More from Paul Thurrot today, as he reviews the N editions of Windows: "If you're wondering what the XP N Editions are like, wonder no more. I got my hands on both XP Home N and XP Pro N this week and gave them both a spin. The results were pretty uneventful. I can't recommend the XP N Editions per se, but I can report that you shouldn't be afraid of using these products at all. They're not crippled or broken in any way I can see."
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Member since:2005-07-09
I havn't mentioned anything about a government choosing for me. My point was like this if you walk in to a local electrical shop you have a choice of vcr's, TV's Fridges, Freezers etc. You have a choice of what features you want /don't want in any of those applicances. The same should be for Operating systems and things that are bolted on.. if you don't want IE, don't have it. If your granmother or whoever is not sure, why can't you tell her the pro's /cons of each available browser, mediaplayer or whatever? would that be too much hardship? let her /him make the decision. nobody tells you what make of car to drive or what wall paper to have or which brand of TV to buy. It should be your choice
Alie
Member since:2005-07-06
My point was like this if you walk in to a local electrical shop you have a choice of vcr's, TV's Fridges, Freezers etc. You have a choice of what features you want /don't want in any of those applicances.
Not in any stores I've seen. When I buy I Phillips TV, I get a Phillips remote. I can't choose a Samsung remote. Maybe Phillips chooses to offer different models with Picture-In-Picture or component inputs or whatever, but I only have a choice between what they choose to offer me. I can't pick and choose elements as if it were a salad bar.
Member since:2005-07-07
There are market limitatons .
To use the car analogy you mentioned, if I buy a new Ford, I am limited to what brand of stereo the vendor will install. And retro fitting a new one can be a hassle.
But the choice IS there, and most cars are built to interact with the "standard" car stereo design.
If Ford had 90% of the car market, this is not neccesarily a problem. If they ONLY sold their cars with Ford Car stereos then there is a case for a monopolies investigation.
(As an aside - I drive a MCC Smart, which has a custom dashboard. Most car stereos would look awful in it but the factory-fitted Grundig is moulded to fit. They did offer a limited choice, but only one model in each category: Just radio, you get Grundig Basic. Radio and CD, you get Grundig CD. 12-disk changer, Pioneer Advanced. (made up names).)
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Indeed. You could say the same thing for any piece of software. Government would not be imposing anything by encouraging a choice between programs which already exist as choices.