Sure -- because now that we know the Higgs-Boson exists, removing mass from all particles from a spaceship and it's crew is entirely feasible and of course, will leave the original molecular structures completely unchanged.
We obviously have no method, right now, of doing so, but wouldn't that at least be plausible?
Yes, it's probably never going to be as easy as "flip a switch and invert the mass of all particles in-situ", however easy that would make interstellar travel. But I can see it being possible for communications.
But my question still stands - would a particle with negative mass be bound by speed-of-light restrictions? Or, alternatively, could manipulation of the Higgs field result in imaginary mass as well?
Actually...one of the exciting findings is that the Higgs boson's mass is lower than expected. So low that the standard model predicts that the vacuum should be unstable.
Weird, I'd heard that it was basically spot-on with their original predictions, so much so that it was almost boring that it was at this value.
IANAP (I am not a physicist), but I do know that the speed-of-light limit is mass-related. Massless particles move at the speed of light, particles with mass move at up to the speed of light.
Could it not be true that particles with negative mass move above lightspeed? I know tachyons are at least theorized, although I'm not sure if they're supposed to have negative mass or if they have some other relativistic loophole.
Now, assuming the above is true, couldn't the manipulation of the Higgs field result in negative mass? We obviously have no method, right now, of doing so, but wouldn't that at least be plausible?
Weird, I didn't know "the rest of the world will get tired of being bullied [...] and stand up" was synonymous with "fragment under it's own mass and economically stagnate when a system hinged on continual expansion and conquest is halted, eventually being broken by displaced tribes to the north who were themselves being pushed out by a stronger expansionistic empire, although one major fragment survived for hundreds more years before finally being conquered by yet another expansionistic empire".
Then, why on EARTH did Linux copy these things from it:
1.) SMP, & thus, ENTERPRISE READY SERVERS for Linux couldn't happen until things very like:
[lots of stuff]
Yes, something that started as a hobbyist OS wasn't ready for enterprise-grade service from version one. Oh, the scandal and outrage.
Of course Linux would copy those features. Those are features any server-grade OS needs. But it's not at all fair to say that Linux copied them from Windows (after all, how many other server-grade OSes have these features? I'd venture to say all of them).
But guess what? Now Linux *has* all these features (and generally far more stably than Windows, IMO). And it's taking the lead with things like BTRFS, FUSE, etc.
Oh, and it runs on damn near everything. Can I install Windows on an UltraSPARC? What about a POWER chip? What about those oft-theorized "hundreds of ARM cores" processors? Right now, all Windows Server runs on is x86 and Itanium, shortly to be just x86.
* Hmmm? (Care to tell us another line of utter bullshit?)
Yes.
Look at the TOP500 lists. The top five hundred supercomputers in the world.
You would think that if Windows were truly a superior product, it would dominate this list. I mean, even the price difference is negligible when the hardware costs this much, so Linux doesn't even have that going for it.
And yet, I see only two systems on this entire list that run Windows HPC, one of which dual-boots Linux as well.
Huh. How about that.
P.S.=> You "Pro-Linux" Penguins are FUD spreaders, bigtime - I'd like to see you explain your way out of this one... apk
And you come to Slashdot? Have you seen this place?
The 360 wasn't intended, itself, to make a profit. It was intended to gain Microsoft a real position in the market. That's why it was frequently sold at a loss (especially at the beginning). Now, between their own legitimate success and Sony's missteps (and Nintendo's not even competing in the same market anymore), they're in prime position to deliver a knockout punch.
Even if the console itself is not profitable, think about everything else. Every Xbox Live subscription. All the first-party games are big money-earners - a few dozen million in development and marketing, then several hundred million in income (the Halo series alone, just the 360 games, likely brought in over a billion dollars). And they get a chunk of every third-party game, especially the XBLA games. They probably *would* have been profitable, if it weren't for the RRoD issues.
Their next one? They don't need to do much. Keep the same general architecture, for compatibility. Double the core count by mirroring the die, maybe up the clock speed if that's feasible. Upgrade to 4GB or 6GB of RAM (remember, in the 360 architecture, RAM is shared between the CPU and GPU). Upgrade the video card - a mid-range Radeon 7000 should be fine, maybe something like the 7770. Add some minor power-saving features - the ability to shut down 5 of the 6 cores should suffice for most purposes, making it more energy-efficient (and thus quiet) when in non-gaming mode.
While they definitely *could* push the hardware much harder, they don't need to. Remember, this is a console. It'll be hooked up to a 720p or 1080p television. Yes, you can get a much better gaming computer, but not in the $400-$500 range.
Bam. There we have it. New console. Dev costs are almost all software. You should be able to sell for $400-500 at a profit, or $300-400 at a minor loss (that will be made up for with game sales and Xbox Live).
I see Microsoft today, and I see a company that has no idea what it's doing. Well, I don't claim to know what is best to do, but I'd at least aim for consistency.
I'd thought about making an Ask Slashdot based on this premise, but I probably will never actually do it. So here's what *I* would do if I ran Microsoft.
