I believe that Microsoft owns the patents on "drive-by downloads" as part of Internet Exploder. IE has been facilitating uninitiated covert downloads for about a decade now. Frankly, this is just a blatant rip-off of Microsoft technology.
I always found it funny that a state that largely consists of hot, arid desert is called "Nevada" ("snowed covered" in Spanish).. of course, it gets the name from the Rocky Mountains (specifically the Sierra Nevada), which are indeed snowed covered.. but I always thought it was a humorous name for the state.
...even funnier if you consider that IBM originally stood for "International Business Machines"... I don't think I'd last very long if I took an Xbox 360 to work.. unless I worked at a game publisher or retailer, I suppose;-)
well, not only that.. but it doesn't do a hell of a lot of good for foreign film buffs who want to see releases from abroad that have not been (or may never be) released on a disc corresponding to their home region. Especially since most DVD players already do internal NTSC/PAL conversion, it's a big letdown.
FWIW, cheap is not necessarily good. But LiteOn is excellent. I've owned lots of LiteOn drives of every flavor, and I've been more than pleased with all of them. Then again, there are some expensive drives I've had trouble with, mainly Sony, and I had a Plextor which was a nightmare. I think what it comes down to is the drive manufacturer. Price does not necessarily reflect this, but it would be wrong to say without qualification that cheap is good. Also, realize that some brands are rebadges and sometimes you don't even get the same drive in identically marked boxes. I generally will stick with Pioneer or LiteOn these days (although I've had good experiences with LG and Panasonic, also.. in fact my old LG burner used to do DAE better than my [newer] Samsung CD-ROM drive, which was kind of weird). I used to like Plextor a lot, but after the experience I had with my last Plextor (or series of Plextors, if you count the in-warranty replacements), I'll never buy one again. But in my experience, you really can't go wrong with LiteOn.
I'm just thinking.. maybe it will come down to which supports greater "interactivity".. I dunno.. I really don't want to become that intimate with my DVD player..:/
I think a lot of this has to do with Microsoft being bitten before wrt Java. The last time they tried to "embrace and extend" it, they were greeted with a lawsuit from Sun. I can't imagine they want to support anything even associated with Java anymore. This is also one of the reasons they developed C#/dotNet. So they could do Java-like things without relying on Java and having to worry about Sun suing them whenever they stepped outside of Sun's boundaries.
The one thing I dislike about 1.5 is that since upgrading from 1.0.7, I no longer have a "Manage Bookmarks" item in the context menu when browsing a bookmark folder either from the menu or the toolbar. I now have to actually select "Manage Bookmarks" from the Boomarks menu, which is a real pain. I would almost consider downgrading back to 1.0.7, but I can't find any other problems with 1.5, so I think it would be silly to do over one little feature. But still, it irks me!
I'm surprised Flanders would take issue with the internet, since it was invented by Rev. Lovejoy... or was that Al Gore? Hmm.. I can't tell them apart...
Actually, if you pronounce the word "Cocoa" a certain way, with the accent on the second 'o,' it sounds like a Portuguese word meaning, well, to be polite, "excrement." You should have seen the look on my wife's aunt's face (they are from Angola) when we were walking through the cereal aisle of the supermarket and she saw "Cocoa Puffs.":-)
Really, it doesn't matter whether IBM picked up on DOS, CP/M, or something else. IBM was a business machine, almost never found in homes. Why would you use it at home? There were cheaper computers better suited for home applications available from Commodore, Atari, and Apple (OK, Apple wasn't all that cheap, but still cheaper than IBM at the time).
What really made the PC ubiquitously popular was Compaq's reverse-engineering of the IBM BIOS. This meant that you no longer had to pay top dollar for something that was truly IBM compatible. This, coupled with the adoption of the ISA bus by all of the PC manufacturers, is what made the PC the king of the hill. All of a sudden, Intel (and others) had a real incentive to make faster, more capable CPUs (because IBM wasn't the only game in town anymore for the x86), and because of standards like the ISA bus, card manufacturers had a broader audience to develop things like SoundBlaster. It was because of this opening up of the hardware to virtually anyone that the PC became popular. It had absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft or DOS. Remember, also, that Microsoft also produced the BASIC in every single Commodore 8-bit computer from the PET through the 128, and so they made money on the millions of those sold, in addition to MS-DOS/PC-DOS.
