Re:Porn vending machines
on
Shop Till It Drops
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Yes, there are capsule hotels. They look like the capsules in The Fifth Element where they gas you to sleep during the journey to whatever that paradise planet was called.
The better hotels are the love hotels (some of which are run via a room key vending machine). You can take your favorite partner to a nicely decked out, pay-by-the-hour hotel. The ones I went to usually had a vending TV that would play adult movies, a vending machine where you could get condoms (which were always too small), one for drinks and beef jerky, and a coin operated bed that jiggles around. The mirrors on almost every flat surface were free. Much more enjoyable than a capsule hotel.
Re:Oh that's very responsible of you, SlashDot
on
Microsoft News Update
·
· Score: 1
I'm actually glad that it was posted on the front page on Slashdot. No, I don't plan to rush out and download it so I can crash all my friends machines, but I would like to show it to people in a controlled environment to teach them the importance of securing their system.
Thanks Slashdot for helping Windows users learn to secure their systems.
Now let me see if I understand this diatribe correctly. It is perfectly fine for those deviants, who obviously are grossly confused by the difficult "tab A goes into slot B" logic of human sexuality, to spout their troubled tab-knocking and slot-confrication beliefs all over the face of the planet in spite of the fact that the majority of civilization is offended by it. However, those who are offended by not only the behavior itself, but the ever increasing, unceasing publicizing and aggrandizing of it during practically every moment ones eyes and ears are open, have no recourse but to idly take it in the chin?
What kind of entry-level mentality is this? If the tab-crossers have a right to their opinion in a public forum, then those who can correctly identify and utilize their organs must also enjoy that right. If the "fags" of the world are offended by opposing opinions, well maybe they have chosen the wrong lifestyle to be engaged in. I am perfectly comfortable and happy with my anti-homosexual tendencies and opinions. If homosexuals aren't happy unless the world agrees with them, then perhaps they are deceiving themselves as to what they really want to be.
You say that calling somebody a fag is a vicious way of attacking people. Don't you remember that whole sticks and stones thing from elementary school? I would hardly call and undirected utterance of the word "fag" in a classroom "vicious".
You also compare the word "fag" with a taboo word for people with dark skin. How dare you compare the suffering of a nation, abused and held in captivity and bondage and hated due to the very visible and unchangeable color of their skin, with the verbal opinions against a bunch of people who choose to publicly flaunt a perverse lifestyle? It is utterly deranged.
To try and stifle virtue and replace it with immoral vice under the guise of freedom is despicable and offends me more than the utterance in a classroom of an offensive word to describe the subscribers of an offensive lifestyle; if indeed that meaning was even what he meant at all.
I disagree with Mr. O'Reilly on this one for two reasons.
First, having worked for the government for three years before, the people in most government agencies who take bids and order items like computers and software don't know the difference between a 5 1/4" floppy disk and a 3 1/2" floppy disk, let alone know what Linux or BSD are. Where I worked, they consistantly ordered the 5 1/4" drives because, "they hold more data."
For this reason, I think OSS needs to be pushed in the government agencies. I'm not saying that they must be forced to use OSS, but rather OSS price gathering must be required during the bidding process.
It behooves the government to find the lowest cost on quality purchases, which is why they have the bidding processes in place. To deny a local vendor the chance to bid on a government contract is against the rules of the bidding process (at least in the departments where I worked it was). The agency must remain fair to all entities during the bidding process. Currently, operating systems like Linux and *BSD are overlooked in the bidding process. This should not be the case since there are many providers who probably would like to bid on such contracts. To my knowledge, they aren't even notified concerning upcoming bids. I think the bidding process should require the gathering and accepting of OSS bids along with Windows bids and the most cost effective solution should be the one that wins the bid.
My second reason is more a political one, and therefore perhaps not as important, but I believe if the government was not reliant on any particular vendor (Microsoft) for the majority of its operating system needs, then that particular vendor would not have as much power or influence in the government. I consider this a good thing.
