Interesting arguments. Maybe this project is just a PR stunt. It sounds cool and forward looking, and maybe it's being publicized to make Azure (which, face it, has a huge marketing budget) seem cool. I think Amazon's 60 Minutes puff piece on delivery drones falls into this category, so why not undersea data centers - and self-driving cars for that matter, Google...
I have no doubt the underlying projects have some serious futurists supporting them inside these huge corporations, but perhaps even that support gets the nod from the money guys based on the PR value.
IDE's were nice when they were optional. Combining a text editor, a make facility and a debugger in a nicely integrated package does make life a little easier. The problem is that IDE's enable complexity - and without a good reason, complexity is a bad thing. IDE's have enabled the migration from comprehensible programs to micro services with myriad triggers tied to tidbits of code. And in the case of web apps, those tidbits are divided between CSS, JavaScript, tons of JavaScript libraries, and whatever's on the back end. All of this crap is virtually impossible to comprehend or manage without an IDE.
If the web weren't the best way to deploy code, it would certainly win as the worst way to develop it...
What I don't get, is how did the kooky base get to decide what a Republican is? While I'm a registered independent, until 2000, I was a pretty reliable Republican voter - at least 75 percent. Mostly on financial issues. Then they party turned. First the Trotskyite neocons, then the Teabaggers took over. Now we're looking at Trump and/or Cruz?
They got to decide it when mainstream Republicans (i.e. big business, old money, etc.) realized that the only way they could win elections while continuing to oppose the economic interests of the majority of Americans is by catering to the kooky folks that became their base. And by Gerrymandering districts and messing with accessibility to the vote they could guarantee Republican wins - regardless of the kooky factor.
Before Reagan, Republicans used to tolerate progressive taxation so that they could win votes based on economic prosperity for all. But once the Reganites figured out that, with the formerly Democratic white Southern racist vote solidly in their corner, they didn't have to provide prosperity for all. Just demagogue on abortion, guns, dog whistle racism and, more recently, Christianist anti-science nonsense, and they can sew up roughly 50% of the electorate.
In the movie 'Cabaret', there's a scene where the sleazy German aristocrat says to the British main character, "Sure, the Nazis are a bunch of Hooligans, but we can control them. Let them take care of the Communists, and we'll take care of them." Famous last words...
Can you think of an instance where Obama or Clinton tried to deny a group of people some pretty basic right based on who they were? I doubt it. The closest you'll get is the twisted-ass pretzel logic that making an official stamp a marriage license amounts to denying her right to discriminate based on her 'religious values'. This is a pluralistic nation, and I'm sorry, but your religious values do not extend to my rights. You can think what you want, but you can't make me live according to your religious beliefs. Why is that so hard to understand?
I suppose you could try to point the finger towards universities that rescind speaking gigs to some people based on political correctness. I think that's pretty dumb too, but it's not in the same category as discrimination based on an immutable characteristic. False equivalencies are a false argument.
A CEO job is a special kind. The CEO serves as the public face of a company, and as such needs to reflect the values of that company - at least to the extent that the customers of the company don't revolt. That's what happened here. Mozilla fans didn't like his bigotry and, since Mozilla is as much a political movement as a product, that mattered to its survival. He didn't get fired for his views, he got fired for alienating his customers, and in turn, losing the confidence of his board.
By the way, apparently Slashdot doesn't have non-obtrusive ads, since I see no ads at all on the site. When I've visited Slashdot on a public computer, it's chock full of the nastiest, blinking-est shit. Why is that SD?
The recording industry was (partially) saved by Apple, who with iTunes, came up with a way to buy music that was less hassle than stealing it. That doesn't mean that the industry's model didn't take a huge hit - it did. And they're still able to make money from streaming sites and (golly!) radio.
