I suppose like anything else, there are people who will adapt to the tool ribbon and like it and people who will use it but never like it. But one of my points is that end users don't have a choice, Microsoft forces what they think is best on the people and the hell with what the customer wants or likes or doesn't like, that attitude for any company is just wrong.
In general my experience with Windows XP repair installs is that the situation you mention where the repair install breaks a particular program installation is rare; I'd have to say that in over 300 repair installs maybe once or twice I found a particular program (out of all installed programs) that didn't work properly after the install and doing all the updates and service packs. So given the rarity of that particular problem, I think that's a pretty poor excuse to remove that feature.
The fact is Ballmer is a sales guy, plain and simple and there have so many things that Microsoft has done wrong it's hard to list them all and I have to wonder if he's just the wrong person to be running things.
For example, starting with Office 2007 came the dreaded "tool ribbon" which to this day 9 out of 10 end users hate with a passion. For example one of my neighbors is a well regarded author with at least six books that have gotten some kind of award and she is fairly active in the community of authors; she's still using office 2003 and will not switch to a newer version because she just can't tolerate the tool ribbon and she says most authors whom she knows feel the same way. Remember back in the day, when Quattro Pro had selectable user interface and all those Lotus 1-2-3 users could switch without any effort? How about something like that (for Office and Windows) rather than MS jamming their idea of what the UI should be down the end users throats!
Another glaring example, starting with Window's Vista we the technician's lost the ability to do a repair of the operating system. In many cases where something went seriously wrong with XP (virus damage etc) you could almost count on a repair install to get the system working again but not with Vista or Windows 7 where the only choice you have is to backup your data and do a complete re-installation; what a waste of time.
And I've heard (maybe this is just a rumor) that the next version of Windows server is not going to have a GUI interface and will be completely command line driven; what sysadmin wants to sit there typing command after command into a Dos prompt.
These are just the things that came to mind, if I actually sat here for a while I'm sure I could think of a bunch more.
That the US Government officially took notice of Chinese efforts to spy on and undermine the US; wasn't all that fake Cisco equipment that ended up in the department of defense enough of a wake up call.
May I suggest that you and other like minded people write some letters calling for his resignation from the committee on the basis that his religious beliefs are incompatible with his post on that committee. The governor of my own state has frequently made statements about teachers and teachers unions that make me sick and I have not hesitated to write my representatives and voice my displeasure; both my parents taught public school for their entire career's and I'm aware of the thanklessness of that job and how wrongly teachers are being painted and vilified by politicians.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Wasn't there some other article posted here a year or so ago about the problem of one photon equaling one electron being the problem and that someone had discovered something that created a cascade effect so that one photon could become more than one electron? When are we going to see that on the market?
My opinion of McAfee is in general on par with other peoples, their software is not as effective as others; is buggy; takes a good chunk of cpu time.
Has anyone at Intel actually gotten any end users and other IT professionals opinion of the product? I'm sure that this is going to go down in business and computer history as a historic blunder and waste of money on Intel's part. I'm sure that anyone here can reel off a dozen cases of acquisitions that ended up being the worst decision in the company's history i.e. Time Warner buying AOL comes to mind.
Aside from the obvious that as someone else stated these laws assume that anyone buying these products is guilty or that the innocent must help pay for all those evil copyright infringers there's a couple things that I've never understood. If governments are collecting this tax money, who or what organization are they turning it over to that decides what artists get reimbursed and by how much for the illegal copying of their works? Do artists / studios have to file paperwork stating that their works were illegally copied and ask for a specific amount of monetary reimbursement?
As has been covered extensively here, studios claim outrageous damages from file sharing and one trial awarded damages against Jammie Thomas in the amount of $9,250 per infringed work so are studios trying to recoup that money from the fund and do the artists in question actually ever see any of that money? Also does the government get to keep a share of the money collected for the work of collecting it and disbursing it?
I was honored to meet him at a SciFi show a couple years ago, he was very pleasant and seemed to really enjoy the fact that he still had so many fans. He will be greatly missed!
If she's a native American, living on an Indian Reservation the RIAA may not be able to enforce a judgment against her. After all don't only certain federal agency's have jurisdiction on Indian Reservations? Isn't that why they can have their own Casino's regardless of the laws in the rest of the state about gambling?
