Good job. You've counted the beans correctly, but didn't address the point.
I guess I didn't spell it out well enough. It doesn't matter whether it took two days, twelve days or twenty days. The point is that there should be a first-in-first-out system of app evaluations. An application that uses a network connection takes a little longer to get approved. I'm okay with that; however, when I see an application that uses the same kind of resources gets submitted after mine and is approved before mine, I know there's a problem.
Personally, I think the story here is that Apple has done a 180 with this app & hope that this is a sign of things to come.
The app approval process is just broken. Way back when, Steve Jobs said that there would be limitations to the applications that would be available on the store and I can understand the reasoning as it started out; however, as of late, it's just arbitrary and capricious. It's becoming simply untenable as a development platform because the combination of seemingly arbitrary and conflicting decisions for rejection combined with the ultra slow-motion with which decisions are made -- not to mention that there is zero visibility into the approval process.
I can't run a business like that; I need to have some expectation that I'll see ROI in a reasonable time period and that Apple will act in an equitable manner regarding application submissions. My hope is that Apple is catching on to the fact that they will lose me and plenty of other developers if they don't turn the corner on the disaster that the app review process has become.
But maybe that's just wishful thinking as I head toward week 4 of waiting for my app to be approved... While developer.apple.com flaunts this in my face: Based on the current volume of app submissions, 95% of applications are being approved within 14 days.
All while Facebook's new app gets approval in about five days...
Personally, I think the upper management at MS was getting complacent, feeling that dominant market-share would mean that everyone would come along no matter what they did.
They threw out the old play-book with Vista and were burned for it. It wasn't necessarily that Vista was much better or worse than anything that had come before. It was just that they didn't control perception before it was released to the public.
MS has always understood that shaping perception before the product is in the hands of the consumer is the most important element of any marketing campaign.
Microsoft's Astroturf campaign has been phenomenal for Windows 7.
It reminds me of the old days when Microsoft Marketing could have sold shrink-wrapped poo; those guys were that good. It's too bad the software was never as good as the marketing.
Your homily about the worth of individual life is unnecessary. No one knows this more than I do. I make daily decisions with that in mind (I don't eat meat for moral reasons). And since I've had to sit at the foot of a family member's bed and watch them struggle to take their last breath as they die of cancer, I can say that I know terminal illness personally.
So now that we have this diversion implying that I don't care enough about people out of the way, we can get back to the topic of discussion.
I completely agree -- expand medicaid; which is the same kind of system that Canada uses (not socialized medicine, but socialized insurance). It's a strange thing to hear -- as Medicaid is the government run bogeyman that conservatives seem so afraid of.
If you're dying, you are dying. If there is hope of recovery, then any medical system will provide that for you -- whether it is here or Canada.
People are on waiting lists for surgeries in the US as well as Canada. The Canadian traveling south myth has been debunked many times.
My apologies this is a bit terse; I've got some business to attend to.
Our current system has an open wallet option. If you are dying you can bankrupt your estate to try and beat it. Does that exist in the Obama-care plan?
If you are dying, you are dying. (hint: everyone dies)
It's simply amazing to me that anyone is defending a system that allows such egregious waste to happen -- because some schmuck can't face the fact he's going to die, while hundreds go without basic medical services because they can't afford it. I mean, really man, no doctor is ever going to give you less than the care you need to recover under the scaaarrry socialized medicine that works for the rest of the world.
Wasting time and resources on people who aren't going to 'beat it' just because they have the money to burn is not only foolhardy, it's stupid.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking up a flag in the holy war; I'm a happy and grateful user of both BSD and Linux. I'm just making an observation about something that bears a lot of resemblance to the response made by the poor lot stuck with Windows. It seemed an interesting irony.
Don't know whether this was a rhetorical question or not. Either way, it is an excellent observation.
I'd say that there are two big reasons that those SA openings are there.
The first, (and obvious reason) is that people don't really want them as much. Having worked as both a full time Systems Administrator in a end-user setting, a datacenter setting and a full time Developer, I can tell you that end-user sysadmins are the blue-collar of the IT world.
Working as a datacenter SA is a much better job, but still comes with the on-call duties and the infrequent periods of very high-stress when systems fail (as systems will).
Either way, the only time anyone ever thinks about you is when things go wrong. I always make sure to give a shout out to all my old SA buddies whenever Systems Administrator appreciation day comes around; it's truly a thankless job.
