Aeternus

I think the first echo is simply to move the cursor down (ie newline)

Why would you uninstall IE? There is no point. It won't cause any trouble with other browsers. Simply because it doesnt matter. Who really cares who was the first to implement something that is now in every browser under the sun. Fair enough, give them their credit and move on. The point is there are lots of features now that Internet Explorer doesnt have and other browsers have got the head start on IE. It's like an old man saying "back in the day", its no longer "the day". The point is, IE offered CSS1 support and then decided it was ok to stop for several years, only offering partial CSS2 support in the mean time. In those years other browsers have caught up and exceeded its support for features. This is why many of us are looking with hope at IE7, longing for it to show us something new. You may be able to create a nice looking site but that doesn't mean your site mightn't look better or mightn't work better if you had the full use of CSS2 or partial use of CSS3 features. Wiki on IE's problem with Standards Article discussing the Problems with IE5's CSS and image support (which is relevant as alot hasnt changed (such as the problems with PNG's and alpha channel transparencies)) Article comparing various features available in different browsers Article showing various browsers compatibility with CSS3 (the features of which can be very useful as you can be alot more general or alot more specific with your styles for different elements and can select whole ranges of elements based on patterns or what an element type contains etc) Article showing what CSS features certain browsers do and don't have (this doesnt include Firefox but does include Opera) So one can use transparent png images that are of a far higher quality than GIF's, one can use things like :before and :after in CSS in other browsers which can make use of a stylesheet much easier when dynamic data is concerned (ie you dont know exactly what will be after an element), you can use the XMLHttpRequest object without fear that the user has quite reasonably disabled ActiveX due to security, you can use a variety of selectors in CSS based on tag properties which can be very helpful when writing JS applications as you can simply set an artitrary property and link a style to that property and its value in the stylesheet allowing your JS component to play nicely with others without having to overwrite the class property etc.... (*... takes a breath ....*) Charts showing CSS Compatibility in a nicely laid out manner (Trident is IE's rendering engine) Simply because you don't use a feature on your site, doesn't mean others don't and there are plenty of features in CSS2/CSS3 that I personally would love to see that allow for some really cool things to be done. Sorry to turn that into a rant against IE6 but it does apply to IE7 in that these are things that it would be nice for IE7 to accomodate. The fact that IE6 doesn't support these features and that other browsers do is evidence that in terms of features IE is lagging behind and these are the reasons I use a different browser and the things I would like to see in IE7, that would give me good reason to begin using IE again. Now back to pure IE7, found a nice little blog here listing some of the bugs theyll be fixing in IE7 and some of the new features. It's nice to see they are fixing these things and adding support for some of the things mentioned, brings a little hope .

This isn't that other browsers don't support the functionality of ActiveX, they simply don't do it in the same way or under the Umbrella Object Setup of ActiveX (for example XMLHttpRequest functionality in all other browsers is part of the JS DOM, whereas IE has it as an ActiveX object). This isn't a failing per say, in fact, it is often considered one of the advantages due to the fact that a more than fair share of Internet Explorer's problems with security and (Ad|Spy)ware have been due to problems with ActiveX, which is why alot of people disable it either completely or for all but a few sites (Wiki). You talk about IE only missing features that no-one has heard or cares about.... does that make it better somehow? Just because no-one has heard of them, it doesn't mean they aren't beneficial, it just means public awareness of such features hasnt been raised. If all you want is the features IE currently has and that people are well aware of then IE wouldn't have a point in improving if we followed your logic (why would we want something weve never heard of) and therefore the features they are thinking of including in IE7 (which by no means overshadow functionality in other popular browsers, not by a long shot) would be pointless as apparently you wouldnt use them. I know its nice to just say, "No-one uses the features" that other browsers claim support for, the point is there are some really cool things that web developers could do with CSS2 and CSS3 if IE would just fully support CSS2 properly and start work on CSS3, pages could be much more rich and much more customisable. Please don't try the argument that no-one would use them, as that simply isn't true (just consider the adoption of CSS in general and the interest in further advancements etc). While IE is a nice enough browser, it simply isn't enough for some people, they want more than simply sufficient, they want the additional features and compliance (*See Below) that other browsers offer. This may change with IE7, it may not, we will see (I honestly hope it does as this is additional competition which will make Firefox, Opera etc strive to improve their browsers even more so). -------------------------------------------- * You mention that standards compliance isn't necessary and that everyone should simply make sure things work with IE. Well the point is MS say that IE conforms to W3C standards and that they plan to meet these standards. This is mostly true when the browser is knocked into Strict mode rather than Quirks. Quirks mode will not display various CSS properties correctly in Quirks mode and so following standards and making sure that the page is written properly can also be needed when writing for IE. Also any good developer knows that a) if you can avoid alienating other users, do (simple standards compliant code will work on both IE and other browsers such as Firefox and Opera who are not a neglible user base as you have yourself proven), b) Market trends change, this has been seen in the growth of Firefox's user base, and in the previous generations death of Netscape. Writing standards compliant code means that whoever wins, your page works. You may moan about the lack of ActiveX but ActiveX very very rarely needs to be used IF AT ALL as the vast majority if not all of its functionality is available in the basic DOM for JS in other browsers.

