Besides, Google has been doing it for years, and look how popular Android is.
You have a point. But I've already opted in to Google services - so I'm getting something in return for access to my info (and I'm pretty much okay with the way they use it - though I'm occasionally creeped out when I go to google something I've been emailed about, and the auto-completion is way ahead of me - but apparently, that's a feature, and I suppose it is useful...).
But I haven't opted in to Microsoft's services. I don't use Bing or Outlook or Office 365, and I don't want to use them. So I'm not okay with them having my info, and I haven't done any research into how they use it. I use Windows because I have to use it sometimes for work (and I only use it rarely, since I only rarely have to - I use Mint most of the time). I paid for my copy of Windows 7, and haven't taken the 'free' upgrade to Windows 10 - but apparently Windows 7 is now collecting info too. If they want my info, offer a service I want - not just a clone of Google services. And make it optional - if I use the service, I ante up my info; if I don't use it, no dice.
Ironically, I think Nokia was the first to propose something like this. They had a laptop-like thing that you could plug your phone into to turn the phone into a 'computer'. I don't think they ever brought it to market, though.
You had me until 'low-cost'. You can probably buy a full desktop or laptop for the cost of the dock for one of these - not to mention that a flagship-class phone capable of running a full-blown Windows system is probably lots more expensive than that cheap desktop or laptop computer. Convenience, sure. And I'd like to see this capability in Android phones and iPhones too. But it's not gonna come cheap - or by the time it does, the fact that it's Windows will be largely irrelevant. You're gonna be running those phone apps in desktop mode too.
I assume the regulations at least partially exist to enforce some sanity on traffic patterns - i.e. regulate the use of the publicly owned city street grid. The granting of taxi licenses has to strike a balance between enough available ride capacity and completely jamming up traffic patterns with too many taxis. Uber's model is a great thing for small cities that don't have large existing taxi fleets. It allows cars to be dispatched to anywhere on demand. In large cities like London or New York, it's probably easier to flag down a regular taxi than to use Uber - unless Uber is significantly cheaper. There's some convenience factor, I guess in not having to deal with cash or a credit card - but those technologies could be incorporated by the medallion fleet too. In any case, the purpose of taxi regulations isn't to maximize the convenience of yuppies - it's to regulate the safety of the service and to optimize the usage of the street grid - including for busses. Maybe Uber should set up a service in such places that only offers rides into and out of the central city - but not within it. That'd improve the efficiency of the hailed taxi system and provide service where it's currently missing.
Personally, I think the thread you linked to is pretty interesting. And the language people seem to be having a problem with is pretty tame - certainly doesn't rise to the level of ad hominem attack (unless you're worried about them attacking Microsoft). The issue was whether to bend over backwards to accept the reality that Microsoft had strong-armed all OEMs to include their security key - and that most include only that key. As a practical matter, Matthew's probably right. I can't speak to whether his code amounts to 'polluting' the kernel or not, but Linus is probably right that it's not something that would be done strictly on the merits - which doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be done. Still, Linus was offering a suggestion of how to do it outside of the kernel, which probably has merit too...
One of the nastiest patent abuse stories I read in recent years is the one about asthma inhalers. The government mandated that the propellant that had long been used be replaced with something that was ozone-safe (or something). The drug companies went and put out new versions of their identical medications and were able to re-patent the whole thing. Suddenly, there were no longer generics available for this tried-and-true medications, and the price went through the roof.
Now, nothing new was invented, so why were new patents granted? Apparently this goes on all the time. it was particularly ugly here because the government mandated taking the old non-protected products off the market. Normally a 'new', reformulated drug has to compete with the old generics - i.e., it has to at least be better to succeed. Some of you will argue that this is a 'government == bad' situation, but really? Can we just assume the old stuff was taken off for a good reason and continue from there...
Anyway, my real point is that all the 'do standard computer function X, but do it on a smartphone' patents are essentially the same thing. There's no new innovation there - just reformulation to work on a different device. And face it, today's smartphones aren't even different devices any more. They're general purpose computers - just like the desktops and laptops of yore. 'Do on a phone' patents assume that communicating something over a cellular modem or with a touch-screen interface is somehow different than doing it over wifi or ethernet, or with a keyboard and mouse. It's not.
There is no invention here. Just like there's not really an invention in putting out, say, a time-release version of your existing medication. The medication exists (valid invention), time-release delivery exists (valid invention). Combining the two is at best an 'invention' of a much lesser scale. I think it's not worthy of patent protection at all - but even if it is, it should be a lesser form of protection. Either much shorter duration or carrying much reduced penalties for violation.