Windows. Still a good product, at least on the desktop, but the brand keeps getting diluted, and attempts to "re-imagine" it or "re-invent" it simply will not work. On the desktop side, you really don't NEED to change much. Just keep focusing on making the existing experience incrementally better. Try to get boot times down to under a second, make it more stable, little improvements like that.
Windows Server? Can it. Windows Server is so far behind *technically* that it's not even funny. The only reason it's used is because a) it's far easier than Linux, and b) Microsoft. (B) won't last forever, so you know what? Give up. Give up a bit of control. Make the next Windows Server a Linux distro.
BUT
Don't do it like every other Linux distro.
The theme should be "it all works together seamlessly". Port Active Directory, port Exchange, port Microsoft SQL, port ASP.NET and everything (make sure it runs as Apache or nginx modules, though. IIS itself is a "maybe"). Wrap it all up in a GUI that makes things easy to figure out - your goal should be that you don't even need a manual. But don't ignore the command line and config files. Make the best damn Linux distro you can, and *sell* it.
Yes, sell. Obviously, anything open-source should stay open-source. Maybe even open-source the stuff that lets others integrate with you - AD stuff,.NET, and so on. But the big stuff? Keep it proprietary, and sell it. And not ridiculously overpriced, either.
In fact, hedge your bets on the desktop side as well. Port the Windows desktop environment over to Linux, because trust me, KDE and GNOME are fucking things up right now, and the Windows desktop experience is actually *better*. You don't even have to make it natively X11, just include an X11 library so all the old apps still work (like how OS X does it). And release for free tools that make Linux integrate well with Windows, stuff to EASILY integrate with AD and such. Yes, open-source stuff can do most of this already, but those are both a pain, and not supported by Microsoft.
Windows Phone? Drop it. You aren't going to win unless you have the apps. And WP7 does not have the apps. It does have some good ideas, though, some very good things. So you know what you should do? Take Android, and mod the shit out of it. Put Office on it. Make it integrate with Active Directory and Exchange and all that shit, so businesses will love it. Make it work with the Xbox and whatever else you've got. And license it out to whoever wants it. Make it "Android, but with ___, ____ and ___". Still compatible with the millions of Android apps, but it has several that, at best, you'd have to buy on the marketplace; at worst, simply not available.
The Xbox is one of the few things Microsoft's not just doing well, but is recognized as doing well. This is your new Big Brand. Make a new Xbox, price target $400-$500. It should be a powerful core-gamer machine. Let Nintendo have the low-end market with the Wii U. And make it more than a game console - you're doing well already, having Netflix and all that on there. Keep that up. Make it work with your WinDroid phone systems, both as a Wii U-like display for the console, and as a remote for Netflix and such. This way, you aren't just fighting Sony - you're also fighting Apple TV and whatever that Google thing is called. Keep backwards compatibility, maybe add a Blu-Ray drive (even if the movies aren't selling so well, it is good for games). But don't do anything crazy. Just... incremental improvements. Make one device that does the task of many others, well enough that it isn't a compromise, and cheaply enough that it's an option if you only actually want one part of it. Yes, that's
The problem is that you are assuming the "guy sitting in his office" is rational. People are *not* rational. I know I'm not, and I've yet to see a truly rational person. Oh sure, at times, maybe even most of the time, people are somewhat rational. But "homo sapiens sapiens" isn't nearly as wise as he thinks he is.
Their chain of thinking is relatively simple. In the beginning, it was simple - you have a Good Idea, one worth money, one that lets you make good products that you sell for more money.
Patents were invented to protect those Good Ideas, to reward the people who came up with Good Ideas. So obviously, when you have a Good Idea, you should patent it.
Eventually, the distinction between Good Ideas and patents was lost. Every Good Idea becomes patented; every patent covers a Good Idea. And, as Good Ideas are good things that you want a lot of, patents must be good things that you want a lot of.
So the men in suits pushed for more patents. They pushed their thinkers to file more patents, and pushed the laws so they could patent more ideas (because, after all, if an idea is patented, it must be a Good Idea that brings in money!)
But they pushed too far. They ended up with patents that were not Good Ideas, maybe just good ideas. Maybe just ideas, or bad ideas, or just ideas for ideas. And they had so many, they covered almost everything. You can't make a product without using hundreds, even thousands, of patents.
And there are *two* ways to make money from patents. First, you can use it to make a Good Product. But you can also use it to get money from someone else who is making a Good Product.
And more and more, the men in suits focused more on the second way than the first way. Which fed the cycle more - driving more and more patents. Which drove more and more patent suits.
It's a common error of human psychology to never see yourself as the aggressor. People almost always see themselves as the one *being* attacked, not the one *doing* the attacks. So now the men in suits are scared, because they feel as though they're under attack by patents.
But in the system we've ended up with, there really is no defense against patents. All you can do is go on the offensive yourself.
And so they fight back, because that's the only option they can see. They probably can tell it will end badly for them, but I imagine they blame the other companies for "forcing" them into this situation (because, after all, most people prefer to blame others rather than their own short-sightedness).
