The writeup on what Quora is built on say that, "Quora uses Ubuntu Linux as it’s OS of choice," and does not mention any Microsoft technologies at all.
Since the link is in a comment that begins, "MS is not a horrible stack to develop on," and ends, "I'm glad I went with .NET for my startup," a reader could get the impression that the link somehow provides support for your pro-MS position.
>"The dirty little secret," a former AOL executive says, "is that seventy-five percent of the people who subscribe to AOL's dial-up service don't need it." [emphasis mine].
The OP (at Huffington Post) very strongly implies that they do not need it because they connect to the internet through DSL or cable. I take that to mean that these customers use web services and client software that AOL offers for free or at a much lower rate if the customer does not need AOL's dial-up service, i.e., basic TCP/IP connectivity, to connect to the internet.
I believe you are correct on this. I thought AOL had a paid service for broadband access, but there is a free plan as well. The paid plans include a dial-up backup and McAfee security.
This promises to remove the only obstacle to my spending $99 on an Apple TV box, namely, my fear of being locked into Apple's content distribution system.
Will someone unaffiliated with the project please describe their experiences with using this software to watch mp4s of movies? Any restrictions or gotchas?
I saw an independant report stating that 1080p had minor stutters. Don't know if that's fixable. This is an early release but on the other hand they're pushing beyond the boundaries of what the hardware is designed for.
I'm also not sure what profiles it supports. Apple's software specs says Main Profile only, but they sometimes software restrict their hardware to keep support homogeneous across their lines (this appears to be the case for the 1080 support, they're just calling Apple's code).
If you wait about 6 months, Apple will most likely release rev. 2 of the ARM based AppleTV, which is rumored to contain the A5 processor, which is based on ARM's dual-core design A9 architecture, and is supposed to be fully capable of hardware accelerated 1080p playback.
The newer hardware should be much more future-proof. It remains to be seen whether it will be easily jailbroken, or whether Apple will get tougher with security.
Seeking is slightly painful with some mkv files for me (at least over Samba - Which was expected given it's 10/100 ethernet), but in generally all the files I've tried (mostly 720p) have played back perfectly.
I would rather have an Emacs that offers fewer choices but looks good out of the box.
Example: the software supplied by Apple with a Mac does not have any themes except for the choice between Blue (colorful) and Graphite (subdued) in the Appearance system preference pane.
OTOH, I regularly have to wait for the software supplied by Apple and I almost never wait for Emacs.
"Example: the software supplied by Apple with a Mac does not have any themes except for the choice between Blue (colorful) and Graphite (subdued) in the Appearance system preference pane."
Both of which I find strikingly unattractive. Overall, I find the OSX UI annoying to use, and the relatively lack of choices in things doesn't help.
I like the idea of a useful out-of-the-box set of defaults, but that should prevent offering users options to tweak to their hearts' content.
