Many companies have not yet certified Windows 7 for corporate deployment. So even if the laptop came with Windows 7, they'll reinstall with the corporate XP build. Keep in mind that corporations are a LOT more sensitive about certification. They won't run a version of software unless it is certified. That takes time and money to do.
Another issue is that some third party products are built to work with older versions of software and they puke when you come along with something newer. Stuff built to work only with IE6 is a prime example. You can yell and scream at the manufacturers of those products all you want, but when you're a captive audience, quite often they'll take their sweet time getting to the issue because they realize the cost it'll be for you to switch to something else.
The way I look at it is VERY simple: Is the product still under support? If yes then your flagship products should still run on it
Many companies have three stages of support for their software products. In the first, new features are added and bugs are fixed. In the second, only bugs are fixed. In the third, their support center will help determine if you hit a bug, then tell you to upgrade.
Microsoft has two problems. The first is that they do not do a good job of communicating when a software product has moved out of development mode and into maintenance mode. The second is that they like to withhold major new features from a product near the end of its development mode if a newer product is out. In short, they seem to be a poor job of communicating expectations. The result is that they get angry customers such as yourself who are frustrated that they can't get IE9 under XP (since XP is still "supported").
They get away with it because they're the only game in town in the PC world. Even if they weren't, there is a risk in publicly saying that your product has reached one of its EOL stages before the other guy. It ends up being a stupid game that we have to play.
I don't understand what point you're trying to make. Of course Linux is older than Windows XP. But in turn, the NT series is older than Linux. So what?
The software's age is irrelevant, what matters is its marketshare
Tell that to Amiga users after Commodore fell. Continued software support and development are equally as important as market share, if not more so.
Windows 7 is way too bloated for old machines. A lightweight Linux would run much better, you might even get to run some programs too.
FreeBSD 8 + Xfce 4.8 was only slightly faster than Windows 7. W7 was actually faster than KDE 4.1. This was even with 1GB of memory on the P2.
If you disable Aero, Windows 7 isn't that bad as long as you have enough memory.
You ran Win 7 on a Pentium 2? Why man good God why? Did you lose a bet or something?
Boredom. I just wanted to see if I could.
IE is just too much of a fragmented mess
Microsoft does seem to be cleaning house as to what they'll support. Had early versions of Vista been more reliable, I don't think we'd be having this discussion about XP support over a decade later. And they do seem to be aware of issues with earlier browsers regarding standards and are trying to retire them.
XP runs just fine thank you very much! Why change for the sake of change... XP runs fine and perfectly well on computers and it makes no sense to upgrade such a great system for eye candy.
Except that it does not. Try using Windows XP on a recent Thinkpad or Inspiron laptop. Constant issues with power saving, USB devices and wireless connectivity, just to name a few. Hardware developers simply are not putting their XP drivers through the same level of QA as their W7 drivers, and it shows.
And if you want to use more than 4GB of memory, you're put in something of an awkward position with XP. The x86-64 edition was based on Server 2003 and not XP Professional. It is the red-headed stepchild of the Windows world. I used it for a couple of years with my desktop and it had its share of... quirks.
Then you have the problem with security updates for XP coming to an end. That isn't eye candy, that's core stability.
There is no reason why IE 9 can't work on XP nor why IE 8 can't do everything other browsers can do.
Lazy just plain lazy. IE 8 is something still so cutting edge and new that companies are spending 10s of millions upgrading from IE 6 as I write this! You are telling them they can't even support the browser they spend 10 million porting their apps to?!! WTF
Google is out of touch
I don't think you understand. Microsoft is a for-profit corporation. They want you to move off of XP and onto W7 or W8. Porting DX11 and IE10 back to XP removes incentives for you to upgrade. That isn't lazy, that's just smart business sense.
Our company still supports older browsers such as IE5 - IE7, but we strip a huge amount of functionality away. No CSS, no images and as little scripting on the client-side as possible. It is basically provided as-is. And people use it.
