I completely agree here. I have been looking at laptops to buy and quite frankly it is scary. The cheap notebooks are Windows proprietary s**t. And if you start to move to anything better quality with better hardware you get close to Apple hardware. I thought I was seeing things, but Apple hardware is not that much more expensive. And if you want to get anything without windows on it, well good luck with that!
I am not saying that you can't find a laptop, but it is truly becoming like pulling teeth. The entire industry outside of Apple has decided to jump on the Windows bandwagon. It leads me to wonder what happened to the separation of OEM from Microsoft? Oh yeah went down the tubers when the legal restrictions expired.
Dude you are in denial! I am a Linux user and gave up Windows. However, my family members are Apple users, and my brother has most Apple products. Frankly they work well together. Want to know why my brother is an Apple user? Because he is sick to crap about having to be an admin to copy files from one machine to another. He likes the fact that his media is available from one device to another. He likes being to watch TV with Apple TV and not have to figure out nitty gritty details such as having the right flash player.
I am not an OSX user because well I prefer Linux. But I am also not dumb to say that Apple has iCrap!
No the Samsung tablet, and the new iPad are way, and I do mean WAY too similar. I have held both in my hands and have to say, "bad Samsung..." It is not just that they cloned the look. But there is no memory card, the USB connection is identical, etc. Samsung really screwed the pooch on this one and should be taken to cleaners.
I mean is it really that hard to not make it look like the iPad? I have an Acer Iconia and am quite happy with it.
Sorry it is not just a GUI... It is a new API designed to replace the current.NET API. Think of it as follows,.NET is Swing and WinRT is SWT. Both use Java technologies, but they are not compatible with each other. What makes WinRT a royal pain is that it is low level C++ API. Thus C# becomes a second rate citizen and C++ a first rate citizen and it uses COM technologies. Never thought that would happen in that COM is brought back to life.
The ramification of this is that C++ programmers who feared becoming obsolete now have something to write to instead of the WinAPI. It also means WinAPI is dead and thus things like Wine are history for any new program. As it is a C++ API the binding is going to be difficult to replicate with Wine. C API is much easier to replicate.
Overall this is a lock-in story by Microsoft. It is what it is and personally I think WinRT will fail overall because it means you are completely beholden to the Windows platform!
Here is where you get statistics wrong. The minority of books for you are readable. However, for the crowd the majority of books are readable. But because of word of mouth and pin holing information flow the crowd has determined a minority of books are readable or even accessible.
Ok 9,990 dollars for a book as an income? That is a joke! And yes even 10,000 downloads is still quite outrageous. Take a look at Robert Scobles the long tail. He said that people would buy more and the monies would be distributed more fairly. This is called the long tail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail
However, the long tail has been debunked:
Also in 2008, a sales analysis of an unnamed UK digital music service by economist Will Page and high-tech entrepreneur Andrew Bud found that sales exhibited a log-normal distribution rather than a power law; they reported that 80 percent of the music tracks available sold no copies at all over a one-year period.
I have seen it myself first hand. With Google, search engines, etc we are doing pin hole searches. Where in the past we would have a broad horizon now we google and get a pin hole view of the world. We don't get the diversity that we used to before. Thus the log tail does not exist.
No wrong the Internet will be willing to pay for a few, but not for many. I reference the book, "Why Are Artists Poor" from Amazon. It is a winner take all type of society. A few will make money, but the vast majority will need to search for a day job. I am not knocking it, but it is what it is and anyone thinking it is otherwise is deluding themselves.
I will give you an example where I personally talked to the Author. Bruce Eckel. He gave away his book and open sourced it. He looked for patronage. The result is that people bought less of his books. If you look at his newer editions of the same books he does not give away everything. He gives samples, and then you need to buy the rest. The reality is that people will not pay, and will not want to give money...
Oh that is hooey... Please read the book, "Why Are Artists Poor" from Amazon. I read this book nearly 7 years ago because I wanted to understand the economics of open source by using a basis case of the arts.
The arts is a patronage system and guess what only a few artists make money. As the author points out the arts is a winner take all type of patronage system. It has to do with the lopsidedness of the economics. He makes the case that at least with say the previous system of copyright the monies are distributed more fairly. His contention and it is not wrong is that most people don't give to the arts, and only a small minority do. And that small minority determines who wins or who loses. This is why you have arts where people crucify mary, and fling feces around. The small minority thinks that is art, whereas the majority does not.