I'd posit that the second reason that those SA positions are 'available' more than dev positions is not because there are more available, but that they are more visible; those are the positions that get advertised in classifieds. The 'good old boy' network is still the primary source for recruiting new people within most organizations. It's really just how things work. Good people often know other good people. So many openings for new positions never make it to the classifieds simply because someone knows someone who is a good fit for the job. But to get those people, an organization needs to offer compensation worth leaving the old job for. But companies are spending less for IT, which means less money for salaries, which means that they can't offer the attractive salaries that it would take to get SA Bob's friend to leave the old job and come over to work with SA Bob.
The Systems Administrator will always be necessary, but as systems automation and software become more mature, the role of the SA in the organization becomes less and less that of wizard and more that of whipping-boy.
I suppose it's easy to interpret "it was a kick-butt achievement" to mean that I liked Classic, so let me just elucidate; when I say it was a "kick-butt achievement" I'm saying that it bridged the gap between two extremely different systems. It allowed Apple to leave behind the spaghettifest that was OS 9 while keeping the customers that they had.
I'm talking about the end-goal as a business to retain customers that you already have while essentially uprooting the entire customer base and moving on to something better.
I'm sure your personal experiences with Classic aren't unique, but that doesn't change the fact that it achieved its goal: it allowed most applications to run (I'll counter with my own pull-out-of-butt metric for how many apps ran under Classic), thereby allowing Apple's loyal customer base to have an upgrade path while retaining the ability to use their already allocated software investments.
And it did it all while running a flakey OS on low-powered hardware.
Back when OS X was still in its infancy & we didn't have native apps we had "Classic" mode. It was a kick-butt achievement back when virtualization meant simulating hardware & a fast Mac was 800 MHz. (and we walked up hill both ways through the snow...)
Classic mode bridged the gap amazingly well & brought the Mac from a primitive platform that was increasingly marginalized to where it is today.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out for Windows. If it helps Microsoft create an OS that is actually usable, I'm all for it.
My hope is that it's wildly successful & drives all the morons (a.k.a. 'domainers') who are squatting all over.com out of business. It's unbelievable how much money these crooks are able to steal from people who are trying to run an honest business, or trying to connect with a business.
I hope this dries up the snake-oil in the domain name 'industry,' but I know that the guys who hold the keys would never let that happen.
This is a ridiculous assertion based upon an interpretation of an overly abstract -- if not inaccurate sentence -- out of context; however the context for the statement does clarify the original meaning of the sentence.
Let's look at the sentence being argued:
A Mac is a genuine Unix workstation that is much easier to administer, and has much better software and hardware support than Linux.
And it doesn't take much to find one sentence later this clarification:
I can run basically every Linux/Unix application on my Mac, both command-line and GUI, while not having to worry about wireless networking drivers, printer support, power management / sleep support on my laptop, getting accelerated 3D drivers working, or any of the other minor hassles that are involved with setting up and maintaining a Linux install.
So having some silly pseudo philosophical argument about the meaning of "hardware support" in the original post and calling people liars if their argument doesn't conform to your viewpoint is not productive, nor does it take into account the original post.
And finally, academia and computer science research shouldn't be beholden to any corporate entity. Our institutions should be funded by the government. The ideas should be public property.
Apple is not doing research on pie in the sky pet projects, but is rather focused on doing exactly what needs to be done to make a good user experience for the products that they sell.
The unstated premise of your post seems to be that Apple should also be trying to research stuff for the sake of doing research. Although I like the idea of a corporate entity giving back to the public (since, after all, the original idea of a corporation was that it existed for the public good -- not the shareholders), this kind of research isn't for the public good; it's to do an IP land grab -- like some dog peeing on a bush to mark its territory.
It would seem that Apple is simply focused on what they're good at. They're not trying to dabble in everything so they can claim some licensing rights later on.
I hope that we see an end of these massive R&D departments, since they are simply a symptom of the very broken patent system.
Back when the antitrust trial was happening in the US, it looked like MS was going to be split up... until Bush took over and scuttled the case. At the time many were saying that Gates et al. would regret not being split up just because things like this would happen.
Being a monopoly has given MS lots of money, but it has effectively limited the ways that they can leverage themselves in new directions.