Ad Block is, yes, threatening the Ad industry. But they're a more serious threat to online content in general. Advertisers have other places to get their messages out, but online publishers are stuck with online publishing (duh). Without advertising to fund it, the only other model is to charge for it. But iTunes had a much more salable product - people knew what songs they wanted, and there was no place else to get essentially the same thing as a recording by popstar X. So most online publishers can't charge, either. The only thing left is 'native advertising', which kind of ruins the content by hiding ads inside it. Not a rosy situation.
I say this as an AdBlock user, as well as a DVR user. Which doesn't say much for the argument that's about to kill Union participation at the Supreme Court. Given the chance, people won't pay - even if they 'know' they're getting benefits that might be threatened by their freeloading. But apparently Justice Kennedy thinks government workers will gladly fork over union dues once they become optional. Maybe so, since the union is directly working for their interests - as opposed to ad-supported media that are mostly just acting as bait for advertisers. But still...
I do have AdBlock set to allow some non-intrusive advertising. So far, so good. I haven't been tempted to turn that back off.
In addition, they 'embraced' ODF itself by providing an ODF format option in MSOffice that didn't work with any other ODF implementation - by intentionally 'interpreting' vague aspects of the spec as 'anything but what's already been implenented in OpenOffice'. At the same time, releasing an MSOffice implementation of OOXML that differs from the published standard.
Not exactly playing nice. More like polluting an existing standard while waiting for their monopoly magic to entrench their new pseudo-standard. Kind of like Java vs C#. And for the C# fans out there, it's not necessarily that their stuff isn't ever any good (though if excess complexity is a negative, OOXML's gotta be one of the worst standards ever). The point is that Microsoft could well embrace true open standards - even while keeping its implementations closed source, and even possibly coming out on top with the best implementation. But time and again, they try to subvert open standards. The simple fact that they're losing some of their ability to do it these days doesn't change a thing IMHO.
I would have hoped that security products that send encrypted passwords would insert random junk to randomize the length of the message containing the password. Since the password is in a predictable place in the data stream, it would make sense to garble it as much as possible, no?
XBox succeeded because it was able to leverage a lot of what developers were already doing for PC games to their console. That's where Microsoft has failed miserably in mobile. By supporting only the new metro API's for mobile, they had no real way to leverage their desktop monopoly. The apps simply didn't materialize because they were late to market (as usual), but this time they didn't have the monopoly to grant them success from a position of lateness. Since they couldn't 'force' developers to code for their platform, developers didn't. Surface has succeeded (to the extent it has), because it's a laptop, not because it's a tablet. People buy it for the desktop WIN32 apps that it runs, not for the Metro stuff - which is, at best, an add-on perk. That's why they're trying to force Windows 10 on everybody - but it won't work. The WIN32 apps are going to stay WIN32, and yes, most new desktop apps will be web apps.
So, I read this new 'Surface Phone' thing as an intel-based phone that can actually run WIN32 stuff when plugged into a keyboard, mouse and monitor. That's pretty cool, actually. But it's not going to compete well with the new sub-$400 class of Android phones out there - especially if Android develops the same capabilities. Of course, Android can't run WIN32 code, so there's still a chance. WINE for Android would be nice...
If you happen to carry a purse, a large cellphone is not a problem. At that point, the big screen has no downside. That said, for those of us of the pants pocket persuasion, a 5.2 inch screen with minimal bezels makes a perfect compromise - if only someone would build a decent device with those dimensions at a decent price and decent battery life. Seems like this sweet spot was hit a few years back by the LG-G2, but now even LG has blown past it and can't seem to get back to the form factor that makes the most sense.
To me the story is that beyond the inherent racism in treating all Muslims as potential terrorists (thanks Trump, etc), this kid was a Sikh, not a Muslim. So not only are Americans dumb enough to mistake a phone charger for a bomb, we can't even get our multiple racisms straight.
They can offer, instead, more votes from the people whose interests the legislator is supporting - or at least not opposing.
