Hey, don't bash the minidisc. I had one for years before mp3 players were out. To this day, I have yet to find a mp3 player with better audio quality/battery life than my minidisc recorder.
Because it's argubly one of the most important fields in biology. Every field in biology has some sort of tie in to evolution. We're talking at the molecular level, biochemical structure (selective influence on DNA stability), enzymes, proteins, all the way up to the evolution of species and the evolution of populations. In short, it's the unifying factor of biology.
Lets not take into account the fact that it's extremely useful too. Evolutionary algorithms are argubly one of the next things in software development. The evolution of diseases like HIV/AIDS has mass implications on the quality of life for millions of people out there. Anyone hear about bacteria evolving antibiotic resistance? Considering how widely used antibiotics are for everything from the common cold to parasite infections to lethal infections like tuberculosis or the fact that antibiotics are prescribed standard treatment for ANY invasive surgery is good enough reason to study evolution.
The stakes are too high to stop advancing the study of evolution because they find the idea of common descent morally repugnant.
Well, shit. When web browsers don't conform to standards, they aren't standards are they? I do have to spend hours hacking websites so they render correctly on numerous versions of IE, Firefox, Opera 8->9, and Konquerer. When I mean nothing I mean that standards are useless in real application because as far as I know, no browser (not even Opera) is completely 100% standards compliant. And getting around browser compliancy usually further amplifies problems across other browsers which makes standards even more irrelevant in actual application.
Seriously, standards mean little or nothing. All I know is, clients don't care if the site they paid for is compliant or not. They just care that it looks good, and works right. Which implies that I only care that it looks good and works right.
Believe it or not, but I still get people complaining when things don't work right for Mac I.E. 4.0X. And the sad thing is one of the people who requested Mac I.E. 4.0X compliance was running OSX on a PowerMac G5. I tried to get him to switch to Safari, but alas it was to no avail.
When you can't get a Mac user running OSX to switch to something other than Internet Explorer, you have a problem. But more importantly it tells you something about the desktop/consumer market and why open source software hasn't really been that successful. Firefox is argubly the most successful open source software, but even it has limited marketshare.
The problem doesn't exist with Microsoft, the problem exists between the computer and keyboard.
Believing IE to be free really is a truly stupid mistake to make wich shows that you lack any true understanding of how the world works. It reminds me of especially young people who get taken in by mobile phone plans that offer free this and free that and thinking they are getting everything for free. Yeah right, offcourse not.
But wait! Isn't this what opensource software is all about? Last time I checked the Firefox I'm using is a free toy! Obviously I'm a young person who lacks any true understanding of how the world works because obviously something as good as Firefox can't be free.
But you're going to see games massively available for the Mac before you see them for Linux. Why? Standarized hardware. Macs have been shipping with basic Radeon cards for awhile now. Truth be told, if you're developing a next generation game, the last thing you want to worry about is supporting a low end card like a Radeon 9200 or poor driver implementations. Factor in the ease of developing for DirectX and you're basically got a no go for most games.
Yes, some games like Quake or Unreal can run on Linux, but those are usually by established companies with a history of Linux gaming. However, bear in mind that DirectX 10 will be Vista only. Although Unreal Tournament 2007 will run on DirectX 9 and below, it is slated to use DirectX 10. So while UT 2007 won't require DX 10, you aren't going to get all of the graphical wowness playing on a Mac or using Linux. And this is for a game that traditionally is very Linux friendly.
Also, with the XBox 360 sharing so much with PC gaming there's even more reason to use DirectX since it can be easily ported. You could port to Windows with less time, more ease, and reach more users than if you ported to Linux.
So it's only to get worse folks, as DX 10 cards hit the market. Many people, including me prefer the OpenGL standards but when developers don't use it, there isn't much you can do. And they don't have a good reason to use it. Look at World of Warcraft. There's a Linux version petition going around with 20,000 signatures + a promise of a full year's worth of subscription. Out of WoW's 6 million+ pool of subscribers, twenty thousand is a completely negligible number. In terms of percentages, that's less than 0.35%. Do the math.
Yeah, gaming is the last barrier for me switching over to Linux but honestly it just isn't going to happen.
Not entirely true. The space shuttle was in part built so that the military could deploy larger sattelites + repair existing ones. NASA just got a good chunk of change in the process.