The next big thing for us is to switch from bitmap (PNG, JPG) to vector (SVG) graphics for static images. That means that IE8 and Android Browser 2.x are on the chopping block unless we want to use <object> tags to embed bitmaps as a fallback.
We're aware that means the end of support for IE on XP. But the OS is over a decade old. Windows 7 is fairly reliable and can run on some fairly geriatric hardware (I've gotten to a W7 desktop with both P2/450 and K6-2/500 systems). The corporate sector is slowly being pushed to W7 kicking and screaming because XP driver support for new laptops is starting to wither. For home users, you have to wonder if they're just being cheap. If they can't fork out for an OS upgrade once a decade, how else will they be like on the consumer side?
But then you have the Android issue. I'm using Cyanogenmod 7.1 on my own handset, but that's still Gingerbread 2.3.7. And I consider myself lucky to be even that far. There are some fairly recent handsets that are still using Gingerbread. So do we want to relegate them to the legacy site or keep Gingerbread support? Most of those devices are too small to take advantage of SVG anyways. The tablets could, and most of them run 3.x or 4.x which includes full SVG support in the Android Browser.
Eventually it'll come down to numbers. Is SVG worth it? How much do we save by no longer certifying those legacy browsers? What other gains do we get from retiring support for legacy browsers? How many people are willing to use the legacy site? We just don't know yet.
The problem is that you have to support all of that equipment you just threw together all piecemeal-like. Do you have spare parts available? If no, how much does it cost to have them shipped overnight? Are they still available via retail channels or do you have to dredge through eBay? How much does it cost to purchase and store spare inventory? Do you have the equipment to test for failed components without the possibility of frying other equipment?
Those "Big Three" server companies charge more because of service and support so you don't have to worry as much about those things. RMA and forget. And yeah, I'm saying that with a straight face.
There are times where a company is small enough to where your tech has enough idle time to deal with a white box server. Other times, your techs are better utilized doing other work.
So then, the new method to kill your foes in HL3 will be:
Select the wand highlight tool Click on your opponent Select the Gaussian Obliterate tool, with pixel radius set to 50px If foe is not obliterated enough, select the Obliterate More tool
According to this report, global warming will make western Washington even gloomier than it already is. So while the rest of the nation bakes, people in Seattle will be perfectly comfortable while they're being glum.
If you do not want your content to be accessed from other sites, there is a very simple way to fix it: simply configure your webserver to lock down the content using a whitelist of referrer domains. If a client attempts to fetch the resource from an unauthorized web page, they'll receive an HTTP 4xx error instead.
Anyone who has visited a discussion forum that allows inline linking of images has probably seen an image or two that says "hot-linking not allowed" or "stop stealing my bandwidth" instead of the image the poster intended. That's another method where you substitute garbage instead of the real content from unauthorized referrers.
Perhaps these media companies should learn a little more about how the Web works before they post their works up on it.
Supposedly sales of the updated Commodore 64C and 1541-II were strong through 1988. It did well in budget and emerging markets where the Amiga 500 would have been prohibitively expensive.
Commodore might have even gotten another few years out of their 8-bit series had they released a competent successor to the C64. The Plus/4 and C128 always struggled to find a niche.
Correct. The Commodore 64 quickly became the lead selling home computer after its release. Tramel was engaged in a price war with his adversary Texas Instruments, so the price of the Commodore 64 was reduced several times. Eventually, Commodore 64 was selling for less than the price it took to manufacture competing home computers. Commodore was able to do this due its vertical integration of component suppliers.
The Commodore 64 wasn't the best home computer at the time, but it quickly became the best bang for your buck. It wasn't until the late 1980s with the fragmentation of the M68k market that PC clone makers were able to lead in sales.
Agreed. My Commodore equipment was a hugely important stepping stone to my current career. I mastered 65xx assembly on my C64, learned Z80 assembly on my C128 and learned 68k assembly, C programming and how to use a BSD TCP/IP stack on my Amiga. Installing NetBSD on my A3000 gave me an interest in BSD that forged a path to my current job in the embedded BSD field.