Yep. I was that guy too. And what's most irksome is that these guys would spin their wheels and implement utter garbage because they were afraid to admit they didn't have a clue. Admittedly, they may have been intimidated by my reactions in the past to how many times they asked the same questions after silently listening to the answers without letting me know they didn't understand them.
I'll be charitable and say that it's not that the Indian developers are not talented. It's that they're simply not in a position to provide any creative input to the process. By design, they are drones working off of specs that are supposed to be complete. But specs are never complete - except in the warped minds of executives who think that 'process' and 'accountability' can solve all problems. That said, since talented developers are just as hamstrung by this process as novices are, I have no doubt that Cognizant hired as cheaply as possible. There's competition for talented devs in India too.
In my case, the company was secretly for sale when the outsourcing was undertaken. Successful future development was not a priority - profitability on paper was all that mattered. What's hideous about this is that the buyers should know by know that a buyout target that has outsourced this way is not a good prospect. But again, in our case, the private equity firm that did the buying had its eyes on an IPO 2 years down the road. An IPO based on a marketing promise to redeploy all apps 'in the cloud' in that time frame. In other words, either idiots - or hucksters confident that they can hype and resell this junk before the shit hits the fan.
The article neglects to report on the end results of this process - making it seem like 'well, this is nasty, but it's what American business needs to do to remain competitive'. Since they mention Cognizant as one of the big players using this 'tape the current workers and then fire them' approach, let me comment as an ex worker that was ultimately fired after surviving a Cognizant outsourcing for several years and working with their devs (technically 'rebadged' as a Cognizant dev myself):
1. Productivity takes a huge hit. I have no idea whether the cost savings are enough to counteract that, but in our case the software products that had their development outsourced, all - without exception - have died on the vine and are now running on skeleton crews in anticipation of being shutdown once all existing support contracts with customers end. That's the endpoint where I lost my job.
2. The Indian developers never get up to speed. Or more accurately, they begin to get up to speed after 9 months to a year - but then Cognizant rotates them out to other projects, and you're back to total green junior guys watching the videos and asking stupid questions again. And yes, this is all by design. Cognizant's big selling point to the US companies is that they enable great flexibility to ramp staff up and down on demand. Why those companies believe that crap is another story altogether.
3. There is no concept of a senior developer. Prior to the Cognizant experience, the senior devs came up through the ranks and had an incredible depth of knowledge and experience about the specific products they were managing. Ultimately, that product-specific knowledge became as valuable as their tech chops. The Cognizant model relies on 'business analysts' who came up through the product design - i.e. spec writers, not through development. So where those folks used to be or have access to senior developers to sanity check their designs, there is now an utter vacuum. So there is no iterative back-and-forth to fix broken designs. Stuff gets built (way late) according to specs with problems that should've been caught along the way. Meanwhile, the offshore dev's spun their wheels trying to build something they didn't understand - often because it didn't make sense. Only to need to have it completely trashed and rewritten.
4. And this is a big one. All that 'knowledge transfer' material (i.e. the videos and any corresponding writeups) are the exclusive property of Cognizant. So that even if you come to realize that the Cognizant outsourcing was a mistake, you have already fired the people who had the original knowledge - and you don't even own the (shitty) materials to train staff to replace Cognizant. They essentially own your operation - at the same time as they drag it down.
I think for the purposes of this investigation, they're not considering iPhones as part of the 'market' in question. There's some justification for this, I guess, since Apple won't license iOS to other OEMs, so if you're not Apple, your only choices today are Android and Windows. So in that limited market, Android has an enormous lead. Still, Google doesn't prevent OEMs from loading alternative apps alongside the Google equivalents - remember the Verizon 'Droid with Bing' thing? And I don't even think non-removablility is a requirement. OEM's install the default stuff into the system area where stuff isn't removable out of their convenience - but they don't have to. Or if they once were required to, they aren't any more.
I think the only thing Google demands of OEMs that might cross the line is requiring all their Android devices to be Google/Android if any of them are. With a Microsoft-flavored Android variant in the wings, the 'all Google Android' requirement might make it tough for Microsoft Android to get a toehold - leaving aside the myriad ironies of 'open source is a cancer' Microsoft trying to usurp an open source platform and to use to push their otherwise failing mobile offerings...