Browsers damn it! Specifically IE7, its advantages and reasons you may or may not use it (possibly including reasons for alternatives). Please don't start with the Linux vs Windows stuff again, its been done in another thread and that was closed down for good reason, it never goes anywhere.

At the minute I've got Opera, Firefox and IE6 on my laptop for testing purposes. I mainly use Firefox and can't remember the last time I had to switch to IE. Opera is nice and the UI in my opinon is alot nicer than Firefox (by default) and from what friends who use it regularly have said certain aspects of it are more customisable (moving url bar etc) which is nice. You do get a few problems with it though with certain sites like gmail and others, it seems to have fixed the majority of these but gmail does still host a warning (I think it was something to do with its implementation of Javascript). Internet Explorer is nice enough but I prefer Firefox due to the tabbed browsing, different themes, extensions like the Live HTTP Headers extension (saves using something like Ethereal or similar), its Javascript console and DOM Inspector etc and the fact that it is nice to develop in when trying to conform to web standards (not saying Internet Explorer doesnt conform to most/alot of the standards, just that making sure its in Strict mode rather than Quirks can be annoying to do all the time and its easier to just chuck a few pages together and check them in firefox then neaten them up with the correct DOCTYPE declarations etc (not a point against IE (although they do have some standards problems) just personal preference)). Firefox isn't perfect, there are some problems such as some security problems that have since been fixed, rare problems with IE/ActiveX centric sites and its notable memory usage problem but these are acceptable in my use of the browser and so I use Firefox (not saying these are acceptable to everyone, each to their own). I agree that Internet Explorers security problems are due mostly to the amount of attention it gets, now Firefox and others are getting more attention, more holes and bugs are being found but damn them why do the IE developers have to use ActiveX for everything, I know its not necessarily the satanic platform that it is made out to be but it has and still does to an extent have security issues and alot of the functionality that is canopied under the ActiveX setup doesnt need to be there (My Gripe). I'm looking forward to the final release of IE7, it should be interesting. I will definitely be trying it out and may even begin using it if it suits my needs (better JS debugging, nice tabs, nice UI, easy to customise etc), it's just that currently Firefox is for me as IE6 just doesnt do what I need. I do hope in IE7 that the small lapses from standards are rectified. I know alot of these are simply people knocking IE into quirks mode and that when in standards mode, it is meant to be w3c compliant, it's just that in some cases as can be evidenced by the article posted in another thread it doesn't live up to the standards that it claims to work by (not using this as a major point against IE or anything, just saying it would be nice to have it cleared up). PS - I totally agree with Pangloss' previous post, its always nice to read your posts as they have are generally unbiased and realistic.

Got to agree, its really quite cool . I think it's free, made by a few universities in collaboration for teaching Java on their courses and at other universities etc I think. http://www.bluej.org/about/what.html

Its - search text site:thesite.com And you could also try using "wget" with its recursive/link crawling functionality and then using "grep" on the files/text ("man wget" and "man grep" should help you, look for the recursive ( -r / -R) stuff).

