Uh, it's pretty well known that all of the big tech companies pay quite well. In the pacific northwest (Amazon, Microsoft) H-1B salaries for graduates with 4-year bachelor's degrees start at around $100k, fresh out of college. It's even higher in Silicon Valley (Facebook, Google, Apple, etc.), although it's offset by higher living costs.
The other day, MS's engineering team did an AMA on reddit where they answered the question of screen resolution:
Hey this is Stevie. Screen resolution is one component of perceived detail. The true measure of resolvability of a screen called Modulation Transfer Function (MTF), not Pixels. MTF is a combination of both contrast and resolution. There are over a dozen subsystems that effect this MTF number.. Most folks just focus on one number out of dozens that effect perceived detail. Without good contrast resolution decreases. Check out contrast sensitivity of the human eye graph (http://www.telescope-optics.net/images/eye_contrast.PNG) and if you want more see the links below. Basically, as resolution/DPI increases the eye has becomes less sensitive. So as a result, the amount of light in a room and the reflections off the screen have a huge effect on the contrast of the display. In fact, a small amount of reflection can greatly reduce contrast and thus the perceived resolution of the display. With the ClearType Display technology we took a 3 pronged approach to maximize that perceived resolution and optimize for battery life, weight, and thickness. First prong, Microsoft has the best pixel rendering technology in the industry (cleartype 1.0 and 2.0).. these are exclusive and unique to Windows, it smooths text regardless of pixel count. Second, we designed a custom 10.6” high-contrast wide-angle screen LCD screen. Lastly we optically bonded the screen with the thinnest optical stack anywhere on the market.. something which is more commonly done on phones we are doing on Surface. While this is not official, our current Cleartype measurements on the amount of light reflected off the screen is around 5.5%-6.2%, the new IPad has a measurement of 9.9% mirror reflections (see the displaymate link: http://www.displaymate.com/iPad_ShootOut_1.htm). Doing a side by side with the new iPad in a consistently lit room, we have had many people see more detail on Surface RT than on the Ipad with more resolution.
So it seems that Microsoft has data that suggests that, despite the lower resolution, the Surface has greater precieved detail than the iPad. (although I find it annoying that they've muddied the waters by re-using trademarks - they've repurposed "Cleartype Display" as the MS equivalent of Apple's "Retina Display")
I use a method by the late great Harry Browne he called failsafe investing.
Here is the summary. Divide your investment into quarters. 25% S&P 500 stocks 25% 30 year Treasury Bonds 25% 100% Treasury Money Market (If you can find one. They pretty much all went under after they put FDIC on money markets) 25% Gold Bullion Coins [...] The beauty of it is that when anything bad happens it is usually people running from one of these to another. This allows you to automatically buy low and sell high.
So in other words it's like traditional portfolio theory except worse?
That isn't true. The pure idiocy and stupidity rampant in American politics means that the US government can default, just like they came close to doing a while ago. That's why the rating on government bonds was dropped to AA - the fact that default was even being considered as a possibility is utterly mindboggling.
Economically there's no reason why the government would ever default. Instead it's the pure unadultered retardation of the politicans in this country that have ensured that an investment that should be risk-free, actually isn't. And that's just so insane that I still have trouble believing that we actually managed to get ourselves into this situation.
Regardless, those are activations... not sales. Microsoft counts the number of times money has exchanged hands for a copy of their product, not the number of times people hit the "Activate Windows Now" button.
I'm sorry to have to ask this, but are you retarded? Honestly.
Hardware acceleration means that the drawing/animations/etc are done faster, more efficiently, and with lower power. And if you don't have hardware acceleration available, it falls back to software. There is not a single conceivable case in which you would prefer software over hardware-accelerated rendering - if it's available the hardware does the same thing, except faster and more efficiently. If you prefer to do everything in software, feel free to rip the graphics card from your PC and go back to your P-133.
The Windows SDK won't ship with MSVC, but Visual Studio Express 11 still does. Visual Studio Express 11 still includes the full compiler toolkits and you're free to use those however you want as you could with the Windows SDK. But the IDE itself will only support creation of Metro-style projects.
ReFS (Win8) and ZFS (Solaris) already exist and are production-ready. There's btrfs for Linux but it's still early in development and is far from usable.
You'd have to be pretty crazy to use ReFS on a removable drive. ReFS is a direct competitor to ZFS, and is designed for use in enterprise and high-integrity systems, not on your USB thumbstick.