They can't see that there is an option to change the game, because few men can truly see that option while they play the game. We outsiders can see it, because we aren't in the middle of it.
Another VA resident here, to counter *your* anecdotal evidence with *my* anecdotal evidence.
You remember Hurricane Isabel? Yeah, I was without power for a month after that one. That was *not* fun. At all.
Or last year, when another hurricane took out power for five days. I think that's about average for me - about every other year, I'll be without power for at least two days after a hurricane. Plus minor thunderstorms knocking out power for a night, probably twice a year or so. And that's not counting the countless times the power has flickered off for a few seconds, which often happens for no identifiable reason.
Under CISPA, if it passes the Senate, the government can see any private corporate record it desires[citation needed]. Including your smartmeter electrical usage[citation needed].
Even without CISPA, governments or govt-controlled utilities at the state level[citation needed] have passed laws mandating rolling blackouts[citation needed]. So your A/C could suddenly shutoff and you'd get nice and toasty. (I prefer dumb meters that *I* control without any communication back to the central entity[opinion][pov].)
In traditional buyouts, yes. But this war is different. They aren't conquering, they're destroying. They're killing each other's profits and expending huge amounts of capital in lawsuits.
They aren't in a period of increasing strength. They're in a period of vulnerability. Small, light companies can rise up and exploit the situation, gain a significant market share while still being relatively untouched by the war.
Yes, the "one winner uber-mega-corporation" outcome is a possibility. But it's more a worst-case than a probable-case.
Windows, at least W7, seems to be pretty good about only restarting when it makes sense. Malware definition updates or user-program updates generally don't trigger a reboot. It's usually only those nonspecific, vague "Windows" updates, or hardware driver updates, that cause any sort of reboot.
I seem to remember doing a full version update of IE without needing a restart - think it was IE8 -> IE9. But I could be remembering it wrong.
The whole massive patent portfolios thing was hinged on mutually assured destruction. Everyone was violating at least one of everyone's patents, but as long as you either had enough of an armory yourself, or paid your dues to the patent portfolios, you were safe (disregarding wild patent trolls). Sort of like the actual Cold War - as long as you had enough nukes, or allied yourself with someone who did, you were safe (disregarding "rogue nations" and proxy wars).
Well, this Patent Cold War is becoming a Patent World War.
It's been going on for a while now, ever since the smartphone lawsuits first stated, but it's ramping up. They're coming faster and faster now, and going for bigger and bigger things. Pretty soon, you'll be seeing injunctions against entire companies, or multi-trillion-dollar fines.
I expect, in the end, most of those involved will end up out-of-business. And, hopefully, it will end with a massive patent system reform.
Yes, yes, air conditioning is less than essential in, say, England, where 30C is considered "sweltering" and the humidity is generally negligible. Or even in Germany or France, where 40C is highly exceptional.
Now come over here to the US. I'm a Virginia resident myself - about halfway up the coast, latitude 37.5 degrees north. I actually did pretty fine in the storms - power flickered a bit, had to reset the clocks, but it was back up within seconds each time.
The day before the storm, it was 43C, and I know this because I'm trying to switch myself over to metric and have all my thermometers and such set to that system. And it was incredibly humid, about 90% humidity - the heat index would have been closer to 50C than to 40C. I'm talking "step outside and have to stop to catch your breath because it feels like your lungs are burning". I'm talking "100F+ in the *shade*".
And this isn't even in the hottest regions. Texas? Florida? They have it even worse, temperature-wise, most of the time. Not sure about right now, though.
When the AC goes out in weather like this, people *die*. This is not an exaggeration. They actually have laws in many places preventing power companies from cutting off people's power during heat like this, even for "hasn't paid the bills in six months".
Weird, Windows includes an IE library other apps can use, but updating IE doesn't require you to reboot anything. And if Microsoft can manage that simple task, so can Apple.
Hell, I've seen an update for iTunes that made me restart. That is six different types of retarded right there.
I'd put some thought into this a while back. Here's my solution:
Create a fanfiction license. As long as it is not-for-profit (with a specific exemption for "posted on a site that has ads"), the fanfic author makes no claims of copyright/trademark ownership of the original characters and whatnot, and agrees to indemnify the original authors in any lawsuit over the fanfic, the fanfic author can obtain a license, at no cost, to use any trademarked or copyrighted material associated with the original work.
This protects both sides. It protects the original authors, by blocking other people from exploiting their work (outside the bounds of regular fair use - remember, nothing says you have to agree to this license; if you think you're protected by Fair Use, you can do for-profit stuff), and by making them explicitly not responsible for anything the fanfic writers do. The fanfic writers, meanwhile, are *explicitly* protected against any legal problems - the license *will* lack a "this license may be amended at any time" or "unilateral cancellation" clause, so even if the original authors DO become assholes, they can't "take it back".
