> Obviously you are not a pro web designer. If you were, patriotaki, you would know exactly how much a PITA IE actually is. All other browsers are more or less standards compliant. To get the same functionality out of IE, more often than not, you have to resort to IE hacks. This is frustrating. the only reason Web Devs put up with such bullshit is because they are sure 90% of people on earth have IE and they can't risk not supporting it.
Hehe, akou leei "patriotaki";) I might not be a pro web designer, as I said, but I have done a little designing, including an undergrad thesis that involved porting the interface of a very complex multimedia database from VB to ASP. While they expected activeX (Greek University - "MS rulez";), I made EVERYTHING to be cross-browser, and for the challenge I left only form validation client side (e.g. my own collapsible treeviews designed server-side with a tree status encoding string passed as form data), so the thing turned out to do everything the original interface did, plus it would run on any ancient browsen even without scripting (ok, with the inconvenience of server-side form validation). My point is that you can work on any browser, no matter how lame it is. It is just a matter of deciding it is good practice. If you start using MS-only non-standard stuff for the web you do not respect Linux or Mac users, or future generations (MS security updates often break sites).
> Well, you surely cannot blame MS for not developing linux games, but what about using patents against OpenGL?
I don't see any news since 2002. It seems MS did not actually do anything. Correct me if I am wrong.
>You might want to read up on Judge Jackson's findings of fact. I wouldn't say microsoft wasn't exactly a boyscout when gaining market share, neither is it one in keeping it. The history linked shows the court's findings of microsoft's misbehaviour. Funny you mentioned Intel:
Not exactly relevant to what I was replying to, but nice to see someone pressuring Intel the way Intel pressures smaller guys! Ok, I have to admit, I am an "AMD fanboy"...;)
> MS is an illegal monopoly, one far more evil than OTE that you are photographing in your posts...;)
No, I live in NY so I was referring to Time Warner Cable. I call them with reasonable requests and get negative answers. Once I dared say "but.. with other cable providers..." to get the response "WE ARE NOT OTHER PROVIDERS ande WE DON'T CARE WHAT THEY DO. WE ARE TIME WARNER" - All your base belong to us! But OTE (Greek national Telecom) is also mocking the public. They increased phone and internet prices to crazy heights (if I remember correctly it was something like $2/hour to call your neighbor) and then ran these TV commercial of how "OTE is the most profitable organization in Greece" DUH!!!
PS. A couple of sentenses on my or the parent post might look Greek to most slashdotters. Don't worry they are Greek.
> If you want to push this argument, I have to tell you that Google is very close to being a monopoly, and that is exactly how they got Firefox to default to them.
Most answers missinterpret the "very close", which has a temporal meaning. Think 4-dimensionally guys - I am not referring to percentages!
> Hmm, being a user of DR DOS 5, I remember them having compatibility messages in the production not beta windows product. And although they spurred MS to improve on the nasty & buggy PC DOS 4.01 & more primitive MS DOS 3.3 I don't think that MS DOS was ever as good as DR DOS 5. DR sold its dos for something like $60 when MS DOS was going for over $100. So, then MS developed MS DOS 5.0 (very sub-par compared to DR DOS 5.0), dropped the price to $19 and meanwhile had the compatibility warnings. DR got to 6.0 reasonably soon, but I never did see (or care by that time) for DR DOS 7.
My first PC (PS/2 actually;) came with DOS 4.0. After just a year DR-DOS 5 came out and I was using DR-DOS (first 5.0 then 6) until about 1996. I never recall having a problem with release versions Windows 3.0, 3.1 or 3.11 during this time and I do not remember any mention of problems apart from that embarassing beta situation. Clarify what exactly "incompatibility messages" you are referring to. Anyway, from your last post I see you change the blame to MS dropping the prices, something logical if they had an inferior product - no?;)
> Oh please no, do not integrate the browser into the os.
Who talked about integrating it? Please don't paraphrase me. I like my linux distro to include all utilities I will need, same would be nice with Windows. Give me a free browser, if I don't like it I will just use it to navigate to mozilla.org.
> The reason that it's so difficult to find a good alternative today is because MS has killed off the alternatives: Excel is a good spreadsheet, but Lotus 1-2-3 is good enough for almost everyone. Word is a disaster for large documents and not noticably better than wordperfect or ami pro (depending on your exact needs). Etc. Of course it's a lot of work for OpenOffice to compete - they've got to build from scratch without almost no revenue, while MS gets a ton of revenue from these products that can then go into completely different product lines. Meanwhile, in spite of pulling in probably billions a year in revenue from the Office product line they've shown no significant improvements in eight years. What crap.