As someone else mentioned, I also believe that Dolph Lungren's acting career has suffered from being in some seriously bad movies (Masters Of The Universe etc) but that he is a good actor. I enjoyed "I Come In Peace" and whatever that movie was that he was in with Branden Lee. But the truth is that having been born in 1957 he's now pushing 53 years old and if he were in his thirty's he'd be perfect for the part but sad to say he's just too old.
I'm sure that there's plenty of undiscovered talent running around in different parts of the world, the question is: Will Marvel / Disney go to the trouble of finding the correct person, possibly someone who's totally unknown for the part.
I mean really, you never know who you're going to find until you look. For example, in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", Will Sampson was working as a park ranger and someone from the production saw him and said "You! You're who we need for this role" and he turned out to be the perfect person.
I really wasn't suggesting anyone in their 50's just that in the past actors have been cast in parts that they were right for in one way but totally wrong for in another (who could really believe olive skinned Jessica Alba who has black hair naturally as a total blond?) and that a good actor can sometimes overcome a bad script or visa versa. If this turns into a franchise with multiple movies then whoever they select has to be young enough to stay in good shape through a six or eight year stretch so that probably lets out anyone over 40.
I've never seen that but I'll take your word for it. I suppose they could have an open casting call in Norway and Germany to see what they can come up with. But really what good is someone who physically fits the part but can't act to save their life and whose English may be nonexistent. I remember seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan The Barbarian and thinking, he really fits the role physically but wow he's a terrible actor. That's not to say that he didn't improve over time as I think that he was terrific in True Lies, but whoever they pick has to be able to act and speak English reasonably well or do the correct accent. My friends and I have this conversation frequently about actors who take parts that require an accent and they just can't do it. Kevin Costner in Robin Hood is one of my favorite examples where he just flat out doesn't even try to do an English accent and it's just laughable.
While I thought that Robert Downey Jr. did a really great job as Iron Man (in the first movie) the thing that made the movie was that the script was reasonably good. The second Fantastic Four movie was a total disaster because the script was absolutely the worst I think I've ever seen filmed and I was thinking all the way through the movie "Did the writer's ever actually read the original Jack Kirby, Stan Lee comic that this was based on?". The problem with the Avengers, besides needing a really good script is that the casting has to be good. To my mind the hardest problem here is trying to find someone to play Thor. You need a six foot two plus guy built like Hulk Hogan in his younger days that can do a credible Nordic accent and I think that is next to impossible.
Don't get me wrong, I love FireFox and it's my preferred browser but I do feel like it's falling behind in a lack of ability to take advantage of certain hardware and software advances.
First as noted, FireFox does not really take advantage of multiple Cpu core's and there's no official 64 bit version. I've read that the developers opinion is that why have a 64 bit version if the most necessary plugin, flash is not available in a 64 bit version so why bother. But Sun does make a 64 bit JRE and that's half the battle and I honestly believe that if a 64 bit official version of FireFox were released that would spur Adobe to jump on the band wagon and produce a 64 bit Flash plugin.
If they actually tried to enforce this wouldn't this just get shot down it court? I was somewhat under the impression that legal agreements i.e. terms of service etc. could not in any way restrict a persons constitutional rights?
It has been a bone of contention for years that Jack Kirby was the real creative talent while Lee was just a great PR man. People who are in the know in the industry agree that Kirby got screwed big time, I'm just sorry that he never lived to see his creative work returned to him.
I've been using BeyondTV and analog capture cards for at least five years (and loving it) and I recently got a dual analog / digital HVR-2250 from Hauppuage but that won't help when Comcast switches some of my favorite channels (like FX, A&E, ABC Family, SciFi, Spike, TNT, USA) to encrypted QAM.
Having to buy a whole new cable card enabled PC to the tune of $1,000 or more to get the functionality that I've been enjoying all these years just isn't in the budget. Yes, this whole situation is incredibly extortionist, monopolistic and just plain sucks.
I'm with you in that I'd really like to find a group like the EFF that would be willing to sue both the FCC and Comcast over this garbage because you can't tell me that in this day and age there's no way to give each household a box to convert / decrypt the channels that they are paying for in their cable package to clear QAM so that people like myself can use their own home brew DVR's. But also it's really going to take a groundswell of complains to everyone's elected representatives and the FCC to get some action on this.
