I must respectfully disagree with your comment about "there aren't many pre-builts better than Apple in terms of hardware." I have had an Apple MacBook for just over a year now and while I love the OS (and upgraded to Leopard a few days ago--the improvements to file management, particularly Stacks and Quicklook are phenomenal), but their hardware (at least the low-end stuff) is some of the crappiest hardware I've ever owned. After just over a year, the plastic on my MacBook has cracked twice (once repaired under warranty--known design flaw--and now once after warranty; I've never bought an extended warranty for any product as I've never NEEDED it for any product). The plastic I'm referring to is the plastic around the keyboard and surround the monitor--slivers of it will fall off (so it's not something that seems natural--e.g. something you would expect from abuse) near the edges of the case. In addition, after just over a year the MagSafe power adapter frayed and became unusable (also a known issue that Apple should have issued a recall for but did not do so--the official line is that its the result of abuse--but I have never had a power adapter from any device fray and if you read online some people had theirs fray after just a couple of months). Of course a replacement MagSafe power adapter is $79 ($75--which included tax, for me as I'm a student and the book store had them for a bit less than Apple sold them for), pretty steep if you ask me. And it's not just the physical components of the hardware that are lacking, the sound chip on the MacBook doesn't even have OpenAL support (note: this is the original Core Duo--I can't speak for the Core 2 Duo), which is pretty basic sound hardware support--and the speakers are of course pretty weak, but that doesn't bother me as much.
Using Opera as an example of a browser with features of Firefox is a bad example... Opera tends to have a lot of features before Firefox, which the Firefox developer later integrate into Firefox. Of course, I'm biased as Opera is my favorite browser, although it's current direction (starting with 9.10) has made me somewhat unhappy (I don't like the tighter integration with Yahoo! and the speed dial thing is just kind of weird/annoying to me). I also don't use Opera because I am addicted to several Google products (such as Calendar) that don't work properly under Opera (I blame this on Google, not Opera... Opera is completely standards compliant last time I checked). On the plus side, I recently discovered some features of Firefox that allow me to make it behave even more like Opera. Now if Firefox could just get Opera's speed, clean up the code base/fix memory leaks, and become fully standards compliant then I'll be happy.
You forget, that in this global economy, China dumping all of those US dollars would not just harm the US, it would likely do serious damage to the economies of other European and Asian countries that are big trade partners of the US, which in turn would effect China's economy as the countries that import their products go into a recession or apply tariffs to try to get their citizens to buy homegrown products since there'll be a huge surplus if the US is no longer in a position to be buying. Anyway, point is it would be bad for everybody and a really stupid move. The US not importing Chinese goods would increase the overall price of things in the US and would also likely drive the price of Chinese goods down in the world market--since there would then be a surplus. No other major negative effects though.
I think it's already pretty clear that it will be bad as it will benefit patent trolls and hurt technologies developed by consortiums or open source projects (neither of which tend to patent their ideas--consortiums just establish standards that define the technologies, and open source projects normally don't waste the money on patents). For example, look at the Verizon vs. Vonage case where Verizon was the first to patent, but as of a Slashdot story yesterday it seems that a consortium of various IT companies actually met and established the standards/protocols/underlying technology of VoiP in question at least a year prior to Verizon filing for a patent.
Child molesters are clearly much further down in hell. But it is right next to people who talk in theaters--especially people who do so while drunk or who give away the ending.
Eh, I think if this had been posted to Slashdot then the users (not all of them, of course, but enough) would have called it out. I mean, it's an article from 2003 so it's pretty easy to prove false.
On a side note, I think a lot of Slashdotters go to both Digg and Slashdot (I do). The difference is though that I use Slashdot for the summary and discussion (article if it's interesting enough), whereas the summary and discussion on Digg tend to be pretty crappy, but some times I can find a link to an interesting article--although most of the time lately it's been to a blog entry and then I have to click through a few layers to get to the actual article... BTW, there's a special place in hell for people who post about news stories without providing a link to the news story.
While I agree with the $3.1 billion probably being far too much for DoubleClicks assets... I disagree with the block list thing, as the vast majority of Internet users do not use AdBlock or any other similar ad blocking software. Yes, a lot of us geeks use that stuff (I don't, as I just ignore them), but then a lot of us geeks are the ones least likely to click on ads and buy the stuff they're selling.
Now as to the reason why they would be willing to pay the $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, it's clearly to prevent Microsoft (and/or Yahoo!) from buying a sizable chunk of the online advertising business, plus it now increases the size of Google's very profitable ad business.