Symantec is trying to carve up Vista so that they don't go the way of Iomega. I hate to defend Microsoft, but according to the link
"However, these were all fixed by Microsoft in build 5384, the version of the operating system that was publicly released in May as Beta 2."
That's not to say the code is totally secure but that that seems to be a very good sign.
Don't forget to question your sources. If I was Symantec, I would be worried that in the case that Windows Vista is secure, and does come with a good build in antivirus that my revenue would go down the drain. For those of you who have ever used recent versions of Norton Antivirus or Internet Security, you know what I'm talking about. The widely used Norton software is honestly rather bloated and probably presents a security risk of its own. As an IT technician, I get a lot of requests from workers to remove Norton because Norton causes an alarming measurable slowdown in system performance.
Given that all the bugs found by Symantec were fixed in build 5384 and the fact that Vista still has about 5-6 months before it goes gold (at the earliest), any attempts to speculate on the security of Vista is just that -- pure speculation.
I think KinderStart attorney, Gregory Yu, needs to go back to kindergarten.
The most important lesson you learn from the public school system is as follows: if you suck the proper solution is to stop sucking.
A quick visit to the KinderStart website shows it to be poorly developed. Perhaps he could use the KinderStart search engine to find a suitable kindergarten for himself.
I bet he'd change his mind about the Pagerank real fast.
In November, AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre famously complained in a BusinessWeek interview that Google and VoIP provider Vonage were using "my pipes free."
When Google finally gets all of those fiber optic cables they've been buying up online, we'll see who's complaining about using "my pipes free." Jokes on you AT&T.
Because getting a detailed error report for most users is scarier than the fact that an error occured at all. Hence the spinning beachball of doom on Mac OSX:).
Well, it's already been announced that WGA isn't going to phone home anymore. Though I guess that's different from being phoned.
Even if Microsoft does this (which I strongly doubt they will), the amount of people who switch won't amount to much. Why?
Most users are running OEM built computers that'll pass WGA just fine. Plus the alternatives just aren't there.
Yes I have tried Ubuntu and SUSE and used a mac extensively for work. You know what? None of them are viable replacements for a primary Windows machine. If you want to game, you've got to use Windows.
I don't think enough people remember that despite the success of the iPod, people are still extremely reluctant to touch other Apple products. My sister loves her iPod nano but she balked when I wanted to install OSX on it.
As for linux, don't kid yourself. Ubuntu doesn't even detect my LCD monitor automatically, I had to search through the forums and find out how to add the drivers + resolution settings manually. I program for a living and I can honestly say that kind of user experience isn't an alternative to Windows.
And if you think I'm smoking crack about the lack of alternatives consider this. The most successful open source program in terms of marketshare for average consumers is argubly Firefox. For the most part, other software like Open Office has failed to gain desktop marketshare. Firefox is one of the few open source programs that is an easy, low maintainence alternative to the commercial competitor. Open Office doesn't fit that criteria. Dont kid yourself, Linux doesn't fit a criteria either -- it'll be faster for most people just to go to Target and buy a $99 copy of Windows XP Home.
That being said, I can't believe that this is real. If it were to happen, the sheer amount of disruption to the economy from all the pirated copies of Windows being used (including government + school) would warrant federal action. If there's a bigger bully than Microsoft it's the federal government. They couldn't bust Microsoft in 2000 because the government was riding the net boom back then. The US government is already looking to wack the petrol companies due to consumer outrage even though petrol companies donate HUGE sums of money to incumbents. Imagine what they'll do to a consumer unpopular and politically inactive Microsoft.
Yeah, but there are also good examples of two entrenched companies.
Just look at AMD vs Intel and ATI vs Nvidia.
Now if only those petroleum companies would really compete against each other...
Or if someone could make an alternative gaming platform to Windows I'd be set.
I can verify that this in fact works.
I used to be signed up for the Orange County Register. I decided to cancel the subscription after they screwed up the billing more than a few times, and after I notified them of the error too. They were charging a little over $19 for home delivery (only on sundays) per month. I tried to cancel it over the internet and once over the phone to no avail. The damned newspapers -- and bills -- just kept on coming.
After a 5 minute call to Discover (credit card company), I had them freeze any future payments to OCregister. Discover told me they'd contact the OC Register and let them know that I had tried to cancel the subscription.
Less than four days later the newspapers stopped coming.
