The only thing that's going away is over-the-air NTSC (and only analog at that; NTSC's resolution will come over the air digitally, not just HD). It'll be coming out of cable and satellite dish boxes for quite some time now, even if those devices are transitioning to direct digital out over HDMI.
Or that's my understanding of it, anyways. I haven't watched TV in several years now, if you don't count the BSG torrents.
It makes perfect sense for them, certainly. But could a single keystroke that advances or rewinds the document by 96% of the height of the viewport (fancy for Page Up) NOT be classified as obvious?
Respect to MS for getting the patent I guess (if you're first then you're first; more power to them), but it just goes to prove how fucked up the patent system is.
There's a difference between showing up for a (hopefully) peaceful protest and bringing a rifle. As in one is a constitutionally-protected right, and the other is a very clear intent of first degree murder.
Right, so what you're saying is that because it's not as bad as a century ago, it's OK? There was also a point where not actively following the state's religion would get you killed. That doesn't make today's religious hysteria acceptable, even if it's not as bad relatively speaking (though it seems we're headed back in that direction).
Please get out of the country now, for everyone's sake.
Yes, but anyone who can sell to a fear-induced market will exploit that to greater profit. It's not unlike the War on Terror, which was provoked by an incident that caused fewer deaths by far than we have from automobile accidents, almost all diseases, shootings, and pretty much anything short of death by lightning strike. More people die of natural causes in a day than were killed in the 9/11 attacks. That certainly doesn't make the incident okay by a longshot, but you can see what the outcome has been. We'll spend all of or time sensationalizing things of incredibly low risk if there's profit to be made somewhere.
Indeed. Just because Google's tried to redefine the word to mean "ongoing product, but we're not liable for any issues you may encounter though we'll do our best to resolve them" doesn't mean the rest of the world has accepted the definition. Don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with Google's products (I use many of them on a daily basis, as do many others here), but their decision to eschew version numbers in favor of a continual disclaimer label isn't exactly industry standard.
Even when I had to work with MOSS2005 at school a couple years ago, it worked fine in Firefox (for a given value of fine anyways - this is MOSS we're talking about).
Ok, what about http://intranet/ ? Obviously the local domain controller is handling things there; shops with intranets that only work in IE6 are almost certainly using an MS-based server.
I just opened up the IE8 beta in a VM, and went to 192.168.0.11 (my OS X webserver's local address) and it doesn't detect automatically as Intranet. It also misses my router at 192.168.0.1, however it does get the WAMP install at http://localhost/ unsurprisingly. Doubleclicking the internet icon in the bottom to check the sites has: (X) Automatically detect intranet network -- (X) Include all local (intranet) sites not listed in other zones -- (X) Include all sites that bypass the proxy server -- (X) Include all network paths (UNC)
You can also go advanced from there and add in additional sites by address or IP.
So I have no idea how it handles the detection. It doesn't do a great job, but then interestingly enough it doesn't consistently give the option to use the compatibility view either. It doesn't appear to be based off of the doctype, availability of IE-only stylesheets, intra/extra/internet location, or anything else that would make sense from my brief testing.
I agree, having installed IE8 beta for the first time about five minutes ago. I clicked the broken page button, and sure enough, the page broke (on a site I've been working on and haven't gotten to IE6/7 hacks yet). Works as promised, I guess. Thankfully, the default strict compliance mode either works correctly or close enough that my lack of IE-conditional stylesheets didn't matter.
I think a little explanation that pops up in that first-load box would be sufficient. They could even use it to paint themselves in a good light - "By default, IE8 will show websites using the latest web standards. Some websites have not been developed to the latest web standards, and may not appear correctly. If this happens, click the compatibility mode icon (image) and the page will be drawn in a less standards-compliant mode that should be closer to the website designer's intentions."
Seriously, attack the web devs and designers in the firstrun message if you have to. Use it as an opportunity to brush up on your doublespeak and make us look bad. We don't care, so long as you render the page as well as the Gecko and Webkit engines by default.
Intranet sites, whatever. I think that should be done within the network rather than the browser's defaults directly, but that's not a major concern to me really.
Actually, some sort of vigilante justice probably could do a lot of good here. Spam out messages for your free trial of whatever (plus 6.95s/h), and send people a rock and a nicely worded letter that tells them to kindly NOT fall for stupid crap anymore. Donate whatever's left over after postage and rock costs to the EFF.
Yes, I understand third-grade business. Obviously sending spam doesn't generate money out of thin air, or we'd all do it. Hell, I've advertised products that might as well have been thin air, and saw money from it (not via email, but that's beside the point). In any case, when those shady businesses that employ the spammers go under because spam stops being effective, the flow of spam will soon dry up.