The only clause that would be controversy-worthy would be the "if the original authors read your work, and later produce another work that bears similarities to the fanfiction, the original authors shall not be held liable for plagiarism unless significant portions of the actual work were copied". And that's mainly so the original authors can read fanfics without worrying that they'll be sued because their sequel incorporates one or two elements that a fanfic happened to include (many authors actually refuse to read fanfics for this reason). Hopefully, if they actually *do* decide to copy some fan work, they'd compensate them appropriately. That's what I would do, at least. But it does rely a bit on the authors not being thieving scumbags.
I used to be an Asus fan. I still have the parts from my M50 lying on my desk (it finally died after years of good service - I have no complaints about that one). The one time it broke under warranty (hard drive failure, probably actually my fault), I shipped it back no-questions-asked and got it fixed within a week.
So, when the time came to replace it, I figured I'd go Asus again. And I figured I'd upgrade to the G5x series (the "gamer" model, instead of the "notebook" model). However, around the time I was going to buy one (a G54), they were mysteriously discontinued. Ivy Bridge was just about to come out, so I figured they just stopped making the old ones in favor of a new model, and just sold out quicker than anticipated. No problem, really.
Well, Ivy Bridge got pushed back a few weeks. Still not Asus's fault, really. So it took a few more weeks for the G55 to come out.
So I found the first place to list them (a site called HIDEvolution, and I'm hating them more than Asus right now). They sold out pretty much immediately. Not that they told me, by the way - I didn't find out they were on backorder until the next week when *I* called them up.
Fine. "Good things come to those who wait" and all that. So I waited.
Four weeks later, I get an email. The customization I had ordered, putting an SSD in the secondary drive bay, was impossible, because apparently they don't *have* a second drive bay. Despite what the product info had said. So either HIDEvolution fucked up on listing the product, or Asus neglected to tell their resellers that they'd removed that option from the new model. Most likely both.
Well, I got things sorted out. Upgraded to the G75. A bit bigger than I'd like, but otherwise identical to the one I thought I'd ordered.
It took a week for them to process the order. Then another week for them to ship it, *by* *ground*, across the country. Who the fuck ships a laptop 2000 miles by truck?
Whatever. I finally have it, right? Very nice, a bit unprofessional-looking (this is technically my work laptop / signing bonus), but I don't care too much about that. I set aside a full weekend for setting everything up *just* *right*, maybe play some of those games I'd bought that don't run on my backup desktop. That night, though, all I do is run a couple benchmarks, then unplug it and surf the web a bit so I can see how long the battery lasts.
Half an hour later, it clicks off. Rather short battery life, I thought, but to be fair, it's a pretty powerful rig. I plug back in and try to boot again. Clicks on, lights flicker, it dies again. Nothing.
I let it charge a bit - maybe it just doesn't like booting from 0%. Five minutes later, the light shows it's fully charged. Still won't power on. Won't even hit BIOS.
FUCK
So I immediately shoot off a problem ticket, describe all the troubleshooting I did, every symptom I can notice. They promise to respond within 48 hours or the ticket will be immediately escalated.
I don't get a response to *that* ticket for a full week. By which time it was irrelevant, as I'd called them up on Tuesday. First Asus insisted it was HIDEvolution's problem. Then HIDEvolution insisted it was Asus's problem. After two hours or so, and not a small amount of profanity, I get Asus to issue an RMA. I ship it off immediately.
That was literally a month ago. June 6. I still have not heard even an ETA on the repair - it's still marked as "awaiting spare parts". Despite the fact that most retailers are still showing them as in stock - I could have gotten a refund and bought a brand-new one in the time it took them to do nothing.
I've emailed them, told them to just send me a new one - I have *nothing* on that particular machine that I want. They refuse. I ask for an ETA. Nothing. I ask at least for some sort of second-day air shipping when they send it back. I get a vague promise that it is *marked* for "expedited shipping".
Two weeks ago, I gave them an ultimatum - either I have
You do know that you can just not use features, right?
I don't even know what Value Templates are, so I'm pretty sure I've never used them.
I've never used diamond inheritance. Hell, I rarely use any sort of multiple inheritance.
I've never used the STL algorithms, although I'm tempted to try sometime just to see if it's as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
I do mix structs and classes, but mainly for readability. My classes are proper, encapsulated objects - no public variables, full of get() and set() methods. My structs are essentially combined variables - if I were to make a coordinate "type", I would do so as a struct. While I could get the same functionality from just classes, I like having that extra bit of "wait, can I just grab that variable and mess with it, or do I need to use getter/setter methods?" implicit documentation.
The iostream libraries are indeed ugly and never used, and should be cast into the fires of/mnt/doom.
I just got* an Asus G75. Power supply is 150W. And yes, it has some crazy-sized fans to keep itself cool.
* Well, got, and then had to send back in for repair after only three hours, and now I've been waiting for weeks just to get an ETA. Long story short, fuck Asus, I'm never buying from them again.
Slashdot Mirror
Says the article, over at SlashBI
And that's when I stopped reading.
Sure -- because now that we know the Higgs-Boson exists, removing mass from all particles from a spaceship and it's crew is entirely feasible and of course, will leave the original molecular structures completely unchanged.