That's still a neutral network though as all the data packets have equal chance of reaching their destination. It would only be a problem if you were prioritizing your own VoIP service and/or penalizing data packets for Google Talk/Gizmo/Vonage voice data packets. Or in some other way prioritizing data packets from the Internet that effects all of your customers (not just those abusing your ToS).
That's a good one, especially since he's also the one who handed everything over to evil.
On another note, maybe Star Wars got second as punishment for the half assed stories of the prequel, whereas Serenity (which borrows heavily from the original Star Wars trilogy--especially from the space cowboy character of Han Solo) was voted first to send a message to Lucas: sell out.
The 30 cents not only buys you a DRM free version, but also a higher quality version. So you pay 30 cents for twice the bit rate and no DRM. I, personally, think it's a decent deal.
He also announced nothing because Nintendo has a pending stock deal that bars them from talking about any future plans... This has been covered extensively by various game news sites.
You actually lose money if you become President (at least during your term in office). There is no budget set aside for entertaining foreign dignitaries and as such, the expense of entertaining the foreign visitors come out of the President's own pocket. This expense tends to far exceed the paltry $400,000 annual paycheck. Or at least this is what I was told over half a decade ago in a US Government class.
I would doubt the site would have the same content though... Images, sure... But the words on the page would clearly be parodied otherwise what's the point of using a parodied version of the slogan? If they really did just copy everything and just change the slogan though, then you're correct--they did deserve to get pulled for that.
Point well taken, but then you don't have the portability I mentioned (as you have to have CVS and Latex installed on all the computers you want to edit the document on). You also lack the ease of use of Google Docs (although that, admittedly, needs some improvement still--changing the name of the documents is non-intuitive and some people who have never used GMail that I've collaborated on documents with have had problems finding some editing features--such as highlighting text). You're definitely right about the Latex solution looking better though--for one it's Latex, for 2 Google Docs needs some serious improvement in the layout end of things--it's far too limited so I pretty much just do it for getting the words on the paper and then reformat it in Office/OpenOffice later if it's a document that has specific formatting criteria (such as a two column formatted abstract/paper).
Google has never claimed that Google Docs was an office replacement--they've always said it was meant to supplement traditional productivity suites. The main advantage of Google Docs (if you've ever used it) is the ability to easily collaborate with other writers of a document that are miles away. Yes, you can do the same thing with a wiki; however, many wikis lock users from editing a document if one user is already editing it--Google Docs doesn't (although if two users are editing the same section of a document, it will warn a user that their changes will be discarded and pop up a Window displaying the changes so they can be copied and re-added). Google Docs, unlike a wiki, also allows easier, more intuitive formatting that will stick when you export it to a traditional productivity suite (wikis don't allow you to export--you must copy and paste into the productivity suite). Plus, not all users need a full featured productivity suite and for those who don't, Google Docs serves as a great alternative solution. I also greatly enjoy the ability to have access to my document no matter where I am as long as I have access to the Internet--yes I can do the same thing with a flash drive, but I really do find Google Docs to be the more convenient solution.
I've had my desktop at work consist of 90% fragmented files with an NTFS file system... Maybe if you're typical use is just browsing the net/using Office then this may be the case. However, if you use your computer for development then installing IDEs, APIs, project files, etc. will end up causing a fragmented drive.
I know this (although MS recruiters do not--they only know about technical side and know nothing of the usability research that takes place in the normal product teams). But the thing is they were proposing a NEW user interface paradigm. This is something that should come out of research, not the product team. I'm sure the product team does user experience testing to a degree and that for the most part they are capable of testing their products usability. However, when you're creating a new interface paradigm you can't just do a couple of focus groups or informal user studies. There are a lot of issues to consider and it should be something that takes a few years to gestate, mature, and research. That's why I'm saying I don't think the new version of Windows should be introducing any new paradigm unless it comes out of MSR. Just like the Tablet PC OS didn't come out of MS products--it was a culmination of work done by MSR that got rolled into the MS product team after it was ready. If the MS product team had come up with it, then it likely would have gone the way of other tablet OSes.
That may be possible, but I feel that would like result in the option of dividing the nation up. Since there are 3 (or more) major factions and each one of them is armed and each one hates the other two... The ones that are minorities are slightly more willing to work with the other minority groups, but if one of the minority groups starts gaining too much power, you know the other minority group(s) will turn on them.
