I like the way the volt fixes range anxiety by allowing serial hybrid/generation. That makes it the only electric vehicle for sale that can easily be taken on long travel.
The forthcoming BMW i3 has an option (and an empty space under the hood) for a range extender. This vehicle looks seriously sweet. I am very much hoping that this new competition encourages GM to up its game with improvements to the interior and performance of its EV line. While I have admired the drivetrain tech in the Volt, I found the interior design and performance to be lacking, more econo-box than flagship. Owning a Volt needs to make the driver feel great, but too often car companies build-in these kind of compromises to encourage buyers to consider the next more expensive model.
The consensus has been that C++ is really useful, really powerful, but really complex, particularly in view of layer upon layer of features piled up along its evolution. How, then, to best learn how to code C++ "the right way" with its modern incarnation and features? Any recommendations?
after this sequel comes out, we'll be trying to 'unsee it'.
Very much this. Only a bad sequel or reboot has the power to leave you so disappointed that you wish you could purge your memory of it.
I've managed to forget nearly everything of The Crow 2, City of Angels (except walking out of the theater) and the Lost in Space reboot. Still working on forgetting Kick Ass 2, Ghostbusters 2, Alien 3, Phantom Menace, and Star Trek 5. Knew better than to see Highlander 2, SpiderToby 2-3, Alien Resurrection, the Robocop reboot, Attack of the Clones... such movies should come with a Warning that they may make you feel genuinely resentful for the money, time, and date you'll never get back.
Blade Runner was a self-contained story. To my knowledge, Philip K. Dick didn't have a follow-up, and that means some Hollywood types are going to hash and re-hash sequel formulas that lure in the nostalgia crowd (1982 for chrissakes) and a whole new audience looking for their sci-fi blockbuster fix. Seriously, how can this possibly be good?
Most likely, some new replicant crisis will occur, bigger and badder than before, the Tyrell corporation will have a new head who's more morally ambiguous than before or even downright evil (Tyrell Jr.?), and Deckard has to be lured out of retirement somewhere, still mourning the death of Rachel, because somehow he has the key to solving the problem. An army of super Nexus 50 replicants have escaped from Tyrell's labs. Face-dancer replicants mind-controlled by the corporation have managed to take over key government posts undetected. The President himself may be a replicant, plotting to destroy all humans. Only Deckard has the uncanny talent to ferret them out.
There'll be explosions. Spaceships on fire. Flying cars with no wires visible. A soundtrack by Moby. And since Harrison Ford is so old, his love interest is his daughter by Rachel, with hidden super powers key to solving the crisis, threatened with retirement unless Deckard does what he's told! Edward James Olmos make his triumphant return as Gaff! You know I got at least some of this right.
Major difference there are no practical physical barriers to competition in the ISP space as exists with other utilities.
How?
If you are talking about wireline broadband, the physical barriers are exactly the same as exists with other utilities: utility poles, underground conduits, and all the rights-of-way necessary to get your wire through.
Sure, theoretically, another electric, gas, water, sewage, or cable company can step in to your town and lay all their own new pipes and wires. But the city is not going to let them clog the streets with all new utility poles or new underground conduits; you gotta use the ones already there. And someone, probably your competition, is already leasing them, or owns them outright.
Unless you're google, or the city itself, that's enough barrier to keep all new competition out.
But perhaps you are considering wireless as being free from physical barriers to competition. Not so. Spectrum is a scarce resource; you have to buy, at auction to the highest bidder, the right to use it, which excludes anyone else from using it. And wireless is no replacement for wireline in performance or reliablility.
So much for robust competition. I say again, competition is for small fry and suckers. Once a company has reached a critical mass (e.g., Comcast-size), it becomes more cost-effective to simply crush competition or buy them out. Why compete, risk revenue on innovation that might fail, when you don't have to?
it gets the government ever more involved in your life, and in managing how you can or must communicate
FUD. Either our government does the managing, or the corporations do. The government, at least, is accountable to the ballot box and the press. Comcast and their ilk are not. And don't say anything about free enterprise and competition. Competition is for small fry and suckers. Once you reach the size of Comcast, it benefits shareholders more to merge and acquire than to compete. Once monopoly status is achieved, hell with consumers and employees alike.
Markets without regulation are like sports without referees... there's nothing to prevent a nice pick-up game from turning into an all-out brawl, because who's to say it wasn't your fault for putting your face in the path of my elbow? Without rules and enforcement, you're a fool if you DON'T cheat like hell, because there's no downside and if you don't the other guy will.
"... Comcast has apologized and is looking at ways to prevent it from happening in the future..."?.
