Your complacency reminds me of the joke about the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building. As he passed the 20th floor, he said, "I don't get why everyone thinks this is so dangerous..."
You're seriously claiming that you've weathered worse than what you'll face? Storm surges that can lift your little boat and deposit it miles inland?
Any time people talk about a problem with USB, somebody says "Just use USB OTG!" as if it were a magic fix for everything. In this case, the complaint is that the tablet has a tiny usb port. How on earth does that relate to OTG?
MS has been doing crazyshit for as long as I remember. As long as people buy PCs, they''ve got a guaranteed revenue stream. That's the difference between MS and Nokia: nobody ever had to buy a Symbian phone just to make a phone call.
But you're not ruling out buying a PC with Windows7? How about the do-over replacement for Windows 8 which will appear in a few years? My point being that failing to expand into new markets doesn't end MS's dominance of existing markets.
Why do you think that another mobile failure will marginalize MS? None of the previous ones did. Are you under the impression that everybody's going to throw away their PC and start using a tablet? That's not what's happening. PC sales are stagnant because the market's saturated. Tablet sales are booming because it's new use case that users are just beginning to move to. One is not being replaced by the other.
It's true that this is going to hurt MS. But they'll still collect a tithe for every non-Mac PC sold, and they'll still sell a lot of server licenses. As these markets saturate, they will cease to make MS uber-profitable, but these markets are still big, and will remain so — as will Microsoft.
The point of the Chromebook is not to sell hardware. The point of the Chromebook is to sell the Google model of doing everything on the cloud. Selling cheap systems running a "real laptop" OS is an unprofitable low-margin business that's of no interest even to hardware companies, never mind a services company like Google.
Hackers are hacking Chromebooks because they're hackers. The commercial viability of the combination is nil.
This is why 8 is so absurdly tablet-centric. If people are buying tablets instead of PCs, well, you can retain them as customers by shoehorning your PC OS into the new paradigm.
What this strategy misses is the fact that people are not replacing their PCs with tablets. They still use PCs, but they don't upgrade them very often. So Windows doesn't have any special advantage as a tablet OS, and is unlikely to rival Android or iOS.
What you're missing is that this isn't about getting people to run out and upgrade to 8, Some people will do that (mostly developers) but most copies of Windows are sold bundled with a PC. So 8 is not being marketed to you, it's being marketed to OEMs. How many OEMs will bite?
Maybe we'll see a lot of Windows-based tablets, which is the hardware platform the new GUI is designed for. But even if that happens, the dominant workaday PC will remain the desktop and laptop. I predict that few of these will be sold with 8.
If so, this will be the second time MS totally blew a Windows upgrade. (I'm not counting ME, which was just an attempt to fill the void caused by the delay in releasing a consumer version of NT.) So we've had the useless Vista, followed by the fixup 7. 8 will probably be followed by a fixup that caters to people who don't need a touch-centric interface. I wonder how long this twostep will last?
Sigh. I can't even try to argue with that. If everything that proves you wrong is part of a vast conspiracy, then you can't be proven wrong — I won't even try. Just consider that the kind of conspiracy you contemplate is usually only apparent to the insane.
And meanwhile, if you incite violence, expect to be smacked down. It's called terrorism, even when you're not wearing a head scarf.
Lord, give me strength! Why can't people read posts in the context of the thread? I wasn't saying tracking children was a bad idea, I was saying that giving them a phone was a bad way to do it.
This is not a matter of scientists crossing the line from science to politics, this is politics (of the worst kind) trying to stop people from doing science.
If you don't like the science, find a scientific way to refute it. But formenting violence against scientists because you don't like their results? That rolls things back about 400 years.
Privacy? There are a lot of ways online services can screw up your privacy. The solution is not to never go online (fat chance of that!) but to make sure that the services you do use actually secure your data.
Anybody who would say what you just said is worse than Hitler. (It's Slashdot, I have to mention Hitler!)
But seriously? People are inciting to have you killed and you're supposed to say, "Oh well, it's part of the job"? If we let that stand, American science doesn't have much of a future.
Rather, DKIM results are supposed to be combined with other metrics to form an overall assessment of message validity.
Which is exactly how my Tuffmail account is configured to use it. Unfortunately, there are many borderline cases where using DKIM is just enough to make my filters decide to forward it. I'm seeing the protocol as pretty useless.
Half the spam that makes it through my filters is DKIM-signed. Spammers use it to make the email look less bogus. Of course, that means that they have to use a real domain and hosting provider that they eventually lose — but domains are cheap, and changing hosts is no big deal.
Your complacency reminds me of the joke about the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building. As he passed the 20th floor, he said, "I don't get why everyone thinks this is so dangerous..."
You're seriously claiming that you've weathered worse than what you'll face? Storm surges that can lift your little boat and deposit it miles inland?
Unfortunately, your joke is unclear to the 99% of the population that's geogrphically challenged.
Any time people talk about a problem with USB, somebody says "Just use USB OTG!" as if it were a magic fix for everything. In this case, the complaint is that the tablet has a tiny usb port. How on earth does that relate to OTG?
Thank you for demonstrating what a waste of space AC posts are. Past time we did away with them.
They're not betting the farm. Windows isn't going to cease to be the dominant desktop OS just because of one disastrous release. I mean, ME? Vista?