It's a little mini food-chain. Break any of the links, and the whole thing falls apart. That could be a) the people with the products being advertised, b) the spammers sending the ads, c) the botnet operators being used to send the spam, renting to the spammers, d) mail servers that deliver the spam to the end-user (or doesn't, when things work reasonably well), or e) the end-user buying the useless shit that enables the cycle to continue.
Most unfortunately, so long as stupid people exist in the world, a and e above will always exist, and a employs b. That means that we need to employ some sort of technical solution to deal with c and d, probably in the form of antivirus/antimalware and better spam filtering respectively.
If there was a magical pill that would increase your penis length three inches overnight, you can damn well bet that the pharma industry is going to be charging you a metric assload for it, not some sketchy internet peddler trying to also sell you V1agr4 and a new R013x. Joe Tard that's indirectly keeping the spammers in business isn't going to realize that anytime soon.
Given the context, posting anonymously might also have been a good idea. If he's in the market for a geeky wedding band, chances are she reads slashdot too (or at least knows that he does)
If only the "holy war" types would make that same connection...
Regardless I wouldn't claim it to be quite that black and white, but then it also depends whether you consider murder to be taking a life under any circumstances or just under the legalese definitions/circumstances.
Use gmail. I'll get a thousand or so spams a month, but I've had maybe four make it to my inbox in the past three years.
It obviously doesn't eliminate the problem of spam, but in theory if it didn't make it to anyone's inbox, idiots would stop acting on it and suddenly spam wouldn't be profitable and would fizzle away.
I've got hardware that can more than handle Vista. There are a ton of problems with it, even for all of the improvements they made. Not all of them are Microsoft's fault (drivers for my video card are still nonfunctional), but they are still issues not manifested in XP. I've never had an issue with the speed of Vista's UI, but every time I attempt to use Vista I end up regretting it.
Designers would certainly love the option (I'm not a designer and I would, as I frequently implement someone else's design and hate the whole thing of slicing images of text in an unsupported font), but I envision font designers throwing a shit-fit. All of those non-standard fonts that you have to drop into place with a png (or sIFR) are, in theory, licensed by the designer, so I do understand where they're coming from.
Now almost by design, anything closed-source or DRMed on the web is destined to fail, given the relatively open nature of the web. Even more so when it comes to standards. @font-face is a great alternative if it's adopted outside of Safari; presumably, the DRM thing could be avoided by high-profile sites using non-standard fonts simply getting audited whenever (like they are for software licenses) to ensure they've paid for fonts in use on the site.
And web design may not be for you. Set your damn user style sheet and it'll override whatever attractive layout the designer provided for you with whatever ugly font you want.
I'm not a designer, but let's stop pretending it's 1995.
Depends on the IT guy's skills in explaining things - or, indeed, 'selling' the open-source solutions. Obviously I'm generalizing here, but most IT people aren't overly business-savvy, so they're often of little help when it comes to explaining why X solution is better than Y. Management doesn't care that CrapSoftwareY is talking to a set of cobbled-together Access tables where DecentSoftwareX functions off of a proper relational database unless the IT guy evaluating the software can explain the BUSINESS benefits of one over the other (and "users won't end up going batshit insane over file locking when trying to hit stupidfile.mdb over a samba share" won't cut it).
Open source guys can evangelize all they want, but if they really want to see adoption, they'll need to sell it. Not via cold calls, but at least throw some copy online that the IT staff can use when they're pitching it against whatever half-assed proprietary product that's backed by a sales department. And let me tell you, MS has a damn good sales department./used to work in software sales, and outselling open-source is trivially easy for those reasons
That's the "beauty" (for MS) of their pricing schemes; it's basically a money pit.
Actually, it's really just a way for them to legally cook their books. While they never provide support* on any of their consumer products, they're still allowed to have a ton of unearned revenue since they only recognize 1/12th of the purchase price each month, or however long you're supported for. Assuming it's one year and a copy of Windows is $300 (I was at Staples today, and apparently it is at least for some version of XP), that means that after a month, they've got $25 of earned revenue and $275 of unearned revenue on the books. Basically, it fucks with the numbers and makes them look richer than they really are.
Of course this isn't at all specific to Microsoft - most companies that provide some sort of support contract do the same (Best Buy extended warranties? Oh yeah). I'd suggest they abuse it a bit more than most, but what do you expect?
*you know what I mean here - I'm sure there's the odd instance of it happening, but by and large the only time you get them on the phone is for an activation problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Just give me one of your monitors and this problem will go away.