In other words, bribes. Votes in today's hyper money-saturated politics are a form of currency. I seriously doubt that Dow can produce voters directly, based solely on huge numbers of people caring about their issues. Of course, I'm sure you'd respond that each of Dow's shareholders counts as a vote aligned with Dow's issues, but that's quite a stretch, based on the issues that voters actually care about. If I were a Congressman, and thought that's all a lobbyist was delivering in the form of 'votes', I'd laugh - that is, if I were a typical corrupt Congressman with my hand out. But corrupt Congresspeople are getting something they want from lobbyists, who are giving much more than the promise of like-minded voters.
The population of the US has been roughly evenly divided on this issue...
So, let me see. If the NYTimes editorial board takes a stance different from yours on this 'evenly divided' issue, they're somehow extreme. Saying that is what's extreme. I'd also venture that interpreting the 2nd ammendment to cover untrackable sales of military-grade rifles to just about anybody who wants one is pretty extreme too. Nuance on this issue is the opposite of extreme, fella.
The H-1B abuse that's been in the news lately is by Indian tech outsourcing firms, and it has nothing to do with low wage H-1B workers. These firms use H-1B visas to bring temporary workers to the US for the explicit purpose of documenting the jobs currently being done by US workers. Then most of the US workers are fired and replaced with offshore workers a prevailing Indian rates. This should be flat-out illegal. Having to pay these guys $100K wouldn't stop this abuse, because they're only in place for a few months at most, and the savings from offshoring dwarf the expense. I'll leave my rant about how badly offshore workers duplicate the work of the US workers they replaced - I've made that here before.
To say that anything about the New York Times is extreme is to be extreme yourself to the point of inanity. The New York Times is about as mainstream as it gets. Their primary bias is toward their own image as 'the paper of record' - i.e. covering everything, in a journalistically 'evenhanded' way. They are 'evenhanded' in a predictable enough way that they were easily manipulated into shilling for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But seriously, alarm over gun violence (and over the out and out gun fetishism of today's right) is also mainstream. Large majorities of Americans want guns trackable and non military-grade. But you're free to continue to enjoy life in your bubble...
It's not the language at all. It's the way to structure an application that's changed drastically. I used to write server-based apps, with a smart terminal front end. It made for a nice, simple, supportable structure, with a reasonable GUI. Recently, I've delved into web programming. Javascript is fine as languages go - though the various libraries built around it are probably more difficult to get a handle on. But the main surprise is what has come to constitute an application. To the extent that there's an application, per se, it consists of Javascript code in the browser, with data accessed via services on the back end. And mostly on a single page basis. In other words, the surprise is that there's no module that counts as an overarching 'application' that defines a structure encompassing a large set of functionality. I have no idea how this structure would scale up beyond a small set of web pages. Not scale in terms of being able to support a large number of users, but in terms of anybody knowing (or remembering) how all the bits of code fit together.
Multiple cores is really just a substitute for faster processors. You're still running a single OS on them, and that OS could multitask pretty much as well on a single core that was twice as fast as on a dual core machine. So, they're essentially using the number of cores as a proxy for the power of the machine. Did they charge more for high clock speed servers back in the single core days?
I can see a point for charging by the VM - in which case you're using the souped up hardware to run multiple copies of the OS, so to use a single license would be kind of cheating.
Meanwhile, why does anybody pay for this? Seriously. Okay, if you're hosting Exchange or Sharepoint, well you bought into it. Or if you built an in-house system bassed on SQLServer. But for anything else, the free alternatives are just as good.
And that $1000 price tag is why the surface pro is not really a tablet from a sales point of view. It'll sell to corporate execs who want a light laptop - and for whom it matters that they have an obviously pricey toy to show off. Plus, these things will primarily be used as laptops to run desktop software. But that's the Mac Air market, not the iPad market - much less the Kindle Fire / $99 Android market.
Microsoft can only hope that once they sell enough of these, devs will start writing tablet software for them. At that point, they might be able to play in the iPad's market - if that market still exists by then and hasn't been decimated by big screen phones. But even then, I guess Microsoft's phones could benefit. Though Android phones will still rule.