Except that the 'security policies for employees' you're talking about were not in place at the time - and private email use by people in her position was common. The only reason we're looking at her email now is the politically motivated Benghazi panel (number 3 is it? or 4?) has issued blanket subpoenas. And even there, the FBI isn't investigating whether her use of a private server - or even the deletion (if such a thing happened) of sensitive emails was problematic. The ONLY thing they're investigating is whether classified information was shared inappropriately. And even if such info got onto her private server (inadvertently, I might add), that doesn't mean it got into the wrong hands - it didn't. That's the difference with the Petreus situation - he actually gave classified info to his girlfriend, who didn't have clearance. So the fact that he went to jail doesn't indicate a double-standard. It indicates that he broke the law - something that nobody (outside of talk radio and causual internet commenters) is alleging.
The only thing to come out of this email 'scandal' is a sense that Clinton is 'untrustworty'. In other words, mission accomplished. So let's just be straight about just what that mission was.
Well, that's pretty dumb. If you don't think there is any compelling reason for generating stable jobs in this country, you'd better build a pretty high wall around your home. Whatever happened to 'promote the general welfare'? The 'legacy baggage' you're talking about is people's jobs. And not jobs that were being performed badly - just jobs being performed at US pay scales. Believe me, outsourcing doesn't make those jobs get done any better (it's usually much worse for tech jobs), but they're done much cheaper, indeed. Makes the bottom line superficially better - makes the long term prospects of the company lousy.
The crazy thing is that the stock market keeps rewarding these short-sighted moves. I guess that makes a kind of perverse sense, in that short term stock investors can reliably predict that other short term investors will push up the price in response. But that only highlights how far the stock market has come from reflecting the true value of companies as real long term investments. The only long term rationale for buying stocks today is as a hedge against inflation (i.e. the price of everything goes up, so ultimately my stocks will too).
You're implying some nefarious intent to send classified info over insecure email - when all evidence shows that Clinton made every effort to not do that, and that all the classifications were after the fact. Plus none of it leaked. There's no criminal investigation - there's only an investigation to see if any classified stuff was leaked. And there was no law at the time about using personal email for non-classified stuff. So you're a little off the rails if you ask me. Sure, it's always possible that some crime was committed - but barring any evidence, you seem to be assuming one was. The Powell example is just to point out that an investigation of Clinton's email is every bit as unwarranted as one of Powell's would be. The only reason we're discussing Clinton's emails at all is that the insane Benghazi commission (the 2nd or 3rd such commission to be set up) has abused its powers to subpoena anything and everything it possibly can in an attempt to hunt for embarrassing stuff to cherry pick.
I'm sure if they went retrospectively over Powell's email, they'd find plenty to classify after the fact. That's my point. They aren't going through his email, because there's no political witch hunt after him.
As fare as your sarcastic 'I'm sure' conspiracy theory, I'm sure that would exist (as a conspiracy theory) whether she had her own email server or not. Just because you think there's something inherently sinister about anything the Clintons do doesn't make it rise to the level of fact. That's my point to. You're justifying an unprecedented combing through Clinton's emails (both work and private - since I'm sure you don't think she had the right to delete her private stuff either) based on an assumption that there must be something evil (or at least politically embarassing) there. So again, I ask, what's the substantive difference between HRC and Colin Powell's use of personal email.
How is this any different from Colin Powell's email - whose private server did he use? Is it only different because he's not running for President - and there's no bogus Benghazi commission looking for stuff to embarrass him with. Or is there really something particularly dangerous or sinister here (and I don't mean 'potetntially sinister' - there will always be conspiracy theories around the Clintons).
Anti-Clinton people always talk about Petreus's prosecution for sharing secret info - except that he actually shared it. That's not parallel at all. There's not even any allegation of criminal behavior that I'm aware of.
..except for the detached dot on the i, which looks nothing like the l. At least the lowercase L looks way different from the uppercase i, which is typically much more of a problem in coding fonts. Likewise O (uppercase oh) and 0 (zero).
It's not that Chrome came about to change the default search provider. Users could certainly change the provider in IE easier than downloading and installing Chrome. There may have been some consideration towards keeping the ability to change it once Microsoft's antitrust remedies ran out, but Chrome had more to do with making sure the web remained the platform of choice for developers. And that that platform remained consistent and compatible across platforms. And it's worked. Microsoft's monopoly remains, but it's a monopoly on legacy win32 desktop software. And nobody want's to write that any more - largely thanks to Chrome and Safari and, yes, Firefox. Without Firefox, we were in danger of losing a consistent web standard. Without a consistent web standard, the iPhone would've never taken off. Without the iPhone, no Android, no Chromebooks and a much more marginal Macintosh. Seems everybody's benefited, except Microsoft. Oh, they're still doing fine, but they've largely lost the power to control the direction of the industry.
