It's great to see major websites like Tom's Hardware publishing articles like these. I'll forward it to a collegue of mine. He's not a computer nerd in any way, yet being fed up with how crappy Windows was running on his netbook, he managed to find out about Ubuntu and install it on his machine completely by himself. It's quite amazing to me that someone with so little tech-saviness can achieve this. I'm not saying it's going to be the year of the Linux desktop or anything, but times are definately changing.
That's actually not missing. He points out that dispite OS X has been out for almost 10 years, Adobe has only now (with the release of CS5) released a version which makes use of Cocoa.
I know H264 is big with the content providers. But you just can't ignore Firefox. It's the biggest HTML5 supporting browser out there and it doesn't do H264 at all.
I can see this sort of solution work for HTML5 as well. Letting servers transcode video files will result in all users on all platforms having access to all video content, without the need for a default codec that everyone can agree upon. It will require massive computing power, but there are already services which provide this functionality, like Bits on the Run.
Of course it would be a lot nicer if we could agree upon a codec, but I don't see it actually happening though.
According to Wikipedia, TGL was already on CBS when they started to make TV episodes in 1952, while at the same time still continuing the radio shows as well.
In 1956 the radio shows were discontinued, which concluded the shows' transfer from radio to television.
The longest running soap opera is The Guiding Light, which started in 1937 on the radio and moved to television (while keeping the same cast and storyline) in 1952. The show was cancelled in 2009 due to low ratings, which makes the total running time about 72 years.
The SCO lawsuits against Linux and other Unices started in 2002 when Darl McBride become CEO of the company. If they can keep it up for another 65 years, they can claim the title of longest running soap opera rightfully theirs.
You might also want to start saving the corporate nickels and dimes since IE6 isn't going to get any more available. It won't run in Windows7 and I doubt MS will make XP available forever. Flag day is coming and if you haven't upgraded by then and don't have those millions available, you'll just have to shut down.
You'd be surprised how long some folks are willing to hold onto something and simply refuse to adopt newer technologies. I actually know of several companies who regularly scan websites such as eBay for old servers or parts they can use in their setup, because they rely on systems long abandoned by their vendors.
That doesn't really work though. IE6 won't work like a real IE6 when a newer version of IE is installed. For example something like [if IE lte 6] won't be triggered anymore.
I'm truly amazed by the situation you just described. Of course that's not something one intern can fix, although putting 80K/year developers through this misery might also be a little extreme, but I get your point.
Did you guys realize you were tying yourself to IE6 when you purchased or built these systems? Have you changed the way you pick new systems because of the situation you are now in?
So the worst case scenario is the case of an exceptionally terrible webapplication which depends on weird IE6 quirks which aren't available in any other application. Isn't the solution as simple as getting some kid as an intern in the summer to fix the stuff that doesn't work? How will that cost you millions?
How exactly will it cost millions to make an IE6 webapp compatible with IE7 or 8? IE has changed little to nothing between those versions and all the crap like ActiveX is still supported, so what's the problem?
Here's a copy of the article text from my cache when the site still worked:
Review of HTC Desire as alternative to Apple iPhone
My search for an alternative to Apple’s iPhone has been long and frustrating.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve walked out of a highstreet phone shop, disappointed by devices that promised so much but turned out to be flimsy toys with sluggish software and unresponsive touchscreens.
Anyone who has similarly quested an escape from Apple’s grasp will know my pain!
The problem, you see, is that the iPhone is close to perfect. It feels solid, it looks pretty, and its screen responds to the slightest gesture.
But it is hobbled by Apple’s super-tight approval process that, for example, blocked Pulitzer Prize-winning work by satirist Mark Fiore, and kept customers waiting an astonishing 20 days for the popular Opera web browser to be allowed on to the device.
(Fiore’s work was eventually approved after much public outcry, while Opera rocketed to the top of the iPhone app chart with more than one million downloads in 48 hours.)
The latest, and most enticing alternative to the iPhone comes in the form of the Desire by Taiwanese mobile phone specialist HTC.
