The plan is entirely for the purpose of keeping fundie senators who hold the balance of power on-side. It's not meant to actually work. They have to try as hard as they can before admitting failure, meanwhile getting the fundie to help pass their legislation while they're stringing him along.
His words would be slightly more credible had the plan not originated with his lot, until they were kicked out in 2007, and then copied in its entirety by the present lot, for the same reason: to keep one fundamentalist Senator who just happens to hold the balance of power onside.
"They are won when the smarter adversary opens up new fronts with better targeted resources."
e.g. netbooks, which Windows blames their failure to make their numbers this quarter on. i.e., the cold wind of actual competition with Linux. And it's all a completely unintentional side-effect!
I really love my Microsoft Natural Keyboard. It really is one of the finest keyboards ever made for those who can type with ten fingers. The only way to make it better would be to put IBM Model M clicky keys on it.
Except they put the '6' on the left-hand cluster, not the right. WHAT.
This is a good example of Microsoft snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Zune had pretty good hardware at a reasonable price... then they put (a) horrible firmware on it (b) THE WORST PC software imaginable for it (c) no way to put your own firmware on.
If they'd made it possible to reflash, a zillion Linux weenies would have bought the devices just to put Rockbox on them.
But no. Obsessive control is so much more important than actual, uh, sales. Remember, it worked for the music industry! Oh wait, it didn't.
In a bid to win back profits after huge layoffs worldwide, Microsoft UK has launched Zune MusicTurd(tm) for mobile phones.
The highly competitive music store offers tracks at twice the price, DRM-locked to a chosen individual ear of the purchaser. If they can get it to work with their phone. Microsoft were careful to point out to the financial press that charging your account, however, works perfectly and that the helpline number has been connected to a fax machine.
Microsoft is confident the MusicTurd(tm) service will attract millions of people who will buy tracks from them to play on one mobile ever, not transferable to any other device including the same phone's replacement, in preference to stores offering cheaper unlocked MP3s, and won't just drive people to filesharing networks, MP3 blogs or copying 500 gigabyte USB disks full of music from their friends in sheer disgust at these corporate tools.
"We understand that lots of people use telephones they carry around with them these days," said Hugh Griffiths, Microsoft UK head of Mobile, "and you can even play music on them. A bit like a transistor radio. Whatever will they think of next! So if we get the consumer interest, we'll offer an enhanced version, MusicTurd(tm) Polished(tm). Like we're doing with Windows 7. You can't expect it to be any good until the third version, of course. So buy the first two and it'll be fantastic. Trust us on this. We have hundreds of loyal suck, er, customers on the MSN website, I'm sure we can squeeze them until the pips rattle.
"What do you mean, I'm lacking enthusiasm for our product? You'd think I was trying to get redundancy in the next round of layoffs or something. Ha! Ha! What a ridiculous notion."
[Read the original interview. Least enthusiastic marketer in history. It was quite hard to outdo.]
Despite many years' warnings that Microsoft regards security as a marketing problem and has only ever done the absolute minimum it can get away with, millions of users who click on any rubbish they see in the hope of pictures of female tennis stars having wardrobe malfunctions still fail to believe that taking Windows out on the Internet is like standing bent over in the street in downtown Gomorrah, naked, arse greased up and carrying a flashing neon sign saying "COME AND GET IT."
Microsoft cannot believe people have not applied the patch for the problem, just because they keep trying to use Windows Genuine Advantage to break legally-bought systems. "Don't they trust us?" asked marketing marketer Steve Ballmer.
Millions of smug Mac users and the four hundred smug Linux users pointed and laughed, having long given up trying to convince their Windows-using friends to see sense. "There's a reason the Unix system on Mac OS X is called Darwin," said appallingly smug Mac user Arty Phagge.
"It can't be stupid if everyone else runs it," said Windows user Joe Beleaguered, who had lost all his email, business files, MP3s and porn again. "Macs cost more than Windows PCs."
"Yes," said Phagge. "Yes, they do."
Ubuntu Linux developer Hiram Nerdboy frantically tried to get our attention about something or other, but we can't say we care.
