Problem is the Hosts file is still too rough. It blocks ad servers but not only on specific sites. For example, I can block all of DoubleClick or all of Atlas, but I can't block www.annoyingads.com.
For example, what if site A is using DoubleClick and all their ads are well-done and don't annoy me? Meanwhile, site B is also using DoubleClick and its ads are completely irritating? Then I'm screwed again: I can't add DoubleClick or I'm punishing site A for a problem on site B.
The *really* annoying part is that this would be like 5 lines of code for AdBlock, since they already have the reverse behavior coded. It's just irritating that it doesn't do that.
Yeah, but using AdBlock is like using a nuclear weapon to go deer hunting.
So you went to ONE site that had ONE ad that slowed your browsing experience down. You install AdBlock, and suddenly it's blocking everything ever! Sure there's a whitelist, but there's no way to turn AdBlock off for all sites *except* for the one you had problems with.
I'd love to use AdBlock for the 3 or 4 sites I regularly visit that have bad ads, but there's no way to do that without blocking thousands of perfectly innocent sites. If AdBlock added a "blacklist" mode, I think they'd make everybody happier.
I'm not even saying they should get rid of the "whitelist" mode it currently has.
That doesn't help me if it works during the testing period, I decided to go for it, then they roll-out an update that fries all my bookmarks 3 weeks later.
Mostly it's just my own paranoid about low-version-number software, I was hoping someone else here had tried it, but of course all I get is snark.
The problem is that AdBlock's only mode is "always on, except on whitelisted sites." If it had a mode of "always off, except for blacklisted sites" then I think a lot more people would get behind it-- content creators and web surfers.
I know for me, there are only about 3 domains I regularly see that have ads I want to block, everything else I visit I want to see the ads. But there's no way to tell AdBlock this, and so my choices are either to block all ads, or keep AdBlock constantly turned-off until I'm on one of those sites. Neither is a good choice.
Does anybody have any experience with Xmarks in Chrome? I want to try it out ASAP, as it's the only thing preventing me from using Chrome full-time, but I get scared away with very beta software like this-- I'm afraid it'll delete all my bookmarks.
Good tech companies have 5-6 tiers for engineers, so they can spend their entire career as an engineer, and never feel like they're being left behind by those who were promoted into middle management.
A few others have made that point and I remember how installing Debian, Gentoo and Suse was around then. It wasn't pretty, but XP, with all of it's manufacturer's support, wasn't doing a great job.
Installing Linux in 2001, you were lucky if the damned thing even booted. I remember, for example, being particularly pissed at an install of RedHat 6.2 (IIRC) which had a SoundBlaster 128 on the *supported hardware* list, and yet when it booted? No sound. Not a peep. So even if XP was hard to install by 2001 standards, at least it didn't lie to users about hardware support.
If you're going to compare to a modern version of Linux, use a modern version of Windows. Apples to apples. Otherwise, you're just slathering FUD all over this site already overflowing with FUD.
My point, however, is that I still wonder how many users switch, how they do it and what their reasons are. If you say that average users don't install OS'es, then either somenone else does it for them or they don't switch.
Duh.
The latter would imply that the percentage netbooks sold with Linux on it would be a fair indicator of de facto market share.
All things being equal, yes.
Except you're missing the point that, occasionally, it's a better deal to buy the XP/Windows 7 netbook and then wipe the drive and install Linux over it. For example, if you want a MSI Wind model, you're better off buying the Windows version *even if you want Linux*, since it has a full hardware and costs the same. That said, that disclaimer also applies to full laptops, and occasionally desktops as well.
Windows however is painful to install, (Install, Update, Reboot repeat until bored....) and then search for the manufacturers website, then search the manufacturers website for the correct driver, run the installer, reboot again... then when I have a working system, tweak to make it how I like as above....
Update your rhetoric.
Vista and Windows 7 solved this problem. Please stop spreading FUD. You might have to run Windows Update once, but that's ONLY if you have a weird video card that doesn't have a driver on the DVD. The patches are slip-streamed in by the installer, the drivers all have a basic version on the DVD and a more complete version up on Windows Update. You just install and... uh... you're done.
Of course you still have to "tweak it to make it how you like", but since Microsoft isn't composed entirely of magical elves, there's really nothing they can do to solve that problem for you.
XP is really, really old. So it doesn't have built-in drivers for any of your stuff, which makes installation pretty painful. Unless you're using a SP3 CD, in which case it's at least a tiny bit updated, but you probably weren't.
I wonder how many 'average' users would get XP, Vista or 7 working on a desktop, let alone a netbook.
Two points here:
1) "average" users don't install OSes. That's some kind of crazy Linux-user fantasy. 2) Vista or Windows 7 would be much, much easier to install than XP.
Tell you what, go find a Linux distro circa XP's release (late 2001, I believe?) and install that on the same beige box. Report back how well it does.