The problem is that trying to get people to take action is very hard, this would require people to actually write letters (which I have done and will continue to do) and make complains and you must admit that the average person doesn't really know or care about this so it's really the tech savvy people (the BeyondTV, MythTV and Linux DVR user) that need to make an effort. If I had any idea how to go about organizing a mass protest and a letter writing campaign I would almost certainly do it since this whole situation just makes me so angry.
I've thought for some time that Microsoft should have some type of open update scheme that other vendors could participate in. As you mention so that Adobe could submit their updates to MS and that you get all your updates through Windows update. I realize that this is a serious issue and that MS would have to run it in a benevolent manner and I think most people here would agree that MS is far from benevolent. (the FireFox plugin that was mentioned recently comes to mind) But really when you want to update your system you've got to run all these software updaters individually and it's just incredibly time consuming not to mention that some of them like the Sun Java JRE installs it's own resident update agent adding yet another process to the system. (the install shield update manager is another, LiveUpdate from Symantec also) All these resident update agents just bog the system down with additional unnecessary processes so some type of central update agent could clean this up.
Also hardware updates as well, I usually check for hardware updates on my systems about every six months and it's a real nuisance. Before anyone says it, yes I've seen many instances of suggested hardware updates from MS that didn't work / caused anything from minor to major problems on the given system. MS would have to do a way, way better job with hardware updates than they do now.
I realize that there are several commercial services that do just this but I'm stubborn and won't pay for something like this that I can do myself. Also I have four computers and these services would not allow me to update all four systems for a single fee and I'm not paying for this service times four.
Without a doubt Monsters Inc. has to be one of the most funny movies I've ever seen ("2319! We've got a 2319!") and we can only hope that they keep the formula and that we get "More of the same" rather than the studio trying to do something different and ruining it.
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For crazy people to find places to steal guns from.
Seriously, if that's not also invasion of privacy then I don't know what is.
I suppose like anything else, there are people who will adapt to the tool ribbon and like it and people who will use it but never like it. But one of my points is that end users don't have a choice, Microsoft forces what they think is best on the people and the hell with what the customer wants or likes or doesn't like, that attitude for any company is just wrong.
In general my experience with Windows XP repair installs is that the situation you mention where the repair install breaks a particular program installation is rare; I'd have to say that in over 300 repair installs maybe once or twice I found a particular program (out of all installed programs) that didn't work properly after the install and doing all the updates and service packs. So given the rarity of that particular problem, I think that's a pretty poor excuse to remove that feature.
The fact is Ballmer is a sales guy, plain and simple and there have so many things that Microsoft has done wrong it's hard to list them all and I have to wonder if he's just the wrong person to be running things.
For example, starting with Office 2007 came the dreaded "tool ribbon" which to this day 9 out of 10 end users hate with a passion. For example one of my neighbors is a well regarded author with at least six books that have gotten some kind of award and she is fairly active in the community of authors; she's still using office 2003 and will not switch to a newer version because she just can't tolerate the tool ribbon and she says most authors whom she knows feel the same way. Remember back in the day, when Quattro Pro had selectable user interface and all those Lotus 1-2-3 users could switch without any effort? How about something like that (for Office and Windows) rather than MS jamming their idea of what the UI should be down the end users throats!
Another glaring example, starting with Window's Vista we the technician's lost the ability to do a repair of the operating system. In many cases where something went seriously wrong with XP (virus damage etc) you could almost count on a repair install to get the system working again but not with Vista or Windows 7 where the only choice you have is to backup your data and do a complete re-installation; what a waste of time.
And I've heard (maybe this is just a rumor) that the next version of Windows server is not going to have a GUI interface and will be completely command line driven; what sysadmin wants to sit there typing command after command into a Dos prompt.
These are just the things that came to mind, if I actually sat here for a while I'm sure I could think of a bunch more.
- Norm
That the US Government officially took notice of Chinese efforts to spy on and undermine the US; wasn't all that fake Cisco equipment that ended up in the department of defense enough of a wake up call.
Thank you very much for that.