An upper manager at Comcast contacted a lower manager in Public and Press Relations, who promptly ordered an assistant to hastily look through pre-fab corporate apology phrases and hash together an official but very brief written response that 1) acknowledges that mistakes were made without admitting to actual knowledge of who made what mistake, if any, 2) appears to take responsibility for whatever went wrong without actually accepting any responsibility for anything, and 3) indicates that some form of appropriate action will be taken without identifying such action or making any commitment that any such action will take place, now or ever. Upon review by at least one corporate attorney to assure that the response does not obligate the company in any way, express or implied, such that the company is completely free and clear to move on and forget the entire thing, the response was released along with an implied message directed to the press that the matter should now be permitted to die away in favor of something more interesting like Katy Perry's wardrobe malfunction.
Either management is approving of these actions either explicitly or implicitly by inaction or management is incompetent.
I would bet that management is 100% engaged in the pending merger with Time Warner... that's the sexy stuff. Day to day management of delivering product or keeping the proles... I mean, customers, satisfied is way down the list of priorities. Too hard to measure, too hard to link to anything that raises stock value. It may be sad, but in big companies making customers happy (particularly customers who are captive to your monopoly status anyway) doesn't get you promoted from your middle-management job like cutting costs does.
I'll wager the under-appreciated grunt employees at the front-lines with the customers are doing this just to test whether any of their merger-mad managers are paying any attention. Since management is only apologizing now after the press and blogosphere have discovered it, the answer was probably no.
I don't want to wait in vain for draft mode, No, I don't want to wait in vain for draft mode. I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna wait in vain, I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna wait in vain.
live updates or an "Apply" button when making changes in character, paragraph, and, page dialogs
Very Much This. It's an interface feature that's not at all new, and easily taken for granted until you come across an app that doesn't have it. Particularly in Draw, the lack of this feature wastes a lot of time.
I am also waiting in vain for Writer to include a "normal" or "draft" view like in Word, making better use of the space on the screen (I don't need to see faux paper stuff all the time) while still retaining margins and showing page breaks unlike the useless (to me) "Web View".
There's bugs registered for these things somewhere, but I can't tell how the developers choose which issues to address and which ones to put off indefinitely.
Both parties in this country are bought and paid for by corporate interests so there's no way to change the status quo
Why do people always say this? Although both parties receive contributions from whoever wants to contribute, they most definitely don't behave the same. This FCC decision is a prime example: the two Republicans voted lock-step with the cable lobby, but the three Democrats had the balls to stand against it to at least try to drag the United States into the future. So, thank you, Democrats, thank you, particularly for calling out the industry's lobbying bullshit, testifying that 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up is just plenty, while at the same time telling consumers that same speed sucks and that we all should pay premium (not available in all areas) because ’25/25 is best for one to three devices at the same time, great for surfing, e-mail, online shopping and social networking, streaming two HD videos simultaneously. 50/50 is best for three to five devices at the same time, more speed for families or individuals with multiple Internet devices, stream up to five HD videos simultaneously.’
Ars Technica was present at the announcement, and the Q&A afterward was both insightful and confusing. They clarify the free upgrade to Windows 10 as follows (emphasis mine):
Update: Microsoft fielded some questions about this upgrade in its Q&A session after the event. The company "hasn't decided" how it will handle upgrades from Windows 7 or 8.1 after the first year of Windows 10 availability ends, and it is "working on an update for Windows RT," but doesn't have further details to share.
Update 2: A blog post from Terry Myerson clears up what "Windows as a service" means, though the duration of "the supported lifetime of the device" is still foggy. "This is more than a one-time upgrade," writes Myerson. "Once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device—at no additional charge."
It seems to me Microsoft is still keeping the details close to the vest. So, for my money, the jury is still out for what happens in a year.
Still, as a strategy to get people to move off Windows 7 in a hurry, this is pretty good. You'd only wonder what would have happened to the XP user base if Vista or 7 had been free. On the other hand, this Windows 10 ecosystem is a really big gamble, and Microsoft desperately needs developers to make their platform compete against iOS and Android. Based on that, giving the first taste away free is a pretty ballsy move.
I only hope they don't try to recoup some of that lost revenue by filling Windows 10 with trackware and clickbait, forking out tons of your personal data to Bing servers because, well, that's where the action is.
Just checked at https://epbfi.com/internet/, 100 Mbps is $57.99... not free, but not bad. Triple-play goes for $132.82. It ain't Sweden, but not awful.
And whereas Bob the Politician would like campaign funding for keeping his job (would that be a part-time or a full-time job, by the way? term limits? what's the pay? does he really give a shit about keeping that job in a local city council?), he can get a lot more campaign donations by getting into bed with commercial internet providers with deeper pockets then some small-change locals.