It's not my blog, it's my professor's blog--I'm just in the class and post on it... I agree with your criticism of it though. And I didn't say the Ribbon was bad, just that I found myself digging more than I used to (which is the opposite of their stated goal). I think it has a tremendous amount of potential, it just needs some more work and needs to be integrated throughout the Office suite and Windows otherwise it forces user's to constantly change their mindset for completing tasks. Customization would be good as well.
I do like the ribbon interface to a degree, I just think it should have gone through MS Research where they could have done more extensive testing and perhaps delayed the ribbon until the next version--right now you not only have the learning curve for the ribbons but the inconsistency of interface throughout the Office suite (Publisher and Visio use the old interface) plus the fact that XP and Vista are both entrenched in the old interface. If you're going to push a new paradigm then you should do so consistently... Plus, most Office users are the already entrenched users...
So WinFS is finally being released? That was the one I was referring to that's been in development (and delayed) for years now. I've heard mixed thoughts about whether or not it will be better or worse, but we won't know until it's out...
The other thing that might be useful (eventually) is a file system designed to optimize the use of flash drives (not really all that useful with 30 GB flash drives costing a few hundred, but this will likely be very useful in about 2-5 years after the prices have dropped considerably/larger capacity flash drives are available).
Frankly, hundreds of thousands of potential casualties are going to happen either way at this point... One way involves America involved and suffering those casualties and the economic drain associated with the war. The other way, involves the people who can't seem to get along with one another and America sitting back and (hopefully) restrengthening its economy. America did not become a super power by military means--they reached the status through economic means (the military came later). If we lose our economic status, we lose our power. All we have then are big guns that we can't even really use, since you can't really fight a war any more (not in a way you can win one). The most you can do in a war is expel invaders from occupied territory--you can't occupy and you can't reform. There is too much public scrutiny and too many international laws to prevent a traditional war--not to mention the constant threat of nuclear war since the technology has spread to some smaller countries that don't value even the lives of their own citizens (and even a dirty bomb has fairly devastating effects). I'm not saying it's a good thing to do. I think it's a horrible thing to do. I just think our options are limited and out of the options, this is the one that allows us to return to progress. With the other options, the terrorists have succeeded in weakening our nation (or perhaps I should say Bush... since the terrorists weren't in Iraq... just Saddam...)
Slashdot Mirror
I must respectfully disagree with your comment about "there aren't many pre-builts better than Apple in terms of hardware." I have had an Apple MacBook for just over a year now and while I love the OS (and upgraded to Leopard a few days ago--the improvements to file management, particularly Stacks and Quicklook are phenomenal), but their hardware (at least the low-end stuff) is some of the crappiest hardware I've ever owned. After just over a year, the plastic on my MacBook has cracked twice (once repaired under warranty--known design flaw--and now once after warranty; I've never bought an extended warranty for any product as I've never NEEDED it for any product). The plastic I'm referring to is the plastic around the keyboard and surround the monitor--slivers of it will fall off (so it's not something that seems natural--e.g. something you would expect from abuse) near the edges of the case. In addition, after just over a year the MagSafe power adapter frayed and became unusable (also a known issue that Apple should have issued a recall for but did not do so--the official line is that its the result of abuse--but I have never had a power adapter from any device fray and if you read online some people had theirs fray after just a couple of months). Of course a replacement MagSafe power adapter is $79 ($75--which included tax, for me as I'm a student and the book store had them for a bit less than Apple sold them for), pretty steep if you ask me. And it's not just the physical components of the hardware that are lacking, the sound chip on the MacBook doesn't even have OpenAL support (note: this is the original Core Duo--I can't speak for the Core 2 Duo), which is pretty basic sound hardware support--and the speakers are of course pretty weak, but that doesn't bother me as much.
Using Opera as an example of a browser with features of Firefox is a bad example... Opera tends to have a lot of features before Firefox, which the Firefox developer later integrate into Firefox. Of course, I'm biased as Opera is my favorite browser, although it's current direction (starting with 9.10) has made me somewhat unhappy (I don't like the tighter integration with Yahoo! and the speed dial thing is just kind of weird/annoying to me). I also don't use Opera because I am addicted to several Google products (such as Calendar) that don't work properly under Opera (I blame this on Google, not Opera... Opera is completely standards compliant last time I checked). On the plus side, I recently discovered some features of Firefox that allow me to make it behave even more like Opera. Now if Firefox could just get Opera's speed, clean up the code base/fix memory leaks, and become fully standards compliant then I'll be happy.
