China will not invade Japan, because the US will get involved.They also will not invade Taiwan for the same reason.
This is also why the US will not get involved in the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
Do you know how silly those two statements sound together?
As demonstrated in Kuwait and Iraq, superior numbers and dated tech do not win wars.
No, being the most clever wins wars, as demonstrated in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan (how's that working out for you?). Clearly the US hasn't learnt their lesson even after repeated attempts, and China is a much, much, more capable beast.
If you've ever read Sun Tzu (remember where he came from?), every battle is won before it is ever fought. The US needs to pay more attention, China has already begun and America is too busy arguing about birth certificates or tax returns and wasting time in a worthless desert. Americans needs to understand that future wars won't be fought with aircraft carriers and Midway style dogfights. It will be a war of business and education and resources and will power. Right now my money is on China winning this one.
Pornography seems always to be disappointing - plasticky looking Ken and Barbie types mechanically doing things and looking utterly bored.
You quite clearly don't get out much. The great thing about internet porn is the variety. Yes there is plasticky bored looking good looking people having sex, but there is also ugly people, amateurs, young, old, fat, skinny, gay, trannies, hairy, shaved, dwarves, giants, every race, colour, creed all doing all sorts of things to each other for your pleasure. Everyone has different desires and pornography caters to most of them.
I am, by the way, from Denmark, where people are incredibly open-minded and at it all the time, everywhere, as we all know, so I know what I am talking about.
Well clearly you don't since your view of porn is severely limited.
Sex is nice, but vastly overhyped. Like anything enjoyable, it becomes trivial when you have had enough, and that happens much sooner than you imagine as a teenager; and it's a good thing really, because there is so much more to life than screwing around.
There are many hidden costs. Scroll down to the poor sap who has to edit.ini files in driver installations to get half assed Win 7 drivers to play nice to XP in some notebooks!
So he bought a printer without checking if it came with compatible drivers? Not an issue I will ever have.
How much money did it cost for that sap to waste a week hacking installations and these units still have no ACPI support and waste energy because XP can't support EFI?
Our desktops are all WinXP compatible, no issues there either. We have no plans to replace these. Ever. When these run out we'll be looking to VDI, with XP. We have this running very successfully in trials already. Hardware will never be an issue ever again.
IE 8 is now a liability too.
Got Firefox and Chrome. Hooray for choice!
I know your employer probably spent tens of thousands just upgrading to it recently from IE 6
Nope.
Sure they run ancient versions of Office fine,
We run Office 2010
but your little appliances that work just fine in your book need to connect to others and they are moving along. IE also is moving to an annual release cycle. IE 11 will be out next year and then IE 12 when XP is depreciated. What are your plans? Still with IE 8 until 2020?! HA.
There are features like power management, a better browser, a version of office where people can find things and not have to go into menus, and in the future tablet integration for your executives, corporate app and profile support with Exchange 2013 for Win 8/9 devices/tablets for your sales people, and CRM and social media integration for things like salesforce in Office 2013. Its time to get with the times. In the good old days corporate America used to first to innovate and bring new technologies first and compete by being cutting edge. Not by staying behind and racing to the bottom to save short term costs.
We have all this now, and we're not American, and we're making profits. WinXP on VMware View with Office 2010. Tell me again, why I should spend one cent on Windows 7?
When you say "does this now and costs us nothing", don't forget to count the ancilliary costs of using XP. How much do you have to spend on IT dealing with malware?
Zero dollars. The last malware we had to spend any real time on was Blaster or Sasser. These were the biggest outbreaks for at least a decade and neither required more staff (costs), nor does the reduction of these types of mass outbreaks these days (last one was 8 years ago) require less staff (costs). The cost of XP is zero. The cost to upgrade to 7 actually does cost real money (we're going through it now and we're paying a lot in software upgrades, consultancy and training.)
The security argument to me is like adding an extra lock on your front door. On paper it's more secure, but the reality is no difference.
Win7 is much less succeptible. What is the productivity cost to your people, who have to use an OS that mismanages RAM so badly and doesn't handle a multi-program workflow very well?