The main reason for this opinion is that marketing and public awareness are more powerful that coding; although coding is more important. Look at all the excellent products that have been coded and not marketed very well, which have died out because of a lack of market awareness (OS/2, BeOS, Amiga, and many others).
Microsoft is proof that lobbying is more important. Windows doesn't come close to the power, security and stability of nearly every other OS popular today; yet it remains solidly on top in marketshare.
Don't get me wrong, more coding is always a good thing, however, to do it at the detriment of lobbying is a sure fire plan to navigate your project into oblivion.
There are two problems at the root of all this. First of all, the RIAA, MPAA, etc. operate under the psychotic delusion that if one million people are sharing files, and they can somehow stop those people from doing it, that it will directly translate into one million new sales. It won't.
To illustrate the second problem, I would like to cite two quotes from Mark Twain:
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."
"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
What is happening here is that the market has spoken, people want to download music, and the corporations are too damn stupid to make it happen and profit from it. Instead, they are lobbying in congress to make laws to force consumers to buy grossly overprices CDs which are usually 10% good music and 90% high-fidelity defecation.
I believe the reason so many people share music is that you can record from the radio or go borrow a CD from your local library; both for free. So people look at file sharing and say, "what's the difference?", and not one single person can answer that question effectively.
Instead of lobbying with the government, perhaps "The Industry" should actually listen to the market. To start off with, they could do the following:
1) Stop pushing one hit wonders. Nobody wants to pay $18.00 for one song and eleven nuggets talentless drivel. People will download the one song they like and leave it at that.
2) Lower the prices of CDs. Most CD stores where I live sell new CDs for $18.00. New movies on DVD are usually $15.00. There is a big problem with that.
3) Offer a service so people can download music for a reasonable price (read $0.25 or less per song you greedy bastards).
Perhaps file sharing is wrong, perhaps not. Regardless, it is very easy to justify doing it since there are many other mechanisms available to consumers to get free music; legally.
Whatever your stance on the file sharing issue, it is wrong for congress to play the ass-licking sycophants to corporations in return for monetary bribes and votes. If you can't see that this is happening and it is probably the biggest threat to our country and our freedoms, then we're in a really sad state.
I hope this made some sense. It's past my bedtime.
Well, then please explain to us why I can go down to any damn library in the US and pick up any damn CD I wish to and listen to it whenever I want to for free. How is this different from filesharing; other than being less convenient?
I bought one of the APEX DVD players, and I wouldn't recommend this as an option since they are problematic.
I have a PlayStation2 and purchased some software for it at www.codejunkies.com, which allows me to view movies from any region (and cheat on games if I wish to). I assume they still sell it.
I tried the Belkin product reviewed in the article and I took it back to the store after about 20 minutes. I've also tried a couple of their older models.
I don't know how Belkin works on other monitors, but I have a top of the line Sony 21" monitor, which has a very crisp display. When I attach a Belkin to the system, I get 7 or 8 prominent ghost lines flowing off the right hand side of all the windows on the screen. The picture quality is horrible.
After returning the Belkin I tried a Linksys KVM and a Cybex. The Linksys was nice, but still had some faint ghost images (nothing as pronounced as the Belkin and it is a lot cheaper) but the Cybex KVM is great (albiet more expensive). No ghost images whatsoever.
Overall, I think the Belkin KVM is the worst KVM I've ever used. I hope other people have better luck with it that I did.
While I love movies and would go see this one, it is a little disappointing to see books like The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia series released as movies.
As a kid I remember reading the Hobbit. It was the first book I ever read outside of school assignments.
The words were hypnotic and the story almost intoxicating to me. It unleashed a power, which ignited my imagination in ways I had never known before. I couldn't put it down. Once I finished The Hobbit, I wanted, or rather needed, more. Dark corners of my mind had suddenly been flooded with wonder and excitement and I could not allow them to dim.
After The Hobbit, I read The Lord of the Rings and then the Narnia series and many other books.