And while one state's corruption laws vary from another's, a politician putting his friend (or relative) in charge of a government program, and then receiving campaign donations back, is at least easy-pickings for a local TV eye-team investigation report. Taking such a man's seat in the next election would be like shooting a fish in a barrel... just run on a campaign of anti-corruption and eliminating government waste. I'll bet Frontier or Comcast would be happy to pay for printing up your campaign signs.
And don't think customers who get service from Frontier don't send money through the Council's hands. Be it through fees or taxes, the City gets paid. Always. The only difference is whether there are shareholders who get a piece of the action.
When Comcast runs the Internet, a substantial cut of the profit goes to shareholders, and another cut goes to expanding territory and growth, again to please shareholders to thereby drive up stock price and raise the value of the company, further increasing the wealth of the shareholders. When the City sets up its own internet, all profit goes back to the City to be redistributed by the Council, maybe to upgrade equipment, maybe to fix roads or schools, maybe as a local tax cut.
If the City Council's internet starts to suck, well, the customers are also voters, and they can replace a politician, maybe with the guy next door. On the other hand, if Comcast starts to suck in a town where there's no competition, customers can call customer service and wait on hold until they go insane. Comcast has enough customers that they don't have to listen to any customers. They only have to listen to shareholders... that is, shareholders with enough voting stock to threaten the sitting Board of Directors (currently, their stock price is $55.81, for just one little share; you can look up how many shares you'd have to buy to get anyone at the company to listen to you).
The point is, if you're a Chattanooga customer, and you're upset, you have a lot better chance of someone giving a shit than if you're a Comcast customer. Local politicians can fuck things up, sure, but unless the local politician is aiming to move higher to state of federal office (where the money is), then he's got to live with you, and probably would just as well keep you happy and off his lawn. A board member or senior management in Comcast, on the other hand, will never give a shit about who you are or what you think of your service, ever, unless maybe you start a class-action lawsuit, or a local broadband initiative in your home town. Then, you'll hear from their lawyers.
I didn't say it should be illegal for politicians to run ISPs. I said it's silly to think that ONLY politicians can run ISPs.
Hmm. I'm not aware of any municipality where ONLY the government is PERMITTED to run an ISP (that might turn out bad, sooner or later). Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm only aware of Big Telecomm complaining that they can't COMPETE with municipals, service for price, which results in an EFFECTIVE local government monopoly. I don't think this is a bad thing, because I think it would only last so long as the government-run ISP didn't suck.
If and when it does start to suck, a commercial competitor would be in a good position to offer a better product, even at a premium price, and if the politicians tried to make it difficult for them (and why would they? they can't legally profit from it) the commercial entity could sue, they would win, and you would have your competition and things would get good again.
But they can be effectively exclusive, if the cost to build out is too high or an existing franchisee or operator makes it difficult to share resources. In my town, the simple answer is that one carrier was here first, which means a competing carrier would have to rely on revenue from customers who switch in order to justify a complete build-out. Not a great gamble, no big bucks here, particularly in the short term, so they don't bother, and we suffer under an effective monopoly.
I mean, if someone's willing to set up a competing service for free, there's no exclusivity rule to stop them. But I'm not holding my breath.
In fact, contrary to Stephenson’s claims that municipal broadband hurt municipal credit ratings, S&P just upgraded the Chattanooga public utility’s bond rating, stating, “The system is providing reliable information to the electric utility on outages, losses and usage, which helps reduce the electric system’s costs.”
lol.. There is no municipalities rights in the US constitution that is supposed to limit what the feds can do.
Well, kinda there is. The 10th amendment expressly reserves for the states any powers not specifically specified by the Constitution to the Fed. On the other hand, your local municipality only has powers as outlined by your state constitution. Typically, any city is completely subordinate to whatever state it happens to be in, but states, and therefore cities, have rights over the Feds unless the Constitution specifically says otherwise (most often, by virtue of the commerce clause).
So, in this case, the Fed is a city's or county's best friend, because its state wants to shut down what the citizens wanted to do for themselves. Either the FCC comes to the rescue, or the city has to go it alone in the state capitol against a very very wealthy powerful lobby whose money can easily make the difference between winning and losing in a state election. Suck it up. Sometimes, the Feds are the only friends you've got... if they have the authority, that is, and if big lobby has anything to say about it, they don't.
Businesses have still been buying Windows 7, AFAICT. Once Windows 10 is out, they may well be more receptive.
Not if Windows 10 is as tied to using OneDrive and other Microsoft services as the Development Preview is now. And Live Tiles has got to go, too. Such distracting, marketing, productivity-killing click-bait has no place in the office (or the start menu).
But it kinda is about mobile... taking marketing and design attention away from the desktop. The old saying goes, "rob Peter to pay Paul". Microsoft is, at best, neglecting the desktop and at worst making it suck, in order to support and even market their mobile platform... a mobile platform that nobody except Microsoft has any reason to care about.
