Businesses only upgrade if they have a case. Having websites and cloud services move to HTML 5 is a pretty darn good business case to upgrade. IN the past IE 6 had such a strong marketshare that they didnt have to worry about as webmasters were forced to cater to it.

According to statcounter.com IE 8 usage is falling fast to 14% in the weekdays and 10% at the weekends. IE also is getting auto updated with Windows Update and before did not which is why grandmas kept using IE 6 for many many years. When that number hits 5% IE 8 you can expect websites will start focusing on HTML 5 and CSS 3.

IE 8 may remain for many corps for years but it wont be all business this time around because of the things stated above. I mean they didn't stick with Mosaic for 10 years did they?

Yep. HTML 5 can offer hardware acceleration on pretty much any mobile device.

The reason for flash was that Java was an ugly POS and people did not want to wiat a full minute for their ugly applets to load while flash was all nice and pretty and loaded instantly.

Flash also exists because of IE. Old IE I may add as IE 9 and IE 10 got their act together and support the HTML 5 video tags. When IE 10 comes out for Windows 7 and XP goes EOL we will see a shift in websites catering to HTML 5 users making flash obsolete for all but the conservative businesses.

Another reason why proprietary addons that can execute code are a bad idea on the open web. Java got picke do enough last month. Flash also executes code by its very nature so of course it will have holes in it.

Yeah, but the idiots who watch it vote!

You know the same ones, where your uncle said buses were available for the Hurricane Katrina victims but they chose to die inside the superdome instead? Or that Obama is a raveling foaming at the mouth socialist who expanded government 500% more than all last 4 presidents combined etc. OMG

Worse the fact that only fox comes up with these ideas confirms that every media outlet MUST BE BIASED ... but Fox of course. After all they do not come with any of these stories!

Better go vote quick to end this communism ... yada yada. The Tea Party was created by Fox news and those who listen to right wing radio jockeys.

I wonder if this and Java are related to the HUE monster security update for IE?

I know I am about to be modded down, but hear me out.

First off as a freshmen he wont even touch any programming course. More than likely he will take english for poets, speech, intro to worplace management, and Intro to computers 101.

Most universities require you to take that ridiculous intro to computers 101 as many assignments today are group projects done in blackboard which use Outlook, Word, Excel, and even Powerpoint. They do this to emulate work which is a good thing to learn. I learned the Powerpoint slide rule, no more than 3 bullets per slide, etc from my biology professor believe it or not.

In college excel is used in math, statistics, and computer science with datasets. Most bright kids today know how to type but do not know even how to set a margin in Word! They just tab all over the place and wonder why formatting errors occur etc. These can be bright kids but just are not used to doing office tasks on them.

Have your son learn this and get a certificate in it so he can exempt from that course and save himself/yourself $2,500 in student loans. He can probably get his WPM typing up too so can get done with papers quicker too.

I would never steal your money or not pay you if I hired you. It is theft.

Does it mean that software companies and movies are not greedy bastards? Of course not, but that does not justify the right to take it. A CEO might feel you are a greedy bastard for not be willing to work the wage of a Chinese man or Indian doing the same job overseas? Does that give him a right to take your money away? No. He does have the right to lay you off and you in return have the right to refuse to work for that low.

Same concept applies. More software besides photoshop would be available if people bought cheaper alternatives rather than pirate.

And how much did Lightroom cost? Most Adobe products are outrageously expensive

I used to be a Gimp basher on here when I had PS and Dreamweaver installed via a pirated copy. I used to be agaisn't piracy but after not working for awhile I used it to justify it. I decided to kick the habbit after going through contstant hacks and other potentially trojaned KMS servers.

Yeah PS is better, but those who say so pirate it 80% of the time! That is not really fair. If you had to actually pay $700 for it would it be worth your value then for its features?

Now since my computer is pirated free and I have my integrity back I have to say no.

In that economical sense NO, for 90% of users. Unless you are a professional marketer or photographer who makes thousands of dollars from it I have to say the GIMP is better. I do like the UI for paint.net better.

It is a shame PaintShop Pro is gone or rather gimped (no pun intended) after Corel bought it. That $79 program could do much photo editing plus create cool textures for websites. Corel got rid of the secondary feature so I can spend more money buying other crappy products they make to duplicate its lost functionality.

Value for dollar you can't beat the Gimp. The only difference is if you work for an advertising agency and get paid serious bucks for production material does PS provide better value.

Lets turn the tables.

How many people reading this are software engineers or programmers? How would you like it if you worked for me and I didn't pay you? I am about to get hired at a major software company which gets hurt when someone pirates its software. How can I look in the mirror and pirate something else (even if I am never going to buy it) when my living is paid by people who purchase software?

I occasionally have pirated software in which I later deleted. It is not right and there is no excuse to justify it if you earn a wage. I lost Office 2007 (actually it was stolen) and I used a pirated copy of Office 2010 and told myself I will pay for it later. I never did and just realized it a few weeks ago. I uninstalled it and hacked a Office 2007 trail (I did pay for that at least) and I feel much better.

I needed VMWare to learn a product for a job interview. What did I do? I asked the sales team if I can have an evaluation version for 30 days to learn it before the interview under the condition that I wont install it in an enterprise environment. Sure enough they were happy to help. Many software companies have policies like this too and even MS will let you download Windows Server for 120 days for non production purposes to learn.

If you need to crop a photo? Then support FOSS by using Paint.net and Gimp. Need to edit some PDFs? Get LibreOffice.

DOS is one of those things that is there like herpes if you dig deep enough under the skin of any enterprise and even a few home users you will find it there.

XP refuses to die on the otherhand and which came out when PCs were much more popular than during the DOS era. I wonder in 2023 we will be having XPBOX or FreeXP since it has so many die hard users who refuse to leave kicking and screaming the whole time.

I was not thinking of the tax implications. That would need to be fixed.

Historically stocks were ways to gain long term success by taking a piece of the profit and as the company grew so did your payments. This flipping with HFT supercomputers, loading a company with debt to inflate its assets, and other tricks are really harmful long term for investors (real people like you and not bankers) and economic growth.

It makes sense if you own a business to reinvest your capital for expansion for long term growth. You simply can not do that. THe fact that Robert Nardelli was fired after setting huge profits and restructuring for long term growth is just one example. Home Depots stock price did skyrocket up after he was fired but it was after all the structural changes. Wall Steet didn't have patience for it and fired him because they only care about quarterly and with flash trading every millisecond of performance. Basically a few guys with clipboards with accounting degrees canned him because the share price didn't move even though sales doubled!

He invested too much money making Home Depot successful.

How much does Dell make in revenues. If they make 9 billion (I made that up as an example) and do a 7 year loan it can easily be doable. If they make 3 billion and already owe 1 billion in debt then that would be a problem.

The reason Apple's stockprice soared was because their magical asset ratios went through the rough as they sat on a pile of cash. Investors only make money if it goes up in price. Not off earnings.

I think one of the reasons the economy is in the shape it is is businesses simply can not expand and make more money. Because doing so will make Excel lower your share price lower when doing the ratios of assets/debts. Accountants and computer programs determine how to run your company and make critical business decisions. Not the CEO.

Personally if I were king (notice I did not say president as I would be called a socialist by the lobbyists) I would require shareholders to own their stock for 30 days before they could resell and each company would be forced to pay a dividend equal to the value of the share.

Then you would not have this silliness. Not every company can generate the revenue like Apple and they could have grown faster if WallStreet didn't force them to horde cash and not invest in themselves so their excel spreadsheets can make them more money.