The point is not that they don't always report, but that they show favoritisim.
The claim was that they weren't covering this, "t was all a right-wing smear attempt, long-term ties to a racist preacher and an unrepentant murderous terrorist weren't newsworthy."
I'd like you to notice you did in the very next line when I made a counter argument, "Yeah, leftwing reactionary verbal regurgitation noted." I.e. if an argument is left wing it should be downplayed. That is precisely what happens with right wing conspiracy theories.
This guy [Ayers] was a terrorist AGAINST the very country Obama was wanting to lead.
Nonsense. The police, the military, the draft board, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Weathermen were all Americans, and Americans who were invested in the United States. All of them were looking to change or impose policies because they believed those policies to be in the best interest of America. All of them thought of themselves as acting in the interests of the American people. And all of them hard large constituencies of Americans that agreed with their political positions if not always their means. No one was against America.
Well, if you want to define it as war then the FBI should have just shot him on sight based on the intel they had.
That's what they did to several of his friends. They didn't catch him.
Yet they demand Romney's tax returns NOW.
As I've said above. The details of Romney's past that have emerged contradict the biography he presents and has presented in his career. That leads to more investigation. Further the norm for candidates is to hand over the tax returns. Romney up until recently claimed that after the primaries he would make public the usually amount which is 8+ years. Further he is making his Bain years the centerpiece of his campaign, "I'm a turnaround business guy, I know how to fix the economy". Obama has never claimed that attending Columbia is what made him qualified to be president.
Transcript? Courses? Society memberships? Bush's were released.
You keep trying to shift here. The claim you made was that there was a missing year that the media never investigated. Now it turns out they did investigate and discovered he in fact was at Columbia. Issue resolved. What he was doing at Columbia, whether he was in glee club or the harley davidson fan club is completely irrelevant to whether he was there or not. The media does not have infinite resources. Once the right makes claims and they are investigated that's the investigation.
And BTW we know his transcripts were good, he got into Harvard Law School off of them.
Obama gets a free ride relative to his competition. Remember memogate? Manufactured by the media, immediately accepted by the media as truth, pushed by the media as truth, exposed by conservatives, still supported by the media with "Fake, but accurate."
Memogate? As far as I know both sides of the American system are on the same side of that one. Ambassador Haqqani is embarrassed but that's not to the best of my knowledge a domestic issue at all.
Do you think that would happen with a liberal? Come on, these people were complaining that Republicans are holding up judge confirmations in the Senate, when they were doing the exact same thing during Bush.
That's true. But under Bush a bipartisan consensus was reached that put an end to the problem. That has not been the case under Obama.
Microsoft is charging like $20 for the Windows 8 upgrade. For a full version OEM prices are below $100. Microsoft has driven almost everyone out of the OS business because their prices are so low. Back when there still was an x86 alternative operating system market SCO was around $600-1000, while workstation OSes cost more. I think there is a lot one can complain about with Microsoft, high prices no. Microsoft has a 35 year track record of driving prices down everywhere they go.
Arguably that's why they've considered Linux such a severe threat because they couldn't beat it in a price war and Linux was able to gain ground in the server space, where Microsoft wasn't willing to cut prices enough to knock Linux out.
They also have an excellent record on long term support. They can't make the new Office run on older systems since they are moving things in the direction of Metro.
As for your car analogy, cars aren't really designed for 10 years either.
I agree the WYSIWYG move was a mistake. WYSIWYM should have become more dominant than it is. A huge amount of the whole document management and unstructured data problem is trying to deal with the problems of WYSIWYG being used when WYSIWYM would fit better.
As for desktop publishing and word processing... well yeah. The 80s were the era where typesetting and layout moved from a separate process to being integrated into authoring. That wasn't WordPerfect's fault, that was the user demand.
Remember this version of office is going to be around a while. Apple starting their migration to retina in Mar 2012 with the iPad3; the first laptop in Jun 2012. Lets assume they are completely migrated by Dec 2013. That means retina screens start hitting PC laptops enmass in 2014. By 2018 or so they will be the norm. This version of Office needs to support that.
Its not meant for enterprise desktops. Microsoft is worried about the consumer market and related technologies. For the corporate market they have really compelling enterprise features in their server offerings like Dynamics and most of them haven't completed the migration to 7 yet.