I couldn't care less about Microsoft mobile. Between iOS and Android, there's not anything I see missing. If Microsoft would simply target and support those platforms for their Office/Exchange ecosystem, they might do pretty darn well. What's the need for yet another platform and OS, except blind greed for some pie-in-the-sky cashola App store?
What I do care about is the desktop, cause that's where me and most of the rest of the world get their work done. And it's not just that Microsoft is blatantly attempting to use their desktop penetration as a billboard to advertise and acclimate a captive audience the new mobile product... bolt a Start Screen and some touch capabilities and Metro compatibility on to Windows 8 or 10 and there probably would be no problems. What's so exceedingly frustrating, maddening, is what they arbitrarily, unilaterally take away.
They chose to yank the Start menu because, well, they just did. Drop a bunch of essential control panels and preview apps, even mail, and replace them with Metro apps because, well, there it is. Just like with the Ribbon in Office, they just chose to yank out the "File Edit etc..." menus because, well, who cares why, users will just get used to it. Aero? Gone, without even an option to get it back, along with a lot of other customization options, because, what? A little transparency made some tablet out there run out of battery? People actually believe that?
I'd compare it to GM coming out with a control stick on all models instead of a steering wheel, because you know, it's better, but that doesn't go far enough 'cause we don't have to drive a Chevy. More like the IRS choosing to collect our tax returns in Latin from now on because, well, Latin is so classic. You can opt out until extended support for English runs out in 2020, but eventually English will be gone and you'll be doing it the new way or nothing.
And just like with Vista, there are plenty of shills, loyal members of the Ballmer-Youth declaring it's all great and get used to it and it's wonderful. I don't understand these people. They're either getting paid by Microsoft, or they never actually USE Windows desktop for anything except as a launching pad for Steam or Chrome. For games or web-surfing, fine. You probably don't miss the Start menu and never really see much of the desktop-metro mess. Probably don't notice how ugly the boxy, non-Aero window decorations are, either, cause you're always in full-screen.
But if you actually have to get work done, have 5-20 windows in 4-8 different apps up simultaneously? For that, the Windows 8, 8.1, even 10 is an inexplicable step backward where Windows 7 works just fine and will continue to work until 2020, by which time Microsoft is either gone or putting out Windows 14. Maybe by then they'll have stopped making such stupid decisions and release a Windows 7.1 like they should have in the first place.
Agreed... but far easier said than done. Like secure e-mail or messaging, mature straight-forward backup solutions just don't exist.
My company was hacked with cryptoware, and thanks to automatic backups we only lost a day or two of data. But that's because we have staff and resources dedicated to taking care of these things.
How's mom and pop gonna do this? Macs have Time Machine, but even that requires an external drive for that single purpose. When buying a laptop or desktop, the average Joe, student, or grandmother doesn't think to plunk down another $100 for an external drive whose only purpose is insurance against "what if".
And again, that's with Apple's Time Machine, which is the closest thing to set-it-and-forget-it backup/restore I know of, particularly because it comes bundled ready-to-go with OS X. Windows, to my knowledge, has no comparable built-in product, nor do I know of any 3rd-party product that is easy enough to have saved grandma from cryptolocker. Seriously. Have you ever tried to support "old" people, like your uncle or the senior partner? They not only routinely use terrible passwords (e.g., their home phone number), they're PROUD of it. They'll look you right in the eye and tell you that nobody in the world is going to bother to hack little old me.
and don't think that makes it their problem and they deserve what's coming to them. If it's your boss or grandma, it's your problem.
Windows needs a turn-key backup/restore solution, out of the box. And as long as I'm pipe-dreaming, PC's are each sold with a second hard drive accessible only to the backup/restore app and can't be wiped even by administrator without entering a key. Or maybe there could be some cloud-based solution - nothing ever goes wrong with those.
Slashdot Mirror
I like the way the volt fixes range anxiety by allowing serial hybrid/generation. That makes it the only electric vehicle for sale that can easily be taken on long travel.
The forthcoming BMW i3 has an option (and an empty space under the hood) for a range extender. This vehicle looks seriously sweet. I am very much hoping that this new competition encourages GM to up its game with improvements to the interior and performance of its EV line. While I have admired the drivetrain tech in the Volt, I found the interior design and performance to be lacking, more econo-box than flagship. Owning a Volt needs to make the driver feel great, but too often car companies build-in these kind of compromises to encourage buyers to consider the next more expensive model.
The consensus has been that C++ is really useful, really powerful, but really complex, particularly in view of layer upon layer of features piled up along its evolution. How, then, to best learn how to code C++ "the right way" with its modern incarnation and features? Any recommendations?
This.
Thanks for everything.
Don't forget Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I'm still trying to forget that.