Had I gotten a KayPro or IBM PC instead of a C64, I'd probably still be in the tech field. But most likely, it'd be a different part. I most likely would have ended up living in a different part of the country, would have married a different woman, would have different friends, etc... Butterfly effect to the maximum.
I just can't imagine the same scenario if I had bought an HP calculator rather than a TI-81 in middle school. My life would have turned out roughly the same either way. Same goes for a lot of stuff from my youth. But my home computers were a huge influence. I imagine the same is for many people, which is why they have such a soft spot for them, defects and all.
I had one for my C64. It still brings up a bit of a sore spot about Commodore.
Commodore was using the IEEE-488 parallel interface in the PET series to connect floppy drives. But Tramel complained that the cables were too expensive and difficult to obtain. So for the VIC-20, he had engineers come up with a home-grown serial version of the IEEE-488 bus that needed fewer pins. That allowed Commodore to switch to a cheaper cable.
Commodore used their new 6522 VIA chip to interface between the serial interface and the host (one in the VIC-20, one in the 1540 drive). Problem was, there was a design defect in the 6522 that caused the chip to drop bits under some scenarios. Rather than fix the chip and delay the release of the VIC-20 and 1540, Tramel had engineers write a patch in ROM that worked around the issue. The patch had each side fetch one bit at a time and shift it in software, which was really slow and CPU intensive. They never did fix the issue while the VIC-20 was in production, FYI...
When the Commodore 64 came around, they used the new 6525 CIA chip that was bug free. But Tramel had a warehouse filled with 1540 parts. Rather than design a new floppy controller board with the 6525 CIA, they wanted to use all of their old 1540 stock. But the ROM patch in the 1540 didn't work with the C64 due to some timing issues. So they rewrote a new ROM patch that was even slower than their old one.
The whole incident was a prime example of the arrogance and screw the customer attitude that Commodore had. We could have had something like the 1570 from the start had Commodore just fixed their error. Instead, we had to go out and buy $30 FastLoad carts.
Intelligent people have critical analysis skills and therefore tend not to be swayed by televised advertising. So advertisers are left targeting a everyone else. But you need content to bring in that target audience. Shows hosted by Carl Sagan aren't going to do it.
As long as we have advertisement funded television programming, television will remain a medium for the lowest common denominator of programming. So that means shows involving a huge Quiverfull family of midgets operating a fishing boat out of Alaska and the fun antics of their scandalous daughter who has the audacity to show a little ankle.
It will be very hard to transition to a television system where all channels are either public-private funded (such as PBS), are subscription based (such as HBO) or are single program PPV. Old people love their free TV and will vote out anyone who dares take it away from them.
At this point, all four major carriers now support LTE. So the next question is: will we start to see handsets that cover the entire LTE frequency smorgasbord that is used within North America?
Current LTE: Band 04 : 1710-1755 UL / 2110-2155 DL - AT&T, T-Mobile, MetroPCS Band 12 : 0699-0716 UL / 0729-0746 DL - Verizon, US Cellular Band 13 : 0777-0787 UL / 0746-0756 DL - Verizon Band 17 : 0704-0716 UL / 0734-0746 DL - AT&T Band 25 : 1850-1915 UL / 1930-1995 DL - Sprint Band 26 : 0814-0849 UL / 0859-0894 DL - Sprint
Future LTE: Band 02 : 1850-1910 UL / 1930-1990 DL - currently being used for HSPA+ by AT&T and T-Mobile Band 41: 2496-2690 TDD - currently being used for WiMax by Clearwire for Sprint
It seems to me that routing based on header is doing entirely the wrong thing.
But that is something you need to support as long as multiple domains are hosted on the same IP address.
In the load-balancing world, this is known as "Layer 7 routing" and it is quite a handy feature. It also goes well beyond just HTTP HOST headers. The User-Agent header is probably the most useful as you can route clients based on browser type or version, operating system and language. I use this one a lot for forwarding clients to a web_css_pool and web_nocss_pool (looking at you, IE6).