It must be a great comfort to be such an absolutist. Nuance is so tiresome, isn't it. The Constitution is not the word of God - a good thing, since God is 99% certain not to exist (I won't go fully absolutist on that one). You just want guns. Just admit to your fetish - or paranoia - or whatever. They're in the Constitution for a well stated, completely obsolete reason. They are not an inalienable right by any definition of 'inalienable' other than, for whatever reason, the guys that wrote the Constitution decided to use that word. So it seems not unreasonable to try to understand why they used it rather than to fall back on a literalistic definition of the word and grant that more meaning than you grant to the full context. I'm sure there are other things in the Constitution where you would object to such a mechanistic interpretation - but you seem unable to see things from any perspective but your own.
Nice how you conveniently ignored the gun show part of my comment - which, yes, is legal and part of the problem.
Anything can be subject to a slippery slope, frog in a pot argument. That's just a lazy excuse for doing nothing. 'They' is the people you elect. Assuming there are enough gun lovers to keep 'them' from pulling a frog in a pot, you have nothing to worry about. But keep it up. Someday, someone you care about will be a victim - that's apparently the only thing that allows some people to see both sides of an issue...
What is so damn overbearing about requiring guns be licensed and not sold to any crazy person, criminal or terrorist at a 'gun show'? They're lethal weapons, not heirloom figurines, ferchrissake.
And as long as we're talking about 'back then' as a valid filter for reading the 2nd ammendment, there was no standing army and we had just fought a war against a foreign government. Today we don't have civilians, organized or not, fighting against armies. The key word is 'militia', not 'regulated'. The US is not defended by a militia, and I don't think you'd want that. So, laws to keep guns off the streets and out of the hands of killers might just make some sense.
I wonder how you feel about the bit in the 14th amendment that grants citizenship to anyone born here. Sometimes stuff written down decades or centuries ago can have unintended consequences that make no sense down the road. Vagueness in the language allows the courts to bring sanity to bear without having to amend the Constitution.
Perhaps, but descriptive or explanatory clauses have a purpose - they're not just decorative. It's reasonable to assume they 'describe' and 'explain' why what follows is there. In other words, they provide context and intention to the other phrase, "shall not be infringed". And it's not an unreasonable interpretation to say that in a new nation without a standing army, an armed population that can be called on to defend the country might be a good thing. And that the standing army might render that moot, while still meeting the requirement of that well regulated militia.
I'm okay with the 2nd ammendment allowing guns - licensed, trackable, non-military style guns. But you guys that are always on the lookout for tyranny always seem to have a low opinion of the rest of the Constitution, which provides mechanisms to vote the tyrants out of office. Of course, you need to be in the majority for that to work...
I guess my point is that this kind of program isn't inherently bad, but as implemented (or policed) they are ripe for abuse. Same goes for the repeal of Glass-Steagle. When you loosen regulations and then don't even try to enforce what's left, you get mass layoffs and housing bubbles. And forget blaming Fannie Mae. The housing bubble was caused by the bond ratings agencies that rubber stamped any crappy mortgage-backed security as AAA and AIG, which pretended to insure them. In other words fraud - plain and simple. None of it would've been possible without that.
That's where the GOP comes in. They are ideologically against almost all regulation. Don't know if that's real ideology, or just convenient think-tank bullshit that happens to suit the needs of their donors. Whatever else you might say, you can't say the Dems are against sensible regulations and enforcement. You might say they tend to go overboard, but that's just an argument for the two parties balancing each other. Except today's GOP won't accept any kind of balance either. Look at the highway bill just passed. 'Payed for' by a laundry list of bogus gimmicks when a raise in the gas tax (which would be pretty painless with gas prices way down - and would probably help to keep them down) would be a no-brainer. But it's a tax - so Republicans can't vote for it. Sheesh...