With HTC’s announcement on Friday that its next handset, the Incredible, will not be launched in the UK — and presumably not on the Continent either — it is likely that the Desire will remain as the iPhone’s main European rival for some considerable time.
Hyped as the world’s first superphone, the Desire is fast, beautiful, and its touchscreen is every bit as tactile and responsive as that on Apple’s handset.
At the heart of the Desire is Google’s Android operating system so it is near-infinitely customisable.
It is also out-of-stock across much of the UK after delivery flights were grounded by the volcanic ash cloud.
On paper, the Desire is the first serious challenger to the iPhone’s reign as king of phones. But how does it compare in use?
Red faces
The failings of the Desire hit you within minutes of first using it.
Its screen is bright and colourful indoors, but almost unusable in sunlight. This severely hampers all aspects of the phone, from sending texts to web browsing, to taking photos.
The touchscreen intermittently remains active during phone calls and it’s too easy to press the on-screen buttons with your ear. I’ve accidentally hung up on people dozens of times.
Sound quality during calls is noticeably worse than the iPhone. Both the earpiece and the speaker produce a feeble, tinny sound with a background hiss.
Used indoors, the Desire’s vivid screen is great for most apps, but when viewing photos or web sites you realise that the screen is severely over-saturated. People’s faces become beetroot red.
Open Android
Web browsing is a joy. Pages render quickly and accurately.
When you zoom in on a web page using the familiar un-pinch gesture, the Desire neatly re-formats text to your screen width for easy reading.
Built-in Google chat is a surprise boon, offering a free and instantaneous alternative to text messaging between friends.
The phone is advertised as a hub-in-your-pocket for social networking, yet support for Facebook and Twitter is incomplete and unreliable, at times missing entire blocks of messages.
Thanks to the open nature of the Android operating system, there is a myriad of alternative apps to replace the standard ones.
Antiquated list-style text messaging is easily upgraded to a free iPhone-style app with familiar speech bubble conversations.
There are superb free apps for Twitter, note taking, reading news feeds, and almost anything else you may want to do with a phone. Facebook apps are thin on the ground and quite poor, although a full-featured official Facebook client is persistently rumoured to
f I had to deal with Wintel all day I would hate computers too.
Same here. That's why I actively avoid situations in which I have to use Windows. Problem solved.
If you like working with Windows, then by all means use it. But if you don't, then don't put up with it, but move away to something else. It's as simple as that.
The sequel felt overly restrictive and I cannot find words to describe how much I hated a) planet scanning and b) the move to an ammunition-based weapon system.
Planet scanning is imho less stupid than the automatically generated levels of ME1. And it's more easy to get a child to do it for you.
About the ammunition, well... it's really just a switch between the guns and the health. In ME1 your health is a number and your ammo replenishes automatically. In ME2 it's the other way around. To me it seems like a trivial thing.
Really? I own both GOW1 and 2, but have only played the single player campaign in co-op mode with a friend. I like the game a lot that way and I've never tried any other mode, nor do I feel the need to.
No, I don't particularly like the action parts of Mass Effect anyway. For me it's all about the storyline, meeting characters and making though decisions.
I like ME1 a lot, but altough it's story is a bit more epic than it's sequel, the way the story is told in part 2 is a lot more engaging and immerse. The dialog is better and also brought better visually by offering more interesting camera movement.
And even though the universe to explore is smaller in part 2, it's also a lot nicer, offering a few hub worlds instead of just one large Citadel and all of the landing points are actually nicely designed levels instead of generic repetitive generated worlds.
All in all ME2 just feels more refined and realistic, while still offering a great story and interesting charactars and dialog. What's not to like?
Slashdot Mirror
It's great to see major websites like Tom's Hardware publishing articles like these. I'll forward it to a collegue of mine. He's not a computer nerd in any way, yet being fed up with how crappy Windows was running on his netbook, he managed to find out about Ubuntu and install it on his machine completely by himself. It's quite amazing to me that someone with so little tech-saviness can achieve this. I'm not saying it's going to be the year of the Linux desktop or anything, but times are definately changing.