I don't care, I dropped cable years & years ago when I realized the quality was steadily decreasing while the prices did the opposite. Anything I really want to see I can get on DVD or watch for free online.
I did the same. There was a steady decrease in program quality in addition to some manipulation of where programs aired.
As for a couple of examples... programs that used to be on Discovery (basic package) ended up on Discovery Science (extended + specialty package). A World Cup match that may have been on ESPN (basic) ended up on ESPN4 (extended + sports package). Everything on the core basic channels ended up devolving to tripe.
Another issue is with the length and frequency of commercials. Both kept going up and up. You'd completely lose the flow of the show after 4 minutes of commercials. Rinse and repeat 7 minutes later when they show another bloc. And you'd get those stupid promos for other shows that took the entire bottom quarter of the screen during the show. It was noticeably worse than with the major broadcast networks (with the exception of ION).
Lastly, check the channel guide before 9AM on a weekday or noon on a weekend. More than anything else, you'll see the words "paid programming". It was getting ridiculous to see the same commercial being aired simultaneously on three or four channels.
The straw that broke the camel's back was when DirecTV migrated from H.262 to H.264. You used to be able to purchase your receiver and it was yours free and clear. But several months after releasing the new H.264 receivers, they changed their policy so that was no longer the case. If you paid $200 for a receiver and decided to cancel service after a year or three, you had to turn your receiver back in. You were not offered a credit.
Today, I get my programming from over-the-air digital TV, Hulu, Netflix and several plug-ins for XBMC. I'd never go back to cable or mini-sat television.
I am actually surprised that Google does not have a dedicated development team working in co-operation with an independent mod group such as Cyanogenmod.
It is fairly clear that one of the greatest problems with Android is with version fragmentation. Mobile carriers have been very sluggish or outright hostile regarding major firmware upgrades on their handsets. It would be preferable for Google to ensure that carriers are contractually obligated to support OS upgrades for at least four or five years. But until that happens, throwing resources at the issue through a back door would be a nice thing.
Nobody forces you to buy a device from a manufacturer that won't update it.
The problem often is not with the manufacturer, but the carrier. The carrier wants you to purchase a new subsidized phone (and the two year contract renewal that comes with it).
All of the major mobile carriers in my country have terrible Android upgrade policies, so it isn't as if I can take my business to a better carrier. My only solution is to jailbreak my handset and use an aftermarket product such as Cyanogenmod. That isn't an option for everybody.
Apple has done a much better job of forcing carriers to provide more timely updates for the iPhone. But Apple has its own set of issues regarding iOS upgrades on older handsets, specifically regarding sluggish performance and soft disabling new features. As such, the upgrade fervor on the Apple side is much more tepid.
Same here. Using it infrequently is not the same as never using it as all.
I have 14 icons in my Quick Launch folder that cover the bulk of my daily PC application use. Everything else is in the Start Menu. That includes stuff like MS Office, Photoshop and a slew of utilities and games. And I have a ton of games installed, going back to Win9x days (one of the benefits of having a 2TB hard drive).
The new tile system reminds me of the old Finder folder used by Mac Classic, but without the benefit of subfolders. Not being able to sort applications by type is going to drive the OCD side of me batty.
Time for somebody to port the KDE desktop manager to Windows, if it hasn't already been done.
It's a thinly veiled substitute for the Chinese Exclusion Act.
India and China have no natural right to dominate the US immigration system simple because each country alone has a greater population than the entire US.
To have a true melting pot, you need a diverse population. When you have a huge immigrant influx from a single region of the world, your melting pot will start to form lumps. That gives rise to a number of socioeconomic issues.
Slashdot Mirror
Many companies have not yet certified Windows 7 for corporate deployment. So even if the laptop came with Windows 7, they'll reinstall with the corporate XP build. Keep in mind that corporations are a LOT more sensitive about certification. They won't run a version of software unless it is certified. That takes time and money to do.