First of all I retain that OpenOffice is not good - I use Koffice on Linux to avoid the frustration. Second, Word might be crap for huge documents (I really don't understand why after so many versions), but it is still better than the competition. You say "not noticably" and I won't dissagree with that. However, it takes me to the next point, which is that Word is bundled in Office and if Word is not THAT amazing, I must tell you that a lot of people (e.g. physics students) will not take any alternative to Excel (which unlike Word does not have any annoying shortcomings). And critisizing someone for making billions of a good product is a bit in contrast to our capitalist society, don't you think? I mean, sure it is not the ideal thing, but all we can do is use Linux for the stuff it's better at - that's our hippie movement right now.
> Why should I pay $200 to license a product that hasn't gotten an upgrade in eight years? Thanks anyway, but openoffice is good enough. I'm using it in the office, the kids have it on their pcs, my wife and i use it at home. And I'm not using pirated software or blowing $1000+ on antiquated MS stuff. Now the thing to do is to send a fraction of that figure to the OpenOffice folks. Hmm, need to remember to do that...
Hmm. I agree actually. That is why I am still using Office 2000. XP was worse IMHO (few useless new features, more unstable product), while 2003 is indeed better than 2000 (seems at least as solid, has a couple of usefull features), it does not justify an upgrade. Still, 8 years with no noteworthy updates... Where is the competition? Why are they trying to replicate MS, instead of providing something lighter, stabler, with features that we actually care about?
> Not sure about that, the telecoms are so incredibly incompetent that it makes for too easy of a target.
> Well as a consumer I can say that I have felt hurt many times by Microsoft's monopoly. Here is why:
> Almost complete lack of drivers provided by hardware companies
I haven't really followed the issue (I have only used rather mainstream parts that have decent support for linux), but isn't the basic reason for this linux's GPL licence? Now that Linux has gained some market share and companies might think about devoting a few resources to Linux support, can they ship proprietary drivers to be included in the kernel? Somebody who knows this issue, please enlighten me.
> Try buying a decent computer (and almost no laptops) that comes preinstalled with Linux
I have never bought a system with a preinstalled anything. If say "decent computer" and in fact mean "Dell", what are you doing on Slashdot? And my company has bought Linux laptops from smaller boutiques.
> Lack of legal codecs on Linux
I really don't think MS is at fault here. WMV is proprietary, but I don't like it and it is generally not that used anyway. However the basic problem is that DRM and content encryption is demanded by the studios and can only be implemented in a non GPL OS. While it should be obvious that I don't have issues with MS, I do have big issues with MPAA, RIAA etc and everyone that tries to take away all of my fair use rights.
> Almost zero games on Linux (so I have to keep Windows around)
It should be obvious that you cannot bash MS for being a monopoly by conquering the market. Therefore, Linux not being lucrative to software houses is not a monopoly abuse by MS. Unless you complain because MS does not make Linux games?:)
> A lot of webpages render really poorly because they are IE only
So, the incompetence of web designers is MS's fault too? I have always cross-browser tested my pages and I am not a professional web designer. Instead of flooding bad designer's mail boxes, it is easier to post on slashdot and complain about MS?
> There are more points but these are off the top of my head. All of these points have to do with Linux having a small market share compared with Windows. While it's disputed why this continues to be, I'm pretty sure that Microsoft's pressure on hardware companies to not include Linux as an option is one of the main barriers for Linux adoption. So yeah, as a consumer I have been hurt many times by Microsoft's monopoly.
Again, it is not illegal to hold the largest market share (and there has never been doubted that the OS market was gained fairly). You might be "pretty sure", but I do have doubts that MS used the same stronghold tactics that Intel used, for the obvious reason that the gains for a company by getting a rebate on the volume licensing of an OS would not be substantial enough for denying options that would benifit the consumer. Unless the vendor is ruthless and does not care about the client. But why are you then STILL bashing MS and letting DELL go its merry way?
Oh, and I forgot to add that is something is expensive and incompatible and not really better, it is punished by the market. Look at PS/2. It seems that MS has been getting something right. And they started out as the "small guy".
> Not only are there completely viable options to Google - Google has never been convicting of abusing a monopoly. Note that later point, many people don't mind a monopoly as long as it doesn't abuse it (see Microsoft).
Oh, come on, there are completely viable options to MS. But MS has the market, like Google seems to have the market. And MS wasn't considered to be abusive at first. You think Google will be a "saint"? I sure hope so, but, my friend, you should know that power corrupts even the best of us.