MS has been doing crazy shit for as long as I remember. As long as people buy PCs, they''ve got a guaranteed revenue stream. That's the difference between MS and Nokia: nobody ever had to buy a Symbian phone just to make a phone call.
But you're not ruling out buying a PC with Windows7? How about the do-over replacement for Windows 8 which will appear in a few years? My point being that failing to expand into new markets doesn't end MS's dominance of existing markets.
Why do you think that another mobile failure will marginalize MS? None of the previous ones did. Are you under the impression that everybody's going to throw away their PC and start using a tablet? That's not what's happening. PC sales are stagnant because the market's saturated. Tablet sales are booming because it's new use case that users are just beginning to move to. One is not being replaced by the other.
It's true that this is going to hurt MS. But they'll still collect a tithe for every non-Mac PC sold, and they'll still sell a lot of server licenses. As these markets saturate, they will cease to make MS uber-profitable, but these markets are still big, and will remain so — as will Microsoft.
The point of the Chromebook is not to sell hardware. The point of the Chromebook is to sell the Google model of doing everything on the cloud. Selling cheap systems running a "real laptop" OS is an unprofitable low-margin business that's of no interest even to hardware companies, never mind a services company like Google.
Hackers are hacking Chromebooks because they're hackers. The commercial viability of the combination is nil.
As your experience with the Kindle indicates, you don't need the same OS on all your platforms to do interoperability.
So you like 8 on a dual monitor system? In what respects is it better than 7 with that same setup?
This is why 8 is so absurdly tablet-centric. If people are buying tablets instead of PCs, well, you can retain them as customers by shoehorning your PC OS into the new paradigm.
What this strategy misses is the fact that people are not replacing their PCs with tablets. They still use PCs, but they don't upgrade them very often. So Windows doesn't have any special advantage as a tablet OS, and is unlikely to rival Android or iOS.
What you're missing is that this isn't about getting people to run out and upgrade to 8, Some people will do that (mostly developers) but most copies of Windows are sold bundled with a PC. So 8 is not being marketed to you, it's being marketed to OEMs. How many OEMs will bite?
Maybe we'll see a lot of Windows-based tablets, which is the hardware platform the new GUI is designed for. But even if that happens, the dominant workaday PC will remain the desktop and laptop. I predict that few of these will be sold with 8.
If so, this will be the second time MS totally blew a Windows upgrade. (I'm not counting ME, which was just an attempt to fill the void caused by the delay in releasing a consumer version of NT.) So we've had the useless Vista, followed by the fixup 7. 8 will probably be followed by a fixup that caters to people who don't need a touch-centric interface. I wonder how long this twostep will last?
I enjoy a good argument, but if you keep changing the subject of the argument, it's kind of frustrating.
Sigh. I can't even try to argue with that. If everything that proves you wrong is part of a vast conspiracy, then you can't be proven wrong — I won't even try. Just consider that the kind of conspiracy you contemplate is usually only apparent to the insane.
And meanwhile, if you incite violence, expect to be smacked down. It's called terrorism, even when you're not wearing a head scarf.
Huh? Somebody turned off the A/C, and entitles you to ignore science?
If you think the Science is bad, tell us why. Any other measure puts you with all the other antiscientific assholes.
Lord, give me strength! Why can't people read posts in the context of the thread? I wasn't saying tracking children was a bad idea, I was saying that giving them a phone was a bad way to do it.
This is not a matter of scientists crossing the line from science to politics, this is politics (of the worst kind) trying to stop people from doing science.
If you don't like the science, find a scientific way to refute it. But formenting violence against scientists because you don't like their results? That rolls things back about 400 years.
I'd put a tracker on my cats if they made them small enough and I still let them go outside. (I'd be heartbroken if anything happened to https://plus.google.com/photos/111202763901896476985/albums/5689079348811622369>either one). Now, if this is the right thing for a furry friend, why is it not for a kid?
Privacy? There are a lot of ways online services can screw up your privacy. The solution is not to never go online (fat chance of that!) but to make sure that the services you do use actually secure your data.
Slippery slope arguments are so lame. There a basic difference between "I want to know where my kids are" and "Big brother wants to know everything."
everything controversial can be made acceptable by saying it will protect the children.
Only on the Simpsons. In the real world, there's nothing controversial about parents needing to supervise their kids.
You don't trust a kid to not wander away, but you do trust them to not lose a hundred-dollar device?
Anybody who would say what you just said is worse than Hitler. (It's Slashdot, I have to mention Hitler!)
But seriously? People are inciting to have you killed and you're supposed to say, "Oh well, it's part of the job"? If we let that stand, American science doesn't have much of a future.
I've configured Sieve to bounce all mail from Yahoo, except for a few relatives who use it.
Rather, DKIM results are supposed to be combined with other metrics to form an overall assessment of message validity.
Which is exactly how my Tuffmail account is configured to use it. Unfortunately, there are many borderline cases where using DKIM is just enough to make my filters decide to forward it. I'm seeing the protocol as pretty useless.
Half the spam that makes it through my filters is DKIM-signed. Spammers use it to make the email look less bogus. Of course, that means that they have to use a real domain and hosting provider that they eventually lose — but domains are cheap, and changing hosts is no big deal.