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Interesting arguments. Maybe this project is just a PR stunt. It sounds cool and forward looking, and maybe it's being publicized to make Azure (which, face it, has a huge marketing budget) seem cool. I think Amazon's 60 Minutes puff piece on delivery drones falls into this category, so why not undersea data centers - and self-driving cars for that matter, Google...
I have no doubt the underlying projects have some serious futurists supporting them inside these huge corporations, but perhaps even that support gets the nod from the money guys based on the PR value.
...minus the redundency. Which is why it never works.
IDE's were nice when they were optional. Combining a text editor, a make facility and a debugger in a nicely integrated package does make life a little easier. The problem is that IDE's enable complexity - and without a good reason, complexity is a bad thing. IDE's have enabled the migration from comprehensible programs to micro services with myriad triggers tied to tidbits of code. And in the case of web apps, those tidbits are divided between CSS, JavaScript, tons of JavaScript libraries, and whatever's on the back end. All of this crap is virtually impossible to comprehend or manage without an IDE.
If the web weren't the best way to deploy code, it would certainly win as the worst way to develop it...
What I don't get, is how did the kooky base get to decide what a Republican is? While I'm a registered independent, until 2000, I was a pretty reliable Republican voter - at least 75 percent. Mostly on financial issues. Then they party turned. First the Trotskyite neocons, then the Teabaggers took over. Now we're looking at Trump and/or Cruz?
They got to decide it when mainstream Republicans (i.e. big business, old money, etc.) realized that the only way they could win elections while continuing to oppose the economic interests of the majority of Americans is by catering to the kooky folks that became their base. And by Gerrymandering districts and messing with accessibility to the vote they could guarantee Republican wins - regardless of the kooky factor.
Before Reagan, Republicans used to tolerate progressive taxation so that they could win votes based on economic prosperity for all. But once the Reganites figured out that, with the formerly Democratic white Southern racist vote solidly in their corner, they didn't have to provide prosperity for all. Just demagogue on abortion, guns, dog whistle racism and, more recently, Christianist anti-science nonsense, and they can sew up roughly 50% of the electorate.
In the movie 'Cabaret', there's a scene where the sleazy German aristocrat says to the British main character, "Sure, the Nazis are a bunch of Hooligans, but we can control them. Let them take care of the Communists, and we'll take care of them." Famous last words...
Can you think of an instance where Obama or Clinton tried to deny a group of people some pretty basic right based on who they were? I doubt it. The closest you'll get is the twisted-ass pretzel logic that making an official stamp a marriage license amounts to denying her right to discriminate based on her 'religious values'. This is a pluralistic nation, and I'm sorry, but your religious values do not extend to my rights. You can think what you want, but you can't make me live according to your religious beliefs. Why is that so hard to understand?
I suppose you could try to point the finger towards universities that rescind speaking gigs to some people based on political correctness. I think that's pretty dumb too, but it's not in the same category as discrimination based on an immutable characteristic. False equivalencies are a false argument.
A CEO job is a special kind. The CEO serves as the public face of a company, and as such needs to reflect the values of that company - at least to the extent that the customers of the company don't revolt. That's what happened here. Mozilla fans didn't like his bigotry and, since Mozilla is as much a political movement as a product, that mattered to its survival. He didn't get fired for his views, he got fired for alienating his customers, and in turn, losing the confidence of his board.
By the way, apparently Slashdot doesn't have non-obtrusive ads, since I see no ads at all on the site. When I've visited Slashdot on a public computer, it's chock full of the nastiest, blinking-est shit. Why is that SD?
The recording industry was (partially) saved by Apple, who with iTunes, came up with a way to buy music that was less hassle than stealing it. That doesn't mean that the industry's model didn't take a huge hit - it did. And they're still able to make money from streaming sites and (golly!) radio.