CM is obviously looking for a business model for monetizing their work. I can't completely fault them for that, but - assuming they're in this because they're open source and/or Android fans - selling out to Microsoft is a pretty lousy choice. Especially since it was Google's open sourcing of the OS that created the opportunity for them to exist in the first place.
So how about this... Make your business one of supporting as many devices as you can for as long as there are users willing to pay for the support. Yep, charge a small fee for maintaining devices that the OEM's orphan. If necessary, share some of that fee with the makers of hardware components that are otherwise unwilling to provide up-to-date drivers for their stuff - while still letting the public know that they might want to avoid devices with components from that vendor in the future. In short, CM could build a business by mitigating some of the fragmentation issues with Android - rather than stoking the fragmentation.
This has nothing to do with whether Google has today's version of Microsoft's desktop monopoly (it doesn't, by the way). it has to do with silently changing a user preference. You might argue that a user doesn't want Google as the default search engine from the start - but if they're buying an Android device, at least they know the default search engine is Google - and they can change it. To quietly change the default without being asked is a whole other thing.
Mozilla pulled this with its switch to Bing. It wasn't supposed to change the search engine for existing installations - but in some cases, it still did. I've even had it changed back to Bing after having switched it back to Google. Don't know if that happened in response to an update or what, but it's nasty.
And it's not that they don't want to get those apps off Windows. They do. They want them to be web apps. But that's a total rewrite. The 'brilliant' ex-CEO of a VOIP company that took over at the software shop where I used to work declared that all of our apps would be 'in the cloud' in 2 years. Moron. Now, after spending a small fortune trying to rewrite just one of them, they're on the verge of folding up shop and getting out of software altogether (there's a hardware component of the business that's still 'thriving').
it's not that Companies won't be running web apps sooner or later - they just won't be the same apps that they're running on Windows today. Windows business-specific apps are legacy - to the point that nobody can support them, much less rewrite them. Okay, well maybe they can support them - if any of the original staff that designed and wrote them hasn't been outsourced to India yet...;-)
OEMs are free to choose a different browser. Don't know whether Chrome has to be installed, but it certainly doesn't have to be the default. Remember when Verizon was selling Android phones with Bing as the default search engine.
The only software patents available should be on actual inventions. The kind of stuff that when described, elicit a response of 'that would be cool - if it could be done', not 'that would be cool - I think I'll go and do it'. That distinction defines non-obviousness. Just because there aren't that many ideas that can't be implemented in software through obvious, well-known approaches doesn't mean that the obvious stuff must be granted patents. If software has opened up a realm of activity where implementation of new ideas no longer requires new inventions, so be it. No need to redefine invention downward just so the PO can keep granting patents and patent lawyers can keep raking in the dough...
The fact remains that an audience for Bing would not even exist had it not been made the default search engine on Windows - and had not millions of Windows users not been savvy enough to change it. Even today, many Windows users get to google by typing www.google.com into IE - since they're too intimidated to even try to change the default. That Bing relied on Google rankings on top of this just underscores that, while there may be some need for competition in search, Microsoft has done little to earn it's 2nd place position.
The original article is about Cortana/Bing on Android. Again, something that Android users have no practical use for, and only makes some marginal sense for Windows 10 users that now have Cortana baked in to their desktops. Having utterly lost the race for relevance in mobile computing, Microsoft has engineered Windows 10 - which will still enjoy essential desktop monopoly status - as a trojan horse to allow them to build a parallel MS-dominated version of Android to deliver MS services to mobile users. For all of the silly bluster from Cyanogen about taking Android away from Google, it's Microsoft that's really attempting to do it. And I guess the open source nature of Android allows for this - though why consumers would accept a Microsoft take-over of Google's work eludes me. Perhaps they won't...
Because Republicans on the Supreme Court are consistently voting to make the situation worse. Prior to Citizens United, it was possible to at least attempt to address the corruption of the system via the elected legislature (or at least throw the bums out if they won't address it). Now, we apparently have to ammend the Constitution to remove a ridiculous manufactured equivalency between corporate bribery and free speech. It's silly to pretend that that's not the result of a significant difference between Republicans and Democrats. And the reason Republicans did it is that they think political money favors them - nothing more, nothing less. So, there's that difference too.
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Besides, Google has been doing it for years, and look how popular Android is.