We obviously have no method, right now, of doing so, but wouldn't that at least be plausible?
Yes, it's probably never going to be as easy as "flip a switch and invert the mass of all particles in-situ", however easy that would make interstellar travel. But I can see it being possible for communications.
Interesting.
But my question still stands - would a particle with negative mass be bound by speed-of-light restrictions? Or, alternatively, could manipulation of the Higgs field result in imaginary mass as well?
Actually...one of the exciting findings is that the Higgs boson's mass is lower than expected. So low that the standard model predicts that the vacuum should be unstable.
Weird, I'd heard that it was basically spot-on with their original predictions, so much so that it was almost boring that it was at this value.
IANAP (I am not a physicist), but I do know that the speed-of-light limit is mass-related. Massless particles move at the speed of light, particles with mass move at up to the speed of light.
Could it not be true that particles with negative mass move above lightspeed? I know tachyons are at least theorized, although I'm not sure if they're supposed to have negative mass or if they have some other relativistic loophole.
Now, assuming the above is true, couldn't the manipulation of the Higgs field result in negative mass? We obviously have no method, right now, of doing so, but wouldn't that at least be plausible?
Better solution:
"Made on Sol 3" ("Made on Earth", if you want to be less pedantic).
Weird, I didn't know "the rest of the world will get tired of being bullied [...] and stand up" was synonymous with "fragment under it's own mass and economically stagnate when a system hinged on continual expansion and conquest is halted, eventually being broken by displaced tribes to the north who were themselves being pushed out by a stronger expansionistic empire, although one major fragment survived for hundreds more years before finally being conquered by yet another expansionistic empire".
Then, why on EARTH did Linux copy these things from it:
1.) SMP, & thus, ENTERPRISE READY SERVERS for Linux couldn't happen until things very like:
[lots of stuff]
Yes, something that started as a hobbyist OS wasn't ready for enterprise-grade service from version one. Oh, the scandal and outrage.
Of course Linux would copy those features. Those are features any server-grade OS needs. But it's not at all fair to say that Linux copied them from Windows (after all, how many other server-grade OSes have these features? I'd venture to say all of them).
But guess what? Now Linux *has* all these features (and generally far more stably than Windows, IMO). And it's taking the lead with things like BTRFS, FUSE, etc.
Oh, and it runs on damn near everything. Can I install Windows on an UltraSPARC? What about a POWER chip? What about those oft-theorized "hundreds of ARM cores" processors? Right now, all Windows Server runs on is x86 and Itanium, shortly to be just x86.
* Hmmm? (Care to tell us another line of utter bullshit?)
Yes.
Look at the TOP500 lists. The top five hundred supercomputers in the world.
You would think that if Windows were truly a superior product, it would dominate this list. I mean, even the price difference is negligible when the hardware costs this much, so Linux doesn't even have that going for it.
And yet, I see only two systems on this entire list that run Windows HPC, one of which dual-boots Linux as well.
Huh. How about that.
P.S.=> You "Pro-Linux" Penguins are FUD spreaders, bigtime - I'd like to see you explain your way out of this one... apk
And you come to Slashdot? Have you seen this place?
The 360 wasn't intended, itself, to make a profit. It was intended to gain Microsoft a real position in the market. That's why it was frequently sold at a loss (especially at the beginning). Now, between their own legitimate success and Sony's missteps (and Nintendo's not even competing in the same market anymore), they're in prime position to deliver a knockout punch.
Even if the console itself is not profitable, think about everything else. Every Xbox Live subscription. All the first-party games are big money-earners - a few dozen million in development and marketing, then several hundred million in income (the Halo series alone, just the 360 games, likely brought in over a billion dollars). And they get a chunk of every third-party game, especially the XBLA games. They probably *would* have been profitable, if it weren't for the RRoD issues.
Their next one? They don't need to do much. Keep the same general architecture, for compatibility. Double the core count by mirroring the die, maybe up the clock speed if that's feasible. Upgrade to 4GB or 6GB of RAM (remember, in the 360 architecture, RAM is shared between the CPU and GPU). Upgrade the video card - a mid-range Radeon 7000 should be fine, maybe something like the 7770. Add some minor power-saving features - the ability to shut down 5 of the 6 cores should suffice for most purposes, making it more energy-efficient (and thus quiet) when in non-gaming mode.
While they definitely *could* push the hardware much harder, they don't need to. Remember, this is a console. It'll be hooked up to a 720p or 1080p television. Yes, you can get a much better gaming computer, but not in the $400-$500 range.
Bam. There we have it. New console. Dev costs are almost all software. You should be able to sell for $400-500 at a profit, or $300-400 at a minor loss (that will be made up for with game sales and Xbox Live).
I see Microsoft today, and I see a company that has no idea what it's doing. Well, I don't claim to know what is best to do, but I'd at least aim for consistency.
I'd thought about making an Ask Slashdot based on this premise, but I probably will never actually do it. So here's what *I* would do if I ran Microsoft.