The hobby of reading everything in sight is still with me today; and is not limited to fiction or fantasy. I firmly believe that I learned much more from reading books growing up than I ever did in school.
Books offered me so much it is beyond my capacity to describe the benefits. Movies, while entertaining, are not able to offer the same and it is for this reason I am disappointed. I think many children will see the movie and miss out on the thaumaturgic properties of literature.
Apache is free, of course, to implement any technology they feel prudent. I, however, will not make use of this code.
My opinion of.NET is that it is a nice replacement for the dismal Win32 API and MFC. Also, with.NET Microsoft has introduced C#, which is a great replacement for the country music of programming languages, VB. These are all good things.
What I hate about.NET is ASP.NET and the whole web development side of it. Sure, VS.NET makes gluming C#, ASP and JavaScript together into one fetid lump of crap easy, but that only benefits programmers who rely on pointy and clicky interfaces to do anything.
Why the hell would anyone want to write web components in C# (unless they sold them at inflated prices to point and click ASP.NET developers), drag and drop them into an ASP.NET project and then have that and IIS generate an HTML page full of JavaScript for them? I can write my own JavaScript without having to jump through all the hoops; and do.
I think.NET is great for Windows desktop application programming, but for web development, there are much better and much cleaner technologies available. I'll use Apache's support for those instead.
I use C#, ASP.NET and VS.NET at work. I find developing web applications with these MS technologies glumed together as irritating as it gets. While the integration between disperate technologies is commendible, VS.NET is slower than frozen mud. Give me a good text editor and command line tools any day.
I think that the whole Mono project will turn out to be a major debacle. Microsoft is going to integrate and complicate.NET with Windows to the point that Mono will never work. MS will release new.NET crap every year and Mono will play catch up for a year so it finally works again just as MS is releasing a new incompatible version.
In the past, Microsoft has either presented an "open" standard, or pushed someone else's open standard, only to hijack it in the end, to the detriment of non-Windows users and developers.
I think the Open Source community would be better off backing a web technology like J2EE and not.NET. Microsoft has proven time and again that it can't play well with others. I think Java has a good record for working everywhere consistantly.
I would recommend consulting members of the Wine and Samba development groups. I'm sure they have plenty of horror stories about working with constantly changing MS technologies.
I disagree. I have worked for the Federal Government before, and incompetence and sheer laziness are a way of life there. There are a few hard working people, but the majority aren't. If you have ever been absolutely frustrated at the DMV while you stand in a line of two hundred people, waiting to be helped by the only clerk that is not gathered in the back taking a perpetual break, you know what I mean.
The problem at the patent office is that just like every other US government job, mediocrity is the standard and the bare minimum is exactly what most of the clerks do. The solution is that the performance bar must be raised.
Ever heard the saying "behind every sleazy lawyer is a sleazy client"? Clearly, behind every sleazy patent office is a sleazy patent applicant trying to abuse the system as well...
This is exactly why the bar must be raised. Instead of "processing" a patent application (meaning taking the applicant's money and stamping the application "approved" (which is just a government synonym for "paid") they should by mandate be required to research the patent to make sure it is valid.
In addition, the patent office should make public summaries of each patent available before the approval process is complete so that invalid patents may be thrown out PRIOR to patents going to court.
If I remember correctly, SuSE (at least 7.3 and 8.0) has an option to install a Chinese system.
I've used the Japanese (yes, I know they are different) setup for Linux before and my only complaint was that the IME functionality was not very intuitive or easy to see. I imagine you'll find the same problem with Chinese.
There are third party IMEs available for inputing Japanese under Linux (like ATOK) which a very nice, so I would guess there are similar products available for inputing Chinese.
The problem is that most Asian language speaking people hate Unicode and run away from it. The biggest complaints are that some of the characters change when converting from Unicode and Codepage and that the Kanji characters are not in "alphabetical" order in the code page listings (since they share characters across Chinese Traditional and Simplified, Japanese and Korean instead of each language having its own section).