Another issue is that some third party products are built to work with older versions of software and they puke when you come along with something newer. Stuff built to work only with IE6 is a prime example. You can yell and scream at the manufacturers of those products all you want, but when you're a captive audience, quite often they'll take their sweet time getting to the issue because they realize the cost it'll be for you to switch to something else.
The way I look at it is VERY simple: Is the product still under support? If yes then your flagship products should still run on it
Many companies have three stages of support for their software products. In the first, new features are added and bugs are fixed. In the second, only bugs are fixed. In the third, their support center will help determine if you hit a bug, then tell you to upgrade.
Microsoft has two problems. The first is that they do not do a good job of communicating when a software product has moved out of development mode and into maintenance mode. The second is that they like to withhold major new features from a product near the end of its development mode if a newer product is out. In short, they seem to be a poor job of communicating expectations. The result is that they get angry customers such as yourself who are frustrated that they can't get IE9 under XP (since XP is still "supported").
They get away with it because they're the only game in town in the PC world. Even if they weren't, there is a risk in publicly saying that your product has reached one of its EOL stages before the other guy. It ends up being a stupid game that we have to play.
And Linux is even older.
I don't understand what point you're trying to make. Of course Linux is older than Windows XP. But in turn, the NT series is older than Linux. So what?
The software's age is irrelevant, what matters is its marketshare
Tell that to Amiga users after Commodore fell. Continued software support and development are equally as important as market share, if not more so.
Windows 7 is way too bloated for old machines. A lightweight Linux would run much better, you might even get to run some programs too.
FreeBSD 8 + Xfce 4.8 was only slightly faster than Windows 7. W7 was actually faster than KDE 4.1. This was even with 1GB of memory on the P2.
If you disable Aero, Windows 7 isn't that bad as long as you have enough memory.
You ran Win 7 on a Pentium 2? Why man good God why? Did you lose a bet or something?
Boredom. I just wanted to see if I could.
IE is just too much of a fragmented mess
Microsoft does seem to be cleaning house as to what they'll support. Had early versions of Vista been more reliable, I don't think we'd be having this discussion about XP support over a decade later. And they do seem to be aware of issues with earlier browsers regarding standards and are trying to retire them.
XP runs just fine thank you very much! Why change for the sake of change ... XP runs fine and perfectly well on computers and it makes no sense to upgrade such a great system for eye candy.
Except that it does not. Try using Windows XP on a recent Thinkpad or Inspiron laptop. Constant issues with power saving, USB devices and wireless connectivity, just to name a few. Hardware developers simply are not putting their XP drivers through the same level of QA as their W7 drivers, and it shows.
And if you want to use more than 4GB of memory, you're put in something of an awkward position with XP. The x86-64 edition was based on Server 2003 and not XP Professional. It is the red-headed stepchild of the Windows world. I used it for a couple of years with my desktop and it had its share of... quirks.
Then you have the problem with security updates for XP coming to an end. That isn't eye candy, that's core stability.
There is no reason why IE 9 can't work on XP nor why IE 8 can't do everything other browsers can do.
Lazy just plain lazy. IE 8 is something still so cutting edge and new that companies are spending 10s of millions upgrading from IE 6 as I write this! You are telling them they can't even support the browser they spend 10 million porting their apps to?!! WTF
Google is out of touch
I don't think you understand. Microsoft is a for-profit corporation. They want you to move off of XP and onto W7 or W8. Porting DX11 and IE10 back to XP removes incentives for you to upgrade. That isn't lazy, that's just smart business sense.
Our company still supports older browsers such as IE5 - IE7, but we strip a huge amount of functionality away. No CSS, no images and as little scripting on the client-side as possible. It is basically provided as-is. And people use it.
The next big thing for us is to switch from bitmap (PNG, JPG) to vector (SVG) graphics for static images. That means that IE8 and Android Browser 2.x are on the chopping block unless we want to use <object> tags to embed bitmaps as a fallback.