> Great, neither has my nine-year-old son, so what? He isn't aware either of how
Then show us, Obi-Wan
> - Microsoft killed DR Dos (a *far* better dos) by creating fake incompatibility messages
OMG - Pink Ponies!. I can't believe you actually state the (indeed "fake") message in a BETA version of Windows as the reason for DR-Dos being killed. Unfortunatelly for you I am not 9 years old. I REMEMBER! I also remember how DR-Dos died... At a time when everyone (at least everyone I knew) was using DR Dos 6, Digital Research was bought by Novell. And they planned DR Dos 7, and planned... and planned... and didn't really ever release something better...
> - Microsoft killed OS2 (a *far* better OS) by ensuring incompatibility between its applications and OS2 ones
It is well known that MS actually believed in OS/2 for at least the first 5 years of its life. OS/2's initial versions were not that great (no 32bit 80386 mode - remember?), so it didn't pick up. Windows did pick up and it was obvious that MS focused there. However there was no "ensuring incompatibility" - OS/2 would run Windows programs (at least in the Win 3x era, by including Win code). Yes, OS/2 Warp was probably better than the first version of Win 95, but it was too little, too late.
> - Microsoft killed Netscape by giving their browser away for free. Once they had the market share they allowed it to stagnate. > - etc, etc, etc
Oh, come on... And video killed the radio star... I want my OS to include a browser. The point is, that MS "allowed it to stagnate" at a time when downloading a replacement was a matter of 2-3 minutes. Let me give you an example of things not being MS's fault. At the times of Opera 5 (somewhere around 2k?) I was an undergrad and had a website that had over 200 visits/day at its peak. I was really impressed by the browser, but it had an ad, and I had no income. So, I optimized my site for Opera, I put up a banner and I signed up for the free licence for webmasters program. If they even replied my request (saying e.g. we want more popular sites), I would not have removed the banner. It was not MS's fault.
>No, my nine-year-old isn't aware of how he's been harmed by Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly. But there are plenty of people who are. These are people who've had to pay for expensive license fees for MS Office in order to have a compatible tool, who've spent a ton of money fighting viruses in the MS world, etc.
There is OpenOffice. What? It is not viable? Of course it is not! It's a bigger memory hog than Windows Me itself! Whenever I try to use it I run into problems. Being a professional in the software engineering business I cannot but admire how such a huge project like MS Office worked out so well. I get pissed every time Word changes what I type thinking it knows better, but that is a minor complain. Yes, I do feel obliged to pay the people behind office - it got the monopoly because there was never better competition. And I won't even START to discuss your blatantly ignorant statement that viruses are MS's fault.
> I think there's room to honestly evaluate and consider both actually.
Yet, once more, you spend so much of our time accusing MS for almost everything but the Bubonic plague. Listen to your 9 year old next time. And start a topic about Time Warner, because I still get interruptions in my service after months of delibarations;)
If you want to push this argument, I have to tell you that Google is very close to being a monopoly, and that is exactly how they got Firefox to default to them.
And as a personal rant I have to say that as a consumer I have never felt hurt by MS's monopoly (my Linux box is doing fine right next to my XP box - thank you very much), however I have been hurt by telco monopoly numerous times. Maybe some articles devoted to the woes that our dependance on companies like Time Warner Cable on monopoly markets would be a refreshing change to all the MS bashing on slashdot.
Exactly the same (and obvious) conclusion as any review I've seen on sites like HardOCP, Anandtech, Tomshardware. Is it news that this article is one of the most amateurish attempts at reviewing cards we've seen in recent history? 4 benchmark runs (at least they use games) put together in little fps graphs along with a 2-page grade school level analysis and of course no details about more important stuff like image quality etc.
Maybe it's just me, since I have never paid over $200 for any kind card, and I would probably object seing such an article on [H], Anand, Tom etc being made "news". However, this particular article is not even close to that level. It really seems like it does not offer anything noteworthy.
Oh, boy, I forgot about the Mac zealots! I thought after the move to x86 they went away:)
Just kidding it is of course logical that you ask, since I didn't clarify.
While I was a grad student I worked as tech support at a large NY university. In my department we had 120+ windows machines (administration - of course in all our CS labs Linux & Solaris is the norm), various wireless devices (Win Mobile or Blackberries), and about 5 Macs and a couple Linux machines. Our 3 person team took care of all these - except the Macs. Whenever the Mac users needed something that could not be done by someone proficient in just Linux & Windows, we called the Mac people from the university central support dept.
