> We'd also like to see inbuilt antivirus software in all operating systems
>>Yeah, then we'd like to sue for anti-competetive practice, >>and make them strip it out again.
Nah, all Microsoft has to do to remain legally competitive is lock down it's operating systems. Then it would be harder for virii to get in, period, and would accomplish the same function as offering an inbuilt antivirus application.
The features that are available here include tabs that allow consumers to target searches to the Web, news, images, music, desktop or Microsoft Encarta.
The fact of the matter is that Google already offers these web-based tools, and without much of the marketing and graphical detritus that is pushed by the MSN website.
1) The Web:http://www.google.com. If you don't know about it, you probably should. It's easy as pie to use, accurate as hell in most cases. And if it doesn't show you what you want right away, chances are a bit of grunt work will turn up something useful in short order. Ads are shifted to the right-side of the screen, so as not to impede your ability to pore through the search results. And you can customize the number of results per page, which means less clicking. Meanwhile, MSN spams me with ads at the top and bottom of each search page, in addition to the right side of the page. There are 8 results per page, which means more effort in trying to find information in all the spam.
2) News:http://news.google.com has been my homepage for quite sometime now. It's about a billion times better, easier to use and more current than my previous news home page, http://www.msnbc.com.
3) Images:http://images.google.com wins, hands-down. MSN's Images search looks cleaner, and allows you to filter by color or B/W right from the main search page, but that's about the only advantages it can claim. MSN required 5 clicks before I could get to the 20th page of results; Google gets me there in 2. MSN yields ~81k results; Google yields ~550k.
4) Music: MSN beats Google here, simply because Google doesn't offer any kind of music-searching utility. However, MSN's site isn't much more than an iTunes wannabe. There's no easy way to do a quick search by artist or album from the front page, and most of the links that pop up offer the ability to purchase downloadable songs, not information on the album or artist. Meanwhile, a quick Google for "Son Kite" turns up the home page of the psytrance artist I'm looking for, at the very top of the page. The 2nd link is to a store that sells Son Kite albums. MSN = pwn3d, again.
5) Desktop: You've got to wonder why Microsoft would deign to develop a web-based ActiveX search tool, when the vast majority of PC users out there are running Windows and have this functionality built into the OS. Never mind that I've disabled ActiveX in Internet Explorer 6, and have begun shunning it for the same reasons I'm training myself to use Firefox 1.0 for standard browsing.
6) Encarta: Another tool that Google doesn't offer (yet). I'm gonna remain neutral on this one, since I don't know much about it.
Advantages of owning single-purpose devices
on
BBC Bill Gates Interview
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Many moons ago, I thought I would give a combo TV/VCR unit a try. I thought it would be cool to have all the features of my VCR built directly into my TV. And for a year or two, it was great.......
Then, the VCR stopped working.
Whereas before I could have simple unplugged the VCR and carted it to a store for servicing, I had to lug the entire damn TV around. In addition, when I did get around to bringing it to a store, the price they quoted me for repairing it was more than the cost of some new, uncoupled VCRs!
While the Windows Media Center isn't necessarily heavy, the idea is still the same -- having all of these different functions integrated into a single unit present the possibility of a single point of failure. Never mind that the Windows OS is nowhere near as stable as what I would traditionally expect from electronics manufacturers. And when you consider the frequency with which Windows OS's require patching...... it just doesn't make sense.
I went ahead and did a bit of reconfiguring on both ends:
[$981.00] Apple Mac Mini
1.42GHz PowerPC G4
512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
80GB Ultra ATA drive
4x SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Wired Keyboard & Mouse Set - U.S. English
56K v.92 Modem
Mac OS X - U.S. English
3yr warranty
[$996.00] Dell Dimension 4700
2.80GHz Intel P4 520 (HT, 800FSB)
512MB DDR400 SDRAM - 2 DIMMs
80GB Serial ATA drive
16x DVD-ROM / 16x DVD+/-RW dbl-layer
Keyboard, two-button mouse
Intel PRO 10/100 Ethernet
Windows XP Professional
3yr basic warranty
Not much price difference between the two, although with Dell you have the option of buying a 15" E153FP flat panel for $100, or a 17" 1704FP for $219.