Microsoft's phone strategy has failed and they are rapidly losing market share. Microsoft's tablet strategy has failed and they are becoming a niche vendor in tablets. Consumers are starting to replace home PC with tablets and phones
Why would they want to make it easier for you to distribute files outside of the SharePoint / Skydrive system? If anything distribution is likely to get much more tightly tied to their enterprise offerings in the next decade.
As someone who's been with OSX since 10.1. Generally around 1 year after an OS version comes out you start seeing applications that require that version of the OS. By about 2 years, around the time you would be 2 versions behind most software packages have undergone an upgrade that requires the new system. So I'd say that by July 2013 you'll start seeing lots of 10.8 only software; and by Jan 2015 the vast majority of software vendors will have dropped Lion support except for offering a place to download the old version.
It is a much much faster cycle than the Microsoft cycle.
Or what we've been discussing in the other thread. Balmer wants to change the culture of Microsoft users and get them used to more frequent and more rapid upgrades. With Cloud based Sharepoint (Microsost 365 & Skydrive) they have something truly compelling over the competition.
There hasn't been any research in about 2 years. But at that point the range was from 5% (india) to 22%(Poland & Czech Republic) with the US at 9%. The market share of Linux may be low; but similar to how Firefox progressed Open Office and derivatives have progressed to large user bases: http://www.webmasterpro.de/portal/news/2010/02/05/international-openoffice-market-shares.html
If Linux does ever win the desktop it will need first to most people's software stack with open source alternatives so instead of people running Mostly proprietary software on proprietary OSes they are running Mostly Free software on proprietary Oses.
Microsoft is in the business of selling software. Of course they do stuff for cashflow reasons like any other business. Microsoft released Vista Jan 2007. They should have stopped supporting any new features on XP no later than Jan 2009.
I think extraordinary generous in allowing people to maintain old OSes with current software and as a result have created end users that actually believe that OS upgrades aren't essentially mandatory. For the alternative I'd present Apple which has trained their users to upgrade, and their developers that once a new OS version hits they better be already prepared with compatible versions of their software. The result has been users get fast progress, developers get upgrade sales and Apple sells new systems at a good clip.
What argument are you taking? If you agree these new technologies exist, even if they are proprietary of in some other ways less than ideal then that explains the additional memory CPU load.
As for complex versioning not paying off, I don't disagree. The implementation is almost good enough to be useful, but you still have to be careful. That's not a good state of affairs and I still think this should used less. That being said though it is heavily used and it is a complex feature.
As for multiple control types office suites have different permissions on who can do what to which aspects. So for example someone can change data but not change the format. They can add sections but not remove. You see this more in Excel where someone can change data but not formulas. That is both a good feature and useful.
In general I think a lot of the complaints really root from (as usual) Microsoft's lack of direction. Were they to tie Office much more closely to SharePoint they could do a much better job on these features but that would require them either having a SharePoint like service for Home/Small-business (i.e. where Skydrive / Micrsoft 365 seem to be going) unless they were willing to abandon those markets which right now they are loath to do. I suspect the next decade will be one where Office start to improve massively.
But regardless of whether it does or doesn't. I think the shoes to airplanes analogy is apt.
Investigated, downplayed, conclusion reached, "nothing to see here."
Not downplayed just not made a big deal of. But if we agree that the media did in fact fully report the facts then we are left with you disagreeing with the mainstream view of how this information should be interpreted. Which is fine but wholly different than the media not reporting them.
Here's the point: He didn't regret setting bombs. He was open to doing it all again. Reformed terrorist, we could agree on. Unrepentant terrorist, should be poison for any politician to associate with.
Except its not. The United States has always been the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. Terrorism was an important part of our pacification of Iraq. All politicians on the intelligence committee regularly associate with unrepentant terrorists. Most of the ones on the defense committee as well. In particular in the context of 2008, John McCain was still friendly with people who had been Contras. Why wasn't it poison for him?
So now you're equating a fugitive terrorist with soldiers?
No I'm saying that your point about him not being captured is the norm in war. As far as the association between terror and soldiers... I'd be happy to go with the UN definition in which case since Ayers targeted military facilities he'd be an insurgent not a terrorist.
The media failed to investigate very much when it came to Obama
And in the 4 years since very little about his past has come out. Which refutes that.
The media's harping about how Romney should release his tax returns further back. Meanwhile, Obama's missing years at Columbia and Harvard are still not investigated.