I am babbling again, but to get to the point every time we had to pay for things that were included in Windows or even in Linux. The most prominent example was around $150 for each machine to see the NT network (DAVE).
Am I missing something? Are you talking about Mac OS X maybe? Who modded this up?
I might be living in a different world, but most useful open source programs come in windows versions anyway, and in some categories (multimedia mostly) they even come ONLY in windows (VirtualDub anyone?).
And the plethora of supplemental tools that come with a Linux distro are of course not a feature of the operating system, just a matter of bundling.
The funny thing is that if MS tries to bundle things (like the - sucky - Media Player), they will get sued for using their monopoly to destroy the competition (sometimes horrid competition like RealPlayer etc).
And I will not understand any objection about downloading free software that does not come with windows. Don't you download your Linux distro anyway? Or just because apt-get is so great and seamless we don't consider that "downloading" of tools?
Anyway, I mentioned Mac OS X at the top because there you have the prime example of selling a stripped kernel (compared to a usual Linux kernel) and then make you pay for obvious features (whaaat? you want cross-platform networking? pay!). Excuse the rant.
I am aware of at least one solution for a reduced QWERTY keyboard the EQ6 that does not use T9, but two different text entry methods (WordWise and LetterWise ) of which none is really word based (although the first looks like it is) and will let you enter anything easily (but actual english will work better). There are demos to check it out. Too bad it has not been picked up yet by a manufacturer.
Yeah, we've heard it a bunch of times, especially in relation to this guy.
And if we turn to our Star Trek Technical Manual, the gravity is controlled by spinning superconductor disks on the Enterprise... And this was written back in 1991... Yes, I know it refers to the 2300's, but on a fictional universe...;)
As history has proven, something by google cannot, by definition, be "something quickly hacked together". I agree with most posters in that the pages are better organised than google.
I am now expecting google to give us even more. What more? An example is some basic analysis that a Stony Brook university project I worked on provides: www.textbiz.org.
Re:I'm sure someone else has mentioned this:
on
AMD Subpoenas Skype
·
· Score: 1
From TFA:
An Intel representative confirmed that there are no instructions that specifically enhance the performance of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software like Skype's in Intel's dual-core chips.
You are essentially correct, perhaps I should have phrased it better. Removing air would make dust particles go and down faster (no resistance from the air), which is not more similar to the behaviour on the moon. So I should have added "desirable" between "any" and "effect". I think the best "fake moon dust effect" would be to keep the air, (of course make sure there are no gusts) and use dust with proper size particles that don't get carried away too much. Even better behaviour of course you would get out of sand in water - but that wouldn't be usefull for rather obvious reasons...
It' really great news that "The History Of The World" will be universally accessible. If enough people watch it and apreciate it, maybe Mel Brooks will consider shooting Part II!
I "partial-vacuum" sound stage (which would probably cost as much as a real mission to the moon) would not have any effect on dust behavior. The dust goes up higher and comes down slower on the moon because of the reduced graviti.
And if the "partial-vacuum" sound stage would be prohibitelly expensive, the "partial-gravity" sound stage cannot be build (on earth). Unless that Pontketnof guy (or whatever his name was) with his "anti-gravity" device was too briliant for any physicist to understand his "invention".
Again, if the BIOS implements power saving "as it should", meaning that other OS's with properly implemented drivers don't exhibit the same problem, then we would not have to update the BIOS.
Ok, I might be overboard here, but something does not feel right. MS does confirm that it is their usb driver's fault, but a possible solution would be a BIOS upgrade??? How is not a Windows update able to fix an MS driver bug?
But if it is not really a driver bug, as the BIOS statement would indicate, why on earth would MS cover for anybody?
It does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!
Hmm, while I develop on a Linux machine, there is always a windows system driving my Home Theater, and I don't really play games. So I never had a problem with Linux drivers for ATI - they work fine for my limited use.
Anyway, the point is that the article only judges video quality. As much as I love my SUSE, it is ridiculous to base an HTPC on it, so linux driver performance is not much of an issue here.
And finally, the "kernel panic" errors are my favorite ones. I mean, they are WAY cooler than the BSOD, as you realize that you are not alone in your frustration: even the kernel is going nuts!
ATI having better quality video has been the case for the last 10 years. Even when they sucked at drivers when it came to games, their video was unmatched, both quality-wise and performance-wise (HW acceleration since 1997 with Rage Pro).
For non-gamer video enthousiasts there was never any doubt as to what card to get.
