Posts by MidiMagic

Any time you buy a piece of computer controlled hardware, you are usually frozen to using the operating system it was designed for. An OS upgrade usually causes the hardware to malfunction.

This includes cash registers, laboratory equipment, home control systems, and music studio equipment.

It is time to permanently end this mad rush to upgrade. The only way to do this is to require support for all OS versions for at least 20 years (the length of time of long-term scientific studies).

The problem is that Microsoft wants all of the upgrade revenue, exspecially by forcing governments to pay for new versions all of the time. It's greed.

At least Microsoft released a fix for this bug in IE 8.

But Microsoft doesn't care that it is forcing premature obsolescence of expensive scientific and recording studio equipment that will not work on newer computers:

• The equipment needs XP. The newer operating systems change the system timing enough that the equipment does not work properly.

• The equipment needs an older computer, because the accessory card will not fit the new bus slots.

• The new operating systems need more RAM than the old computers with the correct accessory slots can hold.

All Microsoft is thinking of is its bottom line.

And they want to force cell phone interfaces on all of us.

Nobody says you have to upgrade -- you are free to use that 20-year-old software and hardware if you wish.

Not if I can't get the hardware to run it on. They have repeatedly changed both the hardware and the software so that nobody can do a verifiable 20-year study anymore if it reauires any real-time data collected by a computer.

"progress" makes science impossible.

XP does not get in your way.

Vista and 7 get in your way with aqnnoying features that waste your time.

8 is the only version of Windows that is worse than CP-M. It is designed to waste your time.

Ban mouseovers. They are not accessible. They cause problems with people who have dyslexia.

It's the same noise you here when the MC at a gathering carries the mike in front of the PA loudspeaker. Acoustic FeeeEEEEEEdback.

The mic must be where it cannot hear the speakers.

It is also wrong for copyrights to last the 95+ years they last now because liberals worship artists. A copyright should last for three to ten years, not the virtual infinity (longrer than the lifetimes of most people) the law now provides for.

In other words, it's extortion.

I think all mouseover changes should be illegal, because they confuse the visually challenged.

Only an idiot wants a vector graphics representation of a photograph.

I'm working on a website for my friend and we're having some problems. We have set up a table to handle the main page, which has within the table a shoutbox, news posts, and links. The news bits within the table are (obviously) longer in terms of space used up than the other bits on the table. So what I did was use the rowspan argument to increase the amount of space that the news feed takes up, but that really isn't enough room, since when we add more news we'll run low on room. Now I would assume that the table would auto-resize to accomidate the length of the news feed, and it does. The problem is that it seems to auto-resize the shoutbox and the first box on the links list as well. Also annoying is the fact that the news is centered both horizontally and vertically, and I would like to center it horizontally only. Both of these are interconnected, because before I resized the news stuff everything worked perfectly, but after I did the problems began coming up. What can I do?

Use the vertical-align: top; style. This moves all of the text in each cell to the top.I always include that style with a table, because IE and FF do different things by default.

When you use rowspan or colspan, how the rows and columns are divided without any styles controlling them depends on the relative sizes of the contents. So if you have …

I don't think ads are evil.

I think ads that take control of the user's browser are evil.

And ads that do things to disrupt the vision of a dyslexic person are not accessible.

And ads that lie are evil.

The advertisers might be advised that I would automatically read their ad through normal automatic visual scanning - IF I am not trying to regain control over my browser because the ad is using 100% CPU time.

>What does the fan on the back of the computer have to do with CPU usage???
It's quite simple. When the CPU usage is high, it generates lots of heat. When there's lots of heat, the fans kick in.

That is absolutely STUPID.

A CPU doesn't generate any more heat when it is being used more.

It's not like an auto engine. The same parts in it are always powered up and operating at the same speed, whether it is busy or idling. The parts are still being used just as much when the CPU is not "busy." They sit there wasting time with thumbtwiddling operations in Windows at the same high speed, waiting for the user to do something. And the RAM is also running at the same speed.

Disk drives and CD burners are the only parts inside the computer that produce substantially more heat when they are used. And some video cards produce slightly more heat when the image is complex.

The only time a CPU "slows down" is when a laptop goes into power-saving sleep mode. And of course, it stops when you turn off the power.

The factors that most determine how often the fans run are the room temperature and how open the space around the computer is.

Also, there should be quite a delay between any increase in heat generation and the time the fan comes on, because it takes time for the heat to get …

This is the problem I was reporting last summer.

What does the fan on the back of the computer have to do with CPU usage???

It doesn't get hotter with increased CPU use. It just sits there doing a repeating loop when it has nothing else to do. The same heat is produced either way.

Now the disk drive is a different story. It will produce more heat with increased use.

Some thoughts:

- The user's browser does not have a scripting language you used installed, or has it turned off.