I'm not sure how the arrangement works, but if you charter a private plane and the charter company is under a certain size, they are responsible for the security check. For example, I'm pretty sure when I flew Kenmore Air out of Seattle, the security screening (what little of it there was) was definitely not under Federal control. And when you think about it, the TSA can't possibly have the resources to send full-time staff to *every* airport (or in the case of Kenmore Air, dock-- they're seaplanes) that offers charters.
And it's so timely because Michael Vick is all over the news right now! People have completely forgotten about that golfer, whatsisname, Lion Woods? Tiger Forest? Whatever.
I never can believe what passes for "humor" on this site. Is it like wine, older is better?
WTF kind of person sees an article about a $200 (supposedly) super-light tablet and immediately asks how many cores it has? How is that even slightly relevant for a machine of this class?
It obviously has 256 cores and can beat Deep Blue at chess.
What are you talking about? Emacs is an abomination. Eclipse is ok, but Java is a deal-breaker for me. I was referring to just any IDE with variable name auto-complete.
How are you using an IDE that's syntactally aware but doesn't have auto-complete? WTF.
Canada, home of the free speech tribunals? Which can unilaterally ban products if they are deemed "insensitive" with absolutely no oversight or public vote?
The market is really hipster douchebags. They're competing with thick-framed square glasses and retro 1980s video game t-shirts. The music industry doesn't really figure into it.
We need to educate programmers, make them better - not dumb down programming.
One of these things is possible, the other is not.
Making programming simpler isn't "dumbing it down" it's making the power of computers accessible to more people. I frankly can't imagine why anybody would object to that.
When you're working on code that requires a lot of manipulation of a variable, typing a long, descriptive name 65 times is a bit of a PITA, and subject to its own bugs, when you misspell it a few times!
Maybe you should upgrade to an IDE built sometime in this century.
That only shows up on some Facebook UIs, though... for example, AFAIK, the iPhone app doesn't have the block option, and I pretty much only ever view Facebook through the iPhone.
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Problem is the Hosts file is still too rough. It blocks ad servers but not only on specific sites. For example, I can block all of DoubleClick or all of Atlas, but I can't block www.annoyingads.com.
For example, what if site A is using DoubleClick and all their ads are well-done and don't annoy me? Meanwhile, site B is also using DoubleClick and its ads are completely irritating? Then I'm screwed again: I can't add DoubleClick or I'm punishing site A for a problem on site B.
The *really* annoying part is that this would be like 5 lines of code for AdBlock, since they already have the reverse behavior coded. It's just irritating that it doesn't do that.
Yeah, but using AdBlock is like using a nuclear weapon to go deer hunting.
So you went to ONE site that had ONE ad that slowed your browsing experience down. You install AdBlock, and suddenly it's blocking everything ever! Sure there's a whitelist, but there's no way to turn AdBlock off for all sites *except* for the one you had problems with.
I'd love to use AdBlock for the 3 or 4 sites I regularly visit that have bad ads, but there's no way to do that without blocking thousands of perfectly innocent sites. If AdBlock added a "blacklist" mode, I think they'd make everybody happier.
I'm not even saying they should get rid of the "whitelist" mode it currently has.
That doesn't help me if it works during the testing period, I decided to go for it, then they roll-out an update that fries all my bookmarks 3 weeks later.
Mostly it's just my own paranoid about low-version-number software, I was hoping someone else here had tried it, but of course all I get is snark.
a message archive for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep
What about for messages I don't want to keep but still want to delete? Does it handle those?
Only if we can't BBQ them.
The problem is that AdBlock's only mode is "always on, except on whitelisted sites." If it had a mode of "always off, except for blacklisted sites" then I think a lot more people would get behind it-- content creators and web surfers.
I know for me, there are only about 3 domains I regularly see that have ads I want to block, everything else I visit I want to see the ads. But there's no way to tell AdBlock this, and so my choices are either to block all ads, or keep AdBlock constantly turned-off until I'm on one of those sites. Neither is a good choice.
Does anybody have any experience with Xmarks in Chrome? I want to try it out ASAP, as it's the only thing preventing me from using Chrome full-time, but I get scared away with very beta software like this-- I'm afraid it'll delete all my bookmarks.
Any opinions?
Good tech companies have 5-6 tiers for engineers, so they can spend their entire career as an engineer, and never feel like they're being left behind by those who were promoted into middle management.
A few others have made that point and I remember how installing Debian, Gentoo and Suse was around then. It wasn't pretty, but XP, with all of it's manufacturer's support, wasn't doing a great job.
Installing Linux in 2001, you were lucky if the damned thing even booted. I remember, for example, being particularly pissed at an install of RedHat 6.2 (IIRC) which had a SoundBlaster 128 on the *supported hardware* list, and yet when it booted? No sound. Not a peep. So even if XP was hard to install by 2001 standards, at least it didn't lie to users about hardware support.
If you're going to compare to a modern version of Linux, use a modern version of Windows. Apples to apples. Otherwise, you're just slathering FUD all over this site already overflowing with FUD.
My point, however, is that I still wonder how many users switch, how they do it and what their reasons are. If you say that average users don't install OS'es, then either somenone else does it for them or they don't switch.
Duh.