Windows. Still a good product, at least on the desktop, but the brand keeps getting diluted, and attempts to "re-imagine" it or "re-invent" it simply will not work. On the desktop side, you really don't NEED to change much. Just keep focusing on making the existing experience incrementally better. Try to get boot times down to under a second, make it more stable, little improvements like that.
Windows Server? Can it. Windows Server is so far behind *technically* that it's not even funny. The only reason it's used is because a) it's far easier than Linux, and b) Microsoft. (B) won't last forever, so you know what? Give up. Give up a bit of control. Make the next Windows Server a Linux distro.
BUT
Don't do it like every other Linux distro.
The theme should be "it all works together seamlessly". Port Active Directory, port Exchange, port Microsoft SQL, port ASP.NET and everything (make sure it runs as Apache or nginx modules, though. IIS itself is a "maybe"). Wrap it all up in a GUI that makes things easy to figure out - your goal should be that you don't even need a manual. But don't ignore the command line and config files. Make the best damn Linux distro you can, and *sell* it.
Yes, sell. Obviously, anything open-source should stay open-source. Maybe even open-source the stuff that lets others integrate with you - AD stuff, .NET, and so on. But the big stuff? Keep it proprietary, and sell it. And not ridiculously overpriced, either.
In fact, hedge your bets on the desktop side as well. Port the Windows desktop environment over to Linux, because trust me, KDE and GNOME are fucking things up right now, and the Windows desktop experience is actually *better*. You don't even have to make it natively X11, just include an X11 library so all the old apps still work (like how OS X does it). And release for free tools that make Linux integrate well with Windows, stuff to EASILY integrate with AD and such. Yes, open-source stuff can do most of this already, but those are both a pain, and not supported by Microsoft.
Windows Phone? Drop it. You aren't going to win unless you have the apps. And WP7 does not have the apps. It does have some good ideas, though, some very good things. So you know what you should do? Take Android, and mod the shit out of it. Put Office on it. Make it integrate with Active Directory and Exchange and all that shit, so businesses will love it. Make it work with the Xbox and whatever else you've got. And license it out to whoever wants it. Make it "Android, but with ___, ____ and ___". Still compatible with the millions of Android apps, but it has several that, at best, you'd have to buy on the marketplace; at worst, simply not available.
The Xbox is one of the few things Microsoft's not just doing well, but is recognized as doing well. This is your new Big Brand. Make a new Xbox, price target $400-$500. It should be a powerful core-gamer machine. Let Nintendo have the low-end market with the Wii U. And make it more than a game console - you're doing well already, having Netflix and all that on there. Keep that up. Make it work with your WinDroid phone systems, both as a Wii U-like display for the console, and as a remote for Netflix and such. This way, you aren't just fighting Sony - you're also fighting Apple TV and whatever that Google thing is called. Keep backwards compatibility, maybe add a Blu-Ray drive (even if the movies aren't selling so well, it is good for games). But don't do anything crazy. Just... incremental improvements. Make one device that does the task of many others, well enough that it isn't a compromise, and cheaply enough that it's an option if you only actually want one part of it. Yes, that's
The problem is that you are assuming the "guy sitting in his office" is rational. People are *not* rational. I know I'm not, and I've yet to see a truly rational person. Oh sure, at times, maybe even most of the time, people are somewhat rational. But "homo sapiens sapiens" isn't nearly as wise as he thinks he is.
Their chain of thinking is relatively simple. In the beginning, it was simple - you have a Good Idea, one worth money, one that lets you make good products that you sell for more money.
Patents were invented to protect those Good Ideas, to reward the people who came up with Good Ideas. So obviously, when you have a Good Idea, you should patent it.
Eventually, the distinction between Good Ideas and patents was lost. Every Good Idea becomes patented; every patent covers a Good Idea. And, as Good Ideas are good things that you want a lot of, patents must be good things that you want a lot of.
So the men in suits pushed for more patents. They pushed their thinkers to file more patents, and pushed the laws so they could patent more ideas (because, after all, if an idea is patented, it must be a Good Idea that brings in money!)
But they pushed too far. They ended up with patents that were not Good Ideas, maybe just good ideas. Maybe just ideas, or bad ideas, or just ideas for ideas. And they had so many, they covered almost everything. You can't make a product without using hundreds, even thousands, of patents.
And there are *two* ways to make money from patents. First, you can use it to make a Good Product. But you can also use it to get money from someone else who is making a Good Product.
And more and more, the men in suits focused more on the second way than the first way. Which fed the cycle more - driving more and more patents. Which drove more and more patent suits.
It's a common error of human psychology to never see yourself as the aggressor. People almost always see themselves as the one *being* attacked, not the one *doing* the attacks. So now the men in suits are scared, because they feel as though they're under attack by patents.
But in the system we've ended up with, there really is no defense against patents. All you can do is go on the offensive yourself.
And so they fight back, because that's the only option they can see. They probably can tell it will end badly for them, but I imagine they blame the other companies for "forcing" them into this situation (because, after all, most people prefer to blame others rather than their own short-sightedness).