May I suggest that you and other like minded people write some letters calling for his resignation from the committee on the basis that his religious beliefs are incompatible with his post on that committee. The governor of my own state has frequently made statements about teachers and teachers unions that make me sick and I have not hesitated to write my representatives and voice my displeasure; both my parents taught public school for their entire career's and I'm aware of the thanklessness of that job and how wrongly teachers are being painted and vilified by politicians.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Wasn't there some other article posted here a year or so ago about the problem of one photon equaling one electron being the problem and that someone had discovered something that created a cascade effect so that one photon could become more than one electron? When are we going to see that on the market?
My opinion of McAfee is in general on par with other peoples, their software is not as effective as others; is buggy; takes a good chunk of cpu time.
Has anyone at Intel actually gotten any end users and other IT professionals opinion of the product? I'm sure that this is going to go down in business and computer history as a historic blunder and waste of money on Intel's part. I'm sure that anyone here can reel off a dozen cases of acquisitions that ended up being the worst decision in the company's history i.e. Time Warner buying AOL comes to mind.
Aside from the obvious that as someone else stated these laws assume that anyone buying these products is guilty or that the innocent must help pay for all those evil copyright infringers there's a couple things that I've never understood. If governments are collecting this tax money, who or what organization are they turning it over to that decides what artists get reimbursed and by how much for the illegal copying of their works? Do artists / studios have to file paperwork stating that their works were illegally copied and ask for a specific amount of monetary reimbursement?
As has been covered extensively here, studios claim outrageous damages from file sharing and one trial awarded damages against Jammie Thomas in the amount of $9,250 per infringed work so are studios trying to recoup that money from the fund and do the artists in question actually ever see any of that money? Also does the government get to keep a share of the money collected for the work of collecting it and disbursing it?
It just all seems highly suspicious to me.
I was honored to meet him at a SciFi show a couple years ago, he was very pleasant and seemed to really enjoy the fact that he still had so many fans. He will be greatly missed!
If she's a native American, living on an Indian Reservation the RIAA may not be able to enforce a judgment against her. After all don't only certain federal agency's have jurisdiction on Indian Reservations? Isn't that why they can have their own Casino's regardless of the laws in the rest of the state about gambling?
While this may be good news if true, I recently read a news article that tests concluded that radiation from cell phone towers was the culprit: http://www.naturalnews.com/029958_mobile_phones_honeybees.html
I find it strange that there's more than one thing being blamed for this.
Novell buys WordPerfect and Quattro Pro... nuff said
As someone else mentioned, I also believe that Dolph Lungren's acting career has suffered from being in some seriously bad movies (Masters Of The Universe etc) but that he is a good actor. I enjoyed "I Come In Peace" and whatever that movie was that he was in with Branden Lee. But the truth is that having been born in 1957 he's now pushing 53 years old and if he were in his thirty's he'd be perfect for the part but sad to say he's just too old.
Actually, you make a really good point and I think that could really work.
I'm sure that there's plenty of undiscovered talent running around in different parts of the world, the question is: Will Marvel / Disney go to the trouble of finding the correct person, possibly someone who's totally unknown for the part.
I mean really, you never know who you're going to find until you look. For example, in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", Will Sampson was working as a park ranger and someone from the production saw him and said "You! You're who we need for this role" and he turned out to be the perfect person.
I really wasn't suggesting anyone in their 50's just that in the past actors have been cast in parts that they were right for in one way but totally wrong for in another (who could really believe olive skinned Jessica Alba who has black hair naturally as a total blond?) and that a good actor can sometimes overcome a bad script or visa versa. If this turns into a franchise with multiple movies then whoever they select has to be young enough to stay in good shape through a six or eight year stretch so that probably lets out anyone over 40.
I've never seen that but I'll take your word for it. I suppose they could have an open casting call in Norway and Germany to see what they can come up with. But really what good is someone who physically fits the part but can't act to save their life and whose English may be nonexistent. I remember seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan The Barbarian and thinking, he really fits the role physically but wow he's a terrible actor. That's not to say that he didn't improve over time as I think that he was terrific in True Lies, but whoever they pick has to be able to act and speak English reasonably well or do the correct accent. My friends and I have this conversation frequently about actors who take parts that require an accent and they just can't do it. Kevin Costner in Robin Hood is one of my favorite examples where he just flat out doesn't even try to do an English accent and it's just laughable.