Your car analogy doesn't quite work. We're talking about two separate products; the web browser is not a part of the OS.
I agree with the premise that Windows 7 is being rushed in order to stem the massive loss of return user sales that Micrsoft is seeing after Vista. That's insightful.
The rest of your post is not so much.
Let's take a look at the proposition that Windows 7 is an "overhauled and re-imagined userland which really does warrant a version change."
Microsoft has been playing fast and loose with their versioning ever since Windows 95. Whatever works for marketing is what it's called. If you look under the hood at Windows 2000, it was Windows NT 5.0, Windows XP is Windows NT 5.1. If you think that a 're-imagined userland' is worthy of a major version, you've been sipping a little too much of the Adobe flavored Kool-Aid.
Even if Microsoft decided to call it Windows Zen or Windows Brouhaha or whatever crazy name they wanted, it wouldn't really matter. It's the fact that they're trying to repackage what's essentially a minor version update as a major update. It's Windows 6.1.
After the return to OS X, Apple declared that they were going to stop the practice of versioning software for the sake of marketing. They returned to the classic and industry standard idea of what a major and minor version update is. The updates to OS X are what they are -- minor revision updates. If someone decides they want the new features, they buy it knowing exactly what they're getting. It's not a repackaged and rebranded marketing gimmick.
The problem for Microsoft is that they're not going to make any more money from the vast number of users that are never going to upgrade anyway. At this point they are thinking about retaining market share -- which adds value to their other titles. This is the traditional line of thought, which has served them well for a decade.
But even this revenue stream is under threat by web services. It's a nightmare scenario for Microsoft because they have to know that there are plenty of users like you that they would lose for good if they started charging for upgrades, but as web applications become more pervasive, the basic rules by which Microsoft can succeed as a company creating software change.
MS needs to learn to retool its business to keep pace.
On the contrary, I said the antiquated idea of a thin client.
By implicitly juxtaposing Google Apps and Live with the traditional thin client, I intended to imply that the old computers running XP or Linux or OS X will be the new thin client for traditional corporate applications like email, spreadsheets, word processing, etc.
I believe that XP will still be king of the desktop in the corporate environment, not because I think it is better, but because there is too much inertia already behind corporate deployments. Many thousands of man-hours spent building and supporting an already deployed system will ensure that the same system is used.
I personally hope that Linux makes big inroads into the corporate environment; it makes very good business sense for a new business; however, for any business that already has a significant Windows deployment, I can't see it happening unless something catastrophic happens. Retooling for a Linux deployment would cost significantly more than just maintaining what's in place.
So, in short, the implied thesis is that if the browser is the new thin client, buying new software to do the same thing that can already be accomplished is completely unnecessary.
It's pretty evident from things like Google Apps and Microsoft's Live that the antiquated idea of a thin client is not going to be making its way back into the business.
Enter the era of frugality. The decade of waste is over and now, whether by regulation or by pragmatic need to survive, business will be thinking about how to maximize the money that is available. Buying a newer version of the same thing isn't going to be happening anymore. Using the hardware and software that's already available will be more important than it ever was before.
Microsoft should just get smart and start charging for service pack updates to XP. Extend the life of the product and start monetizing it in different ways.
Comparing Bush to "Clinton and Carter and the rest" seems more than a little far fetched.
We're talking about the same Bush, right? The Bush who sanctioned torture; something never done by any president prior and I can only hope none ever will again.
You're talking about the Bush who was part of an effort to 'out' a covert agent for political reasons, right? I guess that's no big deal -- just someone who put their very life at risk in the service of the United States.
You're talking about the Bush who made the decision to send American forces to invade a foreign country without an act of aggression ('preemption' another U.S. first, by the way), right? Who ignored the many experienced intelligence analysts who said there was no evidence of an active WMD program? The same Bush who instead set up a separate intelligence analysis unit attached to the Pentagon --which stove-piped the intelligence that did fit the desired conclusion? The same Bush that forced U.N. weapons inspectors to leave Iraq before they completed their job?
We could go into the Justice Department fiasco for a whole new can of worms, or the outright negligence shown towards the victims of Katrina.
Whomever you may be for or against politically, your government must be held accountable. The acts of Bush are not against Democrats, but against Democracy. Unless he's held accountable for circumventing and outright breaking the law, this experiment called America will be destroyed from within.