You forget, that in this global economy, China dumping all of those US dollars would not just harm the US, it would likely do serious damage to the economies of other European and Asian countries that are big trade partners of the US, which in turn would effect China's economy as the countries that import their products go into a recession or apply tariffs to try to get their citizens to buy homegrown products since there'll be a huge surplus if the US is no longer in a position to be buying. Anyway, point is it would be bad for everybody and a really stupid move. The US not importing Chinese goods would increase the overall price of things in the US and would also likely drive the price of Chinese goods down in the world market--since there would then be a surplus. No other major negative effects though.
I think it's already pretty clear that it will be bad as it will benefit patent trolls and hurt technologies developed by consortiums or open source projects (neither of which tend to patent their ideas--consortiums just establish standards that define the technologies, and open source projects normally don't waste the money on patents). For example, look at the Verizon vs. Vonage case where Verizon was the first to patent, but as of a Slashdot story yesterday it seems that a consortium of various IT companies actually met and established the standards/protocols/underlying technology of VoiP in question at least a year prior to Verizon filing for a patent.
Child molesters are clearly much further down in hell. But it is right next to people who talk in theaters--especially people who do so while drunk or who give away the ending.
Eh, I think if this had been posted to Slashdot then the users (not all of them, of course, but enough) would have called it out. I mean, it's an article from 2003 so it's pretty easy to prove false.
On a side note, I think a lot of Slashdotters go to both Digg and Slashdot (I do). The difference is though that I use Slashdot for the summary and discussion (article if it's interesting enough), whereas the summary and discussion on Digg tend to be pretty crappy, but some times I can find a link to an interesting article--although most of the time lately it's been to a blog entry and then I have to click through a few layers to get to the actual article... BTW, there's a special place in hell for people who post about news stories without providing a link to the news story.
That's what I meant by assets. I mean those are the main assets of any advertising firm, or the way I see it anyway.
While I agree with the $3.1 billion probably being far too much for DoubleClicks assets... I disagree with the block list thing, as the vast majority of Internet users do not use AdBlock or any other similar ad blocking software. Yes, a lot of us geeks use that stuff (I don't, as I just ignore them), but then a lot of us geeks are the ones least likely to click on ads and buy the stuff they're selling. Now as to the reason why they would be willing to pay the $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, it's clearly to prevent Microsoft (and/or Yahoo!) from buying a sizable chunk of the online advertising business, plus it now increases the size of Google's very profitable ad business.
That's still a neutral network though as all the data packets have equal chance of reaching their destination. It would only be a problem if you were prioritizing your own VoIP service and/or penalizing data packets for Google Talk/Gizmo/Vonage voice data packets. Or in some other way prioritizing data packets from the Internet that effects all of your customers (not just those abusing your ToS).
That's a good one, especially since he's also the one who handed everything over to evil.
On another note, maybe Star Wars got second as punishment for the half assed stories of the prequel, whereas Serenity (which borrows heavily from the original Star Wars trilogy--especially from the space cowboy character of Han Solo) was voted first to send a message to Lucas: sell out.
The 30 cents not only buys you a DRM free version, but also a higher quality version. So you pay 30 cents for twice the bit rate and no DRM. I, personally, think it's a decent deal.
It isn't about prevent terrorism related deaths, but economic terrorism.
He also announced nothing because Nintendo has a pending stock deal that bars them from talking about any future plans... This has been covered extensively by various game news sites.
You actually lose money if you become President (at least during your term in office). There is no budget set aside for entertaining foreign dignitaries and as such, the expense of entertaining the foreign visitors come out of the President's own pocket. This expense tends to far exceed the paltry $400,000 annual paycheck. Or at least this is what I was told over half a decade ago in a US Government class.
I would doubt the site would have the same content though... Images, sure... But the words on the page would clearly be parodied otherwise what's the point of using a parodied version of the slogan? If they really did just copy everything and just change the slogan though, then you're correct--they did deserve to get pulled for that.
Point well taken, but then you don't have the portability I mentioned (as you have to have CVS and Latex installed on all the computers you want to edit the document on). You also lack the ease of use of Google Docs (although that, admittedly, needs some improvement still--changing the name of the documents is non-intuitive and some people who have never used GMail that I've collaborated on documents with have had problems finding some editing features--such as highlighting text). You're definitely right about the Latex solution looking better though--for one it's Latex, for 2 Google Docs needs some serious improvement in the layout end of things--it's far too limited so I pretty much just do it for getting the words on the paper and then reformat it in Office/OpenOffice later if it's a document that has specific formatting criteria (such as a two column formatted abstract/paper).