That being said, I think it's a matter of what you're looking for. Windows boxen have a bigger pool of software (apps, games) and a wider range of hardware upgrades at more competitive prices; they also offer applications with a consistent UI (Microsoft apps). Of course, their Achilles heel is security........
With Apple, you're a bit more limited in terms of software and hardware upgrades. However, the software is far more secure than Windows, and the interfaces tend to be more consistent across the board.
Um, this was a bonafide question, not a conspiracy theory. A lot of what I've read in the news is that fiber is fast, and that cable companies impose these restrictions on how often, to what degree, you can take advantage of their bandwidth BECAUSE.... you guessed it!.... they can't afford to offer all that bandwidth all the time. Thanks for not providing anything resembling an informative answer, though, jackass.
I don't understand how Creative can be so critical, given the success Apple's had in dominating the hard-drive portable audio player market. Or has Creative forgotten that iPod now commands a 65% share of that market right now? The main reason they released the iPod Shuttle was to grow their share of the overall (hard drive + flash) portable music player market, of which they only have 33% right now. To summarize: they wanted to gain in the lower end of the market, so they had to come up with a winning lower-end product. Eliminate the display to cut costs? Seems like a pretty obvious choice to me.
Even beyond that, Creative has exactly zero reasons to be critical of Apple's design and marketing, since that's what they excel at. For starters, check out a recent NY Times article on what the iPod Mini offers, versus other iPod-killer wannabees. Here's what the article says on how Creative's Zen Micro player, Creative's mid-range product, compares to Apple's iPod Mini:
Pros (Mid-Range)
* Voice recording capability.
* FM radio / recorder.
* Removable lithium-ion battery.
* More space (5GB vs 4GB for Mini)
* More colors (10 vs 5 for Mini)
Cons (Mid-Range)
* Crappy touch-sensitive vertical strip.
* Crappy non-audio file mgmt capabilities.
* Crappy recorded sound quality.
* A bit heavier (3.8oz vs 3.6oz for Mini)
The price is the same ($250), but even if the Zen Micro offers more in the way of features, the quality of those features is lacking. At the bottom end of the market, which is more price-sensitive in nature, you have Creative's Nomad MuVo line of products, the most inexpensive of which are:
So now along comes Apple's iPod Shuttle, which lacks some of the more salient features of the MuVo, but offers more space for less money per MB.
Pros (Low-End)
* Better price-per-MB ratio.
* Smaller form factor
* Lighter in weight
* Supports AAC, Audible v2-4
* Add'l hardware available (e.g. FM radio)
* Compatible with iTunes
* 12-mo limited warranty (vs 3-12 for MuVo's)
* Extended warranty available ($60)
Cons (Low-End)
* No display
* No way to lock controls
* Does not support WMA
* Not compatible with other online music stores
The only place I can see Creative possibly beating out Apple is at the top-end of the market, with their Zen Touch (20/40GB) and Zen Xtra (30/40/60GB) players. Despite being a bit larger and heavier than Apple's iPod, they offer a superior price-per-GB ratio. Then again, if Creative's problems with their mid-range products appear in their high-end products, that may not stop consumers from seriously considering the iPod, even though it's far more expensive per GB.
Personally, I'd rather buy a player that's well engineered (hardware + software), and built by a company that stands behind its products -- that company being Apple. Apple offers a fairly straightforward set of base models, with a growing lineup of 3rd-party accessories that serve to expand the appeal to their products. Creative, in many of these respects, doesn't meet these high standards.
Oh, and before you call me an Apple weenie: I don't like Macs, I don't own an iPod, and I own an old-ass Creative Nomad II mp3 player (whose flaws have been evident from the very start). In all likeliness, I'll probably snag either an iPod Mini or Shuttle at some point in the near future; I haven't decided whether giving up the LCD display and capacity is worth the cost savings.
"(xiv) run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;"
Yes, and the excerpt you quoted is taken from the Prohibited Uses and Activities section of that document.
Granted, fiber wouldn't eliminate the need for the hardware at the head end, but wouldn't fiber eliminate the cable companies' bandwidth limitations? Personally, I say eminent domain should be extended to cover all of the dark fiber that's lying unused around the country right now. I bet you'd see them rush to light it all up after that........