Yep, that was a stinker. I managed to avoid it. Learned my lesson from Last Crusade.
after this sequel comes out, we'll be trying to 'unsee it' .
Very much this. Only a bad sequel or reboot has the power to leave you so disappointed that you wish you could purge your memory of it.
I've managed to forget nearly everything of The Crow 2, City of Angels (except walking out of the theater) and the Lost in Space reboot. Still working on forgetting Kick Ass 2, Ghostbusters 2, Alien 3, Phantom Menace, and Star Trek 5. Knew better than to see Highlander 2, SpiderToby 2-3, Alien Resurrection, the Robocop reboot, Attack of the Clones... such movies should come with a Warning that they may make you feel genuinely resentful for the money, time, and date you'll never get back.
Blade Runner was a self-contained story. To my knowledge, Philip K. Dick didn't have a follow-up, and that means some Hollywood types are going to hash and re-hash sequel formulas that lure in the nostalgia crowd (1982 for chrissakes) and a whole new audience looking for their sci-fi blockbuster fix. Seriously, how can this possibly be good?
Most likely, some new replicant crisis will occur, bigger and badder than before, the Tyrell corporation will have a new head who's more morally ambiguous than before or even downright evil (Tyrell Jr.?), and Deckard has to be lured out of retirement somewhere, still mourning the death of Rachel, because somehow he has the key to solving the problem. An army of super Nexus 50 replicants have escaped from Tyrell's labs. Face-dancer replicants mind-controlled by the corporation have managed to take over key government posts undetected. The President himself may be a replicant, plotting to destroy all humans. Only Deckard has the uncanny talent to ferret them out.
There'll be explosions. Spaceships on fire. Flying cars with no wires visible. A soundtrack by Moby. And since Harrison Ford is so old, his love interest is his daughter by Rachel, with hidden super powers key to solving the crisis, threatened with retirement unless Deckard does what he's told! Edward James Olmos make his triumphant return as Gaff! You know I got at least some of this right.
Major difference there are no practical physical barriers to competition in the ISP space as exists with other utilities.
How?
If you are talking about wireline broadband, the physical barriers are exactly the same as exists with other utilities: utility poles, underground conduits, and all the rights-of-way necessary to get your wire through.
Sure, theoretically, another electric, gas, water, sewage, or cable company can step in to your town and lay all their own new pipes and wires. But the city is not going to let them clog the streets with all new utility poles or new underground conduits; you gotta use the ones already there. And someone, probably your competition, is already leasing them, or owns them outright.
Unless you're google, or the city itself, that's enough barrier to keep all new competition out.
But perhaps you are considering wireless as being free from physical barriers to competition. Not so. Spectrum is a scarce resource; you have to buy, at auction to the highest bidder, the right to use it, which excludes anyone else from using it. And wireless is no replacement for wireline in performance or reliablility.
So much for robust competition. I say again, competition is for small fry and suckers. Once a company has reached a critical mass (e.g., Comcast-size), it becomes more cost-effective to simply crush competition or buy them out. Why compete, risk revenue on innovation that might fail, when you don't have to?
it gets the government ever more involved in your life, and in managing how you can or must communicate
FUD. Either our government does the managing, or the corporations do. The government, at least, is accountable to the ballot box and the press. Comcast and their ilk are not. And don't say anything about free enterprise and competition. Competition is for small fry and suckers. Once you reach the size of Comcast, it benefits shareholders more to merge and acquire than to compete. Once monopoly status is achieved, hell with consumers and employees alike.
Markets without regulation are like sports without referees... there's nothing to prevent a nice pick-up game from turning into an all-out brawl, because who's to say it wasn't your fault for putting your face in the path of my elbow? Without rules and enforcement, you're a fool if you DON'T cheat like hell, because there's no downside and if you don't the other guy will.
"... Comcast has apologized and is looking at ways to prevent it from happening in the future..."?.
An upper manager at Comcast contacted a lower manager in Public and Press Relations, who promptly ordered an assistant to hastily look through pre-fab corporate apology phrases and hash together an official but very brief written response that 1) acknowledges that mistakes were made without admitting to actual knowledge of who made what mistake, if any, 2) appears to take responsibility for whatever went wrong without actually accepting any responsibility for anything, and 3) indicates that some form of appropriate action will be taken without identifying such action or making any commitment that any such action will take place, now or ever. Upon review by at least one corporate attorney to assure that the response does not obligate the company in any way, express or implied, such that the company is completely free and clear to move on and forget the entire thing, the response was released along with an implied message directed to the press that the matter should now be permitted to die away in favor of something more interesting like Katy Perry's wardrobe malfunction.
There. FTFY.
Either management is approving of these actions either explicitly or implicitly by inaction or management is incompetent.
