Many/. users seem to be confused about what Microsoft was found guilty of. Again, it is not illegal to be a monopoly; it is illegal to use the leverage of being a monopoly to stay a monopoly.
Microsoft used tactics to very much hurt other businesses - and as such are being 'rehabilitated'. This might actually be a good thing for Microsoft, as the company will know where they stand when building a product and shipping a product. If two years after Win7 ships a company cries foul play, Microsoft can point back to this committee.
In general, I do agree that the government should stay out of the way of business.
...is that this is a PR stunt (advertising without spending money).
When looking through the data for the Netflix Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize, it has become apparent that many of the userIDs are more than one user. The same person who is watching horror films is probably not the same person renting the Teletubbies.
By "taking away" (wink wink) the feature, and having tons of people freak out about how a cool feature is being removed - Netflix gets free advertising.
Try installing vista on a partition that is only 8 GB. Not possible (at least not without using a 3rd party utility, which will come to haunt you when you do a service pack update).
I once tried to be super cool and have two i-ram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM devices in RAID 0 on my system, and install Vista on this. A system that screamed could not exist on such a small (8 GB) partition. I now use Server2008 as my desktop OS, but frankly you have to be a MS employee for this to be cost effective.
Interestingly enough, the bloat in Vista is what is keeping XP alive in Microsoft's eyes. While the door for OEMs to logo systems with XP closes at the end of this month, EEPCs will continue on for another couple of years. Vista won't fit on the designed limitations of the EEPC.
Do you also remember Microsoft dropping work on Vista to heavily invest in XP.SP2? Do you remember the significant changes that went into security training and code analysis to finally work on securing Windows?
The ship took a massive course change during the product cycle for Vista - which changed what the priorities were for the final release. This should not be overlooked.
Don't get me wrong, the Vista that did ship was a huge piece of junk - but SP1 has fixed many of the significant problems people faced. Now if they would just work on the fit and finish, and the bloat, it would be a good OS.
As for Dell charging more for XP, you *do* realize that it costs Dell money to test and support this OS on their hardware, right? Many of the device driver models changed between XP and Vista - much of this was to sandbox drivers or move them out of the kernel. This is a good thing.
At this point the demand for XP has dropped to a minority share - so why *not* pass the cost to the folks who are generating it? Do you think that you can reasonably request Dell put Win98SE on your machine for no extra charge?
Step1: Use account #1 to post a funny joke to go over heads of dense/. readers
Step2: Wait for dense/. reader to post correction
Step3: Use account #2 to create informative post about how dense the dense/. is
Step4: (Karma) Profit!
A couple of years ago, two Russian physicists predicted that metal nanoclusters with exactly the right number of delocalized electrons (a few hundred or so) could become strong superconductors.
I rewired an outdoor motion sensor light to run the motion sensing switch off of a 9 volt battery, and had it switch off a high frequency buzzer when motion was detected. The infrared sensor was then moved off the PCB and onto the end of a wire, so the bulk of this contraption could be hidden and only the very small sensor exposed.
The buzzer would be going off until somebody entered the cubicle to see what it was, then it would go silent.
The comparison to chess is ludicrous. Chess requires a great deal of training and there are huge differences in skill between players. It's also turned based, therefore the skills required are different (emphasis on pattern matching) than real time games (more related to execution under time pressure).
I don't think you understand the chess comparison. The point is that both sides of the board have an equal setup: The outcome of the game is generally determined by which player is better (the player skill and training). There is no advantage given to one side for having a different interface. Turn based or not, chess is a game where the winner is generally the better player.
What I am trying to emphasize is that there is a balance between a players skill, and their interface to the game. By having a console game, you minimize the amount of influence the interface has on the game. In PC gaming, having a 24in widescreen display running at 2048x1080 @ 75FPS is an advantage over 15in 1024x768. This doesn't include the ingame tweaks that give an advantage but make the game look like crap.
I don't enjoy online PC gaming due to the uneven playing field.
I played a quake lan party years ago and watch a guy turn off the bobbing motion while running, and cranked the contrast and brightness way up so that he could see everything. He now had an advantage, and would dominate the group - so to compete I would need to 'ruin' the game by setting the system to some miserable settings.
Or take the keyboards enabled with macros - what is the point of playing WOW if a bunch of folks are going to macro away the mundane or challenging aspects?
I don't have a car analogy, but I do equate this to playing chess: I can have a lot of fun playing a basic game against another person if the terms are equal. Chess (and other board games) are a lot of fun for the cheap infrastructure: so are console games. I know a beginner with a mouse and keyboard would kick my ass at Halo, but since I am playing against others who have to use the xbox controller, it is a challenge and everybody is closer to equal.
Obviously there can never be completely equal setups (television size, broadband connection speed, etc), but a console means that I don't have to dish out large amounts of $$ to upgrade my video card to give me an edge.
My personal litmus test is whether the system can support/handle corruption - and this is where I see open source as being vulnerable. We have already seen what patent trolls can do - and should open source ever _really_ take off, then you are going to see much more infighting and community contamination.
Many people don't understand what money is, and chase for the wrong reason or with the wrong intentions. How many contributors to open source can protect their patents? How many can outlive an attack by a patent troll?
