I've been on JSA. I got £64 a week. Try buying all that stuff with that "generous" amount. The chavs you talk about probably do cash-in-hand work, steal or deal drugs to pay for those things.
Projects by big organisations fail all the time but ${BIG BANK}'s failed IT restructuring process doesn't make a good story. The amount of politics, bullshit and people not really knowing what's involved or what they want means that large projects take a great deal of skill to manage. Few managers have that skill.
TL;DR especially without the benefit of useful things like paragraphs but it looks like the usual righty crap about commies being given a free pass by all these commie academics. You're delusional if you think that the majority of us who lived under the threat of Soviet Russia think that it's demise was a bad thing, Che t-shirts notwithstanding. I don't see students wearing Stalin t-shirts anywhere.
Sony offer source code for various devices here. Busybox is already installed on my TV but I've no idea how to get a shell up. I'm sure someone cleverer than me will work it out somehow.
It's the Webkit engine. Chrome has the same problem with textareas. I'm not sure what possible advantage there is to it but I'm sure it's a really cool feature.
Although I agree with most of your post, as this is Slashdot I need to point out that Angry Birds is also available on Symbian and Maemo too. The developers have targeted every platform with more than a few thousand users by the looks of things.
My Sony TV has an update firmware facility. I'm not sure I'd want to risk bricking my TV though. As to LG, well after my experience with the shoddy firmware on the Viewty (that LG refused to update) I wouldn't bother buying another.
My Sony Bravia certainly does. Now we see if the MS shills' predictions of Linux being hacked as much as Windows come true, given that it seems to be in everything from TVs to ebook readers to mobile phones these days.
Desktop/UI enhancements that reduce time mucking about with windows.
Have you ever worked with non-technical people? They use hardly any of the features of XP, they're highly unlikely to use any of whatever enhancements you're referring to. I like mucking about with Windows but I'm yet to find anything on my Windows 7 install that would improve my productivity so much that it would save significant sums of money.
Faster searching.
Useful but not that much faster
64-bit from day one, appropriate driver availability is much higher.
Totally irrelevant to productivity and in any case for a lot of corporate users would require a hardware upgrade for no gain whatsoever.
Better 3d graphical support, possibly why stability is much higher. Less time rebooting, less 'glitches' affecting productivity. (This would have a huge impact where I work.)
I bet you don't work in an administrative department. That again is totally irrelevant to an accountant or a secretary.
There is no compelling reason for an organisation to go through all the expense and hassle of upgrading software and potentially hardware as well if what they have already works fine, especially since there's no guarantee that everything the business depends on will work on Windows 7 even with XP Mode.
If you read a newspaper every day you will more than likely see a story about a new study published that shows X is potentially related to Y. What the story never says is that this is just one set of findings, it is reported as if it is established medical fact that X happens because of Y. Until that stops there will be many more stories like this. It would also help if Big Pharma cleaned up its act and regained the trust of the public but Satan won't investing in thermal underwear anytime soon.
Why unbelievably? Those scum of the earth would rather chop their limbs off than admit their disgraceful culpability in this whole mess. And just so there are no arguments about right v left Private Eye can fuck off as well, although at least they have the decency to be a bit ashamed of what they did.
Give me some examples of what would improve worker productivity so drastically as to justify the expense of upgrading of several thousand workstations.
Lame and shortsighted? Here's the pitch to the people who have to pay for the upgrade:
"we need to buy 10,000 new PCs with Windows 7 because Microsoft and some nerds on Slashdot say so"
"but what we have works fine"
"but, but it looks prettier and it has bitlocker"
"get out of my office!"
it may look short-sighted to someone who hasn't ever worked in a large organisation, but upgrades are this lame and short-sighted word: "expensive" and shouldn't be done just because some anonymous dork who's never had a proper job says so. And for the record I'm typing this from Windows 7 so I'm well aware of how little it's actually improved my productivity, never mind some 50 year old audio typist who'll take months to get used to it.
XP is stable, it is familiar, it has people with yeas of experience of it, all the software businesses need works on it. I'm not saying that Windows 7 isn't better, but it's not that much better than XP for the average office worker who won't even be aware of a lot of the advantages. The question is why should an organisation with a lot of XP PCs go through the hassle and expense of upgrading to 7 when the majority of workers will notice very little difference and will probably suffer a short-term drop in productivity thanks to Microsoft changing things around.
None of which is hugely useful to the average office worker, who will be confused by quite a few of the new things, such as the change to how search works.
When an application requires higher privileges, you should always get a UAC prompt, rather than quite often getting "access denied" instead. The control panel should make it easy to elevate permissions when necessary. It should be obvious (as in not having to search on the internet to find out how) how to run Windows Explorer in admin mode. You should never have to login to an admin account to do anything. In short tidy up the security system so that it is as seamless as possible.
Change as little as possible so that users don't have to relearn where everything is again.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been on JSA. I got £64 a week. Try buying all that stuff with that "generous" amount. The chavs you talk about probably do cash-in-hand work, steal or deal drugs to pay for those things.
Resit? Prehaps yuo meaned resist
Projects by big organisations fail all the time but ${BIG BANK}'s failed IT restructuring process doesn't make a good story. The amount of politics, bullshit and people not really knowing what's involved or what they want means that large projects take a great deal of skill to manage. Few managers have that skill.