At this point, bandwidth speed doesn't matter as much to me, in comparison with "reasonable bandwidth" limitations. My Time Warner Cable of NYC offers me plenty of speed, but if I queue up even a few torrents for simultaneous downloading, I'm guaranteed to have my connection dropped within 30-60 minutes.
If the cable companies are really trying to compete with DSL, they need to allow customers to take full advantage of the bandwidth they purport to offer 24x7. Otherwise, cable modems will remain at a disadvantage for people who need more bandwidth.
All of our mission critical data is in Oracle and the not-to-important-data is in SQL Server or a few MySQL databases. We were actually leaning toward Oracle's product (because we use it as our critical DB), however they didn't have a few _very_ important functionalities that we need for our HR processes, so that left PeopleSoft and SAP.
What important features did you find Oracle to be lacking, that SQL Server/mySQL had? My employer is significantly smaller (300 employees worldwide), but we gross $50+ million a year and we're just starting the ERP evaluation process, upgrading from an 80s package using a version of Oracle so old, it's not even relational. As such, any info I learn about ERP and can pass along to my boss is muy helpful.
And what is the cause for this newly-found belief? Battlestar Galactica. They took a well-thought-of series I barely remembered from my childhood, changed various elements of the story and cast, and made it into something interesting and current. The first two pilot episodes -- the mini-movies -- struck the same chord in me as the pilot of Stargate SG-1: the acting was good, the plotline was interesting, and the characters each had something that drew me to them, because they didn't feel like something sprung from a can.
"I wouldn't look to military simultion for an example of a growth area. In general, technologies and practices lag five to ten years behind the rest of the commerical world."
They work just fine. However, I would personally _prefer_ to have an entire season of Stargate SG-1 on a single Blu-Ray DVD, rather than 5 normal DVDs. I would _prefer_ to archive all of my MP3s on one Blu-Ray, rather than a set of DVDs. You get the gist of it.......
Slashdot Mirror
Where are the fucking smart tv producers and network directors, they all quit?
They're over at Comedy Central and Sci-Fi Channel.
In the immortal (paraphrased) words of Stanley Kirk Burrell, " you can't trust this ".
> We'd also like to see inbuilt antivirus software in all operating systems
>>Yeah, then we'd like to sue for anti-competetive practice,
>>and make them strip it out again.
Nah, all Microsoft has to do to remain legally competitive is lock down it's operating systems. Then it would be harder for virii to get in, period, and would accomplish the same function as offering an inbuilt antivirus application.
The features that are available here include tabs that allow consumers to target searches to the Web, news, images, music, desktop or Microsoft Encarta.
The fact of the matter is that Google already offers these web-based tools, and without much of the marketing and graphical detritus that is pushed by the MSN website.
1) The Web: http://www.google.com. If you don't know about it, you probably should. It's easy as pie to use, accurate as hell in most cases. And if it doesn't show you what you want right away, chances are a bit of grunt work will turn up something useful in short order. Ads are shifted to the right-side of the screen, so as not to impede your ability to pore through the search results. And you can customize the number of results per page, which means less clicking. Meanwhile, MSN spams me with ads at the top and bottom of each search page, in addition to the right side of the page. There are 8 results per page, which means more effort in trying to find information in all the spam.
2) News: http://news.google.com has been my homepage for quite sometime now. It's about a billion times better, easier to use and more current than my previous news home page, http://www.msnbc.com.
3) Images: http://images.google.com wins, hands-down. MSN's Images search looks cleaner, and allows you to filter by color or B/W right from the main search page, but that's about the only advantages it can claim. MSN required 5 clicks before I could get to the 20th page of results; Google gets me there in 2. MSN yields ~81k results; Google yields ~550k.
4) Music: MSN beats Google here, simply because Google doesn't offer any kind of music-searching utility. However, MSN's site isn't much more than an iTunes wannabe. There's no easy way to do a quick search by artist or album from the front page, and most of the links that pop up offer the ability to purchase downloadable songs, not information on the album or artist. Meanwhile, a quick Google for "Son Kite" turns up the home page of the psytrance artist I'm looking for, at the very top of the page. The 2nd link is to a store that sells Son Kite albums. MSN = pwn3d, again.