The sanctions were definitely *not* working, in that most of the Oil-for-Food funds were being siphoned off for Saddam's personal use while his people starved.
Sanctions were meant to keep the military threat of Iraq at bay. Your argument has been proven over and over again to be wrong. Although it had natural resources that could have purchased any weapon system the military industrial complex was able to create, Iraq's military had antiquated equipment and was unable to prove even mediocre opposition to an attacking force. Had they been able to subvert the sanctions, they would have been much better equipped to defend against an attacking force. Instead, they were burying twenty year old fighter-jets in the sand in order to conceal them in hopes that they would someday be of use.
And your argument that the oil for food program was somehow responsible for the invasion due to mismanagement would be funny if it weren't just tragically ironic. The corruption in the oil for food program doesn't hold a candle to the outright corruption and mismanagement that is rampant in Iraq after the invasion.
The entire reason for invading Iraq -- and for not letting the weapons inspectors do their job -- was the idea that there were arsenals of chemical and nuclear weapons that were being developed in defiance of international law. Any of your other hypothetical and unsubstantiated reasons for invading Iraq were not used because they wouldn't have mustered a successful security council vote, much less a general assembly acceptance.
You can try to wish away the reason that was given for invading the country, but it still doesn't change the fact that the sanctions were working, the weapons inspections were working and you are just wrong.
Finally, none of your assertions are cross referenced.
Because of the HIGH-QUALITY(!!!!!!) content you've provided, I assure you that the following has been cross-referenced and super-duper-double checked for it's validity.
It is well documented that Dick Cheney is Satan.
It is common knowledge that george w bush is actually mentally retarded. The movie "Forrest Gump" is actually a memoir of his life (they had to change the names for legal reasons, you see).
It is well documented that the "bush administration's" 'justice' department was mainly peopled by illegal immigrants, including John Ashcroft.
Everyone knows that we're actually dropping smarts bombs and nougat cluster ordinance on women and children in Iraq. People aren't actually dying there -- they're being transferred to a park of Fleetwood trailers in Oklahoma (they really don't care about the formaldehyde anyway).
Conspiracy theories are for stooped jerks. We've got fakts to back up our assertions!!!!
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Good job. You've counted the beans correctly, but didn't address the point.
I guess I didn't spell it out well enough. It doesn't matter whether it took two days, twelve days or twenty days. The point is that there should be a first-in-first-out system of app evaluations. An application that uses a network connection takes a little longer to get approved. I'm okay with that; however, when I see an application that uses the same kind of resources gets submitted after mine and is approved before mine, I know there's a problem.
Personally, I think the story here is that Apple has done a 180 with this app & hope that this is a sign of things to come.
The app approval process is just broken. Way back when, Steve Jobs said that there would be limitations to the applications that would be available on the store and I can understand the reasoning as it started out; however, as of late, it's just arbitrary and capricious. It's becoming simply untenable as a development platform because the combination of seemingly arbitrary and conflicting decisions for rejection combined with the ultra slow-motion with which decisions are made -- not to mention that there is zero visibility into the approval process.
I can't run a business like that; I need to have some expectation that I'll see ROI in a reasonable time period and that Apple will act in an equitable manner regarding application submissions. My hope is that Apple is catching on to the fact that they will lose me and plenty of other developers if they don't turn the corner on the disaster that the app review process has become.
But maybe that's just wishful thinking as I head toward week 4 of waiting for my app to be approved... While developer.apple.com flaunts this in my face:
Based on the current volume of app submissions, 95% of applications are being approved within 14 days.
All while Facebook's new app gets approval in about five days...
Thanks.
Personally, I think the upper management at MS was getting complacent, feeling that dominant market-share would mean that everyone would come along no matter what they did.
They threw out the old play-book with Vista and were burned for it. It wasn't necessarily that Vista was much better or worse than anything that had come before. It was just that they didn't control perception before it was released to the public.
MS has always understood that shaping perception before the product is in the hands of the consumer is the most important element of any marketing campaign.
Microsoft's Astroturf campaign has been phenomenal for Windows 7.
It reminds me of the old days when Microsoft Marketing could have sold shrink-wrapped poo; those guys were that good. It's too bad the software was never as good as the marketing.