Slashdot Mirror
> Obviously you are not a pro web designer. If you were, patriotaki, you would know exactly how much a PITA IE actually is. All other browsers are more or less standards compliant. To get the same functionality out of IE, more often than not, you have to resort to IE hacks. This is frustrating. the only reason Web Devs put up with such bullshit is because they are sure 90% of people on earth have IE and they can't risk not supporting it.
;) I might not be a pro web designer, as I said, but I have done a little designing, including an undergrad thesis that involved porting the interface of a very complex multimedia database from VB to ASP. While they expected activeX (Greek University - "MS rulez" ;), I made EVERYTHING to be cross-browser, and for the challenge I left only form validation client side (e.g. my own collapsible treeviews designed server-side with a tree status encoding string passed as form data), so the thing turned out to do everything the original interface did, plus it would run on any ancient browsen even without scripting (ok, with the inconvenience of server-side form validation). My point is that you can work on any browser, no matter how lame it is. It is just a matter of deciding it is good practice. If you start using MS-only non-standard stuff for the web you do not respect Linux or Mac users, or future generations (MS security updates often break sites).
;)
;)
Hehe, akou leei "patriotaki"
> Well, you surely cannot blame MS for not developing linux games, but what about using patents against OpenGL?
I don't see any news since 2002. It seems MS did not actually do anything. Correct me if I am wrong.
>You might want to read up on Judge Jackson's findings of fact. I wouldn't say microsoft wasn't exactly a boyscout when gaining market share, neither is it one in keeping it. The history linked shows the court's findings of microsoft's misbehaviour. Funny you mentioned Intel:
Not exactly relevant to what I was replying to, but nice to see someone pressuring Intel the way Intel pressures smaller guys! Ok, I have to admit, I am an "AMD fanboy"...
> MS is an illegal monopoly, one far more evil than OTE that you are photographing in your posts...
No, I live in NY so I was referring to Time Warner Cable. I call them with reasonable requests and get negative answers. Once I dared say "but.. with other cable providers..." to get the response "WE ARE NOT OTHER PROVIDERS ande WE DON'T CARE WHAT THEY DO. WE ARE TIME WARNER" - All your base belong to us!
But OTE (Greek national Telecom) is also mocking the public. They increased phone and internet prices to crazy heights (if I remember correctly it was something like $2/hour to call your neighbor) and then ran these TV commercial of how "OTE is the most profitable organization in Greece" DUH!!!
PS. A couple of sentenses on my or the parent post might look Greek to most slashdotters. Don't worry they are Greek.
> If you want to push this argument, I have to tell you that Google is very close to being a monopoly, and that is exactly how they got Firefox to default to them.
Most answers missinterpret the "very close", which has a temporal meaning. Think 4-dimensionally guys - I am not referring to percentages!
> Hmm, being a user of DR DOS 5, I remember them having compatibility messages in the production not beta windows product. And although they spurred MS to improve on the nasty & buggy PC DOS 4.01 & more primitive MS DOS 3.3 I don't think that MS DOS was ever as good as DR DOS 5. DR sold its dos for something like $60 when MS DOS was going for over $100. So, then MS developed MS DOS 5.0 (very sub-par compared to DR DOS 5.0), dropped the price to $19 and meanwhile had the compatibility warnings. DR got to 6.0 reasonably soon, but I never did see (or care by that time) for DR DOS 7.
;) came with DOS 4.0. After just a year DR-DOS 5 came out and I was using DR-DOS (first 5.0 then 6) until about 1996. I never recall having a problem with release versions Windows 3.0, 3.1 or 3.11 during this time and I do not remember any mention of problems apart from that embarassing beta situation. Clarify what exactly "incompatibility messages" you are referring to. Anyway, from your last post I see you change the blame to MS dropping the prices, something logical if they had an inferior product - no? ;)
My first PC (PS/2 actually
> Oh please no, do not integrate the browser into the os.
Who talked about integrating it? Please don't paraphrase me. I like my linux distro to include all utilities I will need, same would be nice with Windows. Give me a free browser, if I don't like it I will just use it to navigate to mozilla.org.
> The reason that it's so difficult to find a good alternative today is because MS has killed off the alternatives: Excel is a good spreadsheet, but Lotus 1-2-3 is good enough for almost everyone. Word is a disaster for large documents and not noticably better than wordperfect or ami pro (depending on your exact needs). Etc. Of course it's a lot of work for OpenOffice to compete - they've got to build from scratch without almost no revenue, while MS gets a ton of revenue from these products that can then go into completely different product lines. Meanwhile, in spite of pulling in probably billions a year in revenue from the Office product line they've shown no significant improvements in eight years. What crap.