The latter would imply that the percentage netbooks sold with Linux on it would be a fair indicator of de facto market share.
All things being equal, yes.
Except you're missing the point that, occasionally, it's a better deal to buy the XP/Windows 7 netbook and then wipe the drive and install Linux over it. For example, if you want a MSI Wind model, you're better off buying the Windows version *even if you want Linux*, since it has a full hardware and costs the same. That said, that disclaimer also applies to full laptops, and occasionally desktops as well.
The real problem is that Linux users are such privacy kooks, there's no way to make a distro ping a server and say "hey, this guy just installed Ubuntu!" The only half-decent way to get Linux numbers is to go by browser share, and by that metric Linux has an embarrassingly small marketshare. (Currently less than 0.5%, according to StatOwl. http://statowl.com/operating_system_market_share_trend.php?1=1&timeframe=last_6&interval=month&chart_id=13&fltr_br=&fltr_os=&fltr_se=&fltr_cn=&timeframe=last_12 )
Maybe there are a ton of Linux users who don't use the web. I dunno.
Windows however is painful to install, (Install, Update, Reboot repeat until bored....) and then search for the manufacturers website, then search the manufacturers website for the correct driver, run the installer, reboot again ... then when I have a working system, tweak to make it how I like as above....
Update your rhetoric.
Vista and Windows 7 solved this problem. Please stop spreading FUD. You might have to run Windows Update once, but that's ONLY if you have a weird video card that doesn't have a driver on the DVD. The patches are slip-streamed in by the installer, the drivers all have a basic version on the DVD and a more complete version up on Windows Update. You just install and... uh... you're done.
Of course you still have to "tweak it to make it how you like", but since Microsoft isn't composed entirely of magical elves, there's really nothing they can do to solve that problem for you.
XP is really, really old. So it doesn't have built-in drivers for any of your stuff, which makes installation pretty painful. Unless you're using a SP3 CD, in which case it's at least a tiny bit updated, but you probably weren't.
I wonder how many 'average' users would get XP, Vista or 7 working on a desktop, let alone a netbook.
Two points here:
1) "average" users don't install OSes. That's some kind of crazy Linux-user fantasy.
2) Vista or Windows 7 would be much, much easier to install than XP.
Tell you what, go find a Linux distro circa XP's release (late 2001, I believe?) and install that on the same beige box. Report back how well it does.
It's not the worst kind. Not even remotely. For example, Microsoft doesn't murder people, like union-busting monopolies in the past have.
Nothing to do with your point, but have a sense of perspective.
I'm not sure how the arrangement works, but if you charter a private plane and the charter company is under a certain size, they are responsible for the security check. For example, I'm pretty sure when I flew Kenmore Air out of Seattle, the security screening (what little of it there was) was definitely not under Federal control. And when you think about it, the TSA can't possibly have the resources to send full-time staff to *every* airport (or in the case of Kenmore Air, dock-- they're seaplanes) that offers charters.
And it's so timely because Michael Vick is all over the news right now! People have completely forgotten about that golfer, whatsisname, Lion Woods? Tiger Forest? Whatever.
I never can believe what passes for "humor" on this site. Is it like wine, older is better?
Sure it was a Flash game?
I've seen pixel-perfect clones of Pac-Man, complete with sound effects, written in VBA in Excel itself.
WTF kind of person sees an article about a $200 (supposedly) super-light tablet and immediately asks how many cores it has? How is that even slightly relevant for a machine of this class?
It obviously has 256 cores and can beat Deep Blue at chess.
Wait, I misread. It has auto-completion-- then why would you complain about variable naming?
A lot of complaints in this thread can be resolved by just using the features of your IDE.
What are you talking about? Emacs is an abomination. Eclipse is ok, but Java is a deal-breaker for me. I was referring to just any IDE with variable name auto-complete.
How are you using an IDE that's syntactally aware but doesn't have auto-complete? WTF.
There are kid friendly MMOs, why not just use one of those?
WOW isn't rated for 9-year-olds, anyway. Even if you ignore the "online content" warning, I believe it's either 12+ or 15+.
Canada, home of the free speech tribunals? Which can unilaterally ban products if they are deemed "insensitive" with absolutely no oversight or public vote?
They're going way off the deep-end.
The market is really hipster douchebags. They're competing with thick-framed square glasses and retro 1980s video game t-shirts. The music industry doesn't really figure into it.
We need to educate programmers, make them better - not dumb down programming.
One of these things is possible, the other is not.
Making programming simpler isn't "dumbing it down" it's making the power of computers accessible to more people. I frankly can't imagine why anybody would object to that.
When you're working on code that requires a lot of manipulation of a variable, typing a long, descriptive name 65 times is a bit of a PITA, and subject to its own bugs, when you misspell it a few times!
Maybe you should upgrade to an IDE built sometime in this century.
That only shows up on some Facebook UIs, though... for example, AFAIK, the iPhone app doesn't have the block option, and I pretty much only ever view Facebook through the iPhone.
I invented one called the duh-ometer. It has to do with how many times people say "duh" to you, normalized over a year.
Hard to measure reliably, though.