Actually, I thought it was the Germans that only washed themselves once a week. Seriously, I was an exchange student in Nuernberg, and my host family was shocked that I wanted to shower every day. They thought it was very wasteful of water. I also had to get used to wearing clothes twice before laundering them.
Honestly, I think the problem that most folks have with France, Germany, and Canada are that those governments and those people have been extraordinarily outspoken in criticizing everything the U.S. government does, whether we're right or wrong, seem to look down in disdain at us in their natural superiority, all the while ignoring their own faults. France dares criticize the U.S. for racism and its attitude towards Arabs while Arabs are rioting in the streets of Paris demanding fair treatment. We've faced plenty of criticism from the UK. The UK may be with us in some things, but they're against us in others. But the UK at least shows an air of respect, not the condescension we get from France.
You lecture us on democracy. You were the ones who within a decade of the founding of your Republic, empowered Napoleon! You practically welcomed the Nazi troops invading Paris. You lecture us on multiculturalism and yet treat Arabs like third-class citizens and don't give them the same religious and civil freedoms that you demand the U.S. give to people living here! And then you wonder why we wouldn't mind France sinking to the bottom of the ocean someday? Hmmm...
The last thing we need is more French language content floating around the internet. Hopefully, in 5 or 10 years, all the French will speak Arabic. Much preferable to that awful language they now speak.
John Dvorak is like those crazy preachers that predict the end of the world every five years, and then every five years make adjustments to their original predicitons. He's the Charles Taze Russell or Ellen G. White of computing.
You know, I used to like Seagate until they acquired Conner, which I had terrible experiences with. Then I used to use Maxtor until they acquired Quantum, which I used to see incredible failure rates on in my work as a PC repair tech. The problem is that if I buy a Seagate, how do I know I'm not really getting a Conner? Or if I buy Maxtor, how can I be sure that it's not just a rebranded Quantum drive?
Over the last few years, I've used Western Digital and IBM/Hitachi pretty much exclusively, primarily IBM/Hitachi. I've never had a problem ever with either brand. About a dozen or so drives over the past several years and they were only ever replaced for bigger/faster drives, never because of a defect or problem. I guess I'll really stay away from Seagate now. But I'm not sure why everyone seems to have horror stories about IBM/Hitachi. I've found them to be fast, quiet, and reliable. In fact, although I will pick up a WD if it's on sale, Hitachi is usually a few dollars cheaper and not as loud as a typical WD drive, in my experience.
I'm amazed at the leaps and bounds by which MSN Search has improved over the last several months. There have been many instances where I've done the same search in Google and MSN and MSN provided more relevant results. I like it when Microsoft gets hungry. They can actually deliver when they're forced to compete.
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I believe that Microsoft owns the patents on "drive-by downloads" as part of Internet Exploder. IE has been facilitating uninitiated covert downloads for about a decade now. Frankly, this is just a blatant rip-off of Microsoft technology.
I hear, however, that although the Queen does not have a computer, she does have an iPod, since everyone has one these days...
I always found it funny that a state that largely consists of hot, arid desert is called "Nevada" ("snowed covered" in Spanish).. of course, it gets the name from the Rocky Mountains (specifically the Sierra Nevada), which are indeed snowed covered.. but I always thought it was a humorous name for the state.
...even funnier if you consider that IBM originally stood for "International Business Machines"... I don't think I'd last very long if I took an Xbox 360 to work.. unless I worked at a game publisher or retailer, I suppose ;-)
My five year old spells like that.. maybe there's hope for him yet!
well, not only that.. but it doesn't do a hell of a lot of good for foreign film buffs who want to see releases from abroad that have not been (or may never be) released on a disc corresponding to their home region. Especially since most DVD players already do internal NTSC/PAL conversion, it's a big letdown.
FWIW, cheap is not necessarily good. But LiteOn is excellent. I've owned lots of LiteOn drives of every flavor, and I've been more than pleased with all of them. Then again, there are some expensive drives I've had trouble with, mainly Sony, and I had a Plextor which was a nightmare. I think what it comes down to is the drive manufacturer. Price does not necessarily reflect this, but it would be wrong to say without qualification that cheap is good. Also, realize that some brands are rebadges and sometimes you don't even get the same drive in identically marked boxes. I generally will stick with Pioneer or LiteOn these days (although I've had good experiences with LG and Panasonic, also.. in fact my old LG burner used to do DAE better than my [newer] Samsung CD-ROM drive, which was kind of weird). I used to like Plextor a lot, but after the experience I had with my last Plextor (or series of Plextors, if you count the in-warranty replacements), I'll never buy one again. But in my experience, you really can't go wrong with LiteOn.