Ad Block is, yes, threatening the Ad industry. But they're a more serious threat to online content in general. Advertisers have other places to get their messages out, but online publishers are stuck with online publishing (duh). Without advertising to fund it, the only other model is to charge for it. But iTunes had a much more salable product - people knew what songs they wanted, and there was no place else to get essentially the same thing as a recording by popstar X. So most online publishers can't charge, either. The only thing left is 'native advertising', which kind of ruins the content by hiding ads inside it. Not a rosy situation.
I say this as an AdBlock user, as well as a DVR user. Which doesn't say much for the argument that's about to kill Union participation at the Supreme Court. Given the chance, people won't pay - even if they 'know' they're getting benefits that might be threatened by their freeloading. But apparently Justice Kennedy thinks government workers will gladly fork over union dues once they become optional. Maybe so, since the union is directly working for their interests - as opposed to ad-supported media that are mostly just acting as bait for advertisers. But still...
I do have AdBlock set to allow some non-intrusive advertising. So far, so good. I haven't been tempted to turn that back off.
In addition, they 'embraced' ODF itself by providing an ODF format option in MSOffice that didn't work with any other ODF implementation - by intentionally 'interpreting' vague aspects of the spec as 'anything but what's already been implenented in OpenOffice'. At the same time, releasing an MSOffice implementation of OOXML that differs from the published standard.
Not exactly playing nice. More like polluting an existing standard while waiting for their monopoly magic to entrench their new pseudo-standard. Kind of like Java vs C#. And for the C# fans out there, it's not necessarily that their stuff isn't ever any good (though if excess complexity is a negative, OOXML's gotta be one of the worst standards ever). The point is that Microsoft could well embrace true open standards - even while keeping its implementations closed source, and even possibly coming out on top with the best implementation. But time and again, they try to subvert open standards. The simple fact that they're losing some of their ability to do it these days doesn't change a thing IMHO.
I would have hoped that security products that send encrypted passwords would insert random junk to randomize the length of the message containing the password. Since the password is in a predictable place in the data stream, it would make sense to garble it as much as possible, no?
XBox succeeded because it was able to leverage a lot of what developers were already doing for PC games to their console. That's where Microsoft has failed miserably in mobile. By supporting only the new metro API's for mobile, they had no real way to leverage their desktop monopoly. The apps simply didn't materialize because they were late to market (as usual), but this time they didn't have the monopoly to grant them success from a position of lateness. Since they couldn't 'force' developers to code for their platform, developers didn't. Surface has succeeded (to the extent it has), because it's a laptop, not because it's a tablet. People buy it for the desktop WIN32 apps that it runs, not for the Metro stuff - which is, at best, an add-on perk. That's why they're trying to force Windows 10 on everybody - but it won't work. The WIN32 apps are going to stay WIN32, and yes, most new desktop apps will be web apps.
So, I read this new 'Surface Phone' thing as an intel-based phone that can actually run WIN32 stuff when plugged into a keyboard, mouse and monitor. That's pretty cool, actually. But it's not going to compete well with the new sub-$400 class of Android phones out there - especially if Android develops the same capabilities. Of course, Android can't run WIN32 code, so there's still a chance. WINE for Android would be nice...
If you happen to carry a purse, a large cellphone is not a problem. At that point, the big screen has no downside. That said, for those of us of the pants pocket persuasion, a 5.2 inch screen with minimal bezels makes a perfect compromise - if only someone would build a decent device with those dimensions at a decent price and decent battery life. Seems like this sweet spot was hit a few years back by the LG-G2, but now even LG has blown past it and can't seem to get back to the form factor that makes the most sense.
To me the story is that beyond the inherent racism in treating all Muslims as potential terrorists (thanks Trump, etc), this kid was a Sikh, not a Muslim. So not only are Americans dumb enough to mistake a phone charger for a bomb, we can't even get our multiple racisms straight.
They can offer, instead, more votes from the people whose interests the legislator is supporting - or at least not opposing.