Re:Spielberg annoys to the end
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 1
I have to bring up an issue with your statement. You say that you agree that the movie sucked because the characters constantly explain everything that is going on, then you add, "Upon being cited for a future murder, the protagonist decides that he should run, for no other explanation than, "everyone runs".
Did you want him to go into a long disertation as to why he was running so you could complain more, or because you didn't get it?
Who is the winner here? It's certainly not developers. We're either going to have to code to an ancient, incompatible version of Java because it's the "default"
This is not new news. Microsoft has been unable to ship a decent JVM since 1.1.3. To most Java developers, I would think whether MS includes their JVM or not is highly irrelevant.
I don't know how other Java developers have dealt with the MS problem, but I just distribute the latest JRE with the software I make for my clients if it contains client side applets. Otherwise I just make everything into a servlet or JSP page, which makes client JVM irrelevant.
MS's JVM isn't better. Current JVMs are far more powerful and robust. What you're saying is like saying Windows 3.1 is better than Windows 2000 or XP because it is faster and takes up less memory. I'm not buying it.
The thoughts of an imbicile such as yourself are hardly worth my time, but since your retorts are childish and foolish I just thought I'd take a moment to point that out to you so hopefully you can get better at it.
For me the browser war ended a long time ago. I chose Opera (mostly because I could set it to disallow pop-up windows and tabbed browsing). Now, Mozilla does all the things I like about Opera and it's free. What more can you ask for. Opera still opens all the things your were last looking at when you reopen it. I wish Mozilla did that (maybe it does. I don't know).
Oh, and to all those who claim IE is free, it's not. It has to run on Windows which costs you money.
Microsoft is like that Slurm Willy Wonka epsidoe of Futurama. Everyone knows the product is worm excrement, but they keep coming back to ingest more.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, there are capsule hotels. They look like the capsules in The Fifth Element where they gas you to sleep during the journey to whatever that paradise planet was called.
The better hotels are the love hotels (some of which are run via a room key vending machine). You can take your favorite partner to a nicely decked out, pay-by-the-hour hotel. The ones I went to usually had a vending TV that would play adult movies, a vending machine where you could get condoms (which were always too small), one for drinks and beef jerky, and a coin operated bed that jiggles around. The mirrors on almost every flat surface were free. Much more enjoyable than a capsule hotel.
I'm actually glad that it was posted on the front page on Slashdot. No, I don't plan to rush out and download it so I can crash all my friends machines, but I would like to show it to people in a controlled environment to teach them the importance of securing their system.
Thanks Slashdot for helping Windows users learn to secure their systems.
Now let me see if I understand this diatribe correctly. It is perfectly fine for those deviants, who obviously are grossly confused by the difficult "tab A goes into slot B" logic of human sexuality, to spout their troubled tab-knocking and slot-confrication beliefs all over the face of the planet in spite of the fact that the majority of civilization is offended by it. However, those who are offended by not only the behavior itself, but the ever increasing, unceasing publicizing and aggrandizing of it during practically every moment ones eyes and ears are open, have no recourse but to idly take it in the chin?
What kind of entry-level mentality is this? If the tab-crossers have a right to their opinion in a public forum, then those who can correctly identify and utilize their organs must also enjoy that right. If the "fags" of the world are offended by opposing opinions, well maybe they have chosen the wrong lifestyle to be engaged in. I am perfectly comfortable and happy with my anti-homosexual tendencies and opinions. If homosexuals aren't happy unless the world agrees with them, then perhaps they are deceiving themselves as to what they really want to be.
You say that calling somebody a fag is a vicious way of attacking people. Don't you remember that whole sticks and stones thing from elementary school? I would hardly call and undirected utterance of the word "fag" in a classroom "vicious".
You also compare the word "fag" with a taboo word for people with dark skin. How dare you compare the suffering of a nation, abused and held in captivity and bondage and hated due to the very visible and unchangeable color of their skin, with the verbal opinions against a bunch of people who choose to publicly flaunt a perverse lifestyle? It is utterly deranged.