5) Desktop: You've got to wonder why Microsoft would deign to develop a web-based ActiveX search tool, when the vast majority of PC users out there are running Windows and have this functionality built into the OS. Never mind that I've disabled ActiveX in Internet Explorer 6, and have begun shunning it for the same reasons I'm training myself to use Firefox 1.0 for standard browsing.
6) Encarta: Another tool that Google doesn't offer (yet). I'm gonna remain neutral on this one, since I don't know much about it.
Many moons ago, I thought I would give a combo TV/VCR unit a try. I thought it would be cool to have all the features of my VCR built directly into my TV. And for a year or two, it was great.......
Then, the VCR stopped working.
Whereas before I could have simple unplugged the VCR and carted it to a store for servicing, I had to lug the entire damn TV around. In addition, when I did get around to bringing it to a store, the price they quoted me for repairing it was more than the cost of some new, uncoupled VCRs!
While the Windows Media Center isn't necessarily heavy, the idea is still the same -- having all of these different functions integrated into a single unit present the possibility of a single point of failure. Never mind that the Windows OS is nowhere near as stable as what I would traditionally expect from electronics manufacturers. And when you consider the frequency with which Windows OS's require patching...... it just doesn't make sense.
I went ahead and did a bit of reconfiguring on both ends:
[$981.00] Apple Mac Mini
1.42GHz PowerPC G4
512MB DDR333 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
80GB Ultra ATA drive
4x SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Wired Keyboard & Mouse Set - U.S. English
56K v.92 Modem
Mac OS X - U.S. English
3yr warranty
[$996.00] Dell Dimension 4700
2.80GHz Intel P4 520 (HT, 800FSB)
512MB DDR400 SDRAM - 2 DIMMs
80GB Serial ATA drive
16x DVD-ROM / 16x DVD+/-RW dbl-layer
Keyboard, two-button mouse
Intel PRO 10/100 Ethernet
Windows XP Professional
3yr basic warranty
Not much price difference between the two, although with Dell you have the option of buying a 15" E153FP flat panel for $100, or a 17" 1704FP for $219.
That being said, I think it's a matter of what you're looking for. Windows boxen have a bigger pool of software (apps, games) and a wider range of hardware upgrades at more competitive prices; they also offer applications with a consistent UI (Microsoft apps). Of course, their Achilles heel is security........
With Apple, you're a bit more limited in terms of software and hardware upgrades. However, the software is far more secure than Windows, and the interfaces tend to be more consistent across the board.
Two of the least compelling TNG characters are supposed to help save the show? How about getting Picard and Data to show up instead?
We will find out a whole lot more within the next fortnight, Cell is being described in a lot of details at ISSCC 2005 in early February.
But I don't want to wait forty nights! I want it nooooooow!
Um, this was a bonafide question, not a conspiracy theory. A lot of what I've read in the news is that fiber is fast, and that cable companies impose these restrictions on how often, to what degree, you can take advantage of their bandwidth BECAUSE.... you guessed it!.... they can't afford to offer all that bandwidth all the time. Thanks for not providing anything resembling an informative answer, though, jackass.
Even beyond that, Creative has exactly zero reasons to be critical of Apple's design and marketing, since that's what they excel at. For starters, check out a recent NY Times article on what the iPod Mini offers, versus other iPod-killer wannabees. Here's what the article says on how Creative's Zen Micro player, Creative's mid-range product, compares to Apple's iPod Mini:
Pros (Mid-Range) Cons (Mid-Range)
The price is the same ($250), but even if the Zen Micro offers more in the way of features, the quality of those features is lacking. At the bottom end of the market, which is more price-sensitive in nature, you have Creative's Nomad MuVo line of products, the most inexpensive of which are:
So now along comes Apple's iPod Shuttle, which lacks some of the more salient features of the MuVo, but offers more space for less money per MB.
Pros (Low-End)
Cons (Low-End)
The only place I can see Creative possibly beating out Apple is at the top-end of the market, with their Zen Touch (20/40GB) and Zen Xtra (30/40/60GB) players. Despite being a bit larger and heavier than Apple's iPod, they offer a superior price-per-GB ratio. Then again, if Creative's problems with their mid-range products appear in their high-end products, that may not stop consumers from seriously considering the iPod, even though it's far more expensive per GB.