Actually the media did investigate that and found it to be nothing but right wing BS. Columbia confirmed and has records to verify Obama was there fall 81 - spring 83 as per his books. Conversely with Mitt Romney every time they find new documents, which Romney is working hard to hide, they show additional evidence of him having lied about his resume. Those situations are wholly different. One biography seems to be complete and accurate the other one incomplete and often inaccurate.
Overall, they were very friendly to Obama.
That's true. And they still are friendly to Obama. Reporters are urban voters who often are paid poorly, i.e. people with more education than money. Obama also has the advantage of not having to defend the craziness of the current Republican party, and hence they find him more credible. Which is an entirely different issue than an unwillingness to investigate when information does become available. That was far more true of George Bush in the first term, where credible information was suppressed.
Apple does charge the carriers pretty close to retail actually. That being said their net after manufacturing costs, but before: R&D, warranty, tech support... is about 2/3rds of the cost on a 4S much less on the 3G at about $275 less (less subsidy and $200 off consumer price). I agree that other vendors don't get quite that much, Apple gets a slightly larger subsidy (about $2/mo) and charges about another $100 but they also get things like advertising support, think about the joint Motorola / Verizon Droid campaign.
The subsidy is mostly published data. It really running the carriers around $15/mo per smartphone.
640K? That was far too much for just Word Perfect. And WordStar ran well on 32K of RAM.
But then again: WordStar didn't have Object linking and embedding Complex versioning Multiple style sheets (or even any style sheets) multiple control types
The old word processors have as much in common with the new ones as shoes do with airplanes.
I think the problem is you seem to be under the impression that by hanging some nicer curtains you can turn Mickey D's into Olive garden and it just don't work that way
No I'm saying if you rip the kitchen and chairs out of a Mickey D's and then redecorate you can still use the walls and floor to have an Olive Garden. You don't have to burn the whole building to the ground. But more importantly I don't think of Windows as Mickey D's. I'd consider myself if anything a bit anti-Microsoft and I don't have nearly as low an opinion as you do. Dynamics is not Oracle Financials but it is a terrific package, and I think every company under 10,000 employees has to consider, not necessarily pick but consider, when choosing an ERP. . Sharepoint is not Documentum but it is a terrific package that allows people to setup rather advanced sharing features really cheaply. SQL server is a very compelling product that for going on 15 years has allowed people without DBA skills to not notice they don't have them while running large databases.
Going more towards the home market. Office is far and away the best office suite. The NT Kernel is possible second to the Linux kernel in terms of complexity and features but it is head and shoulders above XNU (the OSX kernel). The Visual Studio compiler is bar none the best compiler on the market. I don't even like Microsoft and I don't think of them down where you are putting them.
I am the Apple customer you are talking about and I consider the better Windows machines. I'd consider Mickey D's to be something like JavaVM-OS (what runs on lots of clock radio type stuff through low end phones), or if you want to focus on systems where people interact with the VM something like Chrome operation system which offers nothing but a browser.
Same with AMD, they make good processors The 16 core AMD Opteron is a really interesting processor that allows you to run a simple simulation of a few thousands agents cheap. And the 8 core are only a little slower than a high end Xeon for much less. Just to show that do sell in higher end boxes like the HP ProBook 6565, the Samsung series 3, and for business HP Proliant D165,
I agree with your sales figures in today's market. The high end of the Windows consumer market is dead, dead as a doornail. Where I disagree is that is something intrinsic. I think that happened when Microsoft decided not to bring out the original vision for Longhorn (later Vista) as a higher end OS with XP owning the low end. Instead they constantly ended up pushing Vista down market first by remove two key features (WinFS and Palladium) and later with their "ready for Vista" approach. In other words I think Microsoft chased the low end of the market in both enterprise and consumer. And that's why they lost much high end.
But the main thing is that its been recent. This is not something that's been true for 10 years. If your negative assessment of Windows were true they wouldn't have been selling high end systems well 5 years ago.
I agree with the hardware upgrades though I don't think it would be quite so bad as the expectations change. Let me just add to the hardware costs you mentioned: -- high quality touch screens -- a hinge that allows the touch screen to move relative the keyboard, which is not a cheap part generally about $150
So we agree there. Now the thing is the sales of 30k exist because Windows consumers would rather buy a $500 PC than a $1000 PC even if the $1000 PC is much better. I'm talking about a situation where the $500 PC option (except for Linux or used) doesn't exist. Where Microsoft shifts the market. Those sales figures wouldn't apply.