To try and stifle virtue and replace it with immoral vice under the guise of freedom is despicable and offends me more than the utterance in a classroom of an offensive word to describe the subscribers of an offensive lifestyle; if indeed that meaning was even what he meant at all.
Good crap!!! If you're going to tell everyone how much you love your penis in Japanese, then do it correctly!
Your code should be ペニス NOT ピニス
Now I have even more reason to sit in front of my computer.
I disagree with Mr. O'Reilly on this one for two reasons.
First, having worked for the government for three years before, the people in most government agencies who take bids and order items like computers and software don't know the difference between a 5 1/4" floppy disk and a 3 1/2" floppy disk, let alone know what Linux or BSD are. Where I worked, they consistantly ordered the 5 1/4" drives because, "they hold more data."
For this reason, I think OSS needs to be pushed in the government agencies. I'm not saying that they must be forced to use OSS, but rather OSS price gathering must be required during the bidding process.
It behooves the government to find the lowest cost on quality purchases, which is why they have the bidding processes in place. To deny a local vendor the chance to bid on a government contract is against the rules of the bidding process (at least in the departments where I worked it was). The agency must remain fair to all entities during the bidding process. Currently, operating systems like Linux and *BSD are overlooked in the bidding process. This should not be the case since there are many providers who probably would like to bid on such contracts. To my knowledge, they aren't even notified concerning upcoming bids. I think the bidding process should require the gathering and accepting of OSS bids along with Windows bids and the most cost effective solution should be the one that wins the bid.
My second reason is more a political one, and therefore perhaps not as important, but I believe if the government was not reliant on any particular vendor (Microsoft) for the majority of its operating system needs, then that particular vendor would not have as much power or influence in the government. I consider this a good thing.
The main reason for this opinion is that marketing and public awareness are more powerful that coding; although coding is more important. Look at all the excellent products that have been coded and not marketed very well, which have died out because of a lack of market awareness (OS/2, BeOS, Amiga, and many others).
Microsoft is proof that lobbying is more important. Windows doesn't come close to the power, security and stability of nearly every other OS popular today; yet it remains solidly on top in marketshare.
Don't get me wrong, more coding is always a good thing, however, to do it at the detriment of lobbying is a sure fire plan to navigate your project into oblivion.
There are two problems at the root of all this. First of all, the RIAA, MPAA, etc. operate under the psychotic delusion that if one million people are sharing files, and they can somehow stop those people from doing it, that it will directly translate into one million new sales. It won't.
To illustrate the second problem, I would like to cite two quotes from Mark Twain:
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."
"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
What is happening here is that the market has spoken, people want to download music, and the corporations are too damn stupid to make it happen and profit from it. Instead, they are lobbying in congress to make laws to force consumers to buy grossly overprices CDs which are usually 10% good music and 90% high-fidelity defecation.
I believe the reason so many people share music is that you can record from the radio or go borrow a CD from your local library; both for free. So people look at file sharing and say, "what's the difference?", and not one single person can answer that question effectively.
Instead of lobbying with the government, perhaps "The Industry" should actually listen to the market. To start off with, they could do the following:
1) Stop pushing one hit wonders. Nobody wants to pay $18.00 for one song and eleven nuggets talentless drivel. People will download the one song they like and leave it at that.
2) Lower the prices of CDs. Most CD stores where I live sell new CDs for $18.00. New movies on DVD are usually $15.00. There is a big problem with that.
3) Offer a service so people can download music for a reasonable price (read $0.25 or less per song you greedy bastards).
Perhaps file sharing is wrong, perhaps not. Regardless, it is very easy to justify doing it since there are many other mechanisms available to consumers to get free music; legally.
Whatever your stance on the file sharing issue, it is wrong for congress to play the ass-licking sycophants to corporations in return for monetary bribes and votes. If you can't see that this is happening and it is probably the biggest threat to our country and our freedoms, then we're in a really sad state.
I hope this made some sense. It's past my bedtime.