In other words, bribes. Votes in today's hyper money-saturated politics are a form of currency. I seriously doubt that Dow can produce voters directly, based solely on huge numbers of people caring about their issues. Of course, I'm sure you'd respond that each of Dow's shareholders counts as a vote aligned with Dow's issues, but that's quite a stretch, based on the issues that voters actually care about. If I were a Congressman, and thought that's all a lobbyist was delivering in the form of 'votes', I'd laugh - that is, if I were a typical corrupt Congressman with my hand out. But corrupt Congresspeople are getting something they want from lobbyists, who are giving much more than the promise of like-minded voters.
The population of the US has been roughly evenly divided on this issue...
So, let me see. If the NYTimes editorial board takes a stance different from yours on this 'evenly divided' issue, they're somehow extreme. Saying that is what's extreme. I'd also venture that interpreting the 2nd ammendment to cover untrackable sales of military-grade rifles to just about anybody who wants one is pretty extreme too. Nuance on this issue is the opposite of extreme, fella.
The H-1B abuse that's been in the news lately is by Indian tech outsourcing firms, and it has nothing to do with low wage H-1B workers. These firms use H-1B visas to bring temporary workers to the US for the explicit purpose of documenting the jobs currently being done by US workers. Then most of the US workers are fired and replaced with offshore workers a prevailing Indian rates. This should be flat-out illegal. Having to pay these guys $100K wouldn't stop this abuse, because they're only in place for a few months at most, and the savings from offshoring dwarf the expense. I'll leave my rant about how badly offshore workers duplicate the work of the US workers they replaced - I've made that here before.
To say that anything about the New York Times is extreme is to be extreme yourself to the point of inanity. The New York Times is about as mainstream as it gets. Their primary bias is toward their own image as 'the paper of record' - i.e. covering everything, in a journalistically 'evenhanded' way. They are 'evenhanded' in a predictable enough way that they were easily manipulated into shilling for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But seriously, alarm over gun violence (and over the out and out gun fetishism of today's right) is also mainstream. Large majorities of Americans want guns trackable and non military-grade. But you're free to continue to enjoy life in your bubble...
It's not the language at all. It's the way to structure an application that's changed drastically. I used to write server-based apps, with a smart terminal front end. It made for a nice, simple, supportable structure, with a reasonable GUI. Recently, I've delved into web programming. Javascript is fine as languages go - though the various libraries built around it are probably more difficult to get a handle on. But the main surprise is what has come to constitute an application. To the extent that there's an application, per se, it consists of Javascript code in the browser, with data accessed via services on the back end. And mostly on a single page basis. In other words, the surprise is that there's no module that counts as an overarching 'application' that defines a structure encompassing a large set of functionality. I have no idea how this structure would scale up beyond a small set of web pages. Not scale in terms of being able to support a large number of users, but in terms of anybody knowing (or remembering) how all the bits of code fit together.
Multiple cores is really just a substitute for faster processors. You're still running a single OS on them, and that OS could multitask pretty much as well on a single core that was twice as fast as on a dual core machine. So, they're essentially using the number of cores as a proxy for the power of the machine. Did they charge more for high clock speed servers back in the single core days?
I can see a point for charging by the VM - in which case you're using the souped up hardware to run multiple copies of the OS, so to use a single license would be kind of cheating.
Meanwhile, why does anybody pay for this? Seriously. Okay, if you're hosting Exchange or Sharepoint, well you bought into it. Or if you built an in-house system bassed on SQLServer. But for anything else, the free alternatives are just as good.
And that $1000 price tag is why the surface pro is not really a tablet from a sales point of view. It'll sell to corporate execs who want a light laptop - and for whom it matters that they have an obviously pricey toy to show off. Plus, these things will primarily be used as laptops to run desktop software. But that's the Mac Air market, not the iPad market - much less the Kindle Fire / $99 Android market.
Microsoft can only hope that once they sell enough of these, devs will start writing tablet software for them. At that point, they might be able to play in the iPad's market - if that market still exists by then and hasn't been decimated by big screen phones. But even then, I guess Microsoft's phones could benefit. Though Android phones will still rule.
