I first went online with a brand-new, crazy-fast 14.4 that I had to set the DIP switches on in 1995. So I wasn't there in 1989, but I'm not a total noob, either. Busy signals 90% of the time? Not in 1995. You're exaggerating just a shade, perhaps. Maybe once every couple days I couldn't connect, but I usually got through on the second call, and pretty much always by the third. I didn't get cable until 2000 or so.

I have no problem with how he runs his business -- phone lines, idle time, etc., yeah, I get that -- but it's 2014 and even though "literally" now means "figuratively", the word "unlimited" still means "unlimited". My only complaint with him is that he shouldn't say "unlimited" if there are, in fact, limits. That's all. There's a perfectly good word available for him to use: "unmetered" -- and I know he knows that word because he buries it under the asterisk. It is quite simply dishonest, whether it's AT&T or Comcast selling UNLIMITED* broadband or a little mom-and-pop shop like this.

IF IT'S FUCKING LIMITED, DON'T FUCKING CALL IT UNLIMITED!

How hard is it to just say "Add $5.00/month for unmetered, interactive usage" without an asterisk and a bunch of bullshit between "Add $5" and the description of what you actually get for your five bucks?

In theory it's usually good when bad things happen to congress for exactly that reason, but the violation here is "we've been spying on you and know all your dirty little secrets" ... so maybe not so much.

Is it "Formal Specification" or "Specification Formal"? Will the process take the form of "PHP to Formal Specification" or will it be "Formal Specification from PHP"? How about "php2spec"?

Once it got to the point that you could buy a decent (read: non-gaming) machine for about the same as the parts would cost, I quit building. The last one I built was an AMD K6-2/450 for close to $1,000 and the first one I bought was a refurbished 1 GHz PIII HP Pavilion for I think $850, to which I added an ATI TV-Wonder video capture card and a 32 MB video card with DVI to drive a used 18.1" IBM flat panel that I picked up for a song. (I think $800 at the time.) It came with Windows ME and I "upgraded" to 98 SE the day I got it (boot time dropped from about 90 seconds to about 45); later I put on Windows 2000 and that thing ran like a swiss watch for years.

- Lenny, Strange Days

/etc/hosts

Install once, update if you care to, but it's not essential. Requires no configuration after installation, works for ALL browsers on your system with no setup, does not require the browser to "support" it in any way (i.e., extensions), never ever gets broken by browser updates, works on ancient computers with grossly out-of-date browsers. Works with ANY tcp/ip-based app on your system, really, so it lowers vectors for IM apps, Acrobat, etc.

The first computer I used it on was an 800 MHz G3 iBook with 640 MB RAM. Some people may say a large hosts file will slow down your computer, but I've never seen that happen myself in over a decade of using it on literally every computer I have.

It may not block EVERY ad like a dedicated extension does, but it comes really really close, and I like the fact that it works with all browsers and never requires updating. When I get a new computer, I put the hosts file on and pretty much never touch it again. A handful of sites (like hulu) will not work with an adblocker and it's a manual process to edit the file, but for unix types, that's not a problem. It blocks google's sponsored links so you may need to take that out too, for people who google "sears" and click the first (sponsored) link instead of the first actual link.

No reason not to do security in layers and use it WITH adblocking extensions, I suppose, but I've never felt the need to.

SPUG: "The group is on hiatus."

The most recent "previous meeting" mentioned was 12/5/2006, and there's a link at the bottom that says "Palm is hiring" if you want a hint of when that page was last updated.

Even the link to the article about the death of Palm is two years old now. Seriously man, it has run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.

My local libraries all have tons of outdated (5- to 15-year-old) books on a variety of computer subjects. You just might get lucky and find the one you need at yours.

Or, check Amazon. Lots of people list lots of useless old books for basically nothing plus shipping. First hit for "palm os programming" is this meaty tome, from 2002, for 30 cents plus $3.99 shipping. Bang, zoom, $4.29 later, you're set. Palm OS Programming for Dummies, 22 cents plus $3.99. Whatever version you need is out there somewhere.

And they usually come with interactive CD-ROMs. Interactive, my friend. Check the descriptions on Amazon and make sure they're included.