Not sure where you work, but when talking productivity, the biggest gains are not to be had in the PC, it is the fleshy bit between the keyboard and chair.
We did a review of our IT and none of the feedback said any PCs or apps were considered 'slow' by any users. Users want more iPads and to trade Blackberries for newer smartphones, but nothing was mentioned by anyone about RAM management of their PC.
WinXP reached the level of 'good enough'. Good enough for 99% of everything 99% of the time. It's very hard to justify spending money on anything once you are at that point.
Going through a Win 7 project now. We have at least 40 business critical apps, 2 of which don't work with Win 7. One has been quoted at $50k for the newer compatible version, the other is closer to $1million for a complete new product because there is no newer version.
If MS forces almost half of its customers (that's more or less what the 43% of the desktop/laptop market is) to upgrade they are going to lose some of them in the process.
Yeah but even if they lose 10%, they make money out of the remaining 90% which is 90% more than they are earning right now.
Why would any sane businesses want to spend money replacing something that works perfectly well? Well, you and I know a few good answers to that
Out of interest what are those answers? I've been through a few Win7 business cases and none of them got accepted. The current place is upgrading purely because we are being forced to my MS as support reaches EOL. Planned obsolescence. Right now we still use XP and it does everything we need it to. Sure 7 might do more, but we don't need more, we just need a stable platform to run our business apps. XP does this and now costs us nothing. The same can't be said for Win7 (or any other OS alternative).
No, advertisers have no business value in taking this seriously, and every incentive to find ways around it. Advertisers know that targeted advertising is both more effective and less offensive than random advertising.
I'm not sure if you know how targeted ads "work". In my experience if I type something into google, click a few links I then get those same pages thrown at me as ads. It makes absolutely no sense as I've already researched that topic and no longer have any interest in it. If I had a product to advertise I would much prefer my brand being exposed to people who didn't already know about it, or hadn't visited my webpage. Google's version of "targeted advertising" is to to hand you a flyer for a store you you just walked out of. It is probably the least effective form I've advertising I've ever come across.
I've been working in IT depts for roughly 20 years and can't remember ever having issues related to "data breach from lack of encryption". Not saying it doesn't happen, but I reckon for most people (outside of finance/defence/govt etc) it's overkill.
It raises a question, how much security is too much? Do you have a lock on your front door? 3 locks? 45 locks? If you had 100 locks on your door and only locked 99 of them, would this be considered vulnerable? This is how I think of the security industry. One lock is fine. If that doesn't work, then no amount of extra locks will help. The bad guys will simply break a window.
Really? Really? "This is why regulations rarely work"?
Any fool that actually believes this Libertian bullshit needs to go spend sometime in Mogadishu. Regulations work my friend, it is no accident that the countries with the most rules and highest taxes are also the least corrupt, are the safest and have the highest quality of life*. Regulations are what are keeping you alive right now.
As for TFA, of course the govt consult with business, that's who pays the fucking bills and keeps the country running. it would be pretty ridiculous to create new laws that suffocated your economy. I'm not sure what Dr Evil scenario you are imaging happened in this meeting, but in my experience, real life doesn't work like that.
* Note the US does not make these lists for a reason, so please do not extrapolate your bizarro US system onto anywhere else.
doesn't mean we do not have a formidable military presence in the rest of the world.
China well knows that if it really tried to piss us off it could be turned into a vast repository of active nuclides so they won't.
Wow.... just wow. Are Americans really this naive? You know America! Fuck Yeah! isn't really a usable military strategy? Sure you have some impressive hardware, but you have no brain. Let me tell you how it will work. China will destroy the US without a single shot being fired. They'll steal you're IP, hack your secrets, buy your officials, supply drugs to your children, financially back all the conflicting fringe groups and rot you from the inside out. They won't kowtow to the religious crazies, the gun nuts or anti-abortionists, they'll do whatever needs to be done to win, and you won't know it has happened until it's all over.
China has a hundred year plan, The US can't plan past next week. You've already lost, it will simply take a few years for all the pieces to fall into place.
At least Microsoft had a monopoly when they reached that level. In fact, that is the only thing that kept them afloat (Windows OS).