Take a look at open source. It is widely used, but only the minority can make money. Open Source is a patronage system and it is not as successful as closed source software in pure fiscal terms. I am not knocking Open Source because I use it extensively myself. However I do not delude myself into thinking that I can earn millions from Open Source. I use Open Source to solve problems other than selling software. Open Source has slaughtered the for pay software model. I am not dissing the result, I am just stating facts as they are.
Thus to say this will be the golden age for writers IMO is deluding yourself... It will be the age where there will be more writers with more opinions, but definitely not more monies...
1911-1913--Tibetan Uprising --During the anti-Manchu Chinese Revolution, Tibetans revolt and force out the Manchu Chinese garrison. The surviving Chinese troops evacuate Tibet by way of British India.
I am not saying that I like the guy who was pinged off! Not at all. What I am saying is that people like him should be brought to trial and made to answer for his crimes! By pinging him off the Chinese have just gotten rights to ping off whoever disagrees with them. Not a good precedent...
Yes and everybody will run under powered desktops in the quest to not have to hear the fan...
I run a desktop because I need the power. If it has an ARM in it, so be it. BUT I need the power. When I develop I am going to use multiple screens. When I run my trading software I need a desktop with multiple screens.
What people need to understand is that there is no solution fits all. Some people don't need a desktop, others do. Some people don't need a tablet, others do. Let's all get this straight we will have more choice, not less choice.
And since they are free I decided to buy their cloud service Ubuntu One. Nice piece of work, and works just as well as DropBox. Since I have an android phone and tablet it is a piece of cake there as well.
I actually disagree. I have been following linux for ages (since about 95). And yes each and every year we say it will be the year of Linux. Well I think the year of Linux for me was 2011, three days ago for me. I have used Linux on and off throughout the years, and I always crawl back to Windows.
But now the processors are fast and powerful enough where apps like VMWare just work. There is also enough Linux software out there that you can get things done on Linux. And for the things that don't work on Linux I have VMWare with its Unity, or VirtualBox with its Seamless.
Others have shifted to OSX, which I really don't care for. I shifted to Linux and have to say that Linux on the desktop is finally possible...
BTW desktops will not die! I always love to hear how people say that desktops will die. Yet they still produce the darn things. Sure they are not a high margin fast market. They are a mature market. I see it with myself I have two smart phones, two tablets, a kindle and a bunch of notebooks and desktops. What is happening is that I keep hardware longer...
I have worked on order books for investment banks. The problem here was that he hedged himself with fake trades. A system cannot detect that. What they can detect is if the hedge is not legal. And to catch an amount like saying, "oh look he has a 20 billion trade let's stop it" does not work. Since banks literally have trillions on their books, with trillions as hedges.
The problem is that he short circuited the order books and some IT code did not balance the books properly.
.NET does not exist with Win8. Take a look at the architecture slides..NET has been relegated to desktop legacy type apps... I find this really moronic by Microsoft.
Here is my question... Should.NET not have taken care of this? I mean is that not the thing with a virtual machine? Oh yeah... Microsoft killed the VM and moved back about a decade! Yes they kept C# the language but it appears the concept of VM has died... Nutters!
I have an Acer Iconia tablet and my wife has the early Samsung 7" tablets. The reality is that the Samsung tablets are a ripoff of the Apple tablets. Look at the ports, Oh wait there are none (unlike most Android tablets). What about the connector? Oh wait it looks just like the Apple (even though most android tablets are not like that). The reality is that Samsung is ripping off the design of Apple...
Here is an idea instead of adding Lua support, I don't know, USE LUA... Wow what a concept!
This is what gets me with the GNU team. Instead of actually reusing what other people develop they rather stick to their own little ivory tower and get very little done. I am being serious here.
I appreciate the work that the original GNU people did about two decades ago. It was needed. But for crying out loud these people remind of an older generation that does certain things because well that is how they did it two decades ago. And if it was good enough then, then gosh darn it, it's good enough today...