And these companies wonder how to save their failing antiquidated business models. Pro tip: Unless you've got a monopoly, you can't afford to piss off your customers. For media companies, this is doubly true. Being a content provider means that anyone can do it faster, better, and cheaper than you.
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Hey, don't bash the minidisc. I had one for years before mp3 players were out. To this day, I have yet to find a mp3 player with better audio quality/battery life than my minidisc recorder.
Because it's argubly one of the most important fields in biology. Every field in biology has some sort of tie in to evolution. We're talking at the molecular level, biochemical structure (selective influence on DNA stability), enzymes, proteins, all the way up to the evolution of species and the evolution of populations. In short, it's the unifying factor of biology.
Lets not take into account the fact that it's extremely useful too. Evolutionary algorithms are argubly one of the next things in software development. The evolution of diseases like HIV/AIDS has mass implications on the quality of life for millions of people out there. Anyone hear about bacteria evolving antibiotic resistance? Considering how widely used antibiotics are for everything from the common cold to parasite infections to lethal infections like tuberculosis or the fact that antibiotics are prescribed standard treatment for ANY invasive surgery is good enough reason to study evolution.
The stakes are too high to stop advancing the study of evolution because they find the idea of common descent morally repugnant.
The funny thing will be if this "feature" makes it onto the Playstation 3.
Great, a $600 machine that's "not a games machine" but can't play movies. Just what I needed!
Can you overclock it?
Well, shit. When web browsers don't conform to standards, they aren't standards are they? I do have to spend hours hacking websites so they render correctly on numerous versions of IE, Firefox, Opera 8->9, and Konquerer. When I mean nothing I mean that standards are useless in real application because as far as I know, no browser (not even Opera) is completely 100% standards compliant. And getting around browser compliancy usually further amplifies problems across other browsers which makes standards even more irrelevant in actual application.
Seriously, standards mean little or nothing. All I know is, clients don't care if the site they paid for is compliant or not. They just care that it looks good, and works right. Which implies that I only care that it looks good and works right.
Believe it or not, but I still get people complaining when things don't work right for Mac I.E. 4.0X. And the sad thing is one of the people who requested Mac I.E. 4.0X compliance was running OSX on a PowerMac G5. I tried to get him to switch to Safari, but alas it was to no avail.
When you can't get a Mac user running OSX to switch to something other than Internet Explorer, you have a problem. But more importantly it tells you something about the desktop/consumer market and why open source software hasn't really been that successful. Firefox is argubly the most successful open source software, but even it has limited marketshare.
The problem doesn't exist with Microsoft, the problem exists between the computer and keyboard.
But you're going to see games massively available for the Mac before you see them for Linux. Why? Standarized hardware. Macs have been shipping with basic Radeon cards for awhile now. Truth be told, if you're developing a next generation game, the last thing you want to worry about is supporting a low end card like a Radeon 9200 or poor driver implementations. Factor in the ease of developing for DirectX and you're basically got a no go for most games. Yes, some games like Quake or Unreal can run on Linux, but those are usually by established companies with a history of Linux gaming. However, bear in mind that DirectX 10 will be Vista only. Although Unreal Tournament 2007 will run on DirectX 9 and below, it is slated to use DirectX 10. So while UT 2007 won't require DX 10, you aren't going to get all of the graphical wowness playing on a Mac or using Linux. And this is for a game that traditionally is very Linux friendly. Also, with the XBox 360 sharing so much with PC gaming there's even more reason to use DirectX since it can be easily ported. You could port to Windows with less time, more ease, and reach more users than if you ported to Linux. So it's only to get worse folks, as DX 10 cards hit the market. Many people, including me prefer the OpenGL standards but when developers don't use it, there isn't much you can do. And they don't have a good reason to use it. Look at World of Warcraft. There's a Linux version petition going around with 20,000 signatures + a promise of a full year's worth of subscription. Out of WoW's 6 million+ pool of subscribers, twenty thousand is a completely negligible number. In terms of percentages, that's less than 0.35%. Do the math. Yeah, gaming is the last barrier for me switching over to Linux but honestly it just isn't going to happen.
Not entirely true. The space shuttle was in part built so that the military could deploy larger sattelites + repair existing ones. NASA just got a good chunk of change in the process.
We should do this the California way. A total recall to terminate the Bush presidency early.
Symantec is trying to carve up Vista so that they don't go the way of Iomega. I hate to defend Microsoft, but according to the link
"However, these were all fixed by Microsoft in build 5384, the version of the operating system that was publicly released in May as Beta 2."
