BP is not a good example.... they were formed by a merger of several companies, the largest was Amoco (A merger of large parts of Standard Oil), along with several other American Oil Companies, are currently run by an American, and the investors are 40% American, (and only 30% UK)
Yes, this means some perfectly legal software is illegal (or needs additional patent licences) in the USA
The problem for a company like Google is that they are US based and so will be hounded in the US courts, and for other companies it means they will have difficulty selling into the US, or having to produce two versions of a product on for the US market and one for non-US
Do you remember the two versions of browsers, one with strong encryption one without... due to US export laws....
Used Free/Net/BSD Linux in more flavours than I care to name including Gentoo and LFS, OS/2, DOS (MS and Non-MS) , And Every version of windows from 3.0 up..
Linux still rates as the easiest to install, FreeBSD the most stable (once setup..), and Windows 7 still rates as the most annoying in it's defaults, most inflexible in it's allowed changes, most likely to break existing apps, most likely to not let me install a random application and want several million updates before it will work
Linux may have it's faults, and so does BSD, but the software in repo's/Ports just work, which they should do since someone somewhere has tested them to work with your distro...and they update themselves (that's everything you have installed) automatically
Whereas the vast majority of Windows software assumes you are on a particular version with a particular setup and does not bother to mention this until after the fact... and updates are done by the seemingly huge number of tooltray apps and background tasks from each manufacturer that are run along with Windows update, rather than one update system for everything...
Anonymous : a loosely organised leaderless temporary collection of individuals who come together on an ad-hoc basis on occasion to perform hacks then disband
With this kind of (lack of) structure anyone can claim to be anonymous, and no-one can... the one thing you can be certain about a spokesperson fro anonymous is that they don't speak for the group as a whole...
Sounds like VAT... we have that in the EU (at various rates), and income tax, and lots of others...
Income Tax is based on what you earn, (not what you have left)
VAT/FairTax is based on what you spend... and VAT at least is deliberately exempt on "essentials" that you must buy to live, which seems to me to be fairer...
I don't live on credit, Don't have a mortgage, my wages now buy less than they did... and there is little prospect of them going up any time soon... Can I have my buying power back please
The power of many C constructs, including macros, is that they allow you to do things that would be difficult or impossible in any other language
The downside is it makes it easy to do things that no sane person would want to do... by accident
The Obfuscated C Code competition is the ultimate example of abuse taken to extremes but people have done similar things either deliberately for allegedly good reasons (at the time) or because they did not know better...
Other languages make you jump through hoops to prove that you actually want to do something stupid, because there may be a good reason for doing it in this one case...., C just lets you do it...
Desktop is a strange notion that seems to mean Office PC - which means OS is irrelevant, but the Apps it runs Office, DB, Company app, Webbrowser Outlook etc is and only Windows can run these... so we are stuck with Windows
OSX is pretty and works well, but is still the niche market is always was, and it is the apps it runs, image editing , video editing, design tools , that really sell it
Linux has it's place as well, but it is not the Desktop because all the Desktop apps people currently use run on Windows or OSX... There is not native Linux killer Desktop App
Cloud and Web Services may actually help this, if you can buy an Office PC without Windows (i.e. ready for a minimal Linux install and Web browser) and only run cloud apps, this will be much cheaper... and so be the Desktop Linux....
In the real world - The written requirements will have at least one requirement missing, will be vague, will change during the process.... so not giving them all the requirements is a good test...
Some people did well, just look at all the companies bought by Microsoft and Apple... they would be failures on this criteria but the bosses and some of the staff are doing nicely
Apple make almost nothing from the app store...but they need it to sell iPhones/iPads....
Apple are a hardware company that also sells software, Microsoft are a software company that also sells hardware - This is why they never really competed and Windows had a monopoly... and why when Apple broke into a new arena they sidestepped MS...
Understanding natural language - useful, but how use it if not speaking
This is the same technology that allowed business users to use their PC's with their voice... that in a busy office is annoying and pointless...and at home is a novelty that wears thin very quickly...
It seems to be another solution looking for a problem, something Apple seem to have strayed into recently ?
Can you tell that to PenPoint OS - released as a Tablet only OS, before Apple Newton, and MS's Tablet...
In fact almost all the earlier tablets had a unique OS, that was their downfall the advantage of Apple iOS was that it was not a custom Tablet OS, so it was already familiar and already had loads of apps, because it was what the iPhone ran...