Well, then please explain to us why I can go down to any damn library in the US and pick up any damn CD I wish to and listen to it whenever I want to for free. How is this different from filesharing; other than being less convenient?
I bought one of the APEX DVD players, and I wouldn't recommend this as an option since they are problematic.
I have a PlayStation2 and purchased some software for it at www.codejunkies.com, which allows me to view movies from any region (and cheat on games if I wish to). I assume they still sell it.
I don't know why they'll bother adding to the DVD all the edited Meesa... yousa...nonsense parts. Nobody will watch them anyway.
I tried the Belkin product reviewed in the article and I took it back to the store after about 20 minutes. I've also tried a couple of their older models.
I don't know how Belkin works on other monitors, but I have a top of the line Sony 21" monitor, which has a very crisp display. When I attach a Belkin to the system, I get 7 or 8 prominent ghost lines flowing off the right hand side of all the windows on the screen. The picture quality is horrible.
After returning the Belkin I tried a Linksys KVM and a Cybex. The Linksys was nice, but still had some faint ghost images (nothing as pronounced as the Belkin and it is a lot cheaper) but the Cybex KVM is great (albiet more expensive). No ghost images whatsoever.
Overall, I think the Belkin KVM is the worst KVM I've ever used. I hope other people have better luck with it that I did.
While I love movies and would go see this one, it is a little disappointing to see books like The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia series released as movies.
As a kid I remember reading the Hobbit. It was the first book I ever read outside of school assignments.
The words were hypnotic and the story almost intoxicating to me. It unleashed a power, which ignited my imagination in ways I had never known before. I couldn't put it down. Once I finished The Hobbit, I wanted, or rather needed, more. Dark corners of my mind had suddenly been flooded with wonder and excitement and I could not allow them to dim.
After The Hobbit, I read The Lord of the Rings and then the Narnia series and many other books.
The hobby of reading everything in sight is still with me today; and is not limited to fiction or fantasy. I firmly believe that I learned much more from reading books growing up than I ever did in school.
Books offered me so much it is beyond my capacity to describe the benefits. Movies, while entertaining, are not able to offer the same and it is for this reason I am disappointed. I think many children will see the movie and miss out on the thaumaturgic properties of literature.
Apache is free, of course, to implement any technology they feel prudent. I, however, will not make use of this code.
.NET is that it is a nice replacement for the dismal Win32 API and MFC. Also, with .NET Microsoft has introduced C#, which is a great replacement for the country music of programming languages, VB. These are all good things.
.NET is ASP.NET and the whole web development side of it. Sure, VS.NET makes gluming C#, ASP and JavaScript together into one fetid lump of crap easy, but that only benefits programmers who rely on pointy and clicky interfaces to do anything.
.NET is great for Windows desktop application programming, but for web development, there are much better and much cleaner technologies available. I'll use Apache's support for those instead.
My opinion of
What I hate about
Why the hell would anyone want to write web components in C# (unless they sold them at inflated prices to point and click ASP.NET developers), drag and drop them into an ASP.NET project and then have that and IIS generate an HTML page full of JavaScript for them? I can write my own JavaScript without having to jump through all the hoops; and do.
I think
I use C#, ASP.NET and VS.NET at work. I find developing web applications with these MS technologies glumed together as irritating as it gets. While the integration between disperate technologies is commendible, VS.NET is slower than frozen mud. Give me a good text editor and command line tools any day.
.NET with Windows to the point that Mono will never work. MS will release new .NET crap every year and Mono will play catch up for a year so it finally works again just as MS is releasing a new incompatible version.
.NET. Microsoft has proven time and again that it can't play well with others. I think Java has a good record for working everywhere consistantly.
I think that the whole Mono project will turn out to be a major debacle. Microsoft is going to integrate and complicate
In the past, Microsoft has either presented an "open" standard, or pushed someone else's open standard, only to hijack it in the end, to the detriment of non-Windows users and developers.