I'd just say it's useless because no two people can agree on what's important, so what's the point of giving a single score? And even something as seemingly simple as a compression algorithm has more than just two characteristics:
1) speed of compression
2) file size
3) speed of decompression
4) does it handle corrupt files well? (or at all?)

Even just looking at 1 & 2, everyone has different needs. Some people value 1 above all others, some people value 2, and most people are somewhere in between, and "somewhere" is a pretty big area. Yes, your examples are pretty far apart and most people would agree that "best" is somewhere in the middle, but the middle is bigger than you think. Hence, there can simply never be a "best". So why bother trying to score one?

> So why can't you create some kind of rating system to give
> you at least a vague quantifiable score of that concept?

Because it would just be too vague to be useful. I mean, yeah, it can sort out the great ones from the horrible ones, but that's easy anyway, so if you're just trying to compare a few really good ones, the difference isn't enough.

A car that goes 200 mph is great, but not if it gets 2 mpg. Likewise, 100 mpg and a top speed of 30 mph isn't useful either. If you're comparing a bunch of cars that get 32-35 mpg and go 130-140 mph, there's not a meaningful way to pick the "best" in that group that everyone will agree on, unless one has the highest speed and the best mileage, but then, again, that's an obvious winner and you don't need an algorithm's help to pick it out of the pack.

OF CORUSE they don't want to make them. More moving parts (read: points of failure), harder to design and manufacturer, higher component costs, and, despite the findings of your rigorous "informal online survey", there actually ISN'T that much demand for such a device.

Adding a slide-out keyboard adds many moving parts, and either a) adds bulk or b) displaces space that could be otherwise used by the battery. (Or both.) So you'll get a more-expensive phone with ONE feature (physical keys) and it'll be larger, heavier, less reliable, and/or have worse battery life. Can you see why this market isn't worth sinking money into? Face it: whenever you deviate from the norm -- the biggest seller, and by extension, the cheapest to manufacture due to economies of scale -- you either need to a) charge a premium, or b) eat the costs because you're chasing market share. Choice "a" will shrink the possible market even more so, further reducing return-on-investment, and "b" is not ideal either.

There are literally a hundred things that could be (or not be) on a phone, and people feel very strongly about these things, but it's impossible to manufacture every single combination. Somewhere there is a guy who wants a phone with a triple-size battery and big antenna and no camera because he works for a defense contractor in a building where he gets shitty reception, but he's SOL and so are you. Unless this takes off, you'll have to live without your dream feature set.

Also, you need to think more about the implications of your data. Of the people you surveyed who HAVE used a phone with a slide-out keyboard, only about half of them STILL want a phone with a slide-out keyboard. There's a clue in there somewhere...

Could have used a <strong> tag that was never closed and some its/it's confusion. Maybe an apostrophe before the "s" at the end of a plural noun. Otherwise, solid post. Would read again.

The process isn't *that* hard, and when you rip movies you borrowed from the library or Redbox, then your ISP, the MPAA, the NSA, and everyone else doesn't know.

OMG! They must have read your comment, realized the error of their ways, and done away with the fee!

"OS X Mavericks. Now available for free from the Mac App Store."
http://www.apple.com/osx/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/ap...

Quick -- ask for a pony next!

> I'd love to see a single UI that works across 4" phones and 7" tablets
> with gorilla glass, and 13" laptops and 10" convertibles with membrane
> keyboards, and 24" desktops with 101-keyboards, and 60" XBox Ones
> with controllers...

You want a UI on a 4" device with one low-res input -- your finger -- that's the same as what's on a 24" desktop with 100 keys and a pixel-accurate mouse because......... why?????

Go ahead and build from common core code -- worked for OS X/iOS! -- and make them work together and even have similar styles and icons, but optimize the UIs based on the environment. Different devices are different, and if you don't optimize for each, you get lowest-common-denominator crap. That is literally the definition of "optimize." Why wouldn't you optimize? There is no such thing as "optimized for all situations." Sinofsky's idea of No compromise design was complete and utter bullshit from Day 1 because design IS compromise. A good UI that's identical from 4" to 60" literally can not exist.

OK, fine, maybe it can exist and it's just that no one has invented it yet, but I'd bet my next year's pay that MS isn't going to solve that puzzle with Windows 9 or 10.