While I thought that Robert Downey Jr. did a really great job as Iron Man (in the first movie) the thing that made the movie was that the script was reasonably good. The second Fantastic Four movie was a total disaster because the script was absolutely the worst I think I've ever seen filmed and I was thinking all the way through the movie "Did the writer's ever actually read the original Jack Kirby, Stan Lee comic that this was based on?". The problem with the Avengers, besides needing a really good script is that the casting has to be good. To my mind the hardest problem here is trying to find someone to play Thor. You need a six foot two plus guy built like Hulk Hogan in his younger days that can do a credible Nordic accent and I think that is next to impossible.
Don't get me wrong, I love FireFox and it's my preferred browser but I do feel like it's falling behind in a lack of ability to take advantage of certain hardware and software advances.
First as noted, FireFox does not really take advantage of multiple Cpu core's and there's no official 64 bit version. I've read that the developers opinion is that why have a 64 bit version if the most necessary plugin, flash is not available in a 64 bit version so why bother. But Sun does make a 64 bit JRE and that's half the battle and I honestly believe that if a 64 bit official version of FireFox were released that would spur Adobe to jump on the band wagon and produce a 64 bit Flash plugin.
If they actually tried to enforce this wouldn't this just get shot down it court? I was somewhat under the impression that legal agreements i.e. terms of service etc. could not in any way restrict a persons constitutional rights?
It has been a bone of contention for years that Jack Kirby was the real creative talent while Lee was just a great PR man. People who are in the know in the industry agree that Kirby got screwed big time, I'm just sorry that he never lived to see his creative work returned to him.
I've been using BeyondTV and analog capture cards for at least five years (and loving it) and I recently got a dual analog / digital HVR-2250 from Hauppuage but that won't help when Comcast switches some of my favorite channels (like FX, A&E, ABC Family, SciFi, Spike, TNT, USA) to encrypted QAM.
Having to buy a whole new cable card enabled PC to the tune of $1,000 or more to get the functionality that I've been enjoying all these years just isn't in the budget. Yes, this whole situation is incredibly extortionist, monopolistic and just plain sucks.
I'm with you in that I'd really like to find a group like the EFF that would be willing to sue both the FCC and Comcast over this garbage because you can't tell me that in this day and age there's no way to give each household a box to convert / decrypt the channels that they are paying for in their cable package to clear QAM so that people like myself can use their own home brew DVR's. But also it's really going to take a groundswell of complains to everyone's elected representatives and the FCC to get some action on this.
The problem is that trying to get people to take action is very hard, this would require people to actually write letters (which I have done and will continue to do) and make complains and you must admit that the average person doesn't really know or care about this so it's really the tech savvy people (the BeyondTV, MythTV and Linux DVR user) that need to make an effort. If I had any idea how to go about organizing a mass protest and a letter writing campaign I would almost certainly do it since this whole situation just makes me so angry.
Damn straight! It's about time somebody took these bad boys out to the wood shed and gave them a good spanking!
I've thought for some time that Microsoft should have some type of open update scheme that other vendors could participate in. As you mention so that Adobe could submit their updates to MS and that you get all your updates through Windows update. I realize that this is a serious issue and that MS would have to run it in a benevolent manner and I think most people here would agree that MS is far from benevolent. (the FireFox plugin that was mentioned recently comes to mind) But really when you want to update your system you've got to run all these software updaters individually and it's just incredibly time consuming not to mention that some of them like the Sun Java JRE installs it's own resident update agent adding yet another process to the system. (the install shield update manager is another, LiveUpdate from Symantec also) All these resident update agents just bog the system down with additional unnecessary processes so some type of central update agent could clean this up.
Also hardware updates as well, I usually check for hardware updates on my systems about every six months and it's a real nuisance. Before anyone says it, yes I've seen many instances of suggested hardware updates from MS that didn't work / caused anything from minor to major problems on the given system. MS would have to do a way, way better job with hardware updates than they do now.
I realize that there are several commercial services that do just this but I'm stubborn and won't pay for something like this that I can do myself. Also I have four computers and these services would not allow me to update all four systems for a single fee and I'm not paying for this service times four.
Without a doubt Monsters Inc. has to be one of the most funny movies I've ever seen ("2319! We've got a 2319!") and we can only hope that they keep the formula and that we get "More of the same" rather than the studio trying to do something different and ruining it.