Your homily about the worth of individual life is unnecessary. No one knows this more than I do. I make daily decisions with that in mind (I don't eat meat for moral reasons). And since I've had to sit at the foot of a family member's bed and watch them struggle to take their last breath as they die of cancer, I can say that I know terminal illness personally.
So now that we have this diversion implying that I don't care enough about people out of the way, we can get back to the topic of discussion.
I completely agree -- expand medicaid; which is the same kind of system that Canada uses (not socialized medicine, but socialized insurance). It's a strange thing to hear -- as Medicaid is the government run bogeyman that conservatives seem so afraid of.
If you're dying, you are dying. If there is hope of recovery, then any medical system will provide that for you -- whether it is here or Canada.
People are on waiting lists for surgeries in the US as well as Canada. The Canadian traveling south myth has been debunked many times.
My apologies this is a bit terse; I've got some business to attend to.
If you are dying, you are dying. (hint: everyone dies)
It's simply amazing to me that anyone is defending a system that allows such egregious waste to happen -- because some schmuck can't face the fact he's going to die, while hundreds go without basic medical services because they can't afford it. I mean, really man, no doctor is ever going to give you less than the care you need to recover under the scaaarrry socialized medicine that works for the rest of the world.
Wasting time and resources on people who aren't going to 'beat it' just because they have the money to burn is not only foolhardy, it's stupid.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking up a flag in the holy war; I'm a happy and grateful user of both BSD and Linux. I'm just making an observation about something that bears a lot of resemblance to the response made by the poor lot stuck with Windows. It seemed an interesting irony.
There's a theme of comments that occur every time another Windows vulnerability happens. It goes something like this:
Windows FanboiIt doesn't matter. Marketshare marketshare marketshare blah blah business drivel Linux has no marketshare!
It's ironic to now see the Linux 31337 in this meme; trying to redirect from security vulnerability to lack of marketshare by a competing OS.
But I guess maybe it goes along with the whole tired 'BSD is dying' theme.
Don't know whether this was a rhetorical question or not. Either way, it is an excellent observation.
I'd say that there are two big reasons that those SA openings are there.
The first, (and obvious reason) is that people don't really want them as much. Having worked as both a full time Systems Administrator in a end-user setting, a datacenter setting and a full time Developer, I can tell you that end-user sysadmins are the blue-collar of the IT world.
Working as a datacenter SA is a much better job, but still comes with the on-call duties and the infrequent periods of very high-stress when systems fail (as systems will).
Either way, the only time anyone ever thinks about you is when things go wrong. I always make sure to give a shout out to all my old SA buddies whenever Systems Administrator appreciation day comes around; it's truly a thankless job.
I'd posit that the second reason that those SA positions are 'available' more than dev positions is not because there are more available, but that they are more visible; those are the positions that get advertised in classifieds. The 'good old boy' network is still the primary source for recruiting new people within most organizations. It's really just how things work. Good people often know other good people. So many openings for new positions never make it to the classifieds simply because someone knows someone who is a good fit for the job. But to get those people, an organization needs to offer compensation worth leaving the old job for. But companies are spending less for IT, which means less money for salaries, which means that they can't offer the attractive salaries that it would take to get SA Bob's friend to leave the old job and come over to work with SA Bob.
The Systems Administrator will always be necessary, but as systems automation and software become more mature, the role of the SA in the organization becomes less and less that of wizard and more that of whipping-boy.
I suppose it's easy to interpret "it was a kick-butt achievement" to mean that I liked Classic, so let me just elucidate; when I say it was a "kick-butt achievement" I'm saying that it bridged the gap between two extremely different systems. It allowed Apple to leave behind the spaghettifest that was OS 9 while keeping the customers that they had.
I'm talking about the end-goal as a business to retain customers that you already have while essentially uprooting the entire customer base and moving on to something better.
I'm sure your personal experiences with Classic aren't unique, but that doesn't change the fact that it achieved its goal: it allowed most applications to run (I'll counter with my own pull-out-of-butt metric for how many apps ran under Classic), thereby allowing Apple's loyal customer base to have an upgrade path while retaining the ability to use their already allocated software investments.
And it did it all while running a flakey OS on low-powered hardware.
Back when OS X was still in its infancy & we didn't have native apps we had "Classic" mode. It was a kick-butt achievement back when virtualization meant simulating hardware & a fast Mac was 800 MHz. (and we walked up hill both ways through the snow...)
