Well my 3.1 experience was on a Pentium, so I never had any speed problems.
I can remember using Windows 2000 for the first time. My high school had just bought 60 or so new Dell workstations for a computer lab. All of the other machines were 200 MHz Win98SE zombie machines built from spare parts (it was a public school). After noticing that it neither took 30 seconds to launch a program nor did the system feel like it needed to be rebooted after a half hour, I thought "Why are we still using these God-awful 98 machines everywhere else?"
I wouldn't experience any non-Windows system until some time later, but even after switching to Ubuntu I still kick myself for buying XP Home for my built system instead of 2000 when it was still on the shelf.
the only real "threats" to Microsoft's main income source are sites like/. where people give information about and advocate the use of other operating systems. I'm surprised that Microsoft isn't buying Slashdot then.
That doesn't mean that they couldn't have made it a higher-end model.
They might as well have put it in the Elite, since the down-conversion of ICT would have made a component-based HD DVD player almost worthless by the end of the decade.
The most stable DOS-based Windows I've ever used was Windows 3.1. 98% of all of my grief turned out too be because of a faulty CD-ROM drive.
But I didn't have near as much trouble with Windows 95 A as I did with both Windows 98 editions. My guess is the IE4 integration. When I naively installed IE4 on my grandmother's Windows 95 OSR2.1 PC about 11 years ago it immediately lost a considerable amount of speed and stability upon reboot.
While this is a factor, I think the main reason Sony is in 3rd place is because it hasn't produced any killer games, which admittedly is partially due to Microsoft's early start (much like how the PS2's early start aligned even more developers with Sony by the time the Xbox came out)*. A rare kudos to Sony for finally taking the time to make a decent console (you can defend Sony's game lineup, but I think we are mostly in agreement that the first two PlayStations were crap hardware-wise), but their earlier consoles have proven that is games that sell the console. Even the Xbox 360 wasn't really worth getting until around Fall of 2006 when Gears of War was released.
They made the same mistake with the PSP: touting its media features but mostly not offering anything in terms of games other than a ported back-catalog. Meanwhile the DS was porting games and offering a significant amount of new material. The few people I've come across who own PSPs say they bought them mainly for the now-portable back-catalog or for the media capabilities. That's fine if that's the market you're targeting, but based on the first two PlayStation franchises I would have thought that Sony would have wanted to continue to attract the same audience.
*Disclaimer: I've pretty much stopped playing video games for about a year now and no longer follow game-related news, so this could very well have happened already. If so, I apologize.
The BDA and the DVD Forum knew full well that it would be financial suicide, and they did try to avoid a format war. It was mounting pressure from Sun and Microsoft on both sides over which interactivity layer to use that ultimately caused the negotiations to fall through.
Actually I'd say that Sony would be in even deeper shit if Blu-Ray lost, because Blu-Ray is also the format for PS3 games. Microsoft using HD-DVD in the same manner would have quickly spelled death to the Xbox, but at least in this case the only ones screwed are the few Xbox owners who purchased the add-on, and even then it's not as bad as if they had invested in a standalone HD-DVD player instead.
Agreed. At the risk of being attacked by Apple fanboys, I think Microsoft should have taken a page out of Apple's Classic and use a compatibility layer for legacy support. If you don't need the layer, don't install it or boot it up.
Not everyone has a choice as to whether or not they can get Vista. What if their school or workplace has some policy where Vista is mandatory for all of the students'/employees' machines? I know that my university forces every incoming freshmen to buy a software bundle, which depending on the college may have either something sophisticated and expensive or just Microsoft Office. If the bundle is never purchased you're just charged with it anyway, and are then taken to honor court (the same disciplinary system that deals with cheating and plagiarism). People would be up in arms about such a policy if they cared that they are either denied the ability to use a competing product for use on their own machines or are being forced to buy something that they may already own. Instead the minority like myself are punished for wanting to exert free choice of software selection, all because the university had to sign some intrusive deal with Microsoft or some other big company that forces everyone to prop up its business.
That analogy sounds more applicable to Apple's M4P's than to MP3's That was the point. You and I know full well that these are M4Ps, but when Grandma or little Billy get their first iTunes Store accounts they believe that they're buying music in this "MP3" format that everyone is talking about. Since digital audio players are nicknamed "MP3 players" or are otherwise advertised as "MP3 compatible," and since Apple doesn't give any hints in the promotional material (last time I checked, anyway) about their songs being in AAC or wrapped in FairPlay, the naive customers believe that their songs will work on any player on the market. It's only once they try to put their songs on, say, a mobile phone (probably the most popular non-iPod players on the market today) that they realize that they've been conned into buying a crippled format.
How, exactly? If I don't want to buy a song and decide to either not consume it at all or consume it in ways that do not give them money but are otherwise not forbidden by law (listening to friends' CDs, listening to the radio and turning it off while the ads are playing, etc.), how does that not prevent them from selling it to me?
Not unless by 'cite' you mean 'insert another work beyond a critical excerpt' or 'plagiarize'. Plagiarism is not an infringement if it's from a public domain work.
Really? What did he take from Microsoft that Microsoft was selling? Apparently those patents that are supposedly in the Linux kernel.
But you have prevented them from selling it to you. I listen to a song on the radio and decide that it sucks or otherwise isn't worth my money. That also prevents them from selling it to me.