I would bet that management is 100% engaged in the pending merger with Time Warner... that's the sexy stuff. Day to day management of delivering product or keeping the proles... I mean, customers, satisfied is way down the list of priorities. Too hard to measure, too hard to link to anything that raises stock value. It may be sad, but in big companies making customers happy (particularly customers who are captive to your monopoly status anyway) doesn't get you promoted from your middle-management job like cutting costs does.
I'll wager the under-appreciated grunt employees at the front-lines with the customers are doing this just to test whether any of their merger-mad managers are paying any attention. Since management is only apologizing now after the press and blogosphere have discovered it, the answer was probably no.
I don't want to wait in vain for draft mode,
No, I don't want to wait in vain for draft mode.
I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna wait in vain,
I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna wait in vain.
Still waiting...
live updates or an "Apply" button when making changes in character, paragraph, and, page dialogs
Very Much This. It's an interface feature that's not at all new, and easily taken for granted until you come across an app that doesn't have it. Particularly in Draw, the lack of this feature wastes a lot of time.
I am also waiting in vain for Writer to include a "normal" or "draft" view like in Word, making better use of the space on the screen (I don't need to see faux paper stuff all the time) while still retaining margins and showing page breaks unlike the useless (to me) "Web View".
There's bugs registered for these things somewhere, but I can't tell how the developers choose which issues to address and which ones to put off indefinitely.
Both parties in this country are bought and paid for by corporate interests so there's no way to change the status quo
Why do people always say this? Although both parties receive contributions from whoever wants to contribute, they most definitely don't behave the same. This FCC decision is a prime example: the two Republicans voted lock-step with the cable lobby, but the three Democrats had the balls to stand against it to at least try to drag the United States into the future. So, thank you, Democrats, thank you, particularly for calling out the industry's lobbying bullshit, testifying that 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up is just plenty, while at the same time telling consumers that same speed sucks and that we all should pay premium (not available in all areas) because ’25/25 is best for one to three devices at the same time, great for surfing, e-mail, online shopping and social networking, streaming two HD videos simultaneously. 50/50 is best for three to five devices at the same time, more speed for families or individuals with multiple Internet devices, stream up to five HD videos simultaneously.’
GPU's are easy to change, 16:10 monitors not so much. There's no way I'm departing from 16:10!
This. Love my 16:10's. Getting harder and harder to find, so can only hope they keep holding up.
Ars Technica was present at the announcement, and the Q&A afterward was both insightful and confusing. They clarify the free upgrade to Windows 10 as follows (emphasis mine):
Update: Microsoft fielded some questions about this upgrade in its Q&A session after the event. The company "hasn't decided" how it will handle upgrades from Windows 7 or 8.1 after the first year of Windows 10 availability ends, and it is "working on an update for Windows RT," but doesn't have further details to share.
Update 2: A blog post from Terry Myerson clears up what "Windows as a service" means, though the duration of "the supported lifetime of the device" is still foggy. "This is more than a one-time upgrade," writes Myerson. "Once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device—at no additional charge."
It seems to me Microsoft is still keeping the details close to the vest. So, for my money, the jury is still out for what happens in a year.
Still, as a strategy to get people to move off Windows 7 in a hurry, this is pretty good. You'd only wonder what would have happened to the XP user base if Vista or 7 had been free. On the other hand, this Windows 10 ecosystem is a really big gamble, and Microsoft desperately needs developers to make their platform compete against iOS and Android. Based on that, giving the first taste away free is a pretty ballsy move.
I only hope they don't try to recoup some of that lost revenue by filling Windows 10 with trackware and clickbait, forking out tons of your personal data to Bing servers because, well, that's where the action is.
Kinda, not quite right.
Just checked at https://epbfi.com/internet/, 100 Mbps is $57.99... not free, but not bad. Triple-play goes for $132.82. It ain't Sweden, but not awful.
And whereas Bob the Politician would like campaign funding for keeping his job (would that be a part-time or a full-time job, by the way? term limits? what's the pay? does he really give a shit about keeping that job in a local city council?), he can get a lot more campaign donations by getting into bed with commercial internet providers with deeper pockets then some small-change locals.
And while one state's corruption laws vary from another's, a politician putting his friend (or relative) in charge of a government program, and then receiving campaign donations back, is at least easy-pickings for a local TV eye-team investigation report. Taking such a man's seat in the next election would be like shooting a fish in a barrel... just run on a campaign of anti-corruption and eliminating government waste. I'll bet Frontier or Comcast would be happy to pay for printing up your campaign signs.
And don't think customers who get service from Frontier don't send money through the Council's hands. Be it through fees or taxes, the City gets paid. Always. The only difference is whether there are shareholders who get a piece of the action.