Of course I can blame them. As a former author the entire system was geared against the author. I have talked to several authors who have shifted to the new self-publish ebook paradigm eg Amazon. They love it. They get to keep more of their own money, and with Amazon they get a half decent DRM. And you got to give credit to Amazon they preserved with the Kindle and it is doing well.
The fact that independent bookstores go downhill is not a surprise, and they have to adapt and think of other ways to make money.
Oh yes be in denial! Yes nobody wants Android tablets! After all they are crap...
Hey did I not hear this record before? Oh yeah it was with Android smartphones. What happened? Oh yeah Android is kicking iOS arse and now everybody is quiet about the numbers. But instead we have this debate on how Apple gets more money and so on with iOS. Well to all of you Apple owners congratulations for overpaying for a piece of hardware. I understand its a free country and you have that right.
BUT please stop with the commenting that Android tablets are not gaining traction. They are!
Why not? If that is your only choice, then why the heck not?
And trust me I have been through, "oh crap lost money on selling my house". But afterwards it was the best move we made since we were able to recoup our losses with the new work.
It's easier to pay off a mortgage when you have a job, then when you don't have a job. And if you don't have a job, unless you paid off your home you are going to lose it anyways. So why not take the hit, get a job, and MOVE ON...
Dude I am probably getting close to your age, 43 myself. I have never married myself to a location. Want to know something... There are NICE places outside the bay. I know that must seem like blasphemy, but trust me there are! In fact I am sure that there ARE MANY nice places outside the bay. And places outside the bay have hardware places as well.
I think what the P is commenting on is that you are whining that you can't get a job, but are not willing to move where there might be a job. Sorry, but that is just pure "its your own damm fault!" IMO you are too used to the area to try something new. I know whenever my wife and I moved around we needed about a year to get used to the area. But after that, no problemo.
Slashdot Mirror
You are right... The problem is that Facebook might want to do business with an EU company. At that point things become funny...
I completely agree here. I have been looking at laptops to buy and quite frankly it is scary. The cheap notebooks are Windows proprietary s**t. And if you start to move to anything better quality with better hardware you get close to Apple hardware. I thought I was seeing things, but Apple hardware is not that much more expensive. And if you want to get anything without windows on it, well good luck with that!
I am not saying that you can't find a laptop, but it is truly becoming like pulling teeth. The entire industry outside of Apple has decided to jump on the Windows bandwagon. It leads me to wonder what happened to the separation of OEM from Microsoft? Oh yeah went down the tubers when the legal restrictions expired.
I am not impressed!!!
Dude you are in denial! I am a Linux user and gave up Windows. However, my family members are Apple users, and my brother has most Apple products. Frankly they work well together. Want to know why my brother is an Apple user? Because he is sick to crap about having to be an admin to copy files from one machine to another. He likes the fact that his media is available from one device to another. He likes being to watch TV with Apple TV and not have to figure out nitty gritty details such as having the right flash player.
I am not an OSX user because well I prefer Linux. But I am also not dumb to say that Apple has iCrap!
No the Samsung tablet, and the new iPad are way, and I do mean WAY too similar. I have held both in my hands and have to say, "bad Samsung..." It is not just that they cloned the look. But there is no memory card, the USB connection is identical, etc. Samsung really screwed the pooch on this one and should be taken to cleaners.
I mean is it really that hard to not make it look like the iPad? I have an Acer Iconia and am quite happy with it.
Here is Miguel on the topic and I think he does a great job of explaining it...
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Sep-15.html
Sorry it is not just a GUI... It is a new API designed to replace the current .NET API. Think of it as follows, .NET is Swing and WinRT is SWT. Both use Java technologies, but they are not compatible with each other. What makes WinRT a royal pain is that it is low level C++ API. Thus C# becomes a second rate citizen and C++ a first rate citizen and it uses COM technologies. Never thought that would happen in that COM is brought back to life.
The ramification of this is that C++ programmers who feared becoming obsolete now have something to write to instead of the WinAPI. It also means WinAPI is dead and thus things like Wine are history for any new program. As it is a C++ API the binding is going to be difficult to replicate with Wine. C API is much easier to replicate.
Overall this is a lock-in story by Microsoft. It is what it is and personally I think WinRT will fail overall because it means you are completely beholden to the Windows platform!