We're aware that means the end of support for IE on XP. But the OS is over a decade old. Windows 7 is fairly reliable and can run on some fairly geriatric hardware (I've gotten to a W7 desktop with both P2/450 and K6-2/500 systems). The corporate sector is slowly being pushed to W7 kicking and screaming because XP driver support for new laptops is starting to wither. For home users, you have to wonder if they're just being cheap. If they can't fork out for an OS upgrade once a decade, how else will they be like on the consumer side?
But then you have the Android issue. I'm using Cyanogenmod 7.1 on my own handset, but that's still Gingerbread 2.3.7. And I consider myself lucky to be even that far. There are some fairly recent handsets that are still using Gingerbread. So do we want to relegate them to the legacy site or keep Gingerbread support? Most of those devices are too small to take advantage of SVG anyways. The tablets could, and most of them run 3.x or 4.x which includes full SVG support in the Android Browser.
Eventually it'll come down to numbers. Is SVG worth it? How much do we save by no longer certifying those legacy browsers? What other gains do we get from retiring support for legacy browsers? How many people are willing to use the legacy site? We just don't know yet.
The problem is that you have to support all of that equipment you just threw together all piecemeal-like. Do you have spare parts available? If no, how much does it cost to have them shipped overnight? Are they still available via retail channels or do you have to dredge through eBay? How much does it cost to purchase and store spare inventory? Do you have the equipment to test for failed components without the possibility of frying other equipment?
Those "Big Three" server companies charge more because of service and support so you don't have to worry as much about those things. RMA and forget. And yeah, I'm saying that with a straight face.
There are times where a company is small enough to where your tech has enough idle time to deal with a white box server. Other times, your techs are better utilized doing other work.
So then, the new method to kill your foes in HL3 will be:
Select the wand highlight tool
Click on your opponent
Select the Gaussian Obliterate tool, with pixel radius set to 50px
If foe is not obliterated enough, select the Obliterate More tool
According to this report, global warming will make western Washington even gloomier than it already is. So while the rest of the nation bakes, people in Seattle will be perfectly comfortable while they're being glum.
If you do not want your content to be accessed from other sites, there is a very simple way to fix it: simply configure your webserver to lock down the content using a whitelist of referrer domains. If a client attempts to fetch the resource from an unauthorized web page, they'll receive an HTTP 4xx error instead.
Anyone who has visited a discussion forum that allows inline linking of images has probably seen an image or two that says "hot-linking not allowed" or "stop stealing my bandwidth" instead of the image the poster intended. That's another method where you substitute garbage instead of the real content from unauthorized referrers.
Perhaps these media companies should learn a little more about how the Web works before they post their works up on it.
Won't happen. HBO is part of Time-Warner. You know, the folks who own Time-Warner Cable. Better chance of Showtime doing it since it is owned by CBS.
Supposedly sales of the updated Commodore 64C and 1541-II were strong through 1988. It did well in budget and emerging markets where the Amiga 500 would have been prohibitively expensive.
Commodore might have even gotten another few years out of their 8-bit series had they released a competent successor to the C64. The Plus/4 and C128 always struggled to find a niche.
Correct. The Commodore 64 quickly became the lead selling home computer after its release. Tramel was engaged in a price war with his adversary Texas Instruments, so the price of the Commodore 64 was reduced several times. Eventually, Commodore 64 was selling for less than the price it took to manufacture competing home computers. Commodore was able to do this due its vertical integration of component suppliers.
The Commodore 64 wasn't the best home computer at the time, but it quickly became the best bang for your buck. It wasn't until the late 1980s with the fragmentation of the M68k market that PC clone makers were able to lead in sales.
Agreed. My Commodore equipment was a hugely important stepping stone to my current career. I mastered 65xx assembly on my C64, learned Z80 assembly on my C128 and learned 68k assembly, C programming and how to use a BSD TCP/IP stack on my Amiga. Installing NetBSD on my A3000 gave me an interest in BSD that forged a path to my current job in the embedded BSD field.
Had I gotten a KayPro or IBM PC instead of a C64, I'd probably still be in the tech field. But most likely, it'd be a different part. I most likely would have ended up living in a different part of the country, would have married a different woman, would have different friends, etc... Butterfly effect to the maximum.