Classic mode bridged the gap amazingly well & brought the Mac from a primitive platform that was increasingly marginalized to where it is today.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out for Windows. If it helps Microsoft create an OS that is actually usable, I'm all for it.
My hope is that it's wildly successful & drives all the morons (a.k.a. 'domainers') who are squatting all over .com out of business. It's unbelievable how much money these crooks are able to steal from people who are trying to run an honest business, or trying to connect with a business.
I hope this dries up the snake-oil in the domain name 'industry,' but I know that the guys who hold the keys would never let that happen.
This is a ridiculous assertion based upon an interpretation of an overly abstract -- if not inaccurate sentence -- out of context; however the context for the statement does clarify the original meaning of the sentence.
Let's look at the sentence being argued:
And it doesn't take much to find one sentence later this clarification:
So having some silly pseudo philosophical argument about the meaning of "hardware support" in the original post and calling people liars if their argument doesn't conform to your viewpoint is not productive, nor does it take into account the original post.
And finally, academia and computer science research shouldn't be beholden to any corporate entity. Our institutions should be funded by the government. The ideas should be public property.
Apple is not doing research on pie in the sky pet projects, but is rather focused on doing exactly what needs to be done to make a good user experience for the products that they sell.
The unstated premise of your post seems to be that Apple should also be trying to research stuff for the sake of doing research. Although I like the idea of a corporate entity giving back to the public (since, after all, the original idea of a corporation was that it existed for the public good -- not the shareholders), this kind of research isn't for the public good; it's to do an IP land grab -- like some dog peeing on a bush to mark its territory.
It would seem that Apple is simply focused on what they're good at. They're not trying to dabble in everything so they can claim some licensing rights later on.
I hope that we see an end of these massive R&D departments, since they are simply a symptom of the very broken patent system.
I'd love to find out why the application called IE can't be removed from the OS; what do you mean by 'tightly intergrated?'
Back when the antitrust trial was happening in the US, it looked like MS was going to be split up... until Bush took over and scuttled the case. At the time many were saying that Gates et al. would regret not being split up just because things like this would happen.
Being a monopoly has given MS lots of money, but it has effectively limited the ways that they can leverage themselves in new directions.
Your car analogy doesn't quite work. We're talking about two separate products; the web browser is not a part of the OS.
This is such an insightful comment.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. — Thomas Jefferson
and I still had mod points just yesterday...
I agree with the premise that Windows 7 is being rushed in order to stem the massive loss of return user sales that Micrsoft is seeing after Vista. That's insightful.
The rest of your post is not so much.
Let's take a look at the proposition that Windows 7 is an "overhauled and re-imagined userland which really does warrant a version change."
Microsoft has been playing fast and loose with their versioning ever since Windows 95. Whatever works for marketing is what it's called. If you look under the hood at Windows 2000, it was Windows NT 5.0, Windows XP is Windows NT 5.1. If you think that a 're-imagined userland' is worthy of a major version, you've been sipping a little too much of the Adobe flavored Kool-Aid.
Even if Microsoft decided to call it Windows Zen or Windows Brouhaha or whatever crazy name they wanted, it wouldn't really matter. It's the fact that they're trying to repackage what's essentially a minor version update as a major update. It's Windows 6.1.
After the return to OS X, Apple declared that they were going to stop the practice of versioning software for the sake of marketing. They returned to the classic and industry standard idea of what a major and minor version update is. The updates to OS X are what they are -- minor revision updates. If someone decides they want the new features, they buy it knowing exactly what they're getting. It's not a repackaged and rebranded marketing gimmick.
The problem for Microsoft is that they're not going to make any more money from the vast number of users that are never going to upgrade anyway. At this point they are thinking about retaining market share -- which adds value to their other titles. This is the traditional line of thought, which has served them well for a decade.
But even this revenue stream is under threat by web services.
It's a nightmare scenario for Microsoft because they have to know that there are plenty of users like you that they would lose for good if they started charging for upgrades, but as web applications become more pervasive, the basic rules by which Microsoft can succeed as a company creating software change.
MS needs to learn to retool its business to keep pace.
On the contrary, I said the antiquated idea of a thin client.
By implicitly juxtaposing Google Apps and Live with the traditional thin client, I intended to imply that the old computers running XP or Linux or OS X will be the new thin client for traditional corporate applications like email, spreadsheets, word processing, etc.