That hiking of license costs is likely to be unfeasible. Note that they credit their most recent failure to meet financial targets to netbooks, i.e. $0 XP on netbooks to keep Linux out. Linux isn't going away. Suddenly there's competition in the OEM OS market, and Microsoft can only get away with charging for an OS what it's actually worth as a product.
"Good morning."
"STFU N00B"
"Er, what?"
"U R SO GAY LOLOLOLOL"
"Do you talk like this to everyone?"
"NO U"
"Sod this, I'm off for a pint."
"IT'S OVER 9000!!"
"..."
"Fag."
How do you make a computer act stupid enough to imitate actual humans?
Artificial intelligence came a step closer this weekend when a computer came within five percent of passing the Turing Test, which the computer passes if people cannot tell between the computer and a human.
The winning conversation was with competitor LOLBOT:
"Good morning."
"STFU N00B"
"Er, what?"
"U R SO GAY LOLOLOLOL"
"Do you talk like this to everyone?"
"NO U"
"Sod this, I'm off for a pint."
"IT'S OVER 9000!!"
"..."
"Fag."
The human tester said he couldn't believe a computer could be so mind-numbingly stupid.
LOLBOT has since been released into the wild to post random abuse, hentai manga and titty shots to 4chan, after having been banned from YouTube for commenting in a perspicacious and on-topic manner.
LOLBOT was also preemptively banned from editing Wikipedia. "We don't consider this sort of thing a suitable use of the encyclopedia," sniffed administrator WikiFiddler451, who said it had nothing to do with his having been one of the human test subjects picked as a computer.
"This is a marvellous achievement, and shows great progress toward goals I've worked for all my life," said Professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading, confirming his status as a system failing the Turing test.
wikipedia.org, not.com (though.com still works). It's a non-profit run by an educational charity with no bloody money. ($6m is a drop in a bucket to run a top-10 site on. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO GAVE US MONEY!)
There's a lot of work being done on Wikipedia's search functionality (it's a heavily tweaked version of Lucene). It's not better than Googling with "site:en.wikipedia.org" as yet, but it's way better than it was even six months ago, and work is ongoing.
You realise of course that even though there isn't a formal expert review process at Wikipedia, the project is *loaded* with experts. You can barely move without tripping over a Ph.D. Hence Wikipedia's other name, "Unemployed Ph.D Death Match."
SKID ROW, Redmond, Friday - Microsoft Corporation has enacted swingeing layoffs in mid-January after the failure of its stock buyback program, and has called for a government bailout in the face of the credit crunch.
"Vastly popular operating systems like Vista just aren't selling," said marketing marketer emeritus Bill Gates, "and it's all because people aren't confident to spend their money. In fact, they didn't start buying it in 2007 because they were expecting this even then. A subsidy to buy good, honest American computer operating systems is essential to the health of the economy, or my part of it."
Should the Big One of American virtual office supplies fail, economists predict that it could free up millions of dollars in business spending and provide a devastating boost to an economy reeling from the impact of the credit crunch.
Hiring in most Microsoft divisions has frozen in the last six months and 30GB Zunes are already on suicide watch. "The workload's impossible to keep up with," said blog technical evangelist Gary M. Stewart. "I've even been answering Slashdot comments on Boycott Novell or Groklaw. It's impossible to keep track of! Anyway, you're just another Twitter sockpuppet. Or Mini-Microsoft. Admit it."
Additional bailouts have been hooked on the bill as riders for HD-DVD, eight-track cartridges, 78rpm gramophones and Babbage analytical engine gear manufacturers.
Senators have stated they will only bail the company out with a change in top management. "What the shit," said Linus Torvalds as his draft notice arrived.
I run a Firefox beta quite happily. The secret is to untar and run it from your home directory. It auto-updates from there too when a new nightly comes out. It Just Works(tm).
I knew the BBC had completely run out of space filler when they started recounting Joe Biden's political career (not so much thirty years as one year thirty times over).
Slashdot Mirror
The plan is entirely for the purpose of keeping fundie senators who hold the balance of power on-side. It's not meant to actually work. They have to try as hard as they can before admitting failure, meanwhile getting the fundie to help pass their legislation while they're stringing him along.
His words would be slightly more credible had the plan not originated with his lot, until they were kicked out in 2007, and then copied in its entirety by the present lot, for the same reason: to keep one fundamentalist Senator who just happens to hold the balance of power onside.