I think the Open Source community would be better off backing a web technology like J2EE and not
I would recommend consulting members of the Wine and Samba development groups. I'm sure they have plenty of horror stories about working with constantly changing MS technologies.
Two comments I'd like to reply to:
but blaming the PTO is not the way to go.
I disagree. I have worked for the Federal Government before, and incompetence and sheer laziness are a way of life there. There are a few hard working people, but the majority aren't. If you have ever been absolutely frustrated at the DMV while you stand in a line of two hundred people, waiting to be helped by the only clerk that is not gathered in the back taking a perpetual break, you know what I mean.
The problem at the patent office is that just like every other US government job, mediocrity is the standard and the bare minimum is exactly what most of the clerks do. The solution is that the performance bar must be raised.
Ever heard the saying "behind every sleazy lawyer is a sleazy client"? Clearly, behind every sleazy patent office is a sleazy patent applicant trying to abuse the system as well...
This is exactly why the bar must be raised. Instead of "processing" a patent application (meaning taking the applicant's money and stamping the application "approved" (which is just a government synonym for "paid") they should by mandate be required to research the patent to make sure it is valid.
In addition, the patent office should make public summaries of each patent available before the approval process is complete so that invalid patents may be thrown out PRIOR to patents going to court.
If I remember correctly, SuSE (at least 7.3 and 8.0) has an option to install a Chinese system.
I've used the Japanese (yes, I know they are different) setup for Linux before and my only complaint was that the IME functionality was not very intuitive or easy to see. I imagine you'll find the same problem with Chinese.
There are third party IMEs available for inputing Japanese under Linux (like ATOK) which a very nice, so I would guess there are similar products available for inputing Chinese.
The problem is that most Asian language speaking people hate Unicode and run away from it. The biggest complaints are that some of the characters change when converting from Unicode and Codepage and that the Kanji characters are not in "alphabetical" order in the code page listings (since they share characters across Chinese Traditional and Simplified, Japanese and Korean instead of each language having its own section).
I have to bring up an issue with your statement. You say that you agree that the movie sucked because the characters constantly explain everything that is going on, then you add, "Upon being cited for a future murder, the protagonist decides that he should run, for no other explanation than, "everyone runs".
Did you want him to go into a long disertation as to why he was running so you could complain more, or because you didn't get it?
Who is the winner here? It's certainly not developers. We're either going to have to code to an ancient, incompatible version of Java because it's the "default"
This is not new news. Microsoft has been unable to ship a decent JVM since 1.1.3. To most Java developers, I would think whether MS includes their JVM or not is highly irrelevant.
I don't know how other Java developers have dealt with the MS problem, but I just distribute the latest JRE with the software I make for my clients if it contains client side applets. Otherwise I just make everything into a servlet or JSP page, which makes client JVM irrelevant.
Either way, problem solved.
MS's JVM isn't better. Current JVMs are far more powerful and robust. What you're saying is like saying Windows 3.1 is better than Windows 2000 or XP because it is faster and takes up less memory. I'm not buying it.
The thoughts of an imbicile such as yourself are hardly worth my time, but since your retorts are childish and foolish I just thought I'd take a moment to point that out to you so hopefully you can get better at it.
No, I think the advice of a complete idiot is not worth following.
For me the browser war ended a long time ago. I chose Opera (mostly because I could set it to disallow pop-up windows and tabbed browsing). Now, Mozilla does all the things I like about Opera and it's free. What more can you ask for. Opera still opens all the things your were last looking at when you reopen it. I wish Mozilla did that (maybe it does. I don't know).
Oh, and to all those who claim IE is free, it's not. It has to run on Windows which costs you money.
Microsoft is like that Slurm Willy Wonka epsidoe of Futurama. Everyone knows the product is worm excrement, but they keep coming back to ingest more.
He cites Microsoft's current monopolistic market share, and dares anyone to try and fight it."
I'll take that dare. I fight against Microsoft on a daily basis by never buying or using any of their products.
In your face space coyote!