Just like in our own number system, it is hard to account for certain numbers in binary (for instance we find representing 1/3 hard in decimal/denary (0.3333 recurring, ie you can't actually represent it accurately)). I would imagine a third itself is very hard to represent in binary accurately (in either floating point or fixed point binary). Saying this I'm sure you could find a way of interpretting bits to let it represent various constants and variables given certain bits set or given certain formats (such as ASCII etc) so... I suppose anythings possible but whether or not it would be practical or reasonable is another matter

There were some old project computers (486's, pentium 75mhz's etc) which only had floppy drives and were the only computers always available in College. They had no connection to any networks other than the closed one for that room (no inet access). They were perfect for our project work (no inet == no distractions, old hardware == Turbo Pascal Heaven) but alas as i said, only floppies. I'll admit my card reader + sd card is far nicer and when I go to uni this year I'll be happy to forget the floppies and use the cardreader or cdrw's but I certainly won't be getting rid of my floppy drive just incase.

Ctrl + alt + del -> Performance -> Physical Memory (In XP anyway)

Agreed, Java is a fantastic language to start programming for a mobile phone in. However, if you do start learning Java in general and then move on to J2ME (which dont get me wrong, i agree with as its all still Java and a knowledge of the main Java implementation is nice), remember that J2ME doesnt have some features and methods that are available in your normal PC Java runtime. When i was playing around with J2ME, I couldnt find the regexp methods for instance (which i had used fine in the normal Java Runtime etc). Don't get me wrong, alot of things can be written manually and used, found online somewhere written by someone else etc, or might be included in MIDP 2.0 where you might be writing for MIDP 1.0 (depending on which version the phone supports), its just nice to be aware beforehand when your learning, that some of the features might not be there (they want to keep the virtual machine as lean and mean as possible due to memory/disk space restrictions). Also, there are some nice J2ME emulators available that you can use to easily and quickly test out your programs rather than laboriously uploading to your phone or being stuck with only your phone as a test. I can't remember the one I was using but heres one - http://microemulator.sourceforge.net/ (first thing off google, so itd be better to search for more).

Where exactly are you looking for this address? (ie exactly where on control panel, network connections etc?) Also, since you didnt mention it after i said, i'm assuming you dont have a router or something similar.

Are you using a router or anything similar? If so, the ip you get in ipconfig or in control panel would be the internal network address (address for your computer within the network behind the router) and the address you get from ipchicken would be your external ip address (of the router) which is then used on the internet (and data can be routed from that address to the various internal ip address depending on port used etc etc. If not, try looking at http://www.whatismyip.com. See what that tells you. I have just used IP Chicken and it doesn't work correctly. It displays the IP address of one of the routing stations/ proxies from my service provider instead of my true ip address. That could be the problem.

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/vbasic/default.aspx Express Editions are pretty neat. Don't have all the features of the full versions but are still nice (i use Visual C# and Visual C++ Express Editions). The main plus is that its free

Well you know (or if you dont, its easy to find out with it) what OS/Distro they are using. Find out the architectures that that distro supports and try a few . Its probably sent somewhere as part of the data (my apache server does, on the 404 errors etc but this doesnt) but probably easier to just try a few (there arent that many).

Your political compass Economic Left/Right: -7.38 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.36

Slashdot article (with link to other article) concerning new features in Vista Caution - Some of the comments on Slashdot will bash Windows (it can be a very anti-ms place), just ignore them.

Why does every thread have to turn into a "linux versus Windows" thread? This is about the next version of Windows, fair enough, mention how Linux already has some features and its nice to see them in Windows, mention how youd like to see other features in it, but please for sanity's sake, no more "Linux is cool" or "Windows is the only viable OS" or "I can't understand why someone would want to use Linux" or "Windoze blows" etc. /me begs

Hehe, indeed Pangloss, if all else fails there always the old "If you can't beat them, buy them" approach

I'm assuming WinFS will be coming out at some later date and perhaps incorporated into the Vista (and XP???) Service packs at some point. Can anyone confirm this or offer any information on it?

Agreed.

Thinking of getting another some time in the future for a nice raid setup or something?? (if you want speed)