one line more that's going to take up space in the document (from a bandwidth point of view, though compression would help this). It would be a lot less work to retroactively fix the websites and applications that are currently IE-only (websites being a minority in this case (no self-respecting organization these days has an IE-only website); Apps would likely have someone maintaining them and thus capable of making the change trivially, profit or non) than to force all web developers to add this tag in the future from now til forever, just because IE6 didn't implement the DOCTYPE properly and is now broken.
It's almost like saying you'd need to add a meta tag to enable alpha transparent PNG's in IE8 because IE6's default behaviour was to blend it with whatever you set the Window colour to in the Display Properties dialogue. You shouldn't have to code things differently on a new browser to fix the bugs in the rendering of an old one. The old renderer should be brought out on a case-by-case basis, not by default. As for non-profit organizations, if things like the Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation can afford to get call centres to solicit donations over telephone, and if they can afford to build a website, they can afford to pay someone to spend an hour or two fixing their website/web apps for them.
All of this, of course, is also assuming that by the time IE8 is released, people will still be using IE6-based web apps in large numbers (unlikely, since IE7 has major departures from IE6's rendering scheme (which actually make it slightly better for standards, paving the way for the next step) and is currently being forced as an update, as per an article here yesterday), and will be willing to upgrade to the latest and greatest IE8 - And if they're not, it still assumes that by the time they do, they'll still be using those ancient apps). While chances are that there will be many organizations that will stick to older software (no newer equivalent, cost, etc), many more still would likely be using something else by then.
So again, who cares about IE6? It was the de-facto standard for several years, and now it's an old, dead horse that needs to be buried before it stinks up the web more than it already has. By the time IE8 is released, IE6 will be on the same page as IE4 is today. And how many people use IE4 now?
As has been said, it's trivial to put a line of code at the top of a document (especially if the header is a PHP include), and if standards push forward, this will only be necessary for older websites and web apps, which would then cease to be created further. Who codes for Netscape's version of HTML 3 these days?
Not only that, but things like Quickbooks, for example, which make use of the MS HTML rendering engine, could simply roll out a patch to automatically fix their HTML code (IE7 caused major issues with the way it rendered QB stuff, from what I've been told), which means no IT/web staff are needed. Those companies who would actually require that would either already have such a department/person, or have one who they can hire to do maybe an hour's work for them to fix it up. And again, if the header's just a PHP include (or in a CMS, a settings file of some sort), it's one change that needs to be made, site-wide.
Well, if standards compliance is going to break web apps, then why not just implement the new tag as a compatibility mode flag to activate the IE6/7 quirks mode instead of doing it the other way around? App devs can just add that meta tag to their web apps, and the rest of the world can code to a standard that doesn't involve MS.
I really think that'd be the best way to go, and you'd probably agree that this isn't an anti-ms rhetoric. I code HTML, too, and I really think that if IE8 can do ACTUAL standards compliance, that should be the default. I shouldn't have to put a tag on my document saying that Firefox should render the site differently than Opera, so I shouldn't have to put a tag on my document saying that IE8 needs to render it a certain way, either. Legacy is unimportant, in my opinion (just try using IE4 to browse the net), and so instead of having a tag to depart from it, the tag should instead be a tag to go into "Legacy" mode. Hell, using the tag like that, it might be possible to look at rendering those Frontpage sites the same way across platforms.
Exactly! I'm glad at least someone works the same way I do with web development. It just makes sense to code to the standard, though it's really difficult to get IE7 to do what you want it to do, in the meantime. However, pretty much every website I've coded looks and acts identically in every browser I've tried (Konqueror, Safari, Opera, Firefox, IE6, IE7, Galeon...), even with a good deal of javascript and CSS to work with. It's in my mind unacceptable to have a broken website on any reasonably up-to-date browser, especially for the corporate world.
More compatibility = more audience. It also means more work, however, but far less work than making something for, say, IE6 and THEN expanding it to other browsers. That would be a nightmare. Of course, many people still use Frontpage... Actually, a local computer shop used Frontpage for their layout, and while actually not bad in terms of visual design (save for the layout changing width on every page), they even use the Frontpage "dynamic" buttons, and there's a few lines out of place in Konqueror. In IE6, there's more top spacing for the buttons, which suggests it was made for IE6 specifically (or someone just used the Frontpage view and forgot about testing). Ugh. You should've seen the prototype.
That's stupid.
A: Ejaculate into a Kleenex, or
B: Dump the contents of your uterus into the toilet
You know what? You're right! That would mean a hell of a lot more copulation for everyone on Slashdot! Hell, most of the world!
Round everyone up! Time for the orgies to begin! In the name of animal/human rights! =D
Ah, but this sentence makes sense, though (and applies to my view on things):
I don't believe that I believe in anything at all.