Let me put it THIS way friend...if someone said they would sell the ultimate laptop for you
So you think Obama would have had to associate with Ayers during his Weather Underground days in order for the claim of association with an unrepentant terrorist to be true?
No. You were originally claiming there was some big scandal the media hadn't investigated. If it is just that Barack Obama and Bill Ayers are friends, that was investigated and verified.
. That association shouldn't reflect on my character, right?
No it should reflect on his character. And the Bill Ayers that Obama knew, the one he actually had anything to do with, was the Bill Ayers who won citizen of the year from the city of Chicago for his work in helping to rebuild and reform Chicago schools. A guy who is putting his talents to good use on the ground helping the poor of Chicago and making the world a better place. I think what it reflects is that Obama unlike a Sarah Palin tries to work with people not against. A trait he has demonstrated repeatedly as president.
Conversely for the people who make this attack it also reflects on their character. It shows that for all pretensions to be Christian they don't believe in forgiveness. They don't look for opportunities to build bridges but for opportunities to build walls. Bill Ayers retired from being a terrorist in 1972 and the organization he was involved in dissolved in 1975. When Sarah Palin raised this issue a 1/3 of a century had passed.
There is nothing there.
Had he been immediately arrested, he'd probably be in prison.
Probably not. You mentioned Charles Manson. The Manson women are all out of prison now. But Ayers might have spent a decade or more behind bars. Not getting caught by the enemy is part of being a soldier and bad things happen when you get caught by the enemy. Every soldier who returns from Afghanistan did so because they didn't get caught by the Taliban.
Riiiiight. If we knew after a couple reports, he must have known over 20 years of actually being there. Is our President really that dumb, dense and inattentive to what is going on around him? Was he that bad a judge of character? Again, I don't know about you, but I prefer that my elected officials not have long-standing close voluntary relationships with racists and anti-semites.
OK good. Well Mitt Romney was a Bishop in the Mormon church which was institutionally racist. So sorry, you don't get your wish both candidates have relationships with racists, even if one wanted to call Wright a racist which is a push and anti-Semite entirely inaccurate.
Of course, that also describes a type of person I definitely don't want as an elected official.
Understood. I don't want most Republicans as elected officials. But originally the claim was that the media had failed to uncover some secret truth. Not your personal preferences.
$99 pretty much represents the security vendor's (remember it isn't actually Microsoft running these keys) costs.
I think you are overestimating your difficulties you can just disable the protection or point to another signing authority which doesn't charge. There is no reason the FSF couldn't become a signing authority. Or just install any of the 1/2 dozen or so distributions that will have valid keys. Anyone who can't do that can't self support on Linux.
The question is should they have to? Personally, the answer is "NO". Microsoft should compete, and if they win it should be because they provide the better product.
This really has nothing to do with competing. It has to do with root kits. If it was about competing Microsoft would just embed copyright code right into the EFI designed only to work with the NT kernel and be done with it.
I think there is 2 issues which are very distinct:
a) Does a standing powerful bureaucracy lead to regulations being written by qualified individuals i.e. intelligent regulation in the grandparent post's words b) Does a standing powerful bureaucracy lead to the best possible outcomes.
(a) is easy to answer, yes. (b) is much more complex. I agree with you that a standing powerful bureaucracy forms a triangle and that triangle becomes very hard to move or replace. This used to the norm prior to the 1980s in most industries, and still is the norm in heavily regulated utilities and the defense industry. It is absolutely the case that the bureaucracy begins to develop their own opinions separate from the voters, the legislature or industry; they in effect become an interest group within the Democracy. Teachers are an example where we have a standing bureaucracy that has an ideology of education often at odds with the majority population but has been semi-succesful in forcing their agenda as the actual implemented education policies in the USA.
Where I would disagree is thinking of it as "the problem" rather than one setup that leads to one set of positive and negative outcomes. I think on balance the positives outweigh the negatives. Particularly at a time like now where we have idealogical politicians balance can be very useful.
Dems outsource American jobs via giving them to illegals making 3 dollars an hour Repubs - oursource American jobs via NAFTA giving them to dirrectly to people working in other countries making 3 dollars an hour
Since when? Agrabusines are a Redstate concern. The failure to crackdown on agrabusiness' use of illegals is Republicans not Democrats. Democrats would love to crack down hard on these jobs and give all Agrabusiness workers UFWA protection and higher wages. If there were only Democrats do you think any states would be right to work states? If there were only Democrats don't you think government unions would have the rights to have a union only rule for government contracting?