- A firewall is blocking certain kinds of files.

- An ISP is blocking certain kinds of files.

- An ISP is overloaded, causing the browser to time out before loading the content.

- Another web page is using a file with the same name, and the browser is using that, rather than refreshing it.

- An old version of the page is in cache.

- An ad site featured on the page is overloaded. It causes the browser to time out, preventing the rest of the page from loading.

- The content is a type older browsers can't display (e.g. .png or .xml files).

- Cookies are turned off in the browser.

- A cookie is expected to be used by different sites.

Go to View and select Print Layout View.

The other views do not show the margins.

Also, you must select the entire region you wish to change the margins in before setting the margins.

My main complaint is all of the costs of changing to a new operating system:

- Upgrading costs money.

- Most real-time software (such as music studio software) usually doesn't work on the new OS, causing the user who has such software to wait a two-year development time to get new software that works on the new OS. This really hampers laboratory work.

- Colleges have to replace their computer curriculum (no small cost).

- The military needs a stable base for software, not upgrade mania.

- NASA is still using 80386 computers and MS-DOS in the Space Shuttles. Reliability requires that they not change anything.

- Long -term scientific studies are often ruined because, the scientists can't prove that the change in OS didn't change anything in the study.

- Too many businessmen don't understand the above limitations, and order all of their employees to upgrade the instant the new software comes out.

We need two things:

- A law requiring software companies to support products for 20 years, so companies develop new products less often.

- Compulsory licensing for all copyrights, not just sheet music and stage plays. That way, anyone who needs the old versions can get them. The monopoly power must be removed.

I wish they had broken Microsoft up into baby Bills back in the 1990s.

PS3 - wasn't that an IBM PC model in the late 1980s?

My list: Digital camera, Apples to Apples Bible Edition, socks.

Infinity is the tangent of 90 degrees.

Infinity exists. There's a setting of infinity on my camera.

Use id instead of name. I already asked the W3C this question.

The only use of name not deprecated is the grouping of radio buttons.

The choice to use XHTML is not mine to make.

IE7 supports it fairly well. There are only a few places where it doesn't work as defined, and IE7 mangles HTML the same way.

A what???

I can tell you why the dropdowns are not working at school. A firewall installed to protect school computers from malicious software is stopping scripts before they get to the computer.

Maybe Opera upgraded itself. In doing so, it may have added a script blocker, or a new set of security settings. Or you might have accidentally changed security settings while doing something else.

Another possibility is that your ISP made changes, such as installing a firewall.

Java and JavaScript are two totally different languages. The only common element is the name "Java".

You can't learn JavaScript from a Java book, or Java from a JavaScript book.

The following is NOT valid JavaScript, though it is valid Java.

code = Trim(DataRangeHdr1("code"))
DiagnosisName = DataRangeHdr1("DiagnosisName")
DiagnosisName = (Replace(DiagnosisName,"'"," "))
 
CodeMark = InStr(code,".")

JavaScript requires a semicolon at the end of each statement, except in certain positions (where the semicolon must not appear). Java does not require semicolons except in certain constructions.

Internet Explorer allows some JavaScript statements to work correctly without semicolons, but other browsers do not. So IE cheats. Don't write your code to rely on IE quirks.

Even if you could do that, Firefox closes so quickly that nobody could read it.

If somebody clicks the X, they want to close the program now. They don't want it to do any more.

If IE can do it, it is because IE has a nonstandard extension to web code. Never use nonstandard code.

This sounds like a setting.

Or it may be that you have a hobbled trial version of the player (in which case, you have to BUY the full version).

It is not a matter of jumping to a conclusion, but having an eye to the future.

Within a few years, browsers will no longer support deprecated elements. Every book I have on the subject warns that this will eventually happen. The transitional doctypes are said to be temporary. Anyone who uses deprecated elements will suddenly find himself with a lot of work to do to fix every page he has. One book says (in the instructions of a table of HTML elements):

"An X indicates that the tag is deprecated (strongly discouraged) in html 4, and will likely be rendered obsolete in future browsers. You may need to use some of these deprecated tags to meet the needs of your audience now, but if your audience will be using very new browsers that support style sheets and HTML 4 completely, we strongly suggest that you avoid deprecated elements."

Target=name is listed as being deprecated in every book on HTML I have except one. That book was printed in 2000. One book has:

"Caution: The target attribute has been deprecated.

However, I just noticed that that it might be that what has really been deprecated is "name", as used for anchor links. It has been replaced by "id", because name has other incompatible uses in other HTML tags.

Another source: "However, frames have turned out to be more of a fad. You can have many of the benefits realized by using frames by using …

how about some animated smileys :?:

No no no no no!

No more stuff that moves. The ads are too distracting as it is!

Moving pictures should be restricted to demonstrating concepts.