When Comcast runs the Internet, a substantial cut of the profit goes to shareholders, and another cut goes to expanding territory and growth, again to please shareholders to thereby drive up stock price and raise the value of the company, further increasing the wealth of the shareholders. When the City sets up its own internet, all profit goes back to the City to be redistributed by the Council, maybe to upgrade equipment, maybe to fix roads or schools, maybe as a local tax cut.
If the City Council's internet starts to suck, well, the customers are also voters, and they can replace a politician, maybe with the guy next door. On the other hand, if Comcast starts to suck in a town where there's no competition, customers can call customer service and wait on hold until they go insane. Comcast has enough customers that they don't have to listen to any customers. They only have to listen to shareholders... that is, shareholders with enough voting stock to threaten the sitting Board of Directors (currently, their stock price is $55.81, for just one little share; you can look up how many shares you'd have to buy to get anyone at the company to listen to you).
The point is, if you're a Chattanooga customer, and you're upset, you have a lot better chance of someone giving a shit than if you're a Comcast customer. Local politicians can fuck things up, sure, but unless the local politician is aiming to move higher to state of federal office (where the money is), then he's got to live with you, and probably would just as well keep you happy and off his lawn. A board member or senior management in Comcast, on the other hand, will never give a shit about who you are or what you think of your service, ever, unless maybe you start a class-action lawsuit, or a local broadband initiative in your home town. Then, you'll hear from their lawyers.
I didn't say it should be illegal for politicians to run ISPs. I said it's silly to think that ONLY politicians can run ISPs.
Hmm. I'm not aware of any municipality where ONLY the government is PERMITTED to run an ISP (that might turn out bad, sooner or later). Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm only aware of Big Telecomm complaining that they can't COMPETE with municipals, service for price, which results in an EFFECTIVE local government monopoly. I don't think this is a bad thing, because I think it would only last so long as the government-run ISP didn't suck.
If and when it does start to suck, a commercial competitor would be in a good position to offer a better product, even at a premium price, and if the politicians tried to make it difficult for them (and why would they? they can't legally profit from it) the commercial entity could sue, they would win, and you would have your competition and things would get good again.
But they can be effectively exclusive, if the cost to build out is too high or an existing franchisee or operator makes it difficult to share resources. In my town, the simple answer is that one carrier was here first, which means a competing carrier would have to rely on revenue from customers who switch in order to justify a complete build-out. Not a great gamble, no big bucks here, particularly in the short term, so they don't bother, and we suffer under an effective monopoly.
I mean, if someone's willing to set up a competing service for free, there's no exclusivity rule to stop them. But I'm not holding my breath.
Chattanooga lost their credit rating did to overwhelming debt from their government broadband attempt
No. This, at least, is unsubstantiated FUD.
From Forbes.com:
In fact, contrary to Stephenson’s claims that municipal broadband hurt municipal credit ratings, S&P just upgraded the Chattanooga public utility’s bond rating, stating, “The system is providing reliable information to the electric utility on outages, losses and usage, which helps reduce the electric system’s costs.”
A quick google search of Chattanooga and broadband turned up multiple articles agreeing that their local internet deployment has been a roaring success, particularly in bringing a new wave of business and revenue to the city.
Not every city is successful, but that's no reason for states to prohibit them from trying, if nothing else to give the monopolists an incentive to improve their crappy race-to-the-bottom service.
lol.. There is no municipalities rights in the US constitution that is supposed to limit what the feds can do.
Well, kinda there is. The 10th amendment expressly reserves for the states any powers not specifically specified by the Constitution to the Fed. On the other hand, your local municipality only has powers as outlined by your state constitution. Typically, any city is completely subordinate to whatever state it happens to be in, but states, and therefore cities, have rights over the Feds unless the Constitution specifically says otherwise (most often, by virtue of the commerce clause).
With municipal broadband, however, things get really twisted. It's not the Feds who are trampling on local efforts to set up public broadband... the states are doing the trampling, perhaps because the states are easier and cheaper for big telecom to lobby, and the Feds are trying to use the authority of the FCC to preempt the power of the states to squash what local authorities want to do within their community. Follow?
Lots of the successful municipal internet projects grew out from local municipalities that already own and run their own electric grid. Since they already own the poles and other conduits for carrying cables, along with trucks and technicians and other infrastructure for supporting them, running fiber is easy. But this makes Big Telecomm upset. Competition takes money out of their pockets. So, they lobby the states to restrict it.
So, in this case, the Fed is a city's or county's best friend, because its state wants to shut down what the citizens wanted to do for themselves. Either the FCC comes to the rescue, or the city has to go it alone in the state capitol against a very very wealthy powerful lobby whose money can easily make the difference between winning and losing in a state election. Suck it up. Sometimes, the Feds are the only friends you've got... if they have the authority, that is, and if big lobby has anything to say about it, they don't.