First of all I retain that OpenOffice is not good - I use Koffice on Linux to avoid the frustration. Second, Word might be crap for huge documents (I really don't understand why after so many versions), but it is still better than the competition. You say "not noticably" and I won't dissagree with that. However, it takes me to the next point, which is that Word is bundled in Office and if Word is not THAT amazing, I must tell you that a lot of people (e.g. physics students) will not take any alternative to Excel (which unlike Word does not have any annoying shortcomings). And critisizing someone for making billions of a good product is a bit in contrast to our capitalist society, don't you think? I mean, sure it is not the ideal thing, but all we can do is use Linux for the stuff it's better at - that's our hippie movement right now.
> Why should I pay $200 to license a product that hasn't gotten an upgrade in eight years? Thanks anyway, but openoffice is good enough. I'm using it in the office, the kids have it on their pcs, my wife and i use it at home. And I'm not using pirated software or blowing $1000+ on antiquated MS stuff. Now the thing to do is to send a fraction of that figure to the OpenOffice folks. Hmm, need to remember to do that...
Hmm. I agree actually. That is why I am still using Office 2000. XP was worse IMHO (few useless new features, more unstable product), while 2003 is indeed better than 2000 (seems at least as solid, has a couple of usefull features), it does not justify an upgrade.
Still, 8 years with no noteworthy updates... Where is the competition? Why are they trying to replicate MS, instead of providing something lighter, stabler, with features that we actually care about?
> Not sure about that, the telecoms are so incredibly incompetent that it makes for too easy of a target.
Oh well. I did say it was a rant.
> Well as a consumer I can say that I have felt hurt many times by Microsoft's monopoly. Here is why:
:)
> Almost complete lack of drivers provided by hardware companies
I haven't really followed the issue (I have only used rather mainstream parts that have decent support for linux), but isn't the basic reason for this linux's GPL licence? Now that Linux has gained some market share and companies might think about devoting a few resources to Linux support, can they ship proprietary drivers to be included in the kernel? Somebody who knows this issue, please enlighten me.
> Try buying a decent computer (and almost no laptops) that comes preinstalled with Linux
I have never bought a system with a preinstalled anything. If say "decent computer" and in fact mean "Dell", what are you doing on Slashdot?
And my company has bought Linux laptops from smaller boutiques.
> Lack of legal codecs on Linux
I really don't think MS is at fault here. WMV is proprietary, but I don't like it and it is generally not that used anyway. However the basic problem is that DRM and content encryption is demanded by the studios and can only be implemented in a non GPL OS. While it should be obvious that I don't have issues with MS, I do have big issues with MPAA, RIAA etc and everyone that tries to take away all of my fair use rights.
> Almost zero games on Linux (so I have to keep Windows around)
It should be obvious that you cannot bash MS for being a monopoly by conquering the market. Therefore, Linux not being lucrative to software houses is not a monopoly abuse by MS. Unless you complain because MS does not make Linux games?
> A lot of webpages render really poorly because they are IE only
So, the incompetence of web designers is MS's fault too? I have always cross-browser tested my pages and I am not a professional web designer. Instead of flooding bad designer's mail boxes, it is easier to post on slashdot and complain about MS?
> There are more points but these are off the top of my head. All of these points have to do with Linux having a small market share compared with Windows. While it's disputed why this continues to be, I'm pretty sure that Microsoft's pressure on hardware companies to not include Linux as an option is one of the main barriers for Linux adoption. So yeah, as a consumer I have been hurt many times by Microsoft's monopoly.
Again, it is not illegal to hold the largest market share (and there has never been doubted that the OS market was gained fairly). You might be "pretty sure", but I do have doubts that MS used the same stronghold tactics that Intel used, for the obvious reason that the gains for a company by getting a rebate on the volume licensing of an OS would not be substantial enough for denying options that would benifit the consumer. Unless the vendor is ruthless and does not care about the client. But why are you then STILL bashing MS and letting DELL go its merry way?
Oh, and I forgot to add that is something is expensive and incompatible and not really better, it is punished by the market.
Look at PS/2.
It seems that MS has been getting something right. And they started out as the "small guy".
> Not only are there completely viable options to Google - Google has never been convicting of abusing a monopoly. Note that later point, many people don't mind a monopoly as long as it doesn't abuse it (see Microsoft).
;)
Oh, come on, there are completely viable options to MS. But MS has the market, like Google seems to have the market. And MS wasn't considered to be abusive at first. You think Google will be a "saint"? I sure hope so, but, my friend, you should know that power corrupts even the best of us.
