Reducing the situation to "fair competition against the OLPC monopoly" just because the XO came first is like saying that years ago all Microsoft did was "fair competition against the Netscape monopoly".
I have yet to read the entire article, specially to see what "reliable" exactly means, but if anything a user can do counts as a contribution, what the article says is not surprising at all. I, myself, do my share of anonymous "good samaritan" contributions to Wikipedia articles I occasionaly read and, since I'm not a specialist at anything, those contributions are usually typo corrections, deletion of vandalism or something simply blatantly wrong.
I know those aren't terribly relevant contributions, but restricting my contributions to that certainly assures one thing: they are usually correct. Meanwhile, I know some "higher-level" Wikipedia contributors and I have the impression that they sometimes lose themselves between "standards", "wikification" and other stuff that, although necessary, might be decided by subjective criteria that make them go around in circles on a same article, not necessarily converging.
...bundling Thunderbird is a good idea in the sense that they won't try to fit more stuff in the saturated market of email clients.
On the other hand, should email client and schedule integration be a priority? From my point of view, Microsoft is using Office as a tool to turn Windows itself into an all-purpose environment. Sun's efforts will probably be restricted to improve OpenOffice, and OpenOffice alone. They might risk turning it into a bloaty 300 Mb mess that people will ditch in favor of KOffice, Evolution or Office 2007 in the case of Windows users.
...I've seen Ballmer being a complete prick in a lot of interviews and this is not one of them.
In my opinion, he didn't say anything out of the ordinary (from a guy who wants to sell his product, that is). He could have made the woman look like a complete fool if he wanted to: take the "XP is safe" statement, for instance. How's Vista less secure? Which bad experiences concerning security did she have? My guess? None. She probably has no idea of what the security differences between and XP and Vista are and probably just wanted something else to say.
The "your daughter saw a lot of value" it's not a good argument, I know, but it's also true that the woman was just describing HER experience, and not her daughter's, who was who she installed the system for in the first place. Maybe her daughter didn't like it as well, I don't know, but the interview shows more personal whining than actual arguments.
Replace "XP" with "Windows" in the text and replace "Vista" with "Linux". Now go to a Ubuntu support forum and see if something sounds familiar.
...the extra flavor that makes this release a little bit more headline-worthy than usual is probably the whole controversy involving the Completely Fair Scheduler. Between Con Kolivas leaving kernel development, the Really Fair Scheduler flamewar and almost ten release candidates, the whole 2.6.23 development was some kind of geek soap opera.
...so you don't have to cope with skeptical people.
- What you said that is?
- A water bridge.
- That's bullshit.
- It's true. The water is floating between the beakers.
- Oh, really? Then I guess it's okay for me to touch to confirm it, right?
- I don't recommend that.
- I knew it. You're so full of shit.
- Okay, touch it if you want. But I wouldn't do that.
- *laughs* Yeah, I'll just touch this "water bridge" and we can't move on with our... AAHHH!!!
- *increases voltage gradually* That's for calling me a liar. Asshole.
...was always good enough when I was using the previous version. I was using 2000 when people were moving to XP. I started using XP after Vista was announced. And I can count on my fingers the number of times I had crashes, viruses or other problems. Sure, I had two antivirus, two anti-spywares and two firewalls (router and computer), but that doesn't change the fact that during the whole period with 2000 and XP (years) I saw zero blue screens.
Then I recently bought a new laptop with Vista included and had one of the worst operating system experiences of my life.
(I won't even elaborate on this)
So, my opinion on the current situation? I'm curious to see if Vista will be more usable after, say, SP2. I'm betting it will.
...I see some interesting gameplay possibilities coming out of this.
In a FPS for instance, how about having the pleasure of noticing and killing a
sneaky bastard that was behind you, thanks to seeing "something moving" reflected
in the doorknob?
Or how about the difficulties of having your whole team paying attention on where
light is coming from, so that your shadows don't give up your location?
Sounds like fun to me, even if a little far from happening.
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He was using Firefox to download OpenOffice and use it to write his resume.
Really.
It's fun to stay with the E-M-C-A
It's fun to stay with the E-M-C-A...
He said at the end that there was a 3 second delay for opening each tab.
This is not an absurd productivity issue, but it's certainly annoying.