They can't see that there is an option to change the game, because few men can truly see that option while they play the game. We outsiders can see it, because we aren't in the middle of it.
Another VA resident here, to counter *your* anecdotal evidence with *my* anecdotal evidence.
You remember Hurricane Isabel? Yeah, I was without power for a month after that one. That was *not* fun. At all.
Or last year, when another hurricane took out power for five days. I think that's about average for me - about every other year, I'll be without power for at least two days after a hurricane. Plus minor thunderstorms knocking out power for a night, probably twice a year or so. And that's not counting the countless times the power has flickered off for a few seconds, which often happens for no identifiable reason.
Under CISPA, if it passes the Senate, the government can see any private corporate record it desires[citation needed]. Including your smartmeter electrical usage[citation needed].
Even without CISPA, governments or govt-controlled utilities at the state level[citation needed] have passed laws mandating rolling blackouts[citation needed]. So your A/C could suddenly shutoff and you'd get nice and toasty. (I prefer dumb meters that *I* control without any communication back to the central entity[opinion][pov].)
FTFY
In traditional buyouts, yes. But this war is different. They aren't conquering, they're destroying. They're killing each other's profits and expending huge amounts of capital in lawsuits.
They aren't in a period of increasing strength. They're in a period of vulnerability. Small, light companies can rise up and exploit the situation, gain a significant market share while still being relatively untouched by the war.
Yes, the "one winner uber-mega-corporation" outcome is a possibility. But it's more a worst-case than a probable-case.
See, there's the beauty of this.
We don't have to do anything. We just sit back and watch the various factions of Corporate Earth (it's not just America) kill each other off.
Windows, at least W7, seems to be pretty good about only restarting when it makes sense. Malware definition updates or user-program updates generally don't trigger a reboot. It's usually only those nonspecific, vague "Windows" updates, or hardware driver updates, that cause any sort of reboot.
I seem to remember doing a full version update of IE without needing a restart - think it was IE8 -> IE9. But I could be remembering it wrong.
The whole massive patent portfolios thing was hinged on mutually assured destruction. Everyone was violating at least one of everyone's patents, but as long as you either had enough of an armory yourself, or paid your dues to the patent portfolios, you were safe (disregarding wild patent trolls). Sort of like the actual Cold War - as long as you had enough nukes, or allied yourself with someone who did, you were safe (disregarding "rogue nations" and proxy wars).
Well, this Patent Cold War is becoming a Patent World War.
It's been going on for a while now, ever since the smartphone lawsuits first stated, but it's ramping up. They're coming faster and faster now, and going for bigger and bigger things. Pretty soon, you'll be seeing injunctions against entire companies, or multi-trillion-dollar fines.
I expect, in the end, most of those involved will end up out-of-business. And, hopefully, it will end with a massive patent system reform.
Yes, yes, air conditioning is less than essential in, say, England, where 30C is considered "sweltering" and the humidity is generally negligible. Or even in Germany or France, where 40C is highly exceptional.
Now come over here to the US. I'm a Virginia resident myself - about halfway up the coast, latitude 37.5 degrees north. I actually did pretty fine in the storms - power flickered a bit, had to reset the clocks, but it was back up within seconds each time.
The day before the storm, it was 43C, and I know this because I'm trying to switch myself over to metric and have all my thermometers and such set to that system. And it was incredibly humid, about 90% humidity - the heat index would have been closer to 50C than to 40C. I'm talking "step outside and have to stop to catch your breath because it feels like your lungs are burning". I'm talking "100F+ in the *shade*".
And this isn't even in the hottest regions. Texas? Florida? They have it even worse, temperature-wise, most of the time. Not sure about right now, though.
When the AC goes out in weather like this, people *die*. This is not an exaggeration. They actually have laws in many places preventing power companies from cutting off people's power during heat like this, even for "hasn't paid the bills in six months".
So is ours.
Weird, Windows includes an IE library other apps can use, but updating IE doesn't require you to reboot anything. And if Microsoft can manage that simple task, so can Apple.
Hell, I've seen an update for iTunes that made me restart. That is six different types of retarded right there.
I'd put some thought into this a while back. Here's my solution:
Create a fanfiction license. As long as it is not-for-profit (with a specific exemption for "posted on a site that has ads"), the fanfic author makes no claims of copyright/trademark ownership of the original characters and whatnot, and agrees to indemnify the original authors in any lawsuit over the fanfic, the fanfic author can obtain a license, at no cost, to use any trademarked or copyrighted material associated with the original work.
This protects both sides. It protects the original authors, by blocking other people from exploiting their work (outside the bounds of regular fair use - remember, nothing says you have to agree to this license; if you think you're protected by Fair Use, you can do for-profit stuff), and by making them explicitly not responsible for anything the fanfic writers do. The fanfic writers, meanwhile, are *explicitly* protected against any legal problems - the license *will* lack a "this license may be amended at any time" or "unilateral cancellation" clause, so even if the original authors DO become assholes, they can't "take it back".