Google has never claimed that Google Docs was an office replacement--they've always said it was meant to supplement traditional productivity suites. The main advantage of Google Docs (if you've ever used it) is the ability to easily collaborate with other writers of a document that are miles away. Yes, you can do the same thing with a wiki; however, many wikis lock users from editing a document if one user is already editing it--Google Docs doesn't (although if two users are editing the same section of a document, it will warn a user that their changes will be discarded and pop up a Window displaying the changes so they can be copied and re-added). Google Docs, unlike a wiki, also allows easier, more intuitive formatting that will stick when you export it to a traditional productivity suite (wikis don't allow you to export--you must copy and paste into the productivity suite). Plus, not all users need a full featured productivity suite and for those who don't, Google Docs serves as a great alternative solution. I also greatly enjoy the ability to have access to my document no matter where I am as long as I have access to the Internet--yes I can do the same thing with a flash drive, but I really do find Google Docs to be the more convenient solution.
I've had my desktop at work consist of 90% fragmented files with an NTFS file system... Maybe if you're typical use is just browsing the net/using Office then this may be the case. However, if you use your computer for development then installing IDEs, APIs, project files, etc. will end up causing a fragmented drive.
I know this (although MS recruiters do not--they only know about technical side and know nothing of the usability research that takes place in the normal product teams). But the thing is they were proposing a NEW user interface paradigm. This is something that should come out of research, not the product team. I'm sure the product team does user experience testing to a degree and that for the most part they are capable of testing their products usability. However, when you're creating a new interface paradigm you can't just do a couple of focus groups or informal user studies. There are a lot of issues to consider and it should be something that takes a few years to gestate, mature, and research. That's why I'm saying I don't think the new version of Windows should be introducing any new paradigm unless it comes out of MSR. Just like the Tablet PC OS didn't come out of MS products--it was a culmination of work done by MSR that got rolled into the MS product team after it was ready. If the MS product team had come up with it, then it likely would have gone the way of other tablet OSes.
My understanding was that the ribbon was a suggestion by a summer intern they had a couple years back.
That may be possible, but I feel that would like result in the option of dividing the nation up. Since there are 3 (or more) major factions and each one of them is armed and each one hates the other two... The ones that are minorities are slightly more willing to work with the other minority groups, but if one of the minority groups starts gaining too much power, you know the other minority group(s) will turn on them.
It's not my blog, it's my professor's blog--I'm just in the class and post on it... I agree with your criticism of it though. And I didn't say the Ribbon was bad, just that I found myself digging more than I used to (which is the opposite of their stated goal). I think it has a tremendous amount of potential, it just needs some more work and needs to be integrated throughout the Office suite and Windows otherwise it forces user's to constantly change their mindset for completing tasks. Customization would be good as well.
I do like the ribbon interface to a degree, I just think it should have gone through MS Research where they could have done more extensive testing and perhaps delayed the ribbon until the next version--right now you not only have the learning curve for the ribbons but the inconsistency of interface throughout the Office suite (Publisher and Visio use the old interface) plus the fact that XP and Vista are both entrenched in the old interface. If you're going to push a new paradigm then you should do so consistently... Plus, most Office users are the already entrenched users...
So WinFS is finally being released? That was the one I was referring to that's been in development (and delayed) for years now. I've heard mixed thoughts about whether or not it will be better or worse, but we won't know until it's out...
The other thing that might be useful (eventually) is a file system designed to optimize the use of flash drives (not really all that useful with 30 GB flash drives costing a few hundred, but this will likely be very useful in about 2-5 years after the prices have dropped considerably/larger capacity flash drives are available).
Frankly, hundreds of thousands of potential casualties are going to happen either way at this point... One way involves America involved and suffering those casualties and the economic drain associated with the war. The other way, involves the people who can't seem to get along with one another and America sitting back and (hopefully) restrengthening its economy. America did not become a super power by military means--they reached the status through economic means (the military came later). If we lose our economic status, we lose our power. All we have then are big guns that we can't even really use, since you can't really fight a war any more (not in a way you can win one). The most you can do in a war is expel invaders from occupied territory--you can't occupy and you can't reform. There is too much public scrutiny and too many international laws to prevent a traditional war--not to mention the constant threat of nuclear war since the technology has spread to some smaller countries that don't value even the lives of their own citizens (and even a dirty bomb has fairly devastating effects). I'm not saying it's a good thing to do. I think it's a horrible thing to do. I just think our options are limited and out of the options, this is the one that allows us to return to progress. With the other options, the terrorists have succeeded in weakening our nation (or perhaps I should say Bush... since the terrorists weren't in Iraq... just Saddam...)