That's actually not missing. He points out that dispite OS X has been out for almost 10 years, Adobe has only now (with the release of CS5) released a version which makes use of Cocoa.
Of course you can change this. It's Linux, you can change anything. Here's a guy explaining how.
I know H264 is big with the content providers. But you just can't ignore Firefox. It's the biggest HTML5 supporting browser out there and it doesn't do H264 at all.
I can see this sort of solution work for HTML5 as well. Letting servers transcode video files will result in all users on all platforms having access to all video content, without the need for a default codec that everyone can agree upon. It will require massive computing power, but there are already services which provide this functionality, like Bits on the Run.
Of course it would be a lot nicer if we could agree upon a codec, but I don't see it actually happening though.
I'm sorry, I didn't understand you meant after the cancellation in 2009.
Why did you emphesize "cable network" though. Isn't CBS a cable network?
According to Wikipedia, TGL was already on CBS when they started to make TV episodes in 1952, while at the same time still continuing the radio shows as well.
In 1956 the radio shows were discontinued, which concluded the shows' transfer from radio to television.
The longest running soap opera is The Guiding Light, which started in 1937 on the radio and moved to television (while keeping the same cast and storyline) in 1952. The show was cancelled in 2009 due to low ratings, which makes the total running time about 72 years.
The SCO lawsuits against Linux and other Unices started in 2002 when Darl McBride become CEO of the company. If they can keep it up for another 65 years, they can claim the title of longest running soap opera rightfully theirs.
You might also want to start saving the corporate nickels and dimes since IE6 isn't going to get any more available. It won't run in Windows7 and I doubt MS will make XP available forever. Flag day is coming and if you haven't upgraded by then and don't have those millions available, you'll just have to shut down.
You'd be surprised how long some folks are willing to hold onto something and simply refuse to adopt newer technologies. I actually know of several companies who regularly scan websites such as eBay for old servers or parts they can use in their setup, because they rely on systems long abandoned by their vendors.
That's pretty sweet then!
I've settled with 4 VM's myself, one for each version of IE. It seems like a pretty stupid setup, but it's actually what Microsoft recommends.
That doesn't really work though. IE6 won't work like a real IE6 when a newer version of IE is installed. For example something like [if IE lte 6] won't be triggered anymore.
I'm truly amazed by the situation you just described. Of course that's not something one intern can fix, although putting 80K/year developers through this misery might also be a little extreme, but I get your point.
Did you guys realize you were tying yourself to IE6 when you purchased or built these systems? Have you changed the way you pick new systems because of the situation you are now in?
So the worst case scenario is the case of an exceptionally terrible webapplication which depends on weird IE6 quirks which aren't available in any other application. Isn't the solution as simple as getting some kid as an intern in the summer to fix the stuff that doesn't work? How will that cost you millions?
No, but you can install Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera or something else next to IE6.
How exactly will it cost millions to make an IE6 webapp compatible with IE7 or 8? IE has changed little to nothing between those versions and all the crap like ActiveX is still supported, so what's the problem?
Review of HTC Desire as alternative to Apple iPhone
My search for an alternative to Apple’s iPhone has been long and frustrating.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve walked out of a highstreet phone shop, disappointed by devices that promised so much but turned out to be flimsy toys with sluggish software and unresponsive touchscreens.
Anyone who has similarly quested an escape from Apple’s grasp will know my pain!
The problem, you see, is that the iPhone is close to perfect. It feels solid, it looks pretty, and its screen responds to the slightest gesture.
But it is hobbled by Apple’s super-tight approval process that, for example, blocked Pulitzer Prize-winning work by satirist Mark Fiore, and kept customers waiting an astonishing 20 days for the popular Opera web browser to be allowed on to the device.
(Fiore’s work was eventually approved after much public outcry, while Opera rocketed to the top of the iPhone app chart with more than one million downloads in 48 hours.)
The latest, and most enticing alternative to the iPhone comes in the form of the Desire by Taiwanese mobile phone specialist HTC.
With HTC’s announcement on Friday that its next handset, the Incredible, will not be launched in the UK — and presumably not on the Continent either — it is likely that the Desire will remain as the iPhone’s main European rival for some considerable time.
