Which web sites? I'd love to test your observation as I have multiple VMs with various IE versions installed on various WinXP flavours.

Please tell us.

http://www.zefrank.com/redalert/index_better.html

My favourite.

"...the colors corresponded to the skin colour taht the terrorists would most likely be on a given day."
"And I remember an intern at the time that said "wouldn't it be problem if you printed it out on a piece of paper and it was a white terrorist?"
" A white terrorist...'"

JB

Well the obvious solution to that is that everyone respect and honor as best as possible the established standards. It makes backwards compatibility far easier if a browser must "flip modes" to respect say, current or past specs, rather than worrying about version "x" of browser "y" etc.

IE is moving towards that now, thankfully, but it also creates the awkward backwards looking issues you describe. The solution? For you possibly this: http://www.vmware.com/products/thinapp/using.html

You can package older or newer versions of IE inside a standalone EXE, and run that as needed. Very handy. Licensing costs I can't cite, but I've seen the demos working for FireFox and MS Office and it's super useful.

JB

You heard it here first.

Now please discuss.

What, no third option? There is no third option!

With apologies to the iMac setup adverts.

Funny you say that...I just ponied up for the pro options. For 19 bucks more I have MPEG 2 support and everything is pretty grand.

I agree nagware is pretty silly in this day and age...perhaps Apple will douse it.

Perhaps...but in MacOS X, the bastion of QuickTime, I have Perian and Flip4Mac WMV codecs installed that , voila, make QuickTime play everything under the sun. I too thought there were perhaps shortcomings but the whole setup merely adds the plugins to Quicktime that are required. Who knew you only needed a plugin? So hard!

It's there, so it must be possible. I suspect noone has bothered to do the same on windows, ergo it's not "possible" to do now, but not impossible to implement.

What I was referring to with regards to the player has to do with video manipulation of existing and readable files. regardless of the codec support, Quicktime *handles* video playback better than many other options out there.

and what is the alternative you propose?

Apples, Oranges.

I can run any internet app or network protocol handler on a mac (from OS 9 to 10!) and that app will "own" the protocol just as I want. That's why MS was sued...they prevented you from using any other protocol helper by tying you to theirs. That's monopolistically anti competitive. It was wrong, and will always be wrong.

Apple has a revenue model tied to a device that could not go to market unless the INDUSTRY providing the content was provided a pound of flesh - as in DRM. Steve Jobs stands alone in the wilderness having PUBLICLY espoused dropping ALL DRM in favour of open formats (pick your poison) that were not locked. What you are complaining about sir, is that we could have had a world where Apple was forced to use *your* choice of format (say, DRM'd wmv?) and pay a royalty to MS, or to Real, or to whomever, Borg Inc? They chose to usurp the world order in favour of a dominant model that was won fair and square, and now they want to kill all DRM forever, which means that you can buy music from whomever, and play it on whatever. All Apple requires is that you use iTunes to manage your Apple devices. boo hoo...now that you can buy MP3s on iTunes you can move that music to whatever other program you like and then play it on the device you like. Inconvenience? Yes, but it's Apple's playground. They helped tear down the fence that kept you locked in. They are under no obligation to makes iTunes sync with any other device. Although it'd be rally nice.

You have your wires crossed. You just argued in favour of the BORG instead of against it.

That just might make up for all the years tha MS crippled QuickTime on windows, throwing up all kinds of fake and mishandled errors. I still get the "QuickTime sucks" line from many IT pros in my workplace despite there being no reasonable method to scrub through video frame by frame in WMV formats.

But yes...it's a sad tactic if it turns out to be so.

Or a music scene on the west coast...

I'm treading on the absurd but your comment stood out.

Tools you suggest in order of appearance:

> 1 humongous ship (It could just be used once in awhile)
> smaller boats (to the coast) ...btw "to the coast is still ~1000km
> the hawaiian volcanos (I know it might be a bit costly)
> a military helicopter (the ones without a bottom)

Wow....seriously? You are a closeted comedy writer BTW.

There is no landfill on the planet that could hold all of this debris. Just how big of a boat were you positing we'd use? Don't get me started on airlifting.

The garbage comes from the continental runoff of every landmass that bounds the pacific. That's a lot of material accumulated over many decades. I know the *bits* seem small but you're talking some seriously gigantic masses when the material is aggregated...not to mention so finely dispersed that the fineness of a net or sieve required to scoop up the material would ensnare all of the plankton and fish along with it.

Essentially we'd have to denude the Pacific ocean of life wherever we're collecting this material. There would be no food left for the fish or whales after we did the cleanup. Even if we could conceivably find a way to build a, oh I don't know, 20-30 km long/wide ship to *try* to tackle the problem. Maybe if we have Beowulf cluster of them.

Big numbers people. Water flows.

http://www.ted.com/talks/capt_charles_moore_on_the_seas_of_plastic.html Interesting stuff in here. Also good to show people who think that humans can't possibly have an "impact" on the biosphere. I can't add much to what's already in this talk...go take a peek.

if it was a vision should you not have jabbed out your visual cortex instead?