Er, because any filesystem can have nonfatal minor errors? For example a filesystem that uses a bitmap to track free space (like NTFS does) can have that bitmap corrupted by bad sectors or whatever. Things like that are sufficiently simple that you can attempt a repair while the volume is online, without major risk of failure.
The German courts and legal system doesn't listen to the US judge. That much is patently obvious, because the US has no jurisdiction in Germany.
But Motorola is a US company who does business in the US. Hence it must abide by US laws and rulings. The US judge said to Motorola, "even if you win the case in Germany, you must not follow through on the ban on MS products in Germany until I have made my ruling here." That doesn't infringe on German jurisdiction.
In ceremony of knighting, the knight-elect kneels on a knighting-stool in front of The Queen, who then lays the sword blade on the knight's right and then left shoulder.
After he has been dubbed, the new knight stands up, and The Queen invests the knight with the insignia of the Order to which he has been appointed, or the Badge of a Knight Bachelor.
Contrary to popular belief, the words 'Arise, Sir...' are not used.
Microsoft pays a regular dividend to its shareholders, unlike most other tech companies. It's not exactly rocket science that a regular dividend suppresses a company's stock price.
WPF is still supported, though, and will continue to be for years to come (if not decades). Microsoft never drops support for a widely used technology until it's well and truly obsolete. Heck, VB6's support date doesn't end until 2020. By that point, it'll be old enough to drink, vote, and serve in the army.
This has already been answered by MS, and the answer is "mostly". Windows 8 for ARM is restricted to "Metro" apps. The available languages for developing Metro apps are C++, C#, VB.NET, or JS+HTML5. All of these, except for C++, can run on both platforms without changes.
Er, the big tech companies are exactly the ones who are pushing hard for patent reform. Microsoft and Google are two of the biggest pushers for patent reform - they both spend a stupendously large amount of money on defensive patents and fighting lawsuits so it makes sense from a business perspective. Microsoft itself has gone before Congress and the Supreme Court a number of times, urging them to reform U.S. patent laws. I don't know what is preventing Congress from enacting patent reforms, but it certainly isn't the big tech companies.
Absolutely correct. People have the misconception that making something free somehow absolves you of all copyright liability. Free may be less bad in the eyes of the copyright owner, but they still have every right to send a cease and desist.
I mean, if I was making my own games and somebdoy decided to take my work without permission and distribute it for free, I certainly wouldn't be happy about it.
Of course Apple is pocketing the extra profits; that's the benefit they reap from basing their company in the US, which has a weak currency... that's how exchange rates work. Besides, Apple isn't really getting a premium, because the dollar is worth so much less.
A weak dollar results in additional profits for Apple as a US company, so they are receiving an additional profit here. If there is a song priced at US$1 on the US store and AUD$2 on the Australian store, Apple might receive US$3 from each Australian sale due to the exchange rate - a three-fold increase over a sale in the US. A falling US dollar exacerbates the difference. The only time it wouldn't matter is if Apple took every dollar earned from Australian sales and spent it overseas, cancelling out the effect of the falling dollar.
Australians are paying the exact same price they always have; you just mistakenly think the price is higher because your currency has strengthened vs the US dollar. If your currency has increased 50% versus the US dollar, it means you can buy 50% more goods IN THE US. It in no way entitles you to the "right" to purchase 50% more goods in Australia.
These goods are being bought from the US. The production of these goods is in no way tied to the Australian economy or the Australian dollar - Apple's licensing costs are in US dollars and their revenues are in US dollars and hence the cost of these goods in USD is independent of the Australian currency.
A rising Australian dollar does in fact entitle me to purchase more goods from overseas - that's the very definition of what a rising Australian dollar means. My local hardware store sells imported power drills - made in the US by a US company and bought with US dollars. As the Australian dollar rises, these imports become cheaper and the Australian price of imported power drills falls accordingly.
The songs from iTunes are sourced from the US, and purchases paid to a US company. There is no explanation for why such a wild discrepancy exists - the economics of international commerce is well understood in every industry except, apparently, in digitally distributed media.
Besides, nothing is preventing you from opening a bank account in the U.S., exchanging money, and then buying songs from the US store. Oh, but that's too inconvenient. Apple provides you with that convenient service, and they are free to charge whatever premium they want for it.
If only it was that easy. Purchasing from other countries' stores is against the iTunes Terms of Use so yes, there is a lot preventing me from buying content from the US store.