Hyped as the world’s first superphone, the Desire is fast, beautiful, and its touchscreen is every bit as tactile and responsive as that on Apple’s handset.
At the heart of the Desire is Google’s Android operating system so it is near-infinitely customisable.
It is also out-of-stock across much of the UK after delivery flights were grounded by the volcanic ash cloud.
On paper, the Desire is the first serious challenger to the iPhone’s reign as king of phones. But how does it compare in use?
Red faces
The failings of the Desire hit you within minutes of first using it.
Its screen is bright and colourful indoors, but almost unusable in sunlight. This severely hampers all aspects of the phone, from sending texts to web browsing, to taking photos.
The touchscreen intermittently remains active during phone calls and it’s too easy to press the on-screen buttons with your ear. I’ve accidentally hung up on people dozens of times.
Sound quality during calls is noticeably worse than the iPhone. Both the earpiece and the speaker produce a feeble, tinny sound with a background hiss.
Used indoors, the Desire’s vivid screen is great for most apps, but when viewing photos or web sites you realise that the screen is severely over-saturated. People’s faces become beetroot red.
Open Android
Web browsing is a joy. Pages render quickly and accurately.
When you zoom in on a web page using the familiar un-pinch gesture, the Desire neatly re-formats text to your screen width for easy reading.
Built-in Google chat is a surprise boon, offering a free and instantaneous alternative to text messaging between friends.
The phone is advertised as a hub-in-your-pocket for social networking, yet support for Facebook and Twitter is incomplete and unreliable, at times missing entire blocks of messages.
Thanks to the open nature of the Android operating system, there is a myriad of alternative apps to replace the standard ones.
Antiquated list-style text messaging is easily upgraded to a free iPhone-style app with familiar speech bubble conversations.
There are superb free apps for Twitter, note taking, reading news feeds, and almost anything else you may want to do with a phone. Facebook apps are thin on the ground and quite poor, although a full-featured official Facebook client is persistently rumoured to
Because the iPhone set the standard for modern smartphones.
f I had to deal with Wintel all day I would hate computers too.
Same here. That's why I actively avoid situations in which I have to use Windows. Problem solved.
If you like working with Windows, then by all means use it. But if you don't, then don't put up with it, but move away to something else. It's as simple as that.
Apple was dying when Steve Jobs wasn't around. Once he took back control of the company, it boomed like never before.
OS/2 was way more popular in it's day than any Linux on the desktop ever was.
My bad ass 486-25 sx (with math coprocessor)
If you had an FPU, it wasn't an SX. If you had an SX, it didn't feature an FPU.
The sequel felt overly restrictive and I cannot find words to describe how much I hated a) planet scanning and b) the move to an ammunition-based weapon system.
Planet scanning is imho less stupid than the automatically generated levels of ME1. And it's more easy to get a child to do it for you.
About the ammunition, well... it's really just a switch between the guns and the health. In ME1 your health is a number and your ammo replenishes automatically. In ME2 it's the other way around. To me it seems like a trivial thing.
It's a multi-player game
Really? I own both GOW1 and 2, but have only played the single player campaign in co-op mode with a friend. I like the game a lot that way and I've never tried any other mode, nor do I feel the need to.
Despite the 18+ label, I think it's realistic to say people from 16 years upwards will play and like this game.
Someone in the range of 16 to 20 years old is a kid in my book.
No, I don't particularly like the action parts of Mass Effect anyway. For me it's all about the storyline, meeting characters and making though decisions.
I like ME1 a lot, but altough it's story is a bit more epic than it's sequel, the way the story is told in part 2 is a lot more engaging and immerse. The dialog is better and also brought better visually by offering more interesting camera movement.
And even though the universe to explore is smaller in part 2, it's also a lot nicer, offering a few hub worlds instead of just one large Citadel and all of the landing points are actually nicely designed levels instead of generic repetitive generated worlds.
All in all ME2 just feels more refined and realistic, while still offering a great story and interesting charactars and dialog. What's not to like?