You have a point. But I've already opted in to Google services - so I'm getting something in return for access to my info (and I'm pretty much okay with the way they use it - though I'm occasionally creeped out when I go to google something I've been emailed about, and the auto-completion is way ahead of me - but apparently, that's a feature, and I suppose it is useful...).
But I haven't opted in to Microsoft's services. I don't use Bing or Outlook or Office 365, and I don't want to use them. So I'm not okay with them having my info, and I haven't done any research into how they use it. I use Windows because I have to use it sometimes for work (and I only use it rarely, since I only rarely have to - I use Mint most of the time). I paid for my copy of Windows 7, and haven't taken the 'free' upgrade to Windows 10 - but apparently Windows 7 is now collecting info too. If they want my info, offer a service I want - not just a clone of Google services. And make it optional - if I use the service, I ante up my info; if I don't use it, no dice.
Ironically, I think Nokia was the first to propose something like this. They had a laptop-like thing that you could plug your phone into to turn the phone into a 'computer'. I don't think they ever brought it to market, though.
You had me until 'low-cost'. You can probably buy a full desktop or laptop for the cost of the dock for one of these - not to mention that a flagship-class phone capable of running a full-blown Windows system is probably lots more expensive than that cheap desktop or laptop computer. Convenience, sure. And I'd like to see this capability in Android phones and iPhones too. But it's not gonna come cheap - or by the time it does, the fact that it's Windows will be largely irrelevant. You're gonna be running those phone apps in desktop mode too.
I assume the regulations at least partially exist to enforce some sanity on traffic patterns - i.e. regulate the use of the publicly owned city street grid. The granting of taxi licenses has to strike a balance between enough available ride capacity and completely jamming up traffic patterns with too many taxis. Uber's model is a great thing for small cities that don't have large existing taxi fleets. It allows cars to be dispatched to anywhere on demand. In large cities like London or New York, it's probably easier to flag down a regular taxi than to use Uber - unless Uber is significantly cheaper. There's some convenience factor, I guess in not having to deal with cash or a credit card - but those technologies could be incorporated by the medallion fleet too. In any case, the purpose of taxi regulations isn't to maximize the convenience of yuppies - it's to regulate the safety of the service and to optimize the usage of the street grid - including for busses. Maybe Uber should set up a service in such places that only offers rides into and out of the central city - but not within it. That'd improve the efficiency of the hailed taxi system and provide service where it's currently missing.
Personally, I think the thread you linked to is pretty interesting. And the language people seem to be having a problem with is pretty tame - certainly doesn't rise to the level of ad hominem attack (unless you're worried about them attacking Microsoft). The issue was whether to bend over backwards to accept the reality that Microsoft had strong-armed all OEMs to include their security key - and that most include only that key. As a practical matter, Matthew's probably right. I can't speak to whether his code amounts to 'polluting' the kernel or not, but Linus is probably right that it's not something that would be done strictly on the merits - which doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be done. Still, Linus was offering a suggestion of how to do it outside of the kernel, which probably has merit too...
One of the nastiest patent abuse stories I read in recent years is the one about asthma inhalers. The government mandated that the propellant that had long been used be replaced with something that was ozone-safe (or something). The drug companies went and put out new versions of their identical medications and were able to re-patent the whole thing. Suddenly, there were no longer generics available for this tried-and-true medications, and the price went through the roof.
Now, nothing new was invented, so why were new patents granted? Apparently this goes on all the time. it was particularly ugly here because the government mandated taking the old non-protected products off the market. Normally a 'new', reformulated drug has to compete with the old generics - i.e., it has to at least be better to succeed. Some of you will argue that this is a 'government == bad' situation, but really? Can we just assume the old stuff was taken off for a good reason and continue from there...
Anyway, my real point is that all the 'do standard computer function X, but do it on a smartphone' patents are essentially the same thing. There's no new innovation there - just reformulation to work on a different device. And face it, today's smartphones aren't even different devices any more. They're general purpose computers - just like the desktops and laptops of yore. 'Do on a phone' patents assume that communicating something over a cellular modem or with a touch-screen interface is somehow different than doing it over wifi or ethernet, or with a keyboard and mouse. It's not.
There is no invention here. Just like there's not really an invention in putting out, say, a time-release version of your existing medication. The medication exists (valid invention), time-release delivery exists (valid invention). Combining the two is at best an 'invention' of a much lesser scale. I think it's not worthy of patent protection at all - but even if it is, it should be a lesser form of protection. Either much shorter duration or carrying much reduced penalties for violation.