Obviously Apple are free to charge what they wish - but that's irrelevant. Price gouging is not regarded as acceptable behaviour in any other industry or for any other goods and services, but apparently Apple is exempt from any and all criticism or scrutiny.
This whole deal also works both ways. Let's say the Australian Dollar plummeted in value, and was suddenly worth half as much as the US dollar. Are you saying Apple should then be forced by law to double the price of their offerings in Australia? They might consider doing it on their own, but they wouldn't be able to, because Australian wages hadn't risen that much; they would only raise it as much as they figure Australians would be willing to pay.
As I've stated before, wages are irrelevant. Bananas in the Philippines are vastly cheaper than bananas produced locally. If we legalised banana imports and started buying 100% of our bananas from the Philippines, the expectation is that the banana price should drop precipitiously. The idea that the price should stay the same with the supermarket pocketing the difference is ludicrous.
Theoretically the free market should prevent price gouging from happening. But in cases of low competition and blatant gouging like in the case of iTunes, a government inquiry may be perfectly justified.
Uh, that makes exactly zero sense. Wages are irrelevant; iTunes is not a physical store in Australia employing people at Australian wages. What matters is the cost of goods sold and other expenses related to doing business in Australia, versus the price paid by Australian consumers. In the case of iTunes, the cost of goods is identical whether the buyer is located in Australia or the US - and aside from a 10% GST, there is no other excuse for why the cost should be so much higher. The result is that Australians are paying exorbitant amounts for the exact same good/service at no extra cost to the vendor - which means that Apple is simply pocketing their extra profits.
Clearly the free market isn't working in the best interests of the Australian people here, so perhaps it's time for legislation.
The MS-RL is copyleft, but the MS-PL isn't. The MS-PL is more like the Apache license - you're given a copyright license and a patent grant and you can basically do anything you want with it.
Er, because at least one person will find this useful? Open-sourcing a previously closed product can only be a good thing for the community and FOSS, regardless of whether it's Microsoft or whether you personally believe it's useful. It's honestly something that Microsoft needs to be doing more often.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, it's pretty well known that all of the big tech companies pay quite well. In the pacific northwest (Amazon, Microsoft) H-1B salaries for graduates with 4-year bachelor's degrees start at around $100k, fresh out of college. It's even higher in Silicon Valley (Facebook, Google, Apple, etc.), although it's offset by higher living costs.
Since when can you install Linux on an iPad?
The other day, MS's engineering team did an AMA on reddit where they answered the question of screen resolution:
Hey this is Stevie. Screen resolution is one component of perceived detail. The true measure of resolvability of a screen called Modulation Transfer Function (MTF), not Pixels. MTF is a combination of both contrast and resolution. There are over a dozen subsystems that effect this MTF number.. Most folks just focus on one number out of dozens that effect perceived detail. Without good contrast resolution decreases. Check out contrast sensitivity of the human eye graph (http://www.telescope-optics.net/images/eye_contrast.PNG) and if you want more see the links below. Basically, as resolution/DPI increases the eye has becomes less sensitive. So as a result, the amount of light in a room and the reflections off the screen have a huge effect on the contrast of the display. In fact, a small amount of reflection can greatly reduce contrast and thus the perceived resolution of the display. With the ClearType Display technology we took a 3 pronged approach to maximize that perceived resolution and optimize for battery life, weight, and thickness. First prong, Microsoft has the best pixel rendering technology in the industry (cleartype 1.0 and 2.0) .. these are exclusive and unique to Windows, it smooths text regardless of pixel count. Second, we designed a custom 10.6” high-contrast wide-angle screen LCD screen. Lastly we optically bonded the screen with the thinnest optical stack anywhere on the market.. something which is more commonly done on phones we are doing on Surface. While this is not official, our current Cleartype measurements on the amount of light reflected off the screen is around 5.5%-6.2%, the new IPad has a measurement of 9.9% mirror reflections (see the displaymate link: http://www.displaymate.com/iPad_ShootOut_1.htm). Doing a side by side with the new iPad in a consistently lit room, we have had many people see more detail on Surface RT than on the Ipad with more resolution.