If authors could make 60K a year that would be amazing... but sadly even that is not easily possible... Especially not with 99 cent books.
Here is where you get statistics wrong. The minority of books for you are readable. However, for the crowd the majority of books are readable. But because of word of mouth and pin holing information flow the crowd has determined a minority of books are readable or even accessible.
Ok 9,990 dollars for a book as an income? That is a joke! And yes even 10,000 downloads is still quite outrageous. Take a look at Robert Scobles the long tail. He said that people would buy more and the monies would be distributed more fairly. This is called the long tail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail
However, the long tail has been debunked:
Also in 2008, a sales analysis of an unnamed UK digital music service by economist Will Page and high-tech entrepreneur Andrew Bud found that sales exhibited a log-normal distribution rather than a power law; they reported that 80 percent of the music tracks available sold no copies at all over a one-year period.
I have seen it myself first hand. With Google, search engines, etc we are doing pin hole searches. Where in the past we would have a broad horizon now we google and get a pin hole view of the world. We don't get the diversity that we used to before. Thus the log tail does not exist.
No wrong the Internet will be willing to pay for a few, but not for many. I reference the book, "Why Are Artists Poor" from Amazon. It is a winner take all type of society. A few will make money, but the vast majority will need to search for a day job. I am not knocking it, but it is what it is and anyone thinking it is otherwise is deluding themselves.
I will give you an example where I personally talked to the Author. Bruce Eckel. He gave away his book and open sourced it. He looked for patronage. The result is that people bought less of his books. If you look at his newer editions of the same books he does not give away everything. He gives samples, and then you need to buy the rest. The reality is that people will not pay, and will not want to give money...
Oh that is hooey... Please read the book, "Why Are Artists Poor" from Amazon. I read this book nearly 7 years ago because I wanted to understand the economics of open source by using a basis case of the arts.
The arts is a patronage system and guess what only a few artists make money. As the author points out the arts is a winner take all type of patronage system. It has to do with the lopsidedness of the economics. He makes the case that at least with say the previous system of copyright the monies are distributed more fairly. His contention and it is not wrong is that most people don't give to the arts, and only a small minority do. And that small minority determines who wins or who loses. This is why you have arts where people crucify mary, and fling feces around. The small minority thinks that is art, whereas the majority does not.
Take a look at open source. It is widely used, but only the minority can make money. Open Source is a patronage system and it is not as successful as closed source software in pure fiscal terms. I am not knocking Open Source because I use it extensively myself. However I do not delude myself into thinking that I can earn millions from Open Source. I use Open Source to solve problems other than selling software. Open Source has slaughtered the for pay software model. I am not dissing the result, I am just stating facts as they are.
Thus to say this will be the golden age for writers IMO is deluding yourself... It will be the age where there will be more writers with more opinions, but definitely not more monies...
And how many people have 1 million downloads? I would say the minority, and not the majority...
By golly you are right darn it! So we better kill some of those Tibet protesters, since after all China is at war with Tibet and their protesters!
Damm those Tibeteans that terrorized the Chinese and kicked them out:
http://www.historyguy.com/tibet_china_wars_conflicts.html
1911-1913--Tibetan Uprising --During the anti-Manchu Chinese Revolution, Tibetans revolt and force out the Manchu Chinese garrison. The surviving Chinese troops evacuate Tibet by way of British India.
I am not saying that I like the guy who was pinged off! Not at all. What I am saying is that people like him should be brought to trial and made to answer for his crimes! By pinging him off the Chinese have just gotten rights to ping off whoever disagrees with them. Not a good precedent...
Yes and everybody will run under powered desktops in the quest to not have to hear the fan...
I run a desktop because I need the power. If it has an ARM in it, so be it. BUT I need the power. When I develop I am going to use multiple screens. When I run my trading software I need a desktop with multiple screens.
What people need to understand is that there is no solution fits all. Some people don't need a desktop, others do. Some people don't need a tablet, others do. Let's all get this straight we will have more choice, not less choice.
Ubuntu is great!!!
And since they are free I decided to buy their cloud service Ubuntu One. Nice piece of work, and works just as well as DropBox. Since I have an android phone and tablet it is a piece of cake there as well.