> Great, neither has my nine-year-old son, so what? He isn't aware either of how
Then show us, Obi-Wan
> - Microsoft killed DR Dos (a *far* better dos) by creating fake incompatibility messages
OMG - Pink Ponies!. I can't believe you actually state the (indeed "fake") message in a BETA version of Windows as the reason for DR-Dos being killed. Unfortunatelly for you I am not 9 years old. I REMEMBER! I also remember how DR-Dos died... At a time when everyone (at least everyone I knew) was using DR Dos 6, Digital Research was bought by Novell. And they planned DR Dos 7, and planned... and planned... and didn't really ever release something better...
> - Microsoft killed OS2 (a *far* better OS) by ensuring incompatibility between its applications and OS2 ones
It is well known that MS actually believed in OS/2 for at least the first 5 years of its life. OS/2's initial versions were not that great (no 32bit 80386 mode - remember?), so it didn't pick up. Windows did pick up and it was obvious that MS focused there. However there was no "ensuring incompatibility" - OS/2 would run Windows programs (at least in the Win 3x era, by including Win code). Yes, OS/2 Warp was probably better than the first version of Win 95, but it was too little, too late.
> - Microsoft killed Netscape by giving their browser away for free. Once they had the market share they allowed it to stagnate.
> - etc, etc, etc
Oh, come on... And video killed the radio star... I want my OS to include a browser. The point is, that MS "allowed it to stagnate" at a time when downloading a replacement was a matter of 2-3 minutes. Let me give you an example of things not being MS's fault. At the times of Opera 5 (somewhere around 2k?) I was an undergrad and had a website that had over 200 visits/day at its peak. I was really impressed by the browser, but it had an ad, and I had no income. So, I optimized my site for Opera, I put up a banner and I signed up for the free licence for webmasters program. If they even replied my request (saying e.g. we want more popular sites), I would not have removed the banner. It was not MS's fault.
>No, my nine-year-old isn't aware of how he's been harmed by Microsoft's abuse of its monopoly. But there are plenty of people who are. These are people who've had to pay for expensive license fees for MS Office in order to have a compatible tool, who've spent a ton of money fighting viruses in the MS world, etc.
There is OpenOffice. What? It is not viable? Of course it is not! It's a bigger memory hog than Windows Me itself! Whenever I try to use it I run into problems. Being a professional in the software engineering business I cannot but admire how such a huge project like MS Office worked out so well. I get pissed every time Word changes what I type thinking it knows better, but that is a minor complain. Yes, I do feel obliged to pay the people behind office - it got the monopoly because there was never better competition.
And I won't even START to discuss your blatantly ignorant statement that viruses are MS's fault.
> I think there's room to honestly evaluate and consider both actually.
Yet, once more, you spend so much of our time accusing MS for almost everything but the Bubonic plague.
Listen to your 9 year old next time. And start a topic about Time Warner, because I still get interruptions in my service after months of delibarations
If you want to push this argument, I have to tell you that Google is very close to being a monopoly, and that is exactly how they got Firefox to default to them.
And as a personal rant I have to say that as a consumer I have never felt hurt by MS's monopoly (my Linux box is doing fine right next to my XP box - thank you very much), however I have been hurt by telco monopoly numerous times. Maybe some articles devoted to the woes that our dependance on companies like Time Warner Cable on monopoly markets would be a refreshing change to all the MS bashing on slashdot.
I really don't get it.
Exactly the same (and obvious) conclusion as any review I've seen on sites like HardOCP, Anandtech, Tomshardware. Is it news that this article is one of the most amateurish attempts at reviewing cards we've seen in recent history? 4 benchmark runs (at least they use games) put together in little fps graphs along with a 2-page grade school level analysis and of course no details about more important stuff like image quality etc.
Maybe it's just me, since I have never paid over $200 for any kind card, and I would probably object seing such an article on [H], Anand, Tom etc being made "news". However, this particular article is not even close to that level. It really seems like it does not offer anything noteworthy.
Oh, boy, I forgot about the Mac zealots! I thought after the move to x86 they went away :)
Just kidding it is of course logical that you ask, since I didn't clarify.
While I was a grad student I worked as tech support at a large NY university. In my department we had 120+ windows machines (administration - of course in all our CS labs Linux & Solaris is the norm), various wireless devices (Win Mobile or Blackberries), and about 5 Macs and a couple Linux machines. Our 3 person team took care of all these - except the Macs. Whenever the Mac users needed something that could not be done by someone proficient in just Linux & Windows, we called the Mac people from the university central support dept.