...the guy who was fixing most of their mistakes
Yep. I was that guy too. And what's most irksome is that these guys would spin their wheels and implement utter garbage because they were afraid to admit they didn't have a clue. Admittedly, they may have been intimidated by my reactions in the past to how many times they asked the same questions after silently listening to the answers without letting me know they didn't understand them.
I'll be charitable and say that it's not that the Indian developers are not talented. It's that they're simply not in a position to provide any creative input to the process. By design, they are drones working off of specs that are supposed to be complete. But specs are never complete - except in the warped minds of executives who think that 'process' and 'accountability' can solve all problems. That said, since talented developers are just as hamstrung by this process as novices are, I have no doubt that Cognizant hired as cheaply as possible. There's competition for talented devs in India too.
In my case, the company was secretly for sale when the outsourcing was undertaken. Successful future development was not a priority - profitability on paper was all that mattered. What's hideous about this is that the buyers should know by know that a buyout target that has outsourced this way is not a good prospect. But again, in our case, the private equity firm that did the buying had its eyes on an IPO 2 years down the road. An IPO based on a marketing promise to redeploy all apps 'in the cloud' in that time frame. In other words, either idiots - or hucksters confident that they can hype and resell this junk before the shit hits the fan.
The article neglects to report on the end results of this process - making it seem like 'well, this is nasty, but it's what American business needs to do to remain competitive'. Since they mention Cognizant as one of the big players using this 'tape the current workers and then fire them' approach, let me comment as an ex worker that was ultimately fired after surviving a Cognizant outsourcing for several years and working with their devs (technically 'rebadged' as a Cognizant dev myself):
1. Productivity takes a huge hit. I have no idea whether the cost savings are enough to counteract that, but in our case the software products that had their development outsourced, all - without exception - have died on the vine and are now running on skeleton crews in anticipation of being shutdown once all existing support contracts with customers end. That's the endpoint where I lost my job.
2. The Indian developers never get up to speed. Or more accurately, they begin to get up to speed after 9 months to a year - but then Cognizant rotates them out to other projects, and you're back to total green junior guys watching the videos and asking stupid questions again. And yes, this is all by design. Cognizant's big selling point to the US companies is that they enable great flexibility to ramp staff up and down on demand. Why those companies believe that crap is another story altogether.
3. There is no concept of a senior developer. Prior to the Cognizant experience, the senior devs came up through the ranks and had an incredible depth of knowledge and experience about the specific products they were managing. Ultimately, that product-specific knowledge became as valuable as their tech chops. The Cognizant model relies on 'business analysts' who came up through the product design - i.e. spec writers, not through development. So where those folks used to be or have access to senior developers to sanity check their designs, there is now an utter vacuum. So there is no iterative back-and-forth to fix broken designs. Stuff gets built (way late) according to specs with problems that should've been caught along the way. Meanwhile, the offshore dev's spun their wheels trying to build something they didn't understand - often because it didn't make sense. Only to need to have it completely trashed and rewritten.
4. And this is a big one. All that 'knowledge transfer' material (i.e. the videos and any corresponding writeups) are the exclusive property of Cognizant. So that even if you come to realize that the Cognizant outsourcing was a mistake, you have already fired the people who had the original knowledge - and you don't even own the (shitty) materials to train staff to replace Cognizant. They essentially own your operation - at the same time as they drag it down.
I think for the purposes of this investigation, they're not considering iPhones as part of the 'market' in question. There's some justification for this, I guess, since Apple won't license iOS to other OEMs, so if you're not Apple, your only choices today are Android and Windows. So in that limited market, Android has an enormous lead. Still, Google doesn't prevent OEMs from loading alternative apps alongside the Google equivalents - remember the Verizon 'Droid with Bing' thing? And I don't even think non-removablility is a requirement. OEM's install the default stuff into the system area where stuff isn't removable out of their convenience - but they don't have to. Or if they once were required to, they aren't any more.
I think the only thing Google demands of OEMs that might cross the line is requiring all their Android devices to be Google/Android if any of them are. With a Microsoft-flavored Android variant in the wings, the 'all Google Android' requirement might make it tough for Microsoft Android to get a toehold - leaving aside the myriad ironies of 'open source is a cancer' Microsoft trying to usurp an open source platform and to use to push their otherwise failing mobile offerings...