>Linux desktop will never happen
I actually disagree. I have been following linux for ages (since about 95). And yes each and every year we say it will be the year of Linux. Well I think the year of Linux for me was 2011, three days ago for me. I have used Linux on and off throughout the years, and I always crawl back to Windows.
But now the processors are fast and powerful enough where apps like VMWare just work. There is also enough Linux software out there that you can get things done on Linux. And for the things that don't work on Linux I have VMWare with its Unity, or VirtualBox with its Seamless.
Others have shifted to OSX, which I really don't care for. I shifted to Linux and have to say that Linux on the desktop is finally possible...
BTW desktops will not die! I always love to hear how people say that desktops will die. Yet they still produce the darn things. Sure they are not a high margin fast market. They are a mature market. I see it with myself I have two smart phones, two tablets, a kindle and a bunch of notebooks and desktops. What is happening is that I keep hardware longer...
I have worked on order books for investment banks. The problem here was that he hedged himself with fake trades. A system cannot detect that. What they can detect is if the hedge is not legal. And to catch an amount like saying, "oh look he has a 20 billion trade let's stop it" does not work. Since banks literally have trillions on their books, with trillions as hedges.
The problem is that he short circuited the order books and some IT code did not balance the books properly.
.NET does not exist with Win8. Take a look at the architecture slides. .NET has been relegated to desktop legacy type apps... I find this really moronic by Microsoft.
Here is my question... Should .NET not have taken care of this? I mean is that not the thing with a virtual machine? Oh yeah... Microsoft killed the VM and moved back about a decade! Yes they kept C# the language but it appears the concept of VM has died... Nutters!
I have an Acer Iconia tablet and my wife has the early Samsung 7" tablets. The reality is that the Samsung tablets are a ripoff of the Apple tablets. Look at the ports, Oh wait there are none (unlike most Android tablets). What about the connector? Oh wait it looks just like the Apple (even though most android tablets are not like that). The reality is that Samsung is ripping off the design of Apple...
Here is an idea instead of adding Lua support, I don't know, USE LUA... Wow what a concept!
This is what gets me with the GNU team. Instead of actually reusing what other people develop they rather stick to their own little ivory tower and get very little done. I am being serious here.
I appreciate the work that the original GNU people did about two decades ago. It was needed. But for crying out loud these people remind of an older generation that does certain things because well that is how they did it two decades ago. And if it was good enough then, then gosh darn it, it's good enough today...
Of course I can blame them. As a former author the entire system was geared against the author. I have talked to several authors who have shifted to the new self-publish ebook paradigm eg Amazon. They love it. They get to keep more of their own money, and with Amazon they get a half decent DRM. And you got to give credit to Amazon they preserved with the Kindle and it is doing well.
The fact that independent bookstores go downhill is not a surprise, and they have to adapt and think of other ways to make money.
Oh yes be in denial! Yes nobody wants Android tablets! After all they are crap...
Hey did I not hear this record before? Oh yeah it was with Android smartphones. What happened? Oh yeah Android is kicking iOS arse and now everybody is quiet about the numbers. But instead we have this debate on how Apple gets more money and so on with iOS. Well to all of you Apple owners congratulations for overpaying for a piece of hardware. I understand its a free country and you have that right.
BUT please stop with the commenting that Android tablets are not gaining traction. They are!
Why not? If that is your only choice, then why the heck not?
And trust me I have been through, "oh crap lost money on selling my house". But afterwards it was the best move we made since we were able to recoup our losses with the new work.
It's easier to pay off a mortgage when you have a job, then when you don't have a job. And if you don't have a job, unless you paid off your home you are going to lose it anyways. So why not take the hit, get a job, and MOVE ON...
Dude I am probably getting close to your age, 43 myself. I have never married myself to a location. Want to know something... There are NICE places outside the bay. I know that must seem like blasphemy, but trust me there are! In fact I am sure that there ARE MANY nice places outside the bay. And places outside the bay have hardware places as well.
I think what the P is commenting on is that you are whining that you can't get a job, but are not willing to move where there might be a job. Sorry, but that is just pure "its your own damm fault!" IMO you are too used to the area to try something new. I know whenever my wife and I moved around we needed about a year to get used to the area. But after that, no problemo.