Actually it is Office that keeps the Enterprise locked in. Windows has plenty of competitors, Office has none (with the same level features and integration).
There are many millions of people with their music and videos in iTunes AAC/M4V format. Given the choice between buying a (let's suppose) superior music player/phone and ditching their media collection or just buying another iPhone and retaining their library, I think most people will choose the latter.
But didn't people just do exactly that when CDs were invented? Or DVDs? Or BluRay? I remember when I bought my first CD player, I didn't go out and buy the same music I had on LP, I bought new stuff and moved on with my life. MS and Oracle etc have lock-in becsiness data has real value, Consumer data doesn't have the same value, if you lose you MP3 collection, you might not be happy, but it's pretty easy to move on, buy a different device, and buy some new music. It is a very fickle market to base a 1/2 trillion dollar business on.
Okay, maybe you're right. It would collapse. Without Windows updates, just how many weeks could an IT infrastructure go before it would be hopelessly compromised beyond all possibility of repair.
Quite a while actually. I still have unpatched Windows 2000 servers that run fine, so it's safe to assume we could go 10 years.
It's amazing how many so called 'nerds' have very little understanding of IT security.
Indeed, the Win95 interface was a massive change. However, it pretty quickly showed that it was superior to the old 3.1 design.
It only showed after it was released, and apps had been released that took advantages of the new interface. To give Win8 a fair go you should at least be waiting until next year when it has had an equal run.
less expensive to fly from Oz to hundreds of tropical destinations.
What if you want to fly somewhere interesting? 10 hours minimum. Australia might have a lot going for it, but ease of travelling is not one of them
The Aussies, due to geography, have an advantage trading with China, India, and other nations in the Pacific Rim.
China is roughly equi-distant from Australia, the US and Europe. Tokyo is closer to the US, India is closer to Europe. And Europe or the US have economies 10x the size of Australia. Australia is on the opposite side of the world from New York and London which are the centres of western commerce. Australia might be a nice place to live, but geographically it is probably the most disadvantaged major economy in the world.
All in all its hard to imagine a much better place.
Unless you like travelling without a mandatory long haul flight, or you want to go shopping after 5pm, or want to do something other drink beer and watch football.
Australia is nice but let's not get carried away.
This Windows 8 Touch Screen seems like the same debate 20 years ago, when PC's started to ship with a Mouse as a common device. It started out as a toy, with only a few applications that used it.
This is the key point that the haters seem to overlook. Win8 might suck, that is possible, but the alternative which I have seen very little press on, is that Metro introduces a new era of 'way to use a computer' and MS wins. In 5 years we might look back on the old desktop and wonder how we could ever live with that. A unified platform for phone, tab, laptop, PC, console and TV, once the apps are developed to take advantage of the new era, all the haters will look like grumpy DOS fanboys in 1998. Of course I'll repeat, Win8 could just as easily be a lemon, only time will tell, but I think these discussions should at least try and provide some balance. I'm sure a lot of us remember these exact same conversations back in 1995.
, you can find anything you want by pressing the Windows key, then typing, then pressing enter. It's so much faster than any menu, including the Start menu.
I haven't paid much attention to Win8, I prefer try it myself with a full release version without prejudice. But one thing I like is browsing for info. I hate context sensitive menus (CSMs), I hate searching (due to the unreliable nature of Windows search - eg search compmgmt comes up with nothing -why?), I want to click a menu and see all my options. This is why I still use XP. I click Start->Programs and I see all my programs laid out in front of me. I haven't been able to figure out how to do this in Win 7 ( the programs menu is a fixed height window and only displays a certain number of apps which you then have to scroll through (yuck)). From what I have seen of Win 8 it gets worse. I use Outlook.com (hotmail upgraded to Metro) and the CSMs annoy the fuck out of me. I like to see things laid out out in front of me before I begin, but you can't do that with CSMs, everytime you click something your menus change so you have to re-read the page to see what changed. Doing this multiple times per task is annoying.
Yeah, it's a "threat" all right. It's a threat to their control over people. But then again, privacy and the freedom it brings is always a threat to governments, isn't it?