I believe that XP will still be king of the desktop in the corporate environment, not because I think it is better, but because there is too much inertia already behind corporate deployments. Many thousands of man-hours spent building and supporting an already deployed system will ensure that the same system is used.
I personally hope that Linux makes big inroads into the corporate environment; it makes very good business sense for a new business; however, for any business that already has a significant Windows deployment, I can't see it happening unless something catastrophic happens. Retooling for a Linux deployment would cost significantly more than just maintaining what's in place.
So, in short, the implied thesis is that if the browser is the new thin client, buying new software to do the same thing that can already be accomplished is completely unnecessary.
It's pretty evident from things like Google Apps and Microsoft's Live that the antiquated idea of a thin client is not going to be making its way back into the business.
Enter the era of frugality. The decade of waste is over and now, whether by regulation or by pragmatic need to survive, business will be thinking about how to maximize the money that is available. Buying a newer version of the same thing isn't going to be happening anymore. Using the hardware and software that's already available will be more important than it ever was before.
Microsoft should just get smart and start charging for service pack updates to XP. Extend the life of the product and start monetizing it in different ways.
Comparing Bush to "Clinton and Carter and the rest" seems more than a little far fetched.
We're talking about the same Bush, right? The Bush who sanctioned torture; something never done by any president prior and I can only hope none ever will again.
You're talking about the Bush who was part of an effort to 'out' a covert agent for political reasons, right? I guess that's no big deal -- just someone who put their very life at risk in the service of the United States.
You're talking about the Bush who made the decision to send American forces to invade a foreign country without an act of aggression ('preemption' another U.S. first, by the way), right? Who ignored the many experienced intelligence analysts who said there was no evidence of an active WMD program? The same Bush who instead set up a separate intelligence analysis unit attached to the Pentagon --which stove-piped the intelligence that did fit the desired conclusion? The same Bush that forced U.N. weapons inspectors to leave Iraq before they completed their job?
We could go into the Justice Department fiasco for a whole new can of worms, or the outright negligence shown towards the victims of Katrina.
Whomever you may be for or against politically, your government must be held accountable. The acts of Bush are not against Democrats, but against Democracy. Unless he's held accountable for circumventing and outright breaking the law, this experiment called America will be destroyed from within.
And you must be from planet Chenselvania.
Sanctions were meant to keep the military threat of Iraq at bay. Your argument has been proven over and over again to be wrong. Although it had natural resources that could have purchased any weapon system the military industrial complex was able to create, Iraq's military had antiquated equipment and was unable to prove even mediocre opposition to an attacking force. Had they been able to subvert the sanctions, they would have been much better equipped to defend against an attacking force. Instead, they were burying twenty year old fighter-jets in the sand in order to conceal them in hopes that they would someday be of use.
And your argument that the oil for food program was somehow responsible for the invasion due to mismanagement would be funny if it weren't just tragically ironic. The corruption in the oil for food program doesn't hold a candle to the outright corruption and mismanagement that is rampant in Iraq after the invasion.
The entire reason for invading Iraq -- and for not letting the weapons inspectors do their job -- was the idea that there were arsenals of chemical and nuclear weapons that were being developed in defiance of international law. Any of your other hypothetical and unsubstantiated reasons for invading Iraq were not used because they wouldn't have mustered a successful security council vote, much less a general assembly acceptance.
You can try to wish away the reason that was given for invading the country, but it still doesn't change the fact that the sanctions were working, the weapons inspections were working and you are just wrong.
Finally, none of your assertions are cross referenced.
Because of the HIGH-QUALITY(!!!!!!) content you've provided, I assure you that the following has been cross-referenced and super-duper-double checked for it's validity.
It is well documented that Dick Cheney is Satan.
It is common knowledge that george w bush is actually mentally retarded. The movie "Forrest Gump" is actually a memoir of his life (they had to change the names for legal reasons, you see).
It is well documented that the "bush administration's" 'justice' department was mainly peopled by illegal immigrants, including John Ashcroft.
Everyone knows that we're actually dropping smarts bombs and nougat cluster ordinance on women and children in Iraq. People aren't actually dying there -- they're being transferred to a park of Fleetwood trailers in Oklahoma (they really don't care about the formaldehyde anyway).
Conspiracy theories are for stooped jerks. We've got fakts to back up our assertions!!!!