Businesses have still been buying Windows 7, AFAICT. Once Windows 10 is out, they may well be more receptive.
Not if Windows 10 is as tied to using OneDrive and other Microsoft services as the Development Preview is now.
And Live Tiles has got to go, too. Such distracting, marketing, productivity-killing click-bait has no place in the office (or the start menu).
Wish I had points to mod you up. Makes me want to rent this again.
But it kinda is about mobile... taking marketing and design attention away from the desktop. The old saying goes, "rob Peter to pay Paul". Microsoft is, at best, neglecting the desktop and at worst making it suck, in order to support and even market their mobile platform... a mobile platform that nobody except Microsoft has any reason to care about.
I couldn't care less about Microsoft mobile. Between iOS and Android, there's not anything I see missing. If Microsoft would simply target and support those platforms for their Office/Exchange ecosystem, they might do pretty darn well. What's the need for yet another platform and OS, except blind greed for some pie-in-the-sky cashola App store?
What I do care about is the desktop, cause that's where me and most of the rest of the world get their work done. And it's not just that Microsoft is blatantly attempting to use their desktop penetration as a billboard to advertise and acclimate a captive audience the new mobile product... bolt a Start Screen and some touch capabilities and Metro compatibility on to Windows 8 or 10 and there probably would be no problems. What's so exceedingly frustrating, maddening, is what they arbitrarily, unilaterally take away.
They chose to yank the Start menu because, well, they just did. Drop a bunch of essential control panels and preview apps, even mail, and replace them with Metro apps because, well, there it is. Just like with the Ribbon in Office, they just chose to yank out the "File Edit etc..." menus because, well, who cares why, users will just get used to it. Aero? Gone, without even an option to get it back, along with a lot of other customization options, because, what? A little transparency made some tablet out there run out of battery? People actually believe that?
I'd compare it to GM coming out with a control stick on all models instead of a steering wheel, because you know, it's better, but that doesn't go far enough 'cause we don't have to drive a Chevy. More like the IRS choosing to collect our tax returns in Latin from now on because, well, Latin is so classic. You can opt out until extended support for English runs out in 2020, but eventually English will be gone and you'll be doing it the new way or nothing.
And just like with Vista, there are plenty of shills, loyal members of the Ballmer-Youth declaring it's all great and get used to it and it's wonderful. I don't understand these people. They're either getting paid by Microsoft, or they never actually USE Windows desktop for anything except as a launching pad for Steam or Chrome. For games or web-surfing, fine. You probably don't miss the Start menu and never really see much of the desktop-metro mess. Probably don't notice how ugly the boxy, non-Aero window decorations are, either, cause you're always in full-screen.
But if you actually have to get work done, have 5-20 windows in 4-8 different apps up simultaneously? For that, the Windows 8, 8.1, even 10 is an inexplicable step backward where Windows 7 works just fine and will continue to work until 2020, by which time Microsoft is either gone or putting out Windows 14. Maybe by then they'll have stopped making such stupid decisions and release a Windows 7.1 like they should have in the first place.
Agreed... but far easier said than done. Like secure e-mail or messaging, mature straight-forward backup solutions just don't exist.
My company was hacked with cryptoware, and thanks to automatic backups we only lost a day or two of data. But that's because we have staff and resources dedicated to taking care of these things.
How's mom and pop gonna do this? Macs have Time Machine, but even that requires an external drive for that single purpose. When buying a laptop or desktop, the average Joe, student, or grandmother doesn't think to plunk down another $100 for an external drive whose only purpose is insurance against "what if".
And again, that's with Apple's Time Machine, which is the closest thing to set-it-and-forget-it backup/restore I know of, particularly because it comes bundled ready-to-go with OS X. Windows, to my knowledge, has no comparable built-in product, nor do I know of any 3rd-party product that is easy enough to have saved grandma from cryptolocker. Seriously. Have you ever tried to support "old" people, like your uncle or the senior partner? They not only routinely use terrible passwords (e.g., their home phone number), they're PROUD of it. They'll look you right in the eye and tell you that nobody in the world is going to bother to hack little old me.
and don't think that makes it their problem and they deserve what's coming to them. If it's your boss or grandma, it's your problem.
Windows needs a turn-key backup/restore solution, out of the box. And as long as I'm pipe-dreaming, PC's are each sold with a second hard drive accessible only to the backup/restore app and can't be wiped even by administrator without entering a key. Or maybe there could be some cloud-based solution - nothing ever goes wrong with those.
AI not required. If movement detected in object of predetermined size within weapon range, shoot it until it stops moving. Example.
Reserve the AI effort for hunting/gathering ammunition.
We're all gonna die.