I am babbling again, but to get to the point every time we had to pay for things that were included in Windows or even in Linux. The most prominent example was around $150 for each machine to see the NT network (DAVE).
Hope I didn't offend anyone! ;)
Woops, and excuse the missing html tags...
Am I missing something? Are you talking about Mac OS X maybe? Who modded this up? I might be living in a different world, but most useful open source programs come in windows versions anyway, and in some categories (multimedia mostly) they even come ONLY in windows (VirtualDub anyone?). And the plethora of supplemental tools that come with a Linux distro are of course not a feature of the operating system, just a matter of bundling. The funny thing is that if MS tries to bundle things (like the - sucky - Media Player), they will get sued for using their monopoly to destroy the competition (sometimes horrid competition like RealPlayer etc). And I will not understand any objection about downloading free software that does not come with windows. Don't you download your Linux distro anyway? Or just because apt-get is so great and seamless we don't consider that "downloading" of tools? Anyway, I mentioned Mac OS X at the top because there you have the prime example of selling a stripped kernel (compared to a usual Linux kernel) and then make you pay for obvious features (whaaat? you want cross-platform networking? pay!). Excuse the rant.
I am aware of at least one solution for a reduced QWERTY keyboard the EQ6 that does not use T9, but two different text entry methods (WordWise and LetterWise ) of which none is really word based (although the first looks like it is) and will let you enter anything easily (but actual english will work better). There are demos to check it out. Too bad it has not been picked up yet by a manufacturer.
Yeah, we've heard it a bunch of times, especially in relation to this guy. And if we turn to our Star Trek Technical Manual, the gravity is controlled by spinning superconductor disks on the Enterprise... And this was written back in 1991... Yes, I know it refers to the 2300's, but on a fictional universe... ;)
As history has proven, something by google cannot, by definition, be "something quickly hacked together". I agree with most posters in that the pages are better organised than google.
I am now expecting google to give us even more. What more? An example is some basic analysis that a Stony Brook university project I worked on provides: www.textbiz.org.
From TFA:
An Intel representative confirmed that there are no instructions that specifically enhance the performance of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software like Skype's in Intel's dual-core chips.
Always recommended to RTFA before posting...
You are essentially correct, perhaps I should have phrased it better. Removing air would make dust particles go and down faster (no resistance from the air), which is not more similar to the behaviour on the moon. So I should have added "desirable" between "any" and "effect".
I think the best "fake moon dust effect" would be to keep the air, (of course make sure there are no gusts) and use dust with proper size particles that don't get carried away too much. Even better behaviour of course you would get out of sand in water - but that wouldn't be usefull for rather obvious reasons...
It' really great news that "The History Of The World" will be universally accessible. If enough people watch it and apreciate it, maybe Mel Brooks will consider shooting Part II!
I "partial-vacuum" sound stage (which would probably cost as much as a real mission to the moon) would not have any effect on dust behavior. The dust goes up higher and comes down slower on the moon because of the reduced graviti. And if the "partial-vacuum" sound stage would be prohibitelly expensive, the "partial-gravity" sound stage cannot be build (on earth). Unless that Pontketnof guy (or whatever his name was) with his "anti-gravity" device was too briliant for any physicist to understand his "invention".
Again, if the BIOS implements power saving "as it should", meaning that other OS's with properly implemented drivers don't exhibit the same problem, then we would not have to update the BIOS.
Ok, I might be overboard here, but something does not feel right. MS does confirm that it is their usb driver's fault, but a possible solution would be a BIOS upgrade??? How is not a Windows update able to fix an MS driver bug?
But if it is not really a driver bug, as the BIOS statement would indicate, why on earth would MS cover for anybody?
It does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!
Maybe NTP? Come on, you must have read the acronym in over 10000 headlines by now...
Hmm, while I develop on a Linux machine, there is always a windows system driving my Home Theater, and I don't really play games. So I never had a problem with Linux drivers for ATI - they work fine for my limited use.
Anyway, the point is that the article only judges video quality. As much as I love my SUSE, it is ridiculous to base an HTPC on it, so linux driver performance is not much of an issue here.
And finally, the "kernel panic" errors are my favorite ones. I mean, they are WAY cooler than the BSOD, as you realize that you are not alone in your frustration: even the kernel is going nuts!
ATI having better quality video has been the case for the last 10 years. Even when they sucked at drivers when it came to games, their video was unmatched, both quality-wise and performance-wise (HW acceleration since 1997 with Rage Pro).
For non-gamer video enthousiasts there was never any doubt as to what card to get.