The only clause that would be controversy-worthy would be the "if the original authors read your work, and later produce another work that bears similarities to the fanfiction, the original authors shall not be held liable for plagiarism unless significant portions of the actual work were copied". And that's mainly so the original authors can read fanfics without worrying that they'll be sued because their sequel incorporates one or two elements that a fanfic happened to include (many authors actually refuse to read fanfics for this reason). Hopefully, if they actually *do* decide to copy some fan work, they'd compensate them appropriately. That's what I would do, at least. But it does rely a bit on the authors not being thieving scumbags.
Time for the full story:
I used to be an Asus fan. I still have the parts from my M50 lying on my desk (it finally died after years of good service - I have no complaints about that one). The one time it broke under warranty (hard drive failure, probably actually my fault), I shipped it back no-questions-asked and got it fixed within a week.
So, when the time came to replace it, I figured I'd go Asus again. And I figured I'd upgrade to the G5x series (the "gamer" model, instead of the "notebook" model). However, around the time I was going to buy one (a G54), they were mysteriously discontinued. Ivy Bridge was just about to come out, so I figured they just stopped making the old ones in favor of a new model, and just sold out quicker than anticipated. No problem, really.
Well, Ivy Bridge got pushed back a few weeks. Still not Asus's fault, really. So it took a few more weeks for the G55 to come out.
So I found the first place to list them (a site called HIDEvolution, and I'm hating them more than Asus right now). They sold out pretty much immediately. Not that they told me, by the way - I didn't find out they were on backorder until the next week when *I* called them up.
Fine. "Good things come to those who wait" and all that. So I waited.
Four weeks later, I get an email. The customization I had ordered, putting an SSD in the secondary drive bay, was impossible, because apparently they don't *have* a second drive bay. Despite what the product info had said. So either HIDEvolution fucked up on listing the product, or Asus neglected to tell their resellers that they'd removed that option from the new model. Most likely both.
Well, I got things sorted out. Upgraded to the G75. A bit bigger than I'd like, but otherwise identical to the one I thought I'd ordered.
It took a week for them to process the order. Then another week for them to ship it, *by* *ground*, across the country. Who the fuck ships a laptop 2000 miles by truck?
Whatever. I finally have it, right? Very nice, a bit unprofessional-looking (this is technically my work laptop / signing bonus), but I don't care too much about that. I set aside a full weekend for setting everything up *just* *right*, maybe play some of those games I'd bought that don't run on my backup desktop. That night, though, all I do is run a couple benchmarks, then unplug it and surf the web a bit so I can see how long the battery lasts.
Half an hour later, it clicks off. Rather short battery life, I thought, but to be fair, it's a pretty powerful rig. I plug back in and try to boot again. Clicks on, lights flicker, it dies again. Nothing.
I let it charge a bit - maybe it just doesn't like booting from 0%. Five minutes later, the light shows it's fully charged. Still won't power on. Won't even hit BIOS.
FUCK
So I immediately shoot off a problem ticket, describe all the troubleshooting I did, every symptom I can notice. They promise to respond within 48 hours or the ticket will be immediately escalated.
I don't get a response to *that* ticket for a full week. By which time it was irrelevant, as I'd called them up on Tuesday. First Asus insisted it was HIDEvolution's problem. Then HIDEvolution insisted it was Asus's problem. After two hours or so, and not a small amount of profanity, I get Asus to issue an RMA. I ship it off immediately.
That was literally a month ago. June 6. I still have not heard even an ETA on the repair - it's still marked as "awaiting spare parts". Despite the fact that most retailers are still showing them as in stock - I could have gotten a refund and bought a brand-new one in the time it took them to do nothing.
I've emailed them, told them to just send me a new one - I have *nothing* on that particular machine that I want. They refuse. I ask for an ETA. Nothing. I ask at least for some sort of second-day air shipping when they send it back. I get a vague promise that it is *marked* for "expedited shipping".
Two weeks ago, I gave them an ultimatum - either I have
You do know that you can just not use features, right?
I don't even know what Value Templates are, so I'm pretty sure I've never used them.
I've never used diamond inheritance. Hell, I rarely use any sort of multiple inheritance.
I've never used the STL algorithms, although I'm tempted to try sometime just to see if it's as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
I do mix structs and classes, but mainly for readability. My classes are proper, encapsulated objects - no public variables, full of get() and set() methods. My structs are essentially combined variables - if I were to make a coordinate "type", I would do so as a struct. While I could get the same functionality from just classes, I like having that extra bit of "wait, can I just grab that variable and mess with it, or do I need to use getter/setter methods?" implicit documentation.
The iostream libraries are indeed ugly and never used, and should be cast into the fires of /mnt/doom.
I'm using a Google+ brain implant, you insensitive clod!
I just got* an Asus G75. Power supply is 150W. And yes, it has some crazy-sized fans to keep itself cool.
* Well, got, and then had to send back in for repair after only three hours, and now I've been waiting for weeks just to get an ETA. Long story short, fuck Asus, I'm never buying from them again.