"They are won when the smarter adversary opens up new fronts with better targeted resources."
e.g. netbooks, which Windows blames their failure to make their numbers this quarter on. i.e., the cold wind of actual competition with Linux. And it's all a completely unintentional side-effect!
I really love my Microsoft Natural Keyboard. It really is one of the finest keyboards ever made for those who can type with ten fingers. The only way to make it better would be to put IBM Model M clicky keys on it.
Except they put the '6' on the left-hand cluster, not the right. WHAT.
This is a good example of Microsoft snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Zune had pretty good hardware at a reasonable price ... then they put (a) horrible firmware on it (b) THE WORST PC software imaginable for it (c) no way to put your own firmware on.
If they'd made it possible to reflash, a zillion Linux weenies would have bought the devices just to put Rockbox on them.
But no. Obsessive control is so much more important than actual, uh, sales. Remember, it worked for the music industry! Oh wait, it didn't.
In a bid to win back profits after huge layoffs worldwide, Microsoft UK has launched Zune MusicTurd(tm) for mobile phones.
The highly competitive music store offers tracks at twice the price, DRM-locked to a chosen individual ear of the purchaser. If they can get it to work with their phone. Microsoft were careful to point out to the financial press that charging your account, however, works perfectly and that the helpline number has been connected to a fax machine.
Microsoft is confident the MusicTurd(tm) service will attract millions of people who will buy tracks from them to play on one mobile ever, not transferable to any other device including the same phone's replacement, in preference to stores offering cheaper unlocked MP3s, and won't just drive people to filesharing networks, MP3 blogs or copying 500 gigabyte USB disks full of music from their friends in sheer disgust at these corporate tools.
"We understand that lots of people use telephones they carry around with them these days," said Hugh Griffiths, Microsoft UK head of Mobile, "and you can even play music on them. A bit like a transistor radio. Whatever will they think of next! So if we get the consumer interest, we'll offer an enhanced version, MusicTurd(tm) Polished(tm). Like we're doing with Windows 7. You can't expect it to be any good until the third version, of course. So buy the first two and it'll be fantastic. Trust us on this. We have hundreds of loyal suck, er, customers on the MSN website, I'm sure we can squeeze them until the pips rattle.
"What do you mean, I'm lacking enthusiasm for our product? You'd think I was trying to get redundancy in the next round of layoffs or something. Ha! Ha! What a ridiculous notion."
[Read the original interview. Least enthusiastic marketer in history. It was quite hard to outdo.]
[Oh, and have a Zune-Anus logo.]
A computer worm that spreads through low security networks, memory sticks, and PCs without the latest security updates is posing a growing threat to users blitheringly stupid enough to still think Windows is not ridiculously and unfixably insecure by design.
Despite many years' warnings that Microsoft regards security as a marketing problem and has only ever done the absolute minimum it can get away with, millions of users who click on any rubbish they see in the hope of pictures of female tennis stars having wardrobe malfunctions still fail to believe that taking Windows out on the Internet is like standing bent over in the street in downtown Gomorrah, naked, arse greased up and carrying a flashing neon sign saying "COME AND GET IT."
Microsoft cannot believe people have not applied the patch for the problem, just because they keep trying to use Windows Genuine Advantage to break legally-bought systems. "Don't they trust us?" asked marketing marketer Steve Ballmer.
Millions of smug Mac users and the four hundred smug Linux users pointed and laughed, having long given up trying to convince their Windows-using friends to see sense. "There's a reason the Unix system on Mac OS X is called Darwin," said appallingly smug Mac user Arty Phagge.
"It can't be stupid if everyone else runs it," said Windows user Joe Beleaguered, who had lost all his email, business files, MP3s and porn again. "Macs cost more than Windows PCs."
"Yes," said Phagge. "Yes, they do."
Ubuntu Linux developer Hiram Nerdboy frantically tried to get our attention about something or other, but we can't say we care.
Predicted by me in early January.
That hiking of license costs is likely to be unfeasible. Note that they credit their most recent failure to meet financial targets to netbooks, i.e. $0 XP on netbooks to keep Linux out. Linux isn't going away. Suddenly there's competition in the OEM OS market, and Microsoft can only get away with charging for an OS what it's actually worth as a product.