Except that the 'security policies for employees' you're talking about were not in place at the time - and private email use by people in her position was common. The only reason we're looking at her email now is the politically motivated Benghazi panel (number 3 is it? or 4?) has issued blanket subpoenas. And even there, the FBI isn't investigating whether her use of a private server - or even the deletion (if such a thing happened) of sensitive emails was problematic. The ONLY thing they're investigating is whether classified information was shared inappropriately. And even if such info got onto her private server (inadvertently, I might add), that doesn't mean it got into the wrong hands - it didn't. That's the difference with the Petreus situation - he actually gave classified info to his girlfriend, who didn't have clearance. So the fact that he went to jail doesn't indicate a double-standard. It indicates that he broke the law - something that nobody (outside of talk radio and causual internet commenters) is alleging.
The only thing to come out of this email 'scandal' is a sense that Clinton is 'untrustworty'. In other words, mission accomplished. So let's just be straight about just what that mission was.
Well, that's pretty dumb. If you don't think there is any compelling reason for generating stable jobs in this country, you'd better build a pretty high wall around your home. Whatever happened to 'promote the general welfare'? The 'legacy baggage' you're talking about is people's jobs. And not jobs that were being performed badly - just jobs being performed at US pay scales. Believe me, outsourcing doesn't make those jobs get done any better (it's usually much worse for tech jobs), but they're done much cheaper, indeed. Makes the bottom line superficially better - makes the long term prospects of the company lousy.
The crazy thing is that the stock market keeps rewarding these short-sighted moves. I guess that makes a kind of perverse sense, in that short term stock investors can reliably predict that other short term investors will push up the price in response. But that only highlights how far the stock market has come from reflecting the true value of companies as real long term investments. The only long term rationale for buying stocks today is as a hedge against inflation (i.e. the price of everything goes up, so ultimately my stocks will too).
You're implying some nefarious intent to send classified info over insecure email - when all evidence shows that Clinton made every effort to not do that, and that all the classifications were after the fact. Plus none of it leaked. There's no criminal investigation - there's only an investigation to see if any classified stuff was leaked. And there was no law at the time about using personal email for non-classified stuff. So you're a little off the rails if you ask me. Sure, it's always possible that some crime was committed - but barring any evidence, you seem to be assuming one was. The Powell example is just to point out that an investigation of Clinton's email is every bit as unwarranted as one of Powell's would be. The only reason we're discussing Clinton's emails at all is that the insane Benghazi commission (the 2nd or 3rd such commission to be set up) has abused its powers to subpoena anything and everything it possibly can in an attempt to hunt for embarrassing stuff to cherry pick.
I'm sure if they went retrospectively over Powell's email, they'd find plenty to classify after the fact. That's my point. They aren't going through his email, because there's no political witch hunt after him.
As fare as your sarcastic 'I'm sure' conspiracy theory, I'm sure that would exist (as a conspiracy theory) whether she had her own email server or not. Just because you think there's something inherently sinister about anything the Clintons do doesn't make it rise to the level of fact. That's my point to. You're justifying an unprecedented combing through Clinton's emails (both work and private - since I'm sure you don't think she had the right to delete her private stuff either) based on an assumption that there must be something evil (or at least politically embarassing) there. So again, I ask, what's the substantive difference between HRC and Colin Powell's use of personal email.
How is this any different from Colin Powell's email - whose private server did he use? Is it only different because he's not running for President - and there's no bogus Benghazi commission looking for stuff to embarrass him with. Or is there really something particularly dangerous or sinister here (and I don't mean 'potetntially sinister' - there will always be conspiracy theories around the Clintons).
Anti-Clinton people always talk about Petreus's prosecution for sharing secret info - except that he actually shared it. That's not parallel at all. There's not even any allegation of criminal behavior that I'm aware of.
..except for the detached dot on the i, which looks nothing like the l. At least the lowercase L looks way different from the uppercase i, which is typically much more of a problem in coding fonts. Likewise O (uppercase oh) and 0 (zero).
It's not that Chrome came about to change the default search provider. Users could certainly change the provider in IE easier than downloading and installing Chrome. There may have been some consideration towards keeping the ability to change it once Microsoft's antitrust remedies ran out, but Chrome had more to do with making sure the web remained the platform of choice for developers. And that that platform remained consistent and compatible across platforms. And it's worked. Microsoft's monopoly remains, but it's a monopoly on legacy win32 desktop software. And nobody want's to write that any more - largely thanks to Chrome and Safari and, yes, Firefox. Without Firefox, we were in danger of losing a consistent web standard. Without a consistent web standard, the iPhone would've never taken off. Without the iPhone, no Android, no Chromebooks and a much more marginal Macintosh. Seems everybody's benefited, except Microsoft. Oh, they're still doing fine, but they've largely lost the power to control the direction of the industry.