Too much privacy is a real threat to law enforcement and the quality of life of law abiding citizens. As much as you don't want to believe it, the govt is net good for those of us who aren't psychopaths.
There is an easy demonstration of this, go visit Ivory Coast or Columbia and see how you get on with very little govt "control".
Ok not a fad, but its required application is far lower than the current hype curve that everyone seems to be jumping on these days. Touch works in a phone where you have a casual short-use, multi-function device. But it doesn't work on a desktop where you need to input data 8 hours a day, it sucks on a volume knob where you want analog-like gradient control, and it has no place in a car where you should be looking at the road.
The worst example I can think of is those stupid shopping mall store directories that are now interactive touch screens. What is wrong with a paper map? It works, anyone can use it, and most importantly many people can use it simultaneously. Technology for technology's sake, it is the bane of my existence.
I am going through this very problem right now in my office.
I have a whole ton of 5 - 8 year old business desktops and laptops...
WinXP on VMware View. Never worry about Desktop OS or hardware upgrades ever again:)
Re:Every OTHER edition of Windows sucked is a myth
on
Windows 8 Is Ready
·
· Score: 1
You seem to be suffering from selective memory...
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 2.1x
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.1x
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.5
Windows 95
Windows NT 4
Windows 98
Windows 98SE
Windows 2000
Windows ME
Windows XP
Windows 2003
Windows 2003 R2
Windows Vista
Windows 2008
Windows 7
Windows 2008 R2
Windows 8
The theory doesn't really work when you include all the information (and I've still left out a bunch of special edition versions like SBS etc).
I can only wish Microsoft good luck, because I don't think they understand what they're doing.
I'm pretty sure I heard this exact same argument when the hardcore DOS users were faced with Win95. What is different this time around? New OS, new ways of doing things, clever and young people will adapt and move with the times, old moaners will complain about people on their lawns.
I think MS know more about this game than you do (and most of Slashdot who continually seem to bash a company that has managed to maintain 90% market share for nearly 20 years).
Slashdot Mirror
China will not invade Japan, because the US will get involved.They also will not invade Taiwan for the same reason.
This is also why the US will not get involved in the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
Do you know how silly those two statements sound together?
As demonstrated in Kuwait and Iraq, superior numbers and dated tech do not win wars.
No, being the most clever wins wars, as demonstrated in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan (how's that working out for you?). Clearly the US hasn't learnt their lesson even after repeated attempts, and China is a much, much, more capable beast. If you've ever read Sun Tzu (remember where he came from?), every battle is won before it is ever fought. The US needs to pay more attention, China has already begun and America is too busy arguing about birth certificates or tax returns and wasting time in a worthless desert. Americans needs to understand that future wars won't be fought with aircraft carriers and Midway style dogfights. It will be a war of business and education and resources and will power. Right now my money is on China winning this one.
Pornography seems always to be disappointing - plasticky looking Ken and Barbie types mechanically doing things and looking utterly bored.
You quite clearly don't get out much. The great thing about internet porn is the variety. Yes there is plasticky bored looking good looking people having sex, but there is also ugly people, amateurs, young, old, fat, skinny, gay, trannies, hairy, shaved, dwarves, giants, every race, colour, creed all doing all sorts of things to each other for your pleasure. Everyone has different desires and pornography caters to most of them.
I am, by the way, from Denmark, where people are incredibly open-minded and at it all the time, everywhere, as we all know, so I know what I am talking about.
Well clearly you don't since your view of porn is severely limited.
Sex is nice, but vastly overhyped. Like anything enjoyable, it becomes trivial when you have had enough, and that happens much sooner than you imagine as a teenager; and it's a good thing really, because there is so much more to life than screwing around.
I can only assume you're doing it wrong.
There are many hidden costs. Scroll down to the poor sap who has to edit .ini files in driver installations to get half assed Win 7 drivers to play nice to XP in some notebooks!
So he bought a printer without checking if it came with compatible drivers? Not an issue I will ever have.
How much money did it cost for that sap to waste a week hacking installations and these units still have no ACPI support and waste energy because XP can't support EFI?