I'm just thinking.. maybe it will come down to which supports greater "interactivity".. I dunno.. I really don't want to become that intimate with my DVD player.. :/
I think a lot of this has to do with Microsoft being bitten before wrt Java. The last time they tried to "embrace and extend" it, they were greeted with a lawsuit from Sun. I can't imagine they want to support anything even associated with Java anymore. This is also one of the reasons they developed C#/dotNet. So they could do Java-like things without relying on Java and having to worry about Sun suing them whenever they stepped outside of Sun's boundaries.
The one thing I dislike about 1.5 is that since upgrading from 1.0.7, I no longer have a "Manage Bookmarks" item in the context menu when browsing a bookmark folder either from the menu or the toolbar. I now have to actually select "Manage Bookmarks" from the Boomarks menu, which is a real pain. I would almost consider downgrading back to 1.0.7, but I can't find any other problems with 1.5, so I think it would be silly to do over one little feature. But still, it irks me!
Actually, if you pronounce the word "Cocoa" a certain way, with the accent on the second 'o,' it sounds like a Portuguese word meaning, well, to be polite, "excrement." You should have seen the look on my wife's aunt's face (they are from Angola) when we were walking through the cereal aisle of the supermarket and she saw "Cocoa Puffs." :-)
What really made the PC ubiquitously popular was Compaq's reverse-engineering of the IBM BIOS. This meant that you no longer had to pay top dollar for something that was truly IBM compatible. This, coupled with the adoption of the ISA bus by all of the PC manufacturers, is what made the PC the king of the hill. All of a sudden, Intel (and others) had a real incentive to make faster, more capable CPUs (because IBM wasn't the only game in town anymore for the x86), and because of standards like the ISA bus, card manufacturers had a broader audience to develop things like SoundBlaster. It was because of this opening up of the hardware to virtually anyone that the PC became popular. It had absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft or DOS. Remember, also, that Microsoft also produced the BASIC in every single Commodore 8-bit computer from the PET through the 128, and so they made money on the millions of those sold, in addition to MS-DOS/PC-DOS.
Honestly, I think the problem that most folks have with France, Germany, and Canada are that those governments and those people have been extraordinarily outspoken in criticizing everything the U.S. government does, whether we're right or wrong, seem to look down in disdain at us in their natural superiority, all the while ignoring their own faults. France dares criticize the U.S. for racism and its attitude towards Arabs while Arabs are rioting in the streets of Paris demanding fair treatment. We've faced plenty of criticism from the UK. The UK may be with us in some things, but they're against us in others. But the UK at least shows an air of respect, not the condescension we get from France.
You lecture us on democracy. You were the ones who within a decade of the founding of your Republic, empowered Napoleon! You practically welcomed the Nazi troops invading Paris. You lecture us on multiculturalism and yet treat Arabs like third-class citizens and don't give them the same religious and civil freedoms that you demand the U.S. give to people living here! And then you wonder why we wouldn't mind France sinking to the bottom of the ocean someday? Hmmm...
That's exactly why we don't like them.. because they're just like the Canadians!
The last thing we need is more French language content floating around the internet. Hopefully, in 5 or 10 years, all the French will speak Arabic. Much preferable to that awful language they now speak.
You know, some people actually like that kind of stuff.
John Dvorak is like those crazy preachers that predict the end of the world every five years, and then every five years make adjustments to their original predicitons. He's the Charles Taze Russell or Ellen G. White of computing.
probably has something to do with his complete lack of clue..
Nobody cares.
Over the last few years, I've used Western Digital and IBM/Hitachi pretty much exclusively, primarily IBM/Hitachi. I've never had a problem ever with either brand. About a dozen or so drives over the past several years and they were only ever replaced for bigger/faster drives, never because of a defect or problem. I guess I'll really stay away from Seagate now. But I'm not sure why everyone seems to have horror stories about IBM/Hitachi. I've found them to be fast, quiet, and reliable. In fact, although I will pick up a WD if it's on sale, Hitachi is usually a few dollars cheaper and not as loud as a typical WD drive, in my experience.
I'm amazed at the leaps and bounds by which MSN Search has improved over the last several months. There have been many instances where I've done the same search in Google and MSN and MSN provided more relevant results. I like it when Microsoft gets hungry. They can actually deliver when they're forced to compete.
The horse is dead already. Please stop beating the poor thing!
http://www.gnuse.cx/