That's not to say the code is totally secure but that that seems to be a very good sign.
Don't forget to question your sources. If I was Symantec, I would be worried that in the case that Windows Vista is secure, and does come with a good build in antivirus that my revenue would go down the drain. For those of you who have ever used recent versions of Norton Antivirus or Internet Security, you know what I'm talking about. The widely used Norton software is honestly rather bloated and probably presents a security risk of its own. As an IT technician, I get a lot of requests from workers to remove Norton because Norton causes an alarming measurable slowdown in system performance.
Given that all the bugs found by Symantec were fixed in build 5384 and the fact that Vista still has about 5-6 months before it goes gold (at the earliest), any attempts to speculate on the security of Vista is just that -- pure speculation.
I think KinderStart attorney, Gregory Yu, needs to go back to kindergarten.
The most important lesson you learn from the public school system is as follows: if you suck the proper solution is to stop sucking.
A quick visit to the KinderStart website shows it to be poorly developed. Perhaps he could use the KinderStart search engine to find a suitable kindergarten for himself.
I bet he'd change his mind about the Pagerank real fast.
In November, AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre famously complained in a BusinessWeek interview that Google and VoIP provider Vonage were using "my pipes free."
When Google finally gets all of those fiber optic cables they've been buying up online, we'll see who's complaining about using "my pipes free." Jokes on you AT&T.
Because getting a detailed error report for most users is scarier than the fact that an error occured at all. Hence the spinning beachball of doom on Mac OSX :).
Well, it's already been announced that WGA isn't going to phone home anymore. Though I guess that's different from being phoned.
Even if Microsoft does this (which I strongly doubt they will), the amount of people who switch won't amount to much. Why?
Most users are running OEM built computers that'll pass WGA just fine. Plus the alternatives just aren't there.
Yes I have tried Ubuntu and SUSE and used a mac extensively for work. You know what? None of them are viable replacements for a primary Windows machine. If you want to game, you've got to use Windows.
I don't think enough people remember that despite the success of the iPod, people are still extremely reluctant to touch other Apple products. My sister loves her iPod nano but she balked when I wanted to install OSX on it.
As for linux, don't kid yourself. Ubuntu doesn't even detect my LCD monitor automatically, I had to search through the forums and find out how to add the drivers + resolution settings manually. I program for a living and I can honestly say that kind of user experience isn't an alternative to Windows.
And if you think I'm smoking crack about the lack of alternatives consider this. The most successful open source program in terms of marketshare for average consumers is argubly Firefox. For the most part, other software like Open Office has failed to gain desktop marketshare. Firefox is one of the few open source programs that is an easy, low maintainence alternative to the commercial competitor. Open Office doesn't fit that criteria. Dont kid yourself, Linux doesn't fit a criteria either -- it'll be faster for most people just to go to Target and buy a $99 copy of Windows XP Home. That being said, I can't believe that this is real. If it were to happen, the sheer amount of disruption to the economy from all the pirated copies of Windows being used (including government + school) would warrant federal action. If there's a bigger bully than Microsoft it's the federal government. They couldn't bust Microsoft in 2000 because the government was riding the net boom back then. The US government is already looking to wack the petrol companies due to consumer outrage even though petrol companies donate HUGE sums of money to incumbents. Imagine what they'll do to a consumer unpopular and politically inactive Microsoft.
Yeah, but there are also good examples of two entrenched companies. Just look at AMD vs Intel and ATI vs Nvidia. Now if only those petroleum companies would really compete against each other... Or if someone could make an alternative gaming platform to Windows I'd be set.
I can verify that this in fact works. I used to be signed up for the Orange County Register. I decided to cancel the subscription after they screwed up the billing more than a few times, and after I notified them of the error too. They were charging a little over $19 for home delivery (only on sundays) per month. I tried to cancel it over the internet and once over the phone to no avail. The damned newspapers -- and bills -- just kept on coming. After a 5 minute call to Discover (credit card company), I had them freeze any future payments to OCregister. Discover told me they'd contact the OC Register and let them know that I had tried to cancel the subscription. Less than four days later the newspapers stopped coming. And these companies wonder how to save their failing antiquidated business models. Pro tip: Unless you've got a monopoly, you can't afford to piss off your customers. For media companies, this is doubly true. Being a content provider means that anyone can do it faster, better, and cheaper than you.