Some more links to share if you want to know more (http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF.html)... Also This is a great book to read if you really want to get into it: http://www.amazon.com/Contrast-Sensitivity-Effects-Quality-Monograph/dp/0819434965 or more here http://alexandria.tue.nl/extra2/9901043.pdf
So it seems that Microsoft has data that suggests that, despite the lower resolution, the Surface has greater precieved detail than the iPad. (although I find it annoying that they've muddied the waters by re-using trademarks - they've repurposed "Cleartype Display" as the MS equivalent of Apple's "Retina Display")
I use a method by the late great Harry Browne he called failsafe investing.
Here is the summary. Divide your investment into quarters.
25% S&P 500 stocks
25% 30 year Treasury Bonds
25% 100% Treasury Money Market (If you can find one. They pretty much all went under after they put FDIC on money markets)
25% Gold Bullion Coins
[...]
The beauty of it is that when anything bad happens it is usually people running from one of these to another. This allows you to automatically buy low and sell high.
So in other words it's like traditional portfolio theory except worse?
That isn't true. The pure idiocy and stupidity rampant in American politics means that the US government can default, just like they came close to doing a while ago. That's why the rating on government bonds was dropped to AA - the fact that default was even being considered as a possibility is utterly mindboggling.
Economically there's no reason why the government would ever default. Instead it's the pure unadultered retardation of the politicans in this country that have ensured that an investment that should be risk-free, actually isn't. And that's just so insane that I still have trouble believing that we actually managed to get ourselves into this situation.
Regardless, those are activations... not sales. Microsoft counts the number of times money has exchanged hands for a copy of their product, not the number of times people hit the "Activate Windows Now" button.
I'm sorry to have to ask this, but are you retarded? Honestly.
Hardware acceleration means that the drawing/animations/etc are done faster, more efficiently, and with lower power. And if you don't have hardware acceleration available, it falls back to software. There is not a single conceivable case in which you would prefer software over hardware-accelerated rendering - if it's available the hardware does the same thing, except faster and more efficiently. If you prefer to do everything in software, feel free to rip the graphics card from your PC and go back to your P-133.
This is a fix-it update, which doesn't appear through windows update and isn't pushed out through WSUS...
The Windows SDK won't ship with MSVC, but Visual Studio Express 11 still does. Visual Studio Express 11 still includes the full compiler toolkits and you're free to use those however you want as you could with the Windows SDK. But the IDE itself will only support creation of Metro-style projects.
ReFS (Win8) and ZFS (Solaris) already exist and are production-ready. There's btrfs for Linux but it's still early in development and is far from usable.
You'd have to be pretty crazy to use ReFS on a removable drive. ReFS is a direct competitor to ZFS, and is designed for use in enterprise and high-integrity systems, not on your USB thumbstick.
Er, because any filesystem can have nonfatal minor errors? For example a filesystem that uses a bitmap to track free space (like NTFS does) can have that bitmap corrupted by bad sectors or whatever. Things like that are sufficiently simple that you can attempt a repair while the volume is online, without major risk of failure.
The German courts and legal system doesn't listen to the US judge. That much is patently obvious, because the US has no jurisdiction in Germany.
But Motorola is a US company who does business in the US. Hence it must abide by US laws and rulings. The US judge said to Motorola, "even if you win the case in Germany, you must not follow through on the ban on MS products in Germany until I have made my ruling here." That doesn't infringe on German jurisdiction.
Source: royal.gov.uk
Microsoft pays a regular dividend to its shareholders, unlike most other tech companies. It's not exactly rocket science that a regular dividend suppresses a company's stock price.
WPF is still supported, though, and will continue to be for years to come (if not decades). Microsoft never drops support for a widely used technology until it's well and truly obsolete. Heck, VB6's support date doesn't end until 2020. By that point, it'll be old enough to drink, vote, and serve in the army.
This has already been answered by MS, and the answer is "mostly". Windows 8 for ARM is restricted to "Metro" apps. The available languages for developing Metro apps are C++, C#, VB.NET, or JS+HTML5. All of these, except for C++, can run on both platforms without changes.
Or you could, you know, just download the Windows ISOs from Microsoft.
Er, the big tech companies are exactly the ones who are pushing hard for patent reform. Microsoft and Google are two of the biggest pushers for patent reform - they both spend a stupendously large amount of money on defensive patents and fighting lawsuits so it makes sense from a business perspective. Microsoft itself has gone before Congress and the Supreme Court a number of times, urging them to reform U.S. patent laws. I don't know what is preventing Congress from enacting patent reforms, but it certainly isn't the big tech companies.