CM is obviously looking for a business model for monetizing their work. I can't completely fault them for that, but - assuming they're in this because they're open source and/or Android fans - selling out to Microsoft is a pretty lousy choice. Especially since it was Google's open sourcing of the OS that created the opportunity for them to exist in the first place.
So how about this... Make your business one of supporting as many devices as you can for as long as there are users willing to pay for the support. Yep, charge a small fee for maintaining devices that the OEM's orphan. If necessary, share some of that fee with the makers of hardware components that are otherwise unwilling to provide up-to-date drivers for their stuff - while still letting the public know that they might want to avoid devices with components from that vendor in the future. In short, CM could build a business by mitigating some of the fragmentation issues with Android - rather than stoking the fragmentation.
This has nothing to do with whether Google has today's version of Microsoft's desktop monopoly (it doesn't, by the way). it has to do with silently changing a user preference. You might argue that a user doesn't want Google as the default search engine from the start - but if they're buying an Android device, at least they know the default search engine is Google - and they can change it. To quietly change the default without being asked is a whole other thing.
Mozilla pulled this with its switch to Bing. It wasn't supposed to change the search engine for existing installations - but in some cases, it still did. I've even had it changed back to Bing after having switched it back to Google. Don't know if that happened in response to an update or what, but it's nasty.
And it's not that they don't want to get those apps off Windows. They do. They want them to be web apps. But that's a total rewrite. The 'brilliant' ex-CEO of a VOIP company that took over at the software shop where I used to work declared that all of our apps would be 'in the cloud' in 2 years. Moron. Now, after spending a small fortune trying to rewrite just one of them, they're on the verge of folding up shop and getting out of software altogether (there's a hardware component of the business that's still 'thriving').
it's not that Companies won't be running web apps sooner or later - they just won't be the same apps that they're running on Windows today. Windows business-specific apps are legacy - to the point that nobody can support them, much less rewrite them. Okay, well maybe they can support them - if any of the original staff that designed and wrote them hasn't been outsourced to India yet... ;-)
OEMs are free to choose a different browser. Don't know whether Chrome has to be installed, but it certainly doesn't have to be the default. Remember when Verizon was selling Android phones with Bing as the default search engine.
The only software patents available should be on actual inventions. The kind of stuff that when described, elicit a response of 'that would be cool - if it could be done', not 'that would be cool - I think I'll go and do it'. That distinction defines non-obviousness. Just because there aren't that many ideas that can't be implemented in software through obvious, well-known approaches doesn't mean that the obvious stuff must be granted patents. If software has opened up a realm of activity where implementation of new ideas no longer requires new inventions, so be it. No need to redefine invention downward just so the PO can keep granting patents and patent lawyers can keep raking in the dough...
The fact remains that an audience for Bing would not even exist had it not been made the default search engine on Windows - and had not millions of Windows users not been savvy enough to change it. Even today, many Windows users get to google by typing www.google.com into IE - since they're too intimidated to even try to change the default. That Bing relied on Google rankings on top of this just underscores that, while there may be some need for competition in search, Microsoft has done little to earn it's 2nd place position.
The original article is about Cortana/Bing on Android. Again, something that Android users have no practical use for, and only makes some marginal sense for Windows 10 users that now have Cortana baked in to their desktops. Having utterly lost the race for relevance in mobile computing, Microsoft has engineered Windows 10 - which will still enjoy essential desktop monopoly status - as a trojan horse to allow them to build a parallel MS-dominated version of Android to deliver MS services to mobile users. For all of the silly bluster from Cyanogen about taking Android away from Google, it's Microsoft that's really attempting to do it. And I guess the open source nature of Android allows for this - though why consumers would accept a Microsoft take-over of Google's work eludes me. Perhaps they won't...
Because Republicans on the Supreme Court are consistently voting to make the situation worse. Prior to Citizens United, it was possible to at least attempt to address the corruption of the system via the elected legislature (or at least throw the bums out if they won't address it). Now, we apparently have to ammend the Constitution to remove a ridiculous manufactured equivalency between corporate bribery and free speech. It's silly to pretend that that's not the result of a significant difference between Republicans and Democrats. And the reason Republicans did it is that they think political money favors them - nothing more, nothing less. So, there's that difference too.
I guess the world doesn't need a Russian Shuttleworth, eh?