I just can't imagine the same scenario if I had bought an HP calculator rather than a TI-81 in middle school. My life would have turned out roughly the same either way. Same goes for a lot of stuff from my youth. But my home computers were a huge influence. I imagine the same is for many people, which is why they have such a soft spot for them, defects and all.
I had one for my C64. It still brings up a bit of a sore spot about Commodore.
Commodore was using the IEEE-488 parallel interface in the PET series to connect floppy drives. But Tramel complained that the cables were too expensive and difficult to obtain. So for the VIC-20, he had engineers come up with a home-grown serial version of the IEEE-488 bus that needed fewer pins. That allowed Commodore to switch to a cheaper cable.
Commodore used their new 6522 VIA chip to interface between the serial interface and the host (one in the VIC-20, one in the 1540 drive). Problem was, there was a design defect in the 6522 that caused the chip to drop bits under some scenarios. Rather than fix the chip and delay the release of the VIC-20 and 1540, Tramel had engineers write a patch in ROM that worked around the issue. The patch had each side fetch one bit at a time and shift it in software, which was really slow and CPU intensive. They never did fix the issue while the VIC-20 was in production, FYI...
When the Commodore 64 came around, they used the new 6525 CIA chip that was bug free. But Tramel had a warehouse filled with 1540 parts. Rather than design a new floppy controller board with the 6525 CIA, they wanted to use all of their old 1540 stock. But the ROM patch in the 1540 didn't work with the C64 due to some timing issues. So they rewrote a new ROM patch that was even slower than their old one.
The whole incident was a prime example of the arrogance and screw the customer attitude that Commodore had. We could have had something like the 1570 from the start had Commodore just fixed their error. Instead, we had to go out and buy $30 FastLoad carts.
It is called the dumbing-down effect.
Intelligent people have critical analysis skills and therefore tend not to be swayed by televised advertising. So advertisers are left targeting a everyone else. But you need content to bring in that target audience. Shows hosted by Carl Sagan aren't going to do it.
As long as we have advertisement funded television programming, television will remain a medium for the lowest common denominator of programming. So that means shows involving a huge Quiverfull family of midgets operating a fishing boat out of Alaska and the fun antics of their scandalous daughter who has the audacity to show a little ankle.
It will be very hard to transition to a television system where all channels are either public-private funded (such as PBS), are subscription based (such as HBO) or are single program PPV. Old people love their free TV and will vote out anyone who dares take it away from them.
At this point, all four major carriers now support LTE. So the next question is: will we start to see handsets that cover the entire LTE frequency smorgasbord that is used within North America?
Current LTE:
Band 04 : 1710-1755 UL / 2110-2155 DL - AT&T, T-Mobile, MetroPCS
Band 12 : 0699-0716 UL / 0729-0746 DL - Verizon, US Cellular
Band 13 : 0777-0787 UL / 0746-0756 DL - Verizon
Band 17 : 0704-0716 UL / 0734-0746 DL - AT&T
Band 25 : 1850-1915 UL / 1930-1995 DL - Sprint
Band 26 : 0814-0849 UL / 0859-0894 DL - Sprint
Future LTE:
Band 02 : 1850-1910 UL / 1930-1990 DL - currently being used for HSPA+ by AT&T and T-Mobile
Band 41: 2496-2690 TDD - currently being used for WiMax by Clearwire for Sprint
You can just do this on a Layer 7 switch like a load-balancer.
rule old_browser_rule {
when HTTP_REQUEST {
switch -glob [string tolower [HTTP::header User-Agent]] {
"*msie 5*" -
"*msie 6*" -
"*msie 7*" -
"*msie 8*" {
pool jquery1_pool
} else {
pool jquery2_pool
}
}
}
}
virtual www_80 {
destination 1.1.1.1:80
rules old_browser_rule
profiles http tcp
}
But that is something you need to support as long as multiple domains are hosted on the same IP address.