It must be a great comfort to be such an absolutist. Nuance is so tiresome, isn't it. The Constitution is not the word of God - a good thing, since God is 99% certain not to exist (I won't go fully absolutist on that one). You just want guns. Just admit to your fetish - or paranoia - or whatever. They're in the Constitution for a well stated, completely obsolete reason. They are not an inalienable right by any definition of 'inalienable' other than, for whatever reason, the guys that wrote the Constitution decided to use that word. So it seems not unreasonable to try to understand why they used it rather than to fall back on a literalistic definition of the word and grant that more meaning than you grant to the full context. I'm sure there are other things in the Constitution where you would object to such a mechanistic interpretation - but you seem unable to see things from any perspective but your own.
Nice how you conveniently ignored the gun show part of my comment - which, yes, is legal and part of the problem.
Anything can be subject to a slippery slope, frog in a pot argument. That's just a lazy excuse for doing nothing. 'They' is the people you elect. Assuming there are enough gun lovers to keep 'them' from pulling a frog in a pot, you have nothing to worry about. But keep it up. Someday, someone you care about will be a victim - that's apparently the only thing that allows some people to see both sides of an issue...
What is so damn overbearing about requiring guns be licensed and not sold to any crazy person, criminal or terrorist at a 'gun show'? They're lethal weapons, not heirloom figurines, ferchrissake.
And as long as we're talking about 'back then' as a valid filter for reading the 2nd ammendment, there was no standing army and we had just fought a war against a foreign government. Today we don't have civilians, organized or not, fighting against armies. The key word is 'militia', not 'regulated'. The US is not defended by a militia, and I don't think you'd want that. So, laws to keep guns off the streets and out of the hands of killers might just make some sense.
I wonder how you feel about the bit in the 14th amendment that grants citizenship to anyone born here. Sometimes stuff written down decades or centuries ago can have unintended consequences that make no sense down the road. Vagueness in the language allows the courts to bring sanity to bear without having to amend the Constitution.
Perhaps, but descriptive or explanatory clauses have a purpose - they're not just decorative. It's reasonable to assume they 'describe' and 'explain' why what follows is there. In other words, they provide context and intention to the other phrase, "shall not be infringed". And it's not an unreasonable interpretation to say that in a new nation without a standing army, an armed population that can be called on to defend the country might be a good thing. And that the standing army might render that moot, while still meeting the requirement of that well regulated militia.
I'm okay with the 2nd ammendment allowing guns - licensed, trackable, non-military style guns. But you guys that are always on the lookout for tyranny always seem to have a low opinion of the rest of the Constitution, which provides mechanisms to vote the tyrants out of office. Of course, you need to be in the majority for that to work...
I guess my point is that this kind of program isn't inherently bad, but as implemented (or policed) they are ripe for abuse. Same goes for the repeal of Glass-Steagle. When you loosen regulations and then don't even try to enforce what's left, you get mass layoffs and housing bubbles. And forget blaming Fannie Mae. The housing bubble was caused by the bond ratings agencies that rubber stamped any crappy mortgage-backed security as AAA and AIG, which pretended to insure them. In other words fraud - plain and simple. None of it would've been possible without that.
That's where the GOP comes in. They are ideologically against almost all regulation. Don't know if that's real ideology, or just convenient think-tank bullshit that happens to suit the needs of their donors. Whatever else you might say, you can't say the Dems are against sensible regulations and enforcement. You might say they tend to go overboard, but that's just an argument for the two parties balancing each other. Except today's GOP won't accept any kind of balance either. Look at the highway bill just passed. 'Payed for' by a laundry list of bogus gimmicks when a raise in the gas tax (which would be pretty painless with gas prices way down - and would probably help to keep them down) would be a no-brainer. But it's a tax - so Republicans can't vote for it. Sheesh...