Personally, I'd rather buy a player that's well engineered (hardware + software), and built by a company that stands behind its products -- that company being Apple. Apple offers a fairly straightforward set of base models, with a growing lineup of 3rd-party accessories that serve to expand the appeal to their products. Creative, in many of these respects, doesn't meet these high standards.
Oh, and before you call me an Apple weenie: I don't like Macs, I don't own an iPod, and I own an old-ass Creative Nomad II mp3 player (whose flaws have been evident from the very start). In all likeliness, I'll probably snag either an iPod Mini or Shuttle at some point in the near future; I haven't decided whether giving up the LCD display and capacity is worth the cost savings.
This is from their acceptable use policy:
"(xiv) run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;"
Yes, and the excerpt you quoted is taken from the Prohibited Uses and Activities section of that document.
That's all well and good, but will they let us do something actually useful with our service like run a web server?
No, because that would eat up too much bandw<NO CARRIER>
That's all well and good, but will they let us do something actually useful with our service like run a web server?
No, because that would eat up too much bandw
Granted, fiber wouldn't eliminate the need for the hardware at the head end, but wouldn't fiber eliminate the cable companies' bandwidth limitations? Personally, I say eminent domain should be extended to cover all of the dark fiber that's lying unused around the country right now. I bet you'd see them rush to light it all up after that........
At this point, bandwidth speed doesn't matter as much to me, in comparison with "reasonable bandwidth" limitations. My Time Warner Cable of NYC offers me plenty of speed, but if I queue up even a few torrents for simultaneous downloading, I'm guaranteed to have my connection dropped within 30-60 minutes.
If the cable companies are really trying to compete with DSL, they need to allow customers to take full advantage of the bandwidth they purport to offer 24x7. Otherwise, cable modems will remain at a disadvantage for people who need more bandwidth.
If you use a Tivo, you can cut their work week to 40hrs.
>Not sure why this mod got posted up on slashdot
>>Because it's free. Enemy Territory is free, the mod is free. Free is good, slashdot likes free.
What was the middle part again?
All of our mission critical data is in Oracle and the not-to-important-data is in SQL Server or a few MySQL databases. We were actually leaning toward Oracle's product (because we use it as our critical DB), however they didn't have a few _very_ important functionalities that we need for our HR processes, so that left PeopleSoft and SAP.
What important features did you find Oracle to be lacking, that SQL Server/mySQL had? My employer is significantly smaller (300 employees worldwide), but we gross $50+ million a year and we're just starting the ERP evaluation process, upgrading from an 80s package using a version of Oracle so old, it's not even relational. As such, any info I learn about ERP and can pass along to my boss is muy helpful.
I have cancelled UO, SWG, EQ, and CoH for WoW...
IMO, TLAMMWTSMEIWARF
(Three Letter Acronyms Make Me Want To Stave My Eye In With A Rusty Fork)
And what is the cause for this newly-found belief? Battlestar Galactica. They took a well-thought-of series I barely remembered from my childhood, changed various elements of the story and cast, and made it into something interesting and current. The first two pilot episodes -- the mini-movies -- struck the same chord in me as the pilot of Stargate SG-1: the acting was good, the plotline was interesting, and the characters each had something that drew me to them, because they didn't feel like something sprung from a can.
"I wouldn't look to military simultion for an example of a growth area. In general, technologies and practices lag five to ten years behind the rest of the commerical world."
What about ARPAnet?
They work just fine. However, I would personally _prefer_ to have an entire season of Stargate SG-1 on a single Blu-Ray DVD, rather than 5 normal DVDs. I would _prefer_ to archive all of my MP3s on one Blu-Ray, rather than a set of DVDs. You get the gist of it.......
I think SkyNet would be much catchier.....
Linus Torvalds holds the patent on the "IsTo" and "IsSo" operators.
Smoke more weed, I've heard from reputable scienticians that it's good against Glaucoma.
This man knows what he's talking about. I've been smoking weed since forever, and I'm glaucoma-free!