Reducing the situation to "fair competition against the OLPC monopoly" just because the XO came first is like saying that years ago all Microsoft did was "fair competition against the Netscape monopoly".
I have yet to read the entire article, specially to see what "reliable" exactly means, but if anything a user can do counts as a contribution, what the article says is not surprising at all. I, myself, do my share of anonymous "good samaritan" contributions to Wikipedia articles I occasionaly read and, since I'm not a specialist at anything, those contributions are usually typo corrections, deletion of vandalism or something simply blatantly wrong. I know those aren't terribly relevant contributions, but restricting my contributions to that certainly assures one thing: they are usually correct. Meanwhile, I know some "higher-level" Wikipedia contributors and I have the impression that they sometimes lose themselves between "standards", "wikification" and other stuff that, although necessary, might be decided by subjective criteria that make them go around in circles on a same article, not necessarily converging.
...bundling Thunderbird is a good idea in the sense that they won't try to fit more stuff in the saturated market of email clients. On the other hand, should email client and schedule integration be a priority? From my point of view, Microsoft is using Office as a tool to turn Windows itself into an all-purpose environment. Sun's efforts will probably be restricted to improve OpenOffice, and OpenOffice alone. They might risk turning it into a bloaty 300 Mb mess that people will ditch in favor of KOffice, Evolution or Office 2007 in the case of Windows users.
...I've seen Ballmer being a complete prick in a lot of interviews and this is not one of them.
In my opinion, he didn't say anything out of the ordinary (from a guy who wants to sell his product, that is). He could have made the woman look like a complete fool if he wanted to: take the "XP is safe" statement, for instance. How's Vista less secure? Which bad experiences concerning security did she have? My guess? None. She probably has no idea of what the security differences between and XP and Vista are and probably just wanted something else to say.
The "your daughter saw a lot of value" it's not a good argument, I know, but it's also true that the woman was just describing HER experience, and not her daughter's, who was who she installed the system for in the first place. Maybe her daughter didn't like it as well, I don't know, but the interview shows more personal whining than actual arguments.
Replace "XP" with "Windows" in the text and replace "Vista" with "Linux". Now go to a Ubuntu support forum and see if something sounds familiar.
...the extra flavor that makes this release a little bit more headline-worthy than usual is probably the whole controversy involving the Completely Fair Scheduler. Between Con Kolivas leaving kernel development, the Really Fair Scheduler flamewar and almost ten release candidates, the whole 2.6.23 development was some kind of geek soap opera.
...happened right after an unlocking hack and a firmware update?
Google Porn is not available to public yet, what else can I do?
...after seeing the volunteer scream "Oh, GOD! Oh, GOD!" while being stimulated.
I think they discovered a G-something, but not exactly God.
...so you don't have to cope with skeptical people.
- What you said that is?
- A water bridge.
- That's bullshit.
- It's true. The water is floating between the beakers.
- Oh, really? Then I guess it's okay for me to touch to confirm it, right?
- I don't recommend that.
- I knew it. You're so full of shit.
- Okay, touch it if you want. But I wouldn't do that.
- *laughs* Yeah, I'll just touch this "water bridge" and we can't move on with our... AAHHH!!!
- *increases voltage gradually* That's for calling me a liar. Asshole.
...was always good enough when I was using the previous version. I was using 2000 when people were moving to XP. I started using XP after Vista was announced. And I can count on my fingers the number of times I had crashes, viruses or other problems. Sure, I had two antivirus, two anti-spywares and two firewalls (router and computer), but that doesn't change the fact that during the whole period with 2000 and XP (years) I saw zero blue screens.
Then I recently bought a new laptop with Vista included and had one of the worst operating system experiences of my life.
(I won't even elaborate on this)
So, my opinion on the current situation? I'm curious to see if Vista will be more usable after, say, SP2. I'm betting it will.
GPLv3 is controversial because it imposes restrictions on what you can do with programs implemented under this license.
Isn't that what licenses usually do?
I know the rest of the paragraph clarifies what he meant, but isolating this sentence was not a very good idea.
...I see some interesting gameplay possibilities coming out of this. In a FPS for instance, how about having the pleasure of noticing and killing a sneaky bastard that was behind you, thanks to seeing "something moving" reflected in the doorknob? Or how about the difficulties of having your whole team paying attention on where light is coming from, so that your shadows don't give up your location? Sounds like fun to me, even if a little far from happening.