....it's what they wanted to evolve into that vision, they wanted the XBOX to be a home media centre, play games, watch movies, play music all on the XBox, now why do you need a PC ?
It failed for the same reason most non-iPods fail, and why the iPod succeeded...iTunes
Microsoft like most others missed the point, the iPod sold because it was ludicrously easy to get music on it... and manage it, so it was bought by Apple's normal type of customer, non-technical..... the Zune had no iTunes equivalent and so you had to learn how to rip CD's download music from a site then upload to the player etc... for the same price as an iPod... ?
US and Russia used pencils, but the tips broke off, floated around and got into everything... so they stopped, neither used space pens, it was developed by an independent US company and NASA never even used them... , they both just use a normal ballpoints they work fine in zero gravity
Moving atoms and single molecules around with lasers is done in labs already, the problems is that they have not worked outside labs, and only work on small numbers of atoms, and do not apply very large forces, so what exactly do they want to use this for...?
Small portable devices are used in too noisy an environment to need high quality, and are supplied with earphones of low enough in quality that Lossless codec are pointless...
The only other Apple portable devices are iPad, and Laptops which have no-upgradable audio cards, that again are of low enough quality that Lossless codecs are pointless...
That leaves Desktop Apple's which are the only Apple devices capable of supporting an audio card with enough quality to actually benefit from a lossless codec... and you can play FLAC on OSX so why bother with ALAC, unless you only live in Apples Walled Garden...
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BP is not a good example .... they were formed by a merger of several companies, the largest was Amoco (A merger of large parts of Standard Oil), along with several other American Oil Companies, are currently run by an American, and the investors are 40% American, (and only 30% UK)
They are about as British as New England ....
Yes, this means some perfectly legal software is illegal (or needs additional patent licences) in the USA
The problem for a company like Google is that they are US based and so will be hounded in the US courts, and for other companies it means they will have difficulty selling into the US, or having to produce two versions of a product on for the US market and one for non-US
Do you remember the two versions of browsers, one with strong encryption one without ... due to US export laws ....
Great idea now you just have to get Microsoft certify this driver and to incorporate into Windows update ...
With our current democratic system people vote for people who are popular ...
With a direct democracy, they would vote for popular policies
Neither are the best thing ... people won't vote for higher taxes, but will vote for higher taxes for other people ...
He who knows not and knows not he knows not: he is a fool - shun him.
He who knows not and knows he knows not: he is simple - teach him.
He who knows and knows not he knows: he is asleep - wake him.
He who knows and knows he knows: he is wise - follow him.
Government is there to do things people don't like but need to be done ...
We need electricity, the vast majority think so, where should we put the power station, everyone agrees not near me ...
Used Free/Net/BSD Linux in more flavours than I care to name including Gentoo and LFS, OS/2, DOS (MS and Non-MS) , And Every version of windows from 3.0 up ..
Linux still rates as the easiest to install, FreeBSD the most stable (once setup ..), and Windows 7 still rates as the most annoying in it's defaults, most inflexible in it's allowed changes, most likely to break existing apps, most likely to not let me install a random application and want several million updates before it will work
Linux may have it's faults, and so does BSD, but the software in repo's/Ports just work, which they should do since someone somewhere has tested them to work with your distro...and they update themselves (that's everything you have installed) automatically
Whereas the vast majority of Windows software assumes you are on a particular version with a particular setup and does not bother to mention this until after the fact ... and updates are done by the seemingly huge number of tooltray apps and background tasks from each manufacturer that are run along with Windows update, rather than one update system for everything ...
Anonymous : a loosely organised leaderless temporary collection of individuals who come together on an ad-hoc basis on occasion to perform hacks then disband
With this kind of (lack of) structure anyone can claim to be anonymous, and no-one can ... the one thing you can be certain about a spokesperson fro anonymous is that they don't speak for the group as a whole ...
Sounds like VAT ... we have that in the EU (at various rates), and income tax, and lots of others ...
Income Tax is based on what you earn, (not what you have left)
VAT/FairTax is based on what you spend ... and VAT at least is deliberately exempt on "essentials" that you must buy to live, which seems to me to be fairer ...
