IE 7 is not standards compliant. So, therefore, IE 7 is proprietary internet graphical interface, that can display content from HTTP servers, that is encoded using microsofts proprietary content protocol.....which may be similar, but is not HTML/CSS.

Microsoft chose to do this, in order to try and leverage msHTML into the open internet. They failed. However, the mess they left is still around. Why shouldn't online retailers charge more to customers who insist in using proprietary clients, to cover the cost of converting the standards compliant HTML, to the Microsoft format?

You think anti-virus would have protected mac users from this?

It wouldn't.

This is the most f*in insightful comment I have seen on slashdot. +10

I use a computer that has a unix command line, comes pre-installed with Apache/PHP, runs office and photoshop natively.... And just works.

Really..... I dont mind paying over the odds for a computer that does this.

I've got to about an hour, before they told me 'I can go to hell'.....

I managed to keep them talking while I setup a new VM from scratch, and then let them butcher that one believeing it was a real PC. And, then resetting it back to its original state a few times, after supposed crashes!..... haha. They havent phoned me back!

>>And since basically NO custom business apps run on it,

You are so wrong.

http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/enterprise/

If apple made eveything iOs, then what are developers going to code with?

Apple releases an iOs SDK for windows?

*shudder*

A user has asked for Airprint to be supported. a quick google search of "windows airprint", gives instructions how to do it. its an easy fix.

However, you rather tell your users they should be using windows 7 instead.

Everyone hates them, the monthly change of password to something that hasn't been uses the last umpteen times, for the sake of security.

A fingerprint reader can be purchased for $50..... So, why, still do the IT departments want to put their staff through the password mangle??

" In fact, Apple’s more tightly constrained systems are generally credited with being more stable and less prone to hardware/software and OS/app incompatibilities and mishaps,"

So, he's saying that apples gear is more stable, etc, because its tightly constrained???

Bollocks!... Look at linux, that's pretty stable and works with all hardware, and yet its arguably the most open of PC operating systems. The reason Apple gear is more stable is because Apple makes it that way, rather than just make something that looks good, and ship it "cus the suckers will buy it anyhow", which seems to be the mentally of most of the tech industry.

Didn't oracle say they were taking over releases of Java on the mac?

So, tell me where you subscribe to a cloud based backup service with 500gb of storage, and you can push data to at 20mb/second.

I'll stick with my 20 year old social networking engine, if you don't mind.

telnet://muon.mono.org

Gates personally coded some of the BASIC interpretors on old-school 8 bit micros. Vic 20/ C64 and the like. I learnt to program on these machines, and in many ways I might not have become a developer earning loads, if it was not for cutting my teeth developing on these machines.

However, somewhere between then, and now, Microsoft lost their way. Innovation, gave way to trying to lock people into their platforms and rejecting anything non Microsoft. They have enough money to develop an operating system, that's built on Open standards,and is graphically as appealing as Apples... And, laugh all the way to the bank!

However, they'd rather charge through the nose for a mediocre system, that they know will sell as they've eliminated the competition by bullying PC suppliers to only ship windows, or else.

The reason Apple are doing well, is because they are not Microsoft, and people would rather pay a high premium for their computers, than have to put up with Microsofts offering. Its just very sad, that Microsoft have chosen to be that type of company.

No, sir, you are mistaken.

>>Not all the photons will get through...

If you use a polarising filter, followed by a detector to detect only half of the photons arriving, then your are right.

However I did not say this. Certain kinds of crystal (calcite for instance) will bend the path of a photon based on its polarisation. So, wire up 2 photon detectors at different exit points from a calcite crystal, and all photons (minus random losses due to the material itself) will get through and be detected, both alignments..

>>>No, this is not the case at all. If you do not know which axis to measure on you destroy the entangled state.
**Completely incorrect**. Quantum theory says that you'll get the entangled photons polarization will correlate to each other .** It doesn't matter** what axis you measure on. If this wasn't the case, well, there wouldn't be anything special about this facet of quantium physics, that couldn't be explained with classical.

>>The spooky effect is that you do see either a quicker or slower dropoff than the cos^2(theta) for polarizers with these entangled state, I can't remember which (quicker/slower).

If you took 2 polarisation detectors, each measuring one of the entangled pair of photons, then cos^2(theta) describes how often the two bitstreams will correlate. However, theta is the angle between the photon detectors... It has no dependence on the original polarisation the the photons are emitted. Indeed it can be shown the emitted photons **cannot actually have** a specific polarisation.