Our desktops are all WinXP compatible, no issues there either. We have no plans to replace these. Ever. When these run out we'll be looking to VDI, with XP. We have this running very successfully in trials already. Hardware will never be an issue ever again.
IE 8 is now a liability too.
Got Firefox and Chrome. Hooray for choice!
I know your employer probably spent tens of thousands just upgrading to it recently from IE 6
Nope.
Sure they run ancient versions of Office fine,
We run Office 2010
but your little appliances that work just fine in your book need to connect to others and they are moving along. IE also is moving to an annual release cycle. IE 11 will be out next year and then IE 12 when XP is depreciated. What are your plans? Still with IE 8 until 2020?! HA.
There are features like power management, a better browser, a version of office where people can find things and not have to go into menus, and in the future tablet integration for your executives, corporate app and profile support with Exchange 2013 for Win 8/9 devices/tablets for your sales people, and CRM and social media integration for things like salesforce in Office 2013. Its time to get with the times. In the good old days corporate America used to first to innovate and bring new technologies first and compete by being cutting edge. Not by staying behind and racing to the bottom to save short term costs.
We have all this now, and we're not American, and we're making profits. WinXP on VMware View with Office 2010. Tell me again, why I should spend one cent on Windows 7?
When you say "does this now and costs us nothing", don't forget to count the ancilliary costs of using XP. How much do you have to spend on IT dealing with malware?
Zero dollars. The last malware we had to spend any real time on was Blaster or Sasser. These were the biggest outbreaks for at least a decade and neither required more staff (costs), nor does the reduction of these types of mass outbreaks these days (last one was 8 years ago) require less staff (costs). The cost of XP is zero. The cost to upgrade to 7 actually does cost real money (we're going through it now and we're paying a lot in software upgrades, consultancy and training.) The security argument to me is like adding an extra lock on your front door. On paper it's more secure, but the reality is no difference.
Win7 is much less succeptible. What is the productivity cost to your people, who have to use an OS that mismanages RAM so badly and doesn't handle a multi-program workflow very well?
Not sure where you work, but when talking productivity, the biggest gains are not to be had in the PC, it is the fleshy bit between the keyboard and chair. We did a review of our IT and none of the feedback said any PCs or apps were considered 'slow' by any users. Users want more iPads and to trade Blackberries for newer smartphones, but nothing was mentioned by anyone about RAM management of their PC. WinXP reached the level of 'good enough'. Good enough for 99% of everything 99% of the time. It's very hard to justify spending money on anything once you are at that point.
Going through a Win 7 project now. We have at least 40 business critical apps, 2 of which don't work with Win 7. One has been quoted at $50k for the newer compatible version, the other is closer to $1million for a complete new product because there is no newer version.
If MS forces almost half of its customers (that's more or less what the 43% of the desktop/laptop market is) to upgrade they are going to lose some of them in the process.
Yeah but even if they lose 10%, they make money out of the remaining 90% which is 90% more than they are earning right now.
Why would any sane businesses want to spend money replacing something that works perfectly well? Well, you and I know a few good answers to that
Out of interest what are those answers? I've been through a few Win7 business cases and none of them got accepted. The current place is upgrading purely because we are being forced to my MS as support reaches EOL. Planned obsolescence. Right now we still use XP and it does everything we need it to. Sure 7 might do more, but we don't need more, we just need a stable platform to run our business apps. XP does this and now costs us nothing. The same can't be said for Win7 (or any other OS alternative).
No, advertisers have no business value in taking this seriously, and every incentive to find ways around it. Advertisers know that targeted advertising is both more effective and less offensive than random advertising.
I'm not sure if you know how targeted ads "work". In my experience if I type something into google, click a few links I then get those same pages thrown at me as ads. It makes absolutely no sense as I've already researched that topic and no longer have any interest in it. If I had a product to advertise I would much prefer my brand being exposed to people who didn't already know about it, or hadn't visited my webpage. Google's version of "targeted advertising" is to to hand you a flyer for a store you you just walked out of. It is probably the least effective form I've advertising I've ever come across.
Steve Jobs could've bought the entire music industry with cash. Clearly he didn't care about it that much.