In the load-balancing world, this is known as "Layer 7 routing" and it is quite a handy feature. It also goes well beyond just HTTP HOST headers. The User-Agent header is probably the most useful as you can route clients based on browser type or version, operating system and language. I use this one a lot for forwarding clients to a web_css_pool and web_nocss_pool (looking at you, IE6).
I don't care, I dropped cable years & years ago when I realized the quality was steadily decreasing while the prices did the opposite. Anything I really want to see I can get on DVD or watch for free online.
I did the same. There was a steady decrease in program quality in addition to some manipulation of where programs aired.
As for a couple of examples... programs that used to be on Discovery (basic package) ended up on Discovery Science (extended + specialty package). A World Cup match that may have been on ESPN (basic) ended up on ESPN4 (extended + sports package). Everything on the core basic channels ended up devolving to tripe.
Another issue is with the length and frequency of commercials. Both kept going up and up. You'd completely lose the flow of the show after 4 minutes of commercials. Rinse and repeat 7 minutes later when they show another bloc. And you'd get those stupid promos for other shows that took the entire bottom quarter of the screen during the show. It was noticeably worse than with the major broadcast networks (with the exception of ION).
Lastly, check the channel guide before 9AM on a weekday or noon on a weekend. More than anything else, you'll see the words "paid programming". It was getting ridiculous to see the same commercial being aired simultaneously on three or four channels.
The straw that broke the camel's back was when DirecTV migrated from H.262 to H.264. You used to be able to purchase your receiver and it was yours free and clear. But several months after releasing the new H.264 receivers, they changed their policy so that was no longer the case. If you paid $200 for a receiver and decided to cancel service after a year or three, you had to turn your receiver back in. You were not offered a credit.
Today, I get my programming from over-the-air digital TV, Hulu, Netflix and several plug-ins for XBMC. I'd never go back to cable or mini-sat television.
I am actually surprised that Google does not have a dedicated development team working in co-operation with an independent mod group such as Cyanogenmod.
It is fairly clear that one of the greatest problems with Android is with version fragmentation. Mobile carriers have been very sluggish or outright hostile regarding major firmware upgrades on their handsets. It would be preferable for Google to ensure that carriers are contractually obligated to support OS upgrades for at least four or five years. But until that happens, throwing resources at the issue through a back door would be a nice thing.
Nobody forces you to buy a device from a manufacturer that won't update it.
The problem often is not with the manufacturer, but the carrier. The carrier wants you to purchase a new subsidized phone (and the two year contract renewal that comes with it).
All of the major mobile carriers in my country have terrible Android upgrade policies, so it isn't as if I can take my business to a better carrier. My only solution is to jailbreak my handset and use an aftermarket product such as Cyanogenmod. That isn't an option for everybody.
Apple has done a much better job of forcing carriers to provide more timely updates for the iPhone. But Apple has its own set of issues regarding iOS upgrades on older handsets, specifically regarding sluggish performance and soft disabling new features. As such, the upgrade fervor on the Apple side is much more tepid.
Same here. Using it infrequently is not the same as never using it as all.
I have 14 icons in my Quick Launch folder that cover the bulk of my daily PC application use. Everything else is in the Start Menu. That includes stuff like MS Office, Photoshop and a slew of utilities and games. And I have a ton of games installed, going back to Win9x days (one of the benefits of having a 2TB hard drive).
The new tile system reminds me of the old Finder folder used by Mac Classic, but without the benefit of subfolders. Not being able to sort applications by type is going to drive the OCD side of me batty.
Time for somebody to port the KDE desktop manager to Windows, if it hasn't already been done.
I am completely aware of history. Many of those chunks from a century past are still stubbornly melting down.
It's a thinly veiled substitute for the Chinese Exclusion Act.
India and China have no natural right to dominate the US immigration system simple because each country alone has a greater population than the entire US.
To have a true melting pot, you need a diverse population. When you have a huge immigrant influx from a single region of the world, your melting pot will start to form lumps. That gives rise to a number of socioeconomic issues.