The only thing that's going away is over-the-air NTSC (and only analog at that; NTSC's resolution will come over the air digitally, not just HD). It'll be coming out of cable and satellite dish boxes for quite some time now, even if those devices are transitioning to direct digital out over HDMI.
Or that's my understanding of it, anyways. I haven't watched TV in several years now, if you don't count the BSG torrents.
Expect the MS DN key to be worn out extremely quickly on the keyboards of most Slashdotters.
Wow, Gates really can't take a joke. He looked like he was ready to punch Bradley in the face after that comment.
It makes perfect sense for them, certainly. But could a single keystroke that advances or rewinds the document by 96% of the height of the viewport (fancy for Page Up) NOT be classified as obvious?
Respect to MS for getting the patent I guess (if you're first then you're first; more power to them), but it just goes to prove how fucked up the patent system is.
There's a difference between showing up for a (hopefully) peaceful protest and bringing a rifle. As in one is a constitutionally-protected right, and the other is a very clear intent of first degree murder.
Right, so what you're saying is that because it's not as bad as a century ago, it's OK? There was also a point where not actively following the state's religion would get you killed. That doesn't make today's religious hysteria acceptable, even if it's not as bad relatively speaking (though it seems we're headed back in that direction).
Please get out of the country now, for everyone's sake.
Yes, but anyone who can sell to a fear-induced market will exploit that to greater profit. It's not unlike the War on Terror, which was provoked by an incident that caused fewer deaths by far than we have from automobile accidents, almost all diseases, shootings, and pretty much anything short of death by lightning strike. More people die of natural causes in a day than were killed in the 9/11 attacks. That certainly doesn't make the incident okay by a longshot, but you can see what the outcome has been. We'll spend all of or time sensationalizing things of incredibly low risk if there's profit to be made somewhere.
And they're fantastic at it.
*cough*
Something that involves competence, if we're lucky.
Indeed. Just because Google's tried to redefine the word to mean "ongoing product, but we're not liable for any issues you may encounter though we'll do our best to resolve them" doesn't mean the rest of the world has accepted the definition. Don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with Google's products (I use many of them on a daily basis, as do many others here), but their decision to eschew version numbers in favor of a continual disclaimer label isn't exactly industry standard.
Even when I had to work with MOSS2005 at school a couple years ago, it worked fine in Firefox (for a given value of fine anyways - this is MOSS we're talking about).
Ok, what about http://intranet/ ? Obviously the local domain controller is handling things there; shops with intranets that only work in IE6 are almost certainly using an MS-based server.
I just opened up the IE8 beta in a VM, and went to 192.168.0.11 (my OS X webserver's local address) and it doesn't detect automatically as Intranet. It also misses my router at 192.168.0.1, however it does get the WAMP install at http://localhost/ unsurprisingly. Doubleclicking the internet icon in the bottom to check the sites has:
(X) Automatically detect intranet network
-- (X) Include all local (intranet) sites not listed in other zones
-- (X) Include all sites that bypass the proxy server
-- (X) Include all network paths (UNC)
You can also go advanced from there and add in additional sites by address or IP.
So I have no idea how it handles the detection. It doesn't do a great job, but then interestingly enough it doesn't consistently give the option to use the compatibility view either. It doesn't appear to be based off of the doctype, availability of IE-only stylesheets, intra/extra/internet location, or anything else that would make sense from my brief testing.
I agree, having installed IE8 beta for the first time about five minutes ago. I clicked the broken page button, and sure enough, the page broke (on a site I've been working on and haven't gotten to IE6/7 hacks yet). Works as promised, I guess. Thankfully, the default strict compliance mode either works correctly or close enough that my lack of IE-conditional stylesheets didn't matter.
I think a little explanation that pops up in that first-load box would be sufficient. They could even use it to paint themselves in a good light - "By default, IE8 will show websites using the latest web standards. Some websites have not been developed to the latest web standards, and may not appear correctly. If this happens, click the compatibility mode icon (image) and the page will be drawn in a less standards-compliant mode that should be closer to the website designer's intentions."
Seriously, attack the web devs and designers in the firstrun message if you have to. Use it as an opportunity to brush up on your doublespeak and make us look bad. We don't care, so long as you render the page as well as the Gecko and Webkit engines by default.
Intranet sites, whatever. I think that should be done within the network rather than the browser's defaults directly, but that's not a major concern to me really.
Actually, some sort of vigilante justice probably could do a lot of good here. Spam out messages for your free trial of whatever (plus 6.95s/h), and send people a rock and a nicely worded letter that tells them to kindly NOT fall for stupid crap anymore. Donate whatever's left over after postage and rock costs to the EFF.