I've been working in IT depts for roughly 20 years and can't remember ever having issues related to "data breach from lack of encryption". Not saying it doesn't happen, but I reckon for most people (outside of finance/defence/govt etc) it's overkill. It raises a question, how much security is too much? Do you have a lock on your front door? 3 locks? 45 locks? If you had 100 locks on your door and only locked 99 of them, would this be considered vulnerable? This is how I think of the security industry. One lock is fine. If that doesn't work, then no amount of extra locks will help. The bad guys will simply break a window.
Really? Really? "This is why regulations rarely work"? Any fool that actually believes this Libertian bullshit needs to go spend sometime in Mogadishu. Regulations work my friend, it is no accident that the countries with the most rules and highest taxes are also the least corrupt, are the safest and have the highest quality of life*. Regulations are what are keeping you alive right now. As for TFA, of course the govt consult with business, that's who pays the fucking bills and keeps the country running. it would be pretty ridiculous to create new laws that suffocated your economy. I'm not sure what Dr Evil scenario you are imaging happened in this meeting, but in my experience, real life doesn't work like that. * Note the US does not make these lists for a reason, so please do not extrapolate your bizarro US system onto anywhere else.
doesn't mean we do not have a formidable military presence in the rest of the world.
China well knows that if it really tried to piss us off it could be turned into a vast repository of active nuclides so they won't.
Wow.... just wow. Are Americans really this naive? You know America! Fuck Yeah! isn't really a usable military strategy? Sure you have some impressive hardware, but you have no brain. Let me tell you how it will work. China will destroy the US without a single shot being fired. They'll steal you're IP, hack your secrets, buy your officials, supply drugs to your children, financially back all the conflicting fringe groups and rot you from the inside out. They won't kowtow to the religious crazies, the gun nuts or anti-abortionists, they'll do whatever needs to be done to win, and you won't know it has happened until it's all over. China has a hundred year plan, The US can't plan past next week. You've already lost, it will simply take a few years for all the pieces to fall into place.
At least Microsoft had a monopoly when they reached that level. In fact, that is the only thing that kept them afloat (Windows OS).
Actually it is Office that keeps the Enterprise locked in. Windows has plenty of competitors, Office has none (with the same level features and integration).
There are many millions of people with their music and videos in iTunes AAC/M4V format. Given the choice between buying a (let's suppose) superior music player/phone and ditching their media collection or just buying another iPhone and retaining their library, I think most people will choose the latter.
But didn't people just do exactly that when CDs were invented? Or DVDs? Or BluRay? I remember when I bought my first CD player, I didn't go out and buy the same music I had on LP, I bought new stuff and moved on with my life. MS and Oracle etc have lock-in becsiness data has real value, Consumer data doesn't have the same value, if you lose you MP3 collection, you might not be happy, but it's pretty easy to move on, buy a different device, and buy some new music. It is a very fickle market to base a 1/2 trillion dollar business on.
Okay, maybe you're right. It would collapse. Without Windows updates, just how many weeks could an IT infrastructure go before it would be hopelessly compromised beyond all possibility of repair.
Quite a while actually. I still have unpatched Windows 2000 servers that run fine, so it's safe to assume we could go 10 years. It's amazing how many so called 'nerds' have very little understanding of IT security.
Indeed, the Win95 interface was a massive change. However, it pretty quickly showed that it was superior to the old 3.1 design.
It only showed after it was released, and apps had been released that took advantages of the new interface. To give Win8 a fair go you should at least be waiting until next year when it has had an equal run.
less expensive to fly from Oz to hundreds of tropical destinations.
What if you want to fly somewhere interesting? 10 hours minimum. Australia might have a lot going for it, but ease of travelling is not one of them
The Aussies, due to geography, have an advantage trading with China, India, and other nations in the Pacific Rim.
China is roughly equi-distant from Australia, the US and Europe. Tokyo is closer to the US, India is closer to Europe. And Europe or the US have economies 10x the size of Australia. Australia is on the opposite side of the world from New York and London which are the centres of western commerce. Australia might be a nice place to live, but geographically it is probably the most disadvantaged major economy in the world.