To average buyers who think that MP3 is the only audio format in existence it would be like buying a Coke tagged with RFID and the cashier never disabling the RFID tag after the sale or telling the customers about it. When the anti-shoplifting gates beep as the customer tries to take the newly-purchased Coke outside, then the cashier tells the customer that they are only allowed to drink the Coke inside the store, and that going outside to drink it or trying to remove the RFID tag is punishable by 5 years in federal prison.
Slashdot Mirror
Free service and support == Microsoft.com
Well my 3.1 experience was on a Pentium, so I never had any speed problems.
I can remember using Windows 2000 for the first time. My high school had just bought 60 or so new Dell workstations for a computer lab. All of the other machines were 200 MHz Win98SE zombie machines built from spare parts (it was a public school). After noticing that it neither took 30 seconds to launch a program nor did the system feel like it needed to be rebooted after a half hour, I thought "Why are we still using these God-awful 98 machines everywhere else?"
I wouldn't experience any non-Windows system until some time later, but even after switching to Ubuntu I still kick myself for buying XP Home for my built system instead of 2000 when it was still on the shelf.
Microsoft should fly to the moon, install a giant "laser," and use it to blow up Google HQ.
How exactly is Ubuntu a marketing department for Google? If anything the distro that markets Google is gOS.
Encrypted File System for their laptops.
That doesn't mean that they couldn't have made it a higher-end model.
They might as well have put it in the Elite, since the down-conversion of ICT would have made a component-based HD DVD player almost worthless by the end of the decade.
The most stable DOS-based Windows I've ever used was Windows 3.1. 98% of all of my grief turned out too be because of a faulty CD-ROM drive.
But I didn't have near as much trouble with Windows 95 A as I did with both Windows 98 editions. My guess is the IE4 integration. When I naively installed IE4 on my grandmother's Windows 95 OSR2.1 PC about 11 years ago it immediately lost a considerable amount of speed and stability upon reboot.
While this is a factor, I think the main reason Sony is in 3rd place is because it hasn't produced any killer games, which admittedly is partially due to Microsoft's early start (much like how the PS2's early start aligned even more developers with Sony by the time the Xbox came out)*. A rare kudos to Sony for finally taking the time to make a decent console (you can defend Sony's game lineup, but I think we are mostly in agreement that the first two PlayStations were crap hardware-wise), but their earlier consoles have proven that is games that sell the console. Even the Xbox 360 wasn't really worth getting until around Fall of 2006 when Gears of War was released.
They made the same mistake with the PSP: touting its media features but mostly not offering anything in terms of games other than a ported back-catalog. Meanwhile the DS was porting games and offering a significant amount of new material. The few people I've come across who own PSPs say they bought them mainly for the now-portable back-catalog or for the media capabilities. That's fine if that's the market you're targeting, but based on the first two PlayStation franchises I would have thought that Sony would have wanted to continue to attract the same audience.
*Disclaimer: I've pretty much stopped playing video games for about a year now and no longer follow game-related news, so this could very well have happened already. If so, I apologize.
The BDA and the DVD Forum knew full well that it would be financial suicide, and they did try to avoid a format war. It was mounting pressure from Sun and Microsoft on both sides over which interactivity layer to use that ultimately caused the negotiations to fall through.
If you really think that Microsoft had that much faith in HD-DVD, then why didn't they integrate it into the Xbox 360?
Actually I'd say that Sony would be in even deeper shit if Blu-Ray lost, because Blu-Ray is also the format for PS3 games. Microsoft using HD-DVD in the same manner would have quickly spelled death to the Xbox, but at least in this case the only ones screwed are the few Xbox owners who purchased the add-on, and even then it's not as bad as if they had invested in a standalone HD-DVD player instead.
At which point Jack Thompson will cry out "I told you so!"
Agreed. At the risk of being attacked by Apple fanboys, I think Microsoft should have taken a page out of Apple's Classic and use a compatibility layer for legacy support. If you don't need the layer, don't install it or boot it up.
In sig: Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY What exactly do you have against the direct election of senators? Just curious.
Demand a refund. Your OEM might be stubborn, but the MS EULA requires them to give you a refund if you choose to disagree with its terms.
Not everyone has a choice as to whether or not they can get Vista. What if their school or workplace has some policy where Vista is mandatory for all of the students'/employees' machines? I know that my university forces every incoming freshmen to buy a software bundle, which depending on the college may have either something sophisticated and expensive or just Microsoft Office. If the bundle is never purchased you're just charged with it anyway, and are then taken to honor court (the same disciplinary system that deals with cheating and plagiarism). People would be up in arms about such a policy if they cared that they are either denied the ability to use a competing product for use on their own machines or are being forced to buy something that they may already own. Instead the minority like myself are punished for wanting to exert free choice of software selection, all because the university had to sign some intrusive deal with Microsoft or some other big company that forces everyone to prop up its business.
"The ballot was confusing!"
How, exactly? If I don't want to buy a song and decide to either not consume it at all or consume it in ways that do not give them money but are otherwise not forbidden by law (listening to friends' CDs, listening to the radio and turning it off while the ads are playing, etc.), how does that not prevent them from selling it to me?
To average buyers who think that MP3 is the only audio format in existence it would be like buying a Coke tagged with RFID and the cashier never disabling the RFID tag after the sale or telling the customers about it. When the anti-shoplifting gates beep as the customer tries to take the newly-purchased Coke outside, then the cashier tells the customer that they are only allowed to drink the Coke inside the store, and that going outside to drink it or trying to remove the RFID tag is punishable by 5 years in federal prison.