Orange is the French for orange.
So it's not your job to supervise your child then.
TL;DR especially without the benefit of useful things like paragraphs but it looks like the usual righty crap about commies being given a free pass by all these commie academics. You're delusional if you think that the majority of us who lived under the threat of Soviet Russia think that it's demise was a bad thing, Che t-shirts notwithstanding. I don't see students wearing Stalin t-shirts anywhere.
Fuck off
That's another 5 customers then *ducks*
Here: http://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/
Stupid slashdot
Sony offer source code for various devices here. Busybox is already installed on my TV but I've no idea how to get a shell up. I'm sure someone cleverer than me will work it out somehow.
It's the Webkit engine. Chrome has the same problem with textareas. I'm not sure what possible advantage there is to it but I'm sure it's a really cool feature.
Although I agree with most of your post, as this is Slashdot I need to point out that Angry Birds is also available on Symbian and Maemo too. The developers have targeted every platform with more than a few thousand users by the looks of things.
My Sony TV has an update firmware facility. I'm not sure I'd want to risk bricking my TV though. As to LG, well after my experience with the shoddy firmware on the Viewty (that LG refused to update) I wouldn't bother buying another.
My Sony Bravia certainly does. Now we see if the MS shills' predictions of Linux being hacked as much as Windows come true, given that it seems to be in everything from TVs to ebook readers to mobile phones these days.
You mean like this?
Improved stability/up-time.
It's been a while since I've seen an XP PC crash.
Desktop/UI enhancements that reduce time mucking about with windows.
Have you ever worked with non-technical people? They use hardly any of the features of XP, they're highly unlikely to use any of whatever enhancements you're referring to. I like mucking about with Windows but I'm yet to find anything on my Windows 7 install that would improve my productivity so much that it would save significant sums of money.
Faster searching.
Useful but not that much faster
64-bit from day one, appropriate driver availability is much higher.
Totally irrelevant to productivity and in any case for a lot of corporate users would require a hardware upgrade for no gain whatsoever.
Better 3d graphical support, possibly why stability is much higher. Less time rebooting, less 'glitches' affecting productivity. (This would have a huge impact where I work.)
I bet you don't work in an administrative department. That again is totally irrelevant to an accountant or a secretary.
There is no compelling reason for an organisation to go through all the expense and hassle of upgrading software and potentially hardware as well if what they have already works fine, especially since there's no guarantee that everything the business depends on will work on Windows 7 even with XP Mode.
If you read a newspaper every day you will more than likely see a story about a new study published that shows X is potentially related to Y. What the story never says is that this is just one set of findings, it is reported as if it is established medical fact that X happens because of Y. Until that stops there will be many more stories like this. It would also help if Big Pharma cleaned up its act and regained the trust of the public but Satan won't investing in thermal underwear anytime soon.
Why unbelievably? Those scum of the earth would rather chop their limbs off than admit their disgraceful culpability in this whole mess. And just so there are no arguments about right v left Private Eye can fuck off as well, although at least they have the decency to be a bit ashamed of what they did.
Give me some examples of what would improve worker productivity so drastically as to justify the expense of upgrading of several thousand workstations.
Lame and shortsighted? Here's the pitch to the people who have to pay for the upgrade:
"we need to buy 10,000 new PCs with Windows 7 because Microsoft and some nerds on Slashdot say so"
"but what we have works fine"
"but, but it looks prettier and it has bitlocker"
"get out of my office!"
it may look short-sighted to someone who hasn't ever worked in a large organisation, but upgrades are this lame and short-sighted word: "expensive" and shouldn't be done just because some anonymous dork who's never had a proper job says so. And for the record I'm typing this from Windows 7 so I'm well aware of how little it's actually improved my productivity, never mind some 50 year old audio typist who'll take months to get used to it.
XP is stable, it is familiar, it has people with yeas of experience of it, all the software businesses need works on it. I'm not saying that Windows 7 isn't better, but it's not that much better than XP for the average office worker who won't even be aware of a lot of the advantages. The question is why should an organisation with a lot of XP PCs go through the hassle and expense of upgrading to 7 when the majority of workers will notice very little difference and will probably suffer a short-term drop in productivity thanks to Microsoft changing things around.
[citation needed]
For home users you're right. For the majority of business users however who don't get the latest version of Windows every 3 or 4 years:
1. UAC is irrelevant to business users who use a locked down XP Pro
2. 32 bit is going nowhere for the foreseeable future
3. The only point I agree with, however a good IT department and good security software will keep threats to a minimum
4. Bitlocker is irrelevant to most business users
5. It'll be quite a while before most business users need 2TB disk space
6. Few business users will have SSDs in the foreseeable future either
7. Few business users are allowed to run anything as admin
8. Again largely meaningless to most users who get their updates from IT
9. Meaningless to business users
10 Useful but not exactly a dealbreaker
11. As point 10
12. I'd dispute that but it's always YMMV on assertions like that
13. You shouldn't have to upgrade if the software does what you want it to.
None of which is hugely useful to the average office worker, who will be confused by quite a few of the new things, such as the change to how search works.