All in all its hard to imagine a much better place.
Unless you like travelling without a mandatory long haul flight, or you want to go shopping after 5pm, or want to do something other drink beer and watch football. Australia is nice but let's not get carried away.
This Windows 8 Touch Screen seems like the same debate 20 years ago, when PC's started to ship with a Mouse as a common device. It started out as a toy, with only a few applications that used it.
This is the key point that the haters seem to overlook. Win8 might suck, that is possible, but the alternative which I have seen very little press on, is that Metro introduces a new era of 'way to use a computer' and MS wins. In 5 years we might look back on the old desktop and wonder how we could ever live with that. A unified platform for phone, tab, laptop, PC, console and TV, once the apps are developed to take advantage of the new era, all the haters will look like grumpy DOS fanboys in 1998. Of course I'll repeat, Win8 could just as easily be a lemon, only time will tell, but I think these discussions should at least try and provide some balance. I'm sure a lot of us remember these exact same conversations back in 1995.
, you can find anything you want by pressing the Windows key, then typing, then pressing enter. It's so much faster than any menu, including the Start menu.
I haven't paid much attention to Win8, I prefer try it myself with a full release version without prejudice. But one thing I like is browsing for info. I hate context sensitive menus (CSMs), I hate searching (due to the unreliable nature of Windows search - eg search compmgmt comes up with nothing -why?), I want to click a menu and see all my options. This is why I still use XP. I click Start->Programs and I see all my programs laid out in front of me. I haven't been able to figure out how to do this in Win 7 ( the programs menu is a fixed height window and only displays a certain number of apps which you then have to scroll through (yuck)). From what I have seen of Win 8 it gets worse. I use Outlook.com (hotmail upgraded to Metro) and the CSMs annoy the fuck out of me. I like to see things laid out out in front of me before I begin, but you can't do that with CSMs, everytime you click something your menus change so you have to re-read the page to see what changed. Doing this multiple times per task is annoying.
Yeah, it's a "threat" all right. It's a threat to their control over people. But then again, privacy and the freedom it brings is always a threat to governments, isn't it?
Too much privacy is a real threat to law enforcement and the quality of life of law abiding citizens. As much as you don't want to believe it, the govt is net good for those of us who aren't psychopaths. There is an easy demonstration of this, go visit Ivory Coast or Columbia and see how you get on with very little govt "control".
Ok not a fad, but its required application is far lower than the current hype curve that everyone seems to be jumping on these days. Touch works in a phone where you have a casual short-use, multi-function device. But it doesn't work on a desktop where you need to input data 8 hours a day, it sucks on a volume knob where you want analog-like gradient control, and it has no place in a car where you should be looking at the road. The worst example I can think of is those stupid shopping mall store directories that are now interactive touch screens. What is wrong with a paper map? It works, anyone can use it, and most importantly many people can use it simultaneously. Technology for technology's sake, it is the bane of my existence.
I am going through this very problem right now in my office.
I have a whole ton of 5 - 8 year old business desktops and laptops...
WinXP on VMware View. Never worry about Desktop OS or hardware upgrades ever again :)
You seem to be suffering from selective memory...
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 2.1x
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.1x
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.5
Windows 95
Windows NT 4
Windows 98
Windows 98SE
Windows 2000
Windows ME
Windows XP
Windows 2003
Windows 2003 R2
Windows Vista
Windows 2008
Windows 7
Windows 2008 R2
Windows 8
The theory doesn't really work when you include all the information (and I've still left out a bunch of special edition versions like SBS etc).
I can only wish Microsoft good luck, because I don't think they understand what they're doing.
I'm pretty sure I heard this exact same argument when the hardcore DOS users were faced with Win95. What is different this time around? New OS, new ways of doing things, clever and young people will adapt and move with the times, old moaners will complain about people on their lawns. I think MS know more about this game than you do (and most of Slashdot who continually seem to bash a company that has managed to maintain 90% market share for nearly 20 years).
swimming which is the only sport measured to the thousand-of-a-second.
FINA haven't measured in thousandths-of-a-second since 1972. In the last 40 years, accuracy is only measured to hundredths-of-a-second.