Absolutely correct. People have the misconception that making something free somehow absolves you of all copyright liability. Free may be less bad in the eyes of the copyright owner, but they still have every right to send a cease and desist.
I mean, if I was making my own games and somebdoy decided to take my work without permission and distribute it for free, I certainly wouldn't be happy about it.
Of course Apple is pocketing the extra profits; that's the benefit they reap from basing their company in the US, which has a weak currency... that's how exchange rates work. Besides, Apple isn't really getting a premium, because the dollar is worth so much less.
A weak dollar results in additional profits for Apple as a US company, so they are receiving an additional profit here. If there is a song priced at US$1 on the US store and AUD$2 on the Australian store, Apple might receive US$3 from each Australian sale due to the exchange rate - a three-fold increase over a sale in the US. A falling US dollar exacerbates the difference. The only time it wouldn't matter is if Apple took every dollar earned from Australian sales and spent it overseas, cancelling out the effect of the falling dollar.
Australians are paying the exact same price they always have; you just mistakenly think the price is higher because your currency has strengthened vs the US dollar. If your currency has increased 50% versus the US dollar, it means you can buy 50% more goods IN THE US. It in no way entitles you to the "right" to purchase 50% more goods in Australia.
These goods are being bought from the US. The production of these goods is in no way tied to the Australian economy or the Australian dollar - Apple's licensing costs are in US dollars and their revenues are in US dollars and hence the cost of these goods in USD is independent of the Australian currency.
A rising Australian dollar does in fact entitle me to purchase more goods from overseas - that's the very definition of what a rising Australian dollar means. My local hardware store sells imported power drills - made in the US by a US company and bought with US dollars. As the Australian dollar rises, these imports become cheaper and the Australian price of imported power drills falls accordingly.
The songs from iTunes are sourced from the US, and purchases paid to a US company. There is no explanation for why such a wild discrepancy exists - the economics of international commerce is well understood in every industry except, apparently, in digitally distributed media.
Besides, nothing is preventing you from opening a bank account in the U.S., exchanging money, and then buying songs from the US store. Oh, but that's too inconvenient. Apple provides you with that convenient service, and they are free to charge whatever premium they want for it.
If only it was that easy. Purchasing from other countries' stores is against the iTunes Terms of Use so yes, there is a lot preventing me from buying content from the US store.
Obviously Apple are free to charge what they wish - but that's irrelevant. Price gouging is not regarded as acceptable behaviour in any other industry or for any other goods and services, but apparently Apple is exempt from any and all criticism or scrutiny.
This whole deal also works both ways. Let's say the Australian Dollar plummeted in value, and was suddenly worth half as much as the US dollar. Are you saying Apple should then be forced by law to double the price of their offerings in Australia? They might consider doing it on their own, but they wouldn't be able to, because Australian wages hadn't risen that much; they would only raise it as much as they figure Australians would be willing to pay.
As I've stated before, wages are irrelevant. Bananas in the Philippines are vastly cheaper than bananas produced locally. If we legalised banana imports and started buying 100% of our bananas from the Philippines, the expectation is that the banana price should drop precipitiously. The idea that the price should stay the same with the supermarket pocketing the difference is ludicrous.
Theoretically the free market should prevent price gouging from happening. But in cases of low competition and blatant gouging like in the case of iTunes, a government inquiry may be perfectly justified.
Uh, that makes exactly zero sense. Wages are irrelevant; iTunes is not a physical store in Australia employing people at Australian wages. What matters is the cost of goods sold and other expenses related to doing business in Australia, versus the price paid by Australian consumers. In the case of iTunes, the cost of goods is identical whether the buyer is located in Australia or the US - and aside from a 10% GST, there is no other excuse for why the cost should be so much higher. The result is that Australians are paying exorbitant amounts for the exact same good/service at no extra cost to the vendor - which means that Apple is simply pocketing their extra profits.
Clearly the free market isn't working in the best interests of the Australian people here, so perhaps it's time for legislation.
So? A contribution is a contribution, even if it is for selfish reasons.
The MS-RL is copyleft, but the MS-PL isn't. The MS-PL is more like the Apache license - you're given a copyright license and a patent grant and you can basically do anything you want with it.
Er, because at least one person will find this useful? Open-sourcing a previously closed product can only be a good thing for the community and FOSS, regardless of whether it's Microsoft or whether you personally believe it's useful. It's honestly something that Microsoft needs to be doing more often.