A couple of related notes (per my observations over this holiday season):
Not everybody travels on a regular basis, and we are not all caught up on the current rule of the day. If you are going to require travelers to empty water bottles, have the garbage can to do this in multiple locations at the security point. I watched a guy have to track back through the metal detector without his shoes and leaving his laptop at the end of the xray counter as he had to go find a trashcan to empty his water bottle. This is just silly.
If you are going to make a silly rule that all liquids must be in ziplock bags, then have ziplock bags at the security checkpoint for people to use. The cost of the bags is minimal compared to the delay caused by a person deciding if that bottle of perfume is worth going back and checking another bag. These problems really slow down the line - are are completely avoidable.
For rich hypocondriacs. More seriously, I wonder what the implications are for the insurance, medical and even dating industries. I have been wondering how we are going to solve our genetic drift problem now that natural selection is not killing off as many of us.
While genetic drift is a good thing for a species, part of the implications of having the drift is that we are going to have individuals born who should not carry forward their genes (Darwin would normally take care of them).
We now have drugs and technology to keep people alive who wouldn't be otherwise - increasing our dependency on technology and setting us up for a larger catastrophe.
This wasn't entirely Microsoft's fault as to this marketing.
Windows Vista was released to manufacturer in January, which is not exactly the peak retail time for computers. Many of the manufacturers pressed Microsoft to allow for this 'Vista compatible' status so that they would not lose (or 'loose', as it seems to be on/.) out on holiday sales with people waiting for Vista to actually ship.
I have tried aftermarket sound drivers for the soundblaster live! -- they work excellently until I reboot and Vista restores the pos MS driver. This is besides the point that drivers are available for this card for every other OS I use (with the possible exception of Solaris). Just because Creative decided to EOL support for the card doesn't make it not work and I refuse to spend $50+ to "fix something that ain't broke". I am sorry, but Creative has had a horrible track record of supporting their devices after the sale has been made. Even if the XP audio drivers worked, they would need to logo them through the WHQL process in order for the drivers to be posted to Windows Update - or they could post the drivers to their website. However, Creative has decided to chase the route which the PHBs think will generate more $$.
Don't blame Microsoft for the lack of driver support for Creative devices, blame Creative.
Slashdot Mirror
...yeah, but a kernel panic wouldn't end in a real "D", it would just freak the patient out.
Makes sense to me.
Keep reading for more Windows FUD circle jerking.
I'd be interested to see how quickly he will be fired for doing this on that cluster.
The whole question makes me think that things have not be thought through. Say that 10 times really fast without using copy/paste.
...I hear WinFS will be in Win7...it should be legendary.
Many /. users seem to be confused about what Microsoft was found guilty of. Again, it is not illegal to be a monopoly; it is illegal to use the leverage of being a monopoly to stay a monopoly.
Microsoft used tactics to very much hurt other businesses - and as such are being 'rehabilitated'. This might actually be a good thing for Microsoft, as the company will know where they stand when building a product and shipping a product. If two years after Win7 ships a company cries foul play, Microsoft can point back to this committee.
In general, I do agree that the government should stay out of the way of business.
...is that this is a PR stunt (advertising without spending money).
When looking through the data for the Netflix Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize, it has become apparent that many of the userIDs are more than one user. The same person who is watching horror films is probably not the same person renting the Teletubbies.
By "taking away" (wink wink) the feature, and having tons of people freak out about how a cool feature is being removed - Netflix gets free advertising.
Outcome? More people use the feature.
Try installing vista on a partition that is only 8 GB. Not possible (at least not without using a 3rd party utility, which will come to haunt you when you do a service pack update).
I once tried to be super cool and have two i-ram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM devices in RAID 0 on my system, and install Vista on this. A system that screamed could not exist on such a small (8 GB) partition. I now use Server2008 as my desktop OS, but frankly you have to be a MS employee for this to be cost effective.
Interestingly enough, the bloat in Vista is what is keeping XP alive in Microsoft's eyes. While the door for OEMs to logo systems with XP closes at the end of this month, EEPCs will continue on for another couple of years. Vista won't fit on the designed limitations of the EEPC.
Do you also remember Microsoft dropping work on Vista to heavily invest in XP.SP2? Do you remember the significant changes that went into security training and code analysis to finally work on securing Windows?
The ship took a massive course change during the product cycle for Vista - which changed what the priorities were for the final release. This should not be overlooked.
Don't get me wrong, the Vista that did ship was a huge piece of junk - but SP1 has fixed many of the significant problems people faced. Now if they would just work on the fit and finish, and the bloat, it would be a good OS.
As for Dell charging more for XP, you *do* realize that it costs Dell money to test and support this OS on their hardware, right? Many of the device driver models changed between XP and Vista - much of this was to sandbox drivers or move them out of the kernel. This is a good thing.
At this point the demand for XP has dropped to a minority share - so why *not* pass the cost to the folks who are generating it? Do you think that you can reasonably request Dell put Win98SE on your machine for no extra charge?
Bit shifting to the right generally doesn't increase the value.