"Good morning."
"STFU N00B"
"Er, what?"
"U R SO GAY LOLOLOLOL"
"Do you talk like this to everyone?" "NO U"
"Sod this, I'm off for a pint."
"IT'S OVER 9000!!"
"..."
"Fag."
How do you make a computer act stupid enough to imitate actual humans?
Artificial intelligence came a step closer this weekend when a computer came within five percent of passing the Turing Test, which the computer passes if people cannot tell between the computer and a human.
The winning conversation was with competitor LOLBOT:
The human tester said he couldn't believe a computer could be so mind-numbingly stupid.
LOLBOT has since been released into the wild to post random abuse, hentai manga and titty shots to 4chan, after having been banned from YouTube for commenting in a perspicacious and on-topic manner.
LOLBOT was also preemptively banned from editing Wikipedia. "We don't consider this sort of thing a suitable use of the encyclopedia," sniffed administrator WikiFiddler451, who said it had nothing to do with his having been one of the human test subjects picked as a computer.
"This is a marvellous achievement, and shows great progress toward goals I've worked for all my life," said Professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading, confirming his status as a system failing the Turing test.
... before the Internet was popular.
They're privately owned. They started losing money in 1991, before the Internet. They're now a billionaire's vanity toy.
Just wait a few years. The Wikimedia Foundation will be able to buy the shell with spare change.
wikipedia.org, not .com (though .com still works). It's a non-profit run by an educational charity with no bloody money. ($6m is a drop in a bucket to run a top-10 site on. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO GAVE US MONEY!)
Some say this has been going on for years.
Yep. He sounds like "we're trying to sell something that's crappier than Vista on a Zune, I know it and I gave up hope long ago. Kill me now."
O rly? I think they do care.
Wikipedia hasn't marketed itself at all. See that top-10 ranking, #4 on ComScore and #8 on Alexa? Word of mouth.
Its losing point is that it isn't all free content, even if it's done in MediaWiki.
There's a lot of work being done on Wikipedia's search functionality (it's a heavily tweaked version of Lucene). It's not better than Googling with "site:en.wikipedia.org" as yet, but it's way better than it was even six months ago, and work is ongoing.
You realise of course that even though there isn't a formal expert review process at Wikipedia, the project is *loaded* with experts. You can barely move without tripping over a Ph.D. Hence Wikipedia's other name, "Unemployed Ph.D Death Match."
SKID ROW, Redmond, Friday - Microsoft Corporation has enacted swingeing layoffs in mid-January after the failure of its stock buyback program, and has called for a government bailout in the face of the credit crunch.
"Vastly popular operating systems like Vista just aren't selling," said marketing marketer emeritus Bill Gates, "and it's all because people aren't confident to spend their money. In fact, they didn't start buying it in 2007 because they were expecting this even then. A subsidy to buy good, honest American computer operating systems is essential to the health of the economy, or my part of it."
Should the Big One of American virtual office supplies fail, economists predict that it could free up millions of dollars in business spending and provide a devastating boost to an economy reeling from the impact of the credit crunch.
Hiring in most Microsoft divisions has frozen in the last six months and 30GB Zunes are already on suicide watch. "The workload's impossible to keep up with," said blog technical evangelist Gary M. Stewart. "I've even been answering Slashdot comments on Boycott Novell or Groklaw. It's impossible to keep track of! Anyway, you're just another Twitter sockpuppet. Or Mini-Microsoft. Admit it."
Additional bailouts have been hooked on the bill as riders for HD-DVD, eight-track cartridges, 78rpm gramophones and Babbage analytical engine gear manufacturers.
Senators have stated they will only bail the company out with a change in top management. "What the shit," said Linus Torvalds as his draft notice arrived.
The program loader doesn't presently work, but I'm working on Wine for Windows! First step: get it to actually compile ...
I run a Firefox beta quite happily. The secret is to untar and run it from your home directory. It auto-updates from there too when a new nightly comes out. It Just Works(tm).
I knew the BBC had completely run out of space filler when they started recounting Joe Biden's political career (not so much thirty years as one year thirty times over).