(no subject)

[peterbirks]

Windows persuaded me to install Internet Explorer 8 last night. The first time I opened it up I managed to freeze it, but nothing has gone wrong since. The "Accelerator" and "Web slice" options, look like they could be useful, and there's a whole raft of add-ons that try to fight back against non-Microsoft search engines. But all of these strike me as being created by a videogame generation, one for whom the ideal is to create a work-based add-on that is fun so that you can spend eight hours tweaking it and being useful at the same time (rather than eight hours in front of the screen playing Grand Theft Auto IX). Ordinary people, meanwhile, just want the computer to do stuff; they don't want to waste eight hours of their life customizing it.

The "add-ons" seemed to run to 43 pages of 10, and that's before you pick annything. Most of them seem shit, while some seem duplicated shit (I spotted three versions of "Stumble Upon" for example).

But this isn't the main worry. The main worry is that, if something is really useful then you feel lost when you have to use another PC that is not your own. It's a paradox. If the add-on wouldn't be missed at another machien, then you don't need the add-on. If the add-on would be missed, then it shouldn't be an add-on; it should be installed as standard.

The computer world is trying to get round this by allowing you to store your "preferences" online. Well, that's the plan. Except that where do you store those preferences? If it's with Microsoft, it won't have all your Opera or Firefox or Google Chrome preferences. It will stick you to IE8. Although it's a dream that a "personal" computer could be transferrable to any machine in the world, it just ain't gonna happen.

But, wh not? Why the online restriction? Why not have a program that could just transfer "your" machine (not the files, just all of the preferences on your browser, on Word, and on any other program that you use) to any new one that you use? And, yes, I can hear the answer now.... Security.

+++++++++++++

I continue to run like Mr McBad of BadRunTown, with a 10BI downsing on $100BI (and now running flat at that level since about mid-March). a $1000 downswing on Stars, and generally all a bit of a pisser. I was also running bad on Party this morning, but "got out" with QQ on a board of KQJ and three all-ins (not including the original raiser pf, whom I had reraised).

I'm about 31% on the flop , by the way.


$200 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Monday, May 25,

Seat 6 is the button

Total number of players : 10

Seat 1: ixyesia ( $25 USD )
Seat 2: JustLeague ( $220.22 USD )
Seat 4: PokerStenz80 ( $53.50 USD )
Seat 3: St4lliN ( $212.90 USD )
Seat 5: Hero ( $202.25 USD )
Seat 6: rodimus604 ( $120.88 USD )
Seat 7: Villain ( $110.65 USD )
Seat 8: v8ers ( $57 USD )
Seat 9: sunny_uwc ( $374.22 USD )
Seat 10: natcat_83 ( $79.40 USD )

Villain posts small blind [$1 USD].
v8ers posts big blind [$2 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to Hero [ Q♣; Q♡; ]
sunny_uwc folds
natcat_83 folds
ixyesia folds
JustLeague raises [$6 USD]
St4lliN folds
PokerStenz80 folds
Hero raises [$18 USD]
rodimus604 calls [$18 USD]
Villain calls [$17 USD]
v8ers folds
JustLeague calls [$12 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ J◊;, K♠, Q♠ ]

Villain bets [$2 USD]
JustLeague calls [$2 USD]
Hero raises [$75 USD]
rodimus604 is all-In [$102.88 USD]
Villain is all-In [$90.65 USD]
JustLeague folds
Hero calls [$27.88 USD]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 2♠ ]
** Dealing River ** [ J♠ ]

Hero shows [ Q♣;, Q♡; ]a full house, Queens full of Jacks.
rodimus604 doesn't show [ K♣;, A♡; ]two pairs, Kings and Jacks.
Villain doesn't show [ A◊;, T♠ ]a flush, King high.

Hero wins $20.46 USD from the side pot 1 with a full house, Queens full of Jacks.
Hero wins $350.95 USD from the main pot with a full house, Queens full of Jacks.

Comments

IE8

[geoffchall.livejournal.com]

Strange coincidence - I installed IE8 over the weekend because I wanted to utilise Facebook chat and it whings at me that it thinks IE6 is just too ugly and old for it to work smoothly with. IE8 made a complete mess of Facebook - every wall posting, or home page status report of others was compressed into about 3 lines and would not expand. There's probably a fix but I really couldn't be bothered and so rolled it back to IE6.

Without wishing to sound like your alter ego, James, the lack of understanding of the phrase 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' is sympotmatic of the desparate need of Microsoft et al to generate new business where there doesn't need to be any.

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

i think won't be long before you can keep all (well, most) of your stuff - apps and data - in a virtual machine somewhere on the net, suitably encrypted and anywhere with a sufficiently fast internet link be able to run it remotely. It'll be sandboxed so the local machine's owner won't have to be concerned, and you'll pay by GB stored and CPU used. For servers it's already there, for data ditto, and I suspect that it's already possible to some extent for the apps, although there's no clearly user-friendly client software that I'm aware of.

Amazon (who are probably the market leaders) and Microsoft will offer it at least.

"... virtual machine somewhere on the net, ..."

[ukastronomy.livejournal.com]

This idea fills me with horror. The short version of why this is goes something like this - "Sooner rather than later the "suitably encrypted" data will be hacked into."

Re: "... virtual machine somewhere on the net, ..."

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

But, for my purposes, I don't really care, because the only data that could be hacked would be a clone of the set-up of my home computer. There wouldn't be any files on (the virtual machine) per se, just set-up preferences. It would be a trivial matter to require a log-in to run programmes that aren't standard on other machines (e.g., my poker sites, my other poker software, etc). Many of my "details" are stored on remote servers anyway -- poker site keep a detail of how much I have in my account and my database software runs on postgres.

PJ