Step1: Use account #1 to post a funny joke to go over heads of dense /. readers /. reader to post correction /. is
Step2: Wait for dense
Step3: Use account #2 to create informative post about how dense the dense
Step4: (Karma) Profit!
A friend once told me that "BMW motorcycle engines never used to overheat until they started putting temperature gauges on them."
/.
Microsoft: We spend millions on usability testing, and incorporate feedback in our products.
Linux: We usability test with our girlfriends, and then post results to
That is the number range for exact ?
I did something similar to this years ago.
I rewired an outdoor motion sensor light to run the motion sensing switch off of a 9 volt battery, and had it switch off a high frequency buzzer when motion was detected. The infrared sensor was then moved off the PCB and onto the end of a wire, so the bulk of this contraption could be hidden and only the very small sensor exposed.
The buzzer would be going off until somebody entered the cubicle to see what it was, then it would go silent.
Pretty funny to watch from a distance.
Am I the only one creeped out by this? Does this mean that amputees aren't counted?
I don't think you understand the chess comparison. The point is that both sides of the board have an equal setup: The outcome of the game is generally determined by which player is better (the player skill and training). There is no advantage given to one side for having a different interface. Turn based or not, chess is a game where the winner is generally the better player.
What I am trying to emphasize is that there is a balance between a players skill, and their interface to the game. By having a console game, you minimize the amount of influence the interface has on the game. In PC gaming, having a 24in widescreen display running at 2048x1080 @ 75FPS is an advantage over 15in 1024x768. This doesn't include the ingame tweaks that give an advantage but make the game look like crap.
I don't enjoy online PC gaming due to the uneven playing field.
I played a quake lan party years ago and watch a guy turn off the bobbing motion while running, and cranked the contrast and brightness way up so that he could see everything. He now had an advantage, and would dominate the group - so to compete I would need to 'ruin' the game by setting the system to some miserable settings.
Or take the keyboards enabled with macros - what is the point of playing WOW if a bunch of folks are going to macro away the mundane or challenging aspects?
I don't have a car analogy, but I do equate this to playing chess: I can have a lot of fun playing a basic game against another person if the terms are equal. Chess (and other board games) are a lot of fun for the cheap infrastructure: so are console games. I know a beginner with a mouse and keyboard would kick my ass at Halo, but since I am playing against others who have to use the xbox controller, it is a challenge and everybody is closer to equal.
Obviously there can never be completely equal setups (television size, broadband connection speed, etc), but a console means that I don't have to dish out large amounts of $$ to upgrade my video card to give me an edge.
Pull your head out of your ass.
You can use this method to root a Mac or *nix box as well.
The issue here is that the 1394 bus has DMA access to the system - it is an architecture flaw in 1394 and not in the Windows OS.
http://www.atm.tut.fi/list-archive/freebsd-security/msg05438.html
My personal litmus test is whether the system can support/handle corruption - and this is where I see open source as being vulnerable.
We have already seen what patent trolls can do - and should open source ever _really_ take off, then you are going to see much more infighting and community contamination.
Many people don't understand what money is, and chase for the wrong reason or with the wrong intentions. How many contributors to open source can protect their patents? How many can outlive an attack by a patent troll?
A couple of related notes (per my observations over this holiday season):
Not everybody travels on a regular basis, and we are not all caught up on the current rule of the day. If you are going to require travelers to empty water bottles, have the garbage can to do this in multiple locations at the security point. I watched a guy have to track back through the metal detector without his shoes and leaving his laptop at the end of the xray counter as he had to go find a trashcan to empty his water bottle. This is just silly.
If you are going to make a silly rule that all liquids must be in ziplock bags, then have ziplock bags at the security checkpoint for people to use. The cost of the bags is minimal compared to the delay caused by a person deciding if that bottle of perfume is worth going back and checking another bag. These problems really slow down the line - are are completely avoidable.
One of Nokia's earliest products was toilet paper http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1505703.stm. I wonder if they are attempting to "go back to their roots" with the need for DRM?
I think there is a strong correlation to people having seen "The Miracle of Life", and abstinence.
I decided to use search engines to see if anybody else has used "WTPOYSAIYHTWIANTITEIA":
1 point to Google for having indexed your post already.
0 points for Live.com
0 Points for Yahoo.
Not sure what you should mod me, because it sure as hell is not informative or interesting.
I have been wondering how we are going to solve our genetic drift problem now that natural selection is not killing off as many of us.
While genetic drift is a good thing for a species, part of the implications of having the drift is that we are going to have individuals born who should not carry forward their genes (Darwin would normally take care of them).
We now have drugs and technology to keep people alive who wouldn't be otherwise - increasing our dependency on technology and setting us up for a larger catastrophe.
This wasn't entirely Microsoft's fault as to this marketing.
/.) out on holiday sales with people waiting for Vista to actually ship.
Windows Vista was released to manufacturer in January, which is not exactly the peak retail time for computers. Many of the manufacturers pressed Microsoft to allow for this 'Vista compatible' status so that they would not lose (or 'loose', as it seems to be on
Is there any other kind of desert curling? Is it listed in OSQ?
Don't blame Microsoft for the lack of driver support for Creative devices, blame Creative.