I don't live on credit, Don't have a mortgage, my wages now buy less than they did ... and there is little prospect of them going up any time soon ... Can I have my buying power back please
The power of many C constructs, including macros, is that they allow you to do things that would be difficult or impossible in any other language
The downside is it makes it easy to do things that no sane person would want to do ... by accident
The Obfuscated C Code competition is the ultimate example of abuse taken to extremes but people have done similar things either deliberately for allegedly good reasons (at the time) or because they did not know better ...
Other languages make you jump through hoops to prove that you actually want to do something stupid, because there may be a good reason for doing it in this one case...., C just lets you do it ...
They want to get rid of the trolls, because even when they win it just costs money, fighting other companies has benefits so they don't mind that ...
Most PC's run windows
The Default Browser for Windows is IE
The Default Search Engine for IE is Bing
This is the only reason ... People don't change the default
Desktop is a strange notion that seems to mean Office PC - which means OS is irrelevant, but the Apps it runs Office, DB, Company app, Webbrowser Outlook etc is and only Windows can run these... so we are stuck with Windows
OSX is pretty and works well, but is still the niche market is always was, and it is the apps it runs, image editing , video editing, design tools , that really sell it
Linux has it's place as well, but it is not the Desktop because all the Desktop apps people currently use run on Windows or OSX ... There is not native Linux killer Desktop App
Cloud and Web Services may actually help this, if you can buy an Office PC without Windows (i.e. ready for a minimal Linux install and Web browser) and only run cloud apps, this will be much cheaper ... and so be the Desktop Linux ....
In the real world - The written requirements will have at least one requirement missing, will be vague, will change during the process.... so not giving them all the requirements is a good test ...
Some people did well, just look at all the companies bought by Microsoft and Apple ... they would be failures on this criteria but the bosses and some of the staff are doing nicely
Apple make almost nothing from the app store ...but they need it to sell iPhones/iPads ....
Apple are a hardware company that also sells software, Microsoft are a software company that also sells hardware - This is why they never really competed and Windows had a monopoly ... and why when Apple broke into a new arena they sidestepped MS ...
This is in England, not an earthquake zone, not a volcanic zone, we have one of the most stable tectonic areas on the planet ...
the area in question has now had 2 quakes in a month, the UK as a whole gets only 30 a year in total, and all lower in magnitude then these ...
The earthquakes were caused by fracking and nothing else ..
Speaking to your phone- odd and not very useful
Understanding natural language - useful, but how use it if not speaking
This is the same technology that allowed business users to use their PC's with their voice... that in a busy office is annoying and pointless ...and at home is a novelty that wears thin very quickly ...
It seems to be another solution looking for a problem, something Apple seem to have strayed into recently ?
Should that not be ThinkPad .,... a rather heavily marketed tablet device
Can you tell that to PenPoint OS - released as a Tablet only OS, before Apple Newton, and MS's Tablet ...
In fact almost all the earlier tablets had a unique OS, that was their downfall the advantage of Apple iOS was that it was not a custom Tablet OS, so it was already familiar and already had loads of apps, because it was what the iPhone ran ...
....it's what they wanted to evolve into that vision, they wanted the XBOX to be a home media centre, play games, watch movies, play music all on the XBox, now why do you need a PC ?
It failed for the same reason most non-iPods fail, and why the iPod succeeded ...iTunes
Microsoft like most others missed the point, the iPod sold because it was ludicrously easy to get music on it ... and manage it, so it was bought by Apple's normal type of customer, non-technical ..... the Zune had no iTunes equivalent and so you had to learn how to rip CD's download music from a site then upload to the player etc ... for the same price as an iPod ... ?
US and Russia used pencils, but the tips broke off, floated around and got into everything ... so they stopped, neither used space pens, it was developed by an independent US company and NASA never even used them ... , they both just use a normal ballpoints they work fine in zero gravity
Moving atoms and single molecules around with lasers is done in labs already, the problems is that they have not worked outside labs, and only work on small numbers of atoms, and do not apply very large forces, so what exactly do they want to use this for ...?
ALAC - Supported on Apple devices only,
Small portable devices are used in too noisy an environment to need high quality, and are supplied with earphones of low enough in quality that Lossless codec are pointless ...
The only other Apple portable devices are iPad, and Laptops which have no-upgradable audio cards, that again are of low enough quality that Lossless codecs are pointless ...
That leaves Desktop Apple's which are the only Apple devices capable of supporting an audio card with enough quality to actually benefit from a lossless codec... and you can play FLAC on OSX so why bother with ALAC, unless you only live in Apples Walled Garden ...