Yes, I understand third-grade business. Obviously sending spam doesn't generate money out of thin air, or we'd all do it. Hell, I've advertised products that might as well have been thin air, and saw money from it (not via email, but that's beside the point). In any case, when those shady businesses that employ the spammers go under because spam stops being effective, the flow of spam will soon dry up.
It's a little mini food-chain. Break any of the links, and the whole thing falls apart. That could be a) the people with the products being advertised, b) the spammers sending the ads, c) the botnet operators being used to send the spam, renting to the spammers, d) mail servers that deliver the spam to the end-user (or doesn't, when things work reasonably well), or e) the end-user buying the useless shit that enables the cycle to continue.
Most unfortunately, so long as stupid people exist in the world, a and e above will always exist, and a employs b. That means that we need to employ some sort of technical solution to deal with c and d, probably in the form of antivirus/antimalware and better spam filtering respectively.
If there was a magical pill that would increase your penis length three inches overnight, you can damn well bet that the pharma industry is going to be charging you a metric assload for it, not some sketchy internet peddler trying to also sell you V1agr4 and a new R013x. Joe Tard that's indirectly keeping the spammers in business isn't going to realize that anytime soon.
Given the context, posting anonymously might also have been a good idea. If he's in the market for a geeky wedding band, chances are she reads slashdot too (or at least knows that he does)
If only the "holy war" types would make that same connection...
Regardless I wouldn't claim it to be quite that black and white, but then it also depends whether you consider murder to be taking a life under any circumstances or just under the legalese definitions/circumstances.
Use gmail. I'll get a thousand or so spams a month, but I've had maybe four make it to my inbox in the past three years.
It obviously doesn't eliminate the problem of spam, but in theory if it didn't make it to anyone's inbox, idiots would stop acting on it and suddenly spam wouldn't be profitable and would fizzle away.
I've got hardware that can more than handle Vista. There are a ton of problems with it, even for all of the improvements they made. Not all of them are Microsoft's fault (drivers for my video card are still nonfunctional), but they are still issues not manifested in XP. I've never had an issue with the speed of Vista's UI, but every time I attempt to use Vista I end up regretting it.
Designers would certainly love the option (I'm not a designer and I would, as I frequently implement someone else's design and hate the whole thing of slicing images of text in an unsupported font), but I envision font designers throwing a shit-fit. All of those non-standard fonts that you have to drop into place with a png (or sIFR) are, in theory, licensed by the designer, so I do understand where they're coming from.
Now almost by design, anything closed-source or DRMed on the web is destined to fail, given the relatively open nature of the web. Even more so when it comes to standards. @font-face is a great alternative if it's adopted outside of Safari; presumably, the DRM thing could be avoided by high-profile sites using non-standard fonts simply getting audited whenever (like they are for software licenses) to ensure they've paid for fonts in use on the site.
Dibs on #GGGGGG. I'll make a killing on HDR websites.
And web design may not be for you. Set your damn user style sheet and it'll override whatever attractive layout the designer provided for you with whatever ugly font you want.
I'm not a designer, but let's stop pretending it's 1995.
Depends on the IT guy's skills in explaining things - or, indeed, 'selling' the open-source solutions. Obviously I'm generalizing here, but most IT people aren't overly business-savvy, so they're often of little help when it comes to explaining why X solution is better than Y. Management doesn't care that CrapSoftwareY is talking to a set of cobbled-together Access tables where DecentSoftwareX functions off of a proper relational database unless the IT guy evaluating the software can explain the BUSINESS benefits of one over the other (and "users won't end up going batshit insane over file locking when trying to hit stupidfile.mdb over a samba share" won't cut it).
Open source guys can evangelize all they want, but if they really want to see adoption, they'll need to sell it. Not via cold calls, but at least throw some copy online that the IT staff can use when they're pitching it against whatever half-assed proprietary product that's backed by a sales department. And let me tell you, MS has a damn good sales department. /used to work in software sales, and outselling open-source is trivially easy for those reasons
Actually, it's really just a way for them to legally cook their books. While they never provide support* on any of their consumer products, they're still allowed to have a ton of unearned revenue since they only recognize 1/12th of the purchase price each month, or however long you're supported for. Assuming it's one year and a copy of Windows is $300 (I was at Staples today, and apparently it is at least for some version of XP), that means that after a month, they've got $25 of earned revenue and $275 of unearned revenue on the books. Basically, it fucks with the numbers and makes them look richer than they really are.
Of course this isn't at all specific to Microsoft - most companies that provide some sort of support contract do the same (Best Buy extended warranties? Oh yeah). I'd suggest they abuse it a bit more than most, but what do you expect?
*you know what I mean here - I'm sure there's the odd instance of it happening, but by and large the only time you get them on the phone is for an activation problem.