Both favor strong social controls, just so long as they are not aimed at their core constiuency
Agree. Though there is a key difference between using the tax system to discourage use and the criminal justice system.
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever the motivation, the claim was Microsoft was charging $400 for an upgrade. That's false.
The point is not that they don't always report, but that they show favoritisim.
The claim was that they weren't covering this, "t was all a right-wing smear attempt, long-term ties to a racist preacher and an unrepentant murderous terrorist weren't newsworthy."
I'd like you to notice you did in the very next line when I made a counter argument, "Yeah, leftwing reactionary verbal regurgitation noted." I.e. if an argument is left wing it should be downplayed. That is precisely what happens with right wing conspiracy theories.
This guy [Ayers] was a terrorist AGAINST the very country Obama was wanting to lead.
Nonsense. The police, the military, the draft board, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Weathermen were all Americans, and Americans who were invested in the United States. All of them were looking to change or impose policies because they believed those policies to be in the best interest of America. All of them thought of themselves as acting in the interests of the American people. And all of them hard large constituencies of Americans that agreed with their political positions if not always their means. No one was against America.
Well, if you want to define it as war then the FBI should have just shot him on sight based on the intel they had.
That's what they did to several of his friends. They didn't catch him.
Yet they demand Romney's tax returns NOW.
As I've said above. The details of Romney's past that have emerged contradict the biography he presents and has presented in his career. That leads to more investigation. Further the norm for candidates is to hand over the tax returns. Romney up until recently claimed that after the primaries he would make public the usually amount which is 8+ years. Further he is making his Bain years the centerpiece of his campaign, "I'm a turnaround business guy, I know how to fix the economy". Obama has never claimed that attending Columbia is what made him qualified to be president.
Transcript? Courses? Society memberships? Bush's were released.
You keep trying to shift here. The claim you made was that there was a missing year that the media never investigated. Now it turns out they did investigate and discovered he in fact was at Columbia. Issue resolved. What he was doing at Columbia, whether he was in glee club or the harley davidson fan club is completely irrelevant to whether he was there or not. The media does not have infinite resources. Once the right makes claims and they are investigated that's the investigation.
And BTW we know his transcripts were good, he got into Harvard Law School off of them.
Obama gets a free ride relative to his competition. Remember memogate? Manufactured by the media, immediately accepted by the media as truth, pushed by the media as truth, exposed by conservatives, still supported by the media with "Fake, but accurate."
Memogate? As far as I know both sides of the American system are on the same side of that one. Ambassador Haqqani is embarrassed but that's not to the best of my knowledge a domestic issue at all.
Do you think that would happen with a liberal? Come on, these people were complaining that Republicans are holding up judge confirmations in the Senate, when they were doing the exact same thing during Bush.
That's true. But under Bush a bipartisan consensus was reached that put an end to the problem. That has not been the case under Obama.
Microsoft is charging like $20 for the Windows 8 upgrade. For a full version OEM prices are below $100. Microsoft has driven almost everyone out of the OS business because their prices are so low. Back when there still was an x86 alternative operating system market SCO was around $600-1000, while workstation OSes cost more. I think there is a lot one can complain about with Microsoft, high prices no. Microsoft has a 35 year track record of driving prices down everywhere they go.
Arguably that's why they've considered Linux such a severe threat because they couldn't beat it in a price war and Linux was able to gain ground in the server space, where Microsoft wasn't willing to cut prices enough to knock Linux out.
They also have an excellent record on long term support. They can't make the new Office run on older systems since they are moving things in the direction of Metro.
As for your car analogy, cars aren't really designed for 10 years either.
I agree the WYSIWYG move was a mistake. WYSIWYM should have become more dominant than it is. A huge amount of the whole document management and unstructured data problem is trying to deal with the problems of WYSIWYG being used when WYSIWYM would fit better.
As for desktop publishing and word processing... well yeah. The 80s were the era where typesetting and layout moved from a separate process to being integrated into authoring. That wasn't WordPerfect's fault, that was the user demand.
Remember this version of office is going to be around a while. Apple starting their migration to retina in Mar 2012 with the iPad3; the first laptop in Jun 2012. Lets assume they are completely migrated by Dec 2013. That means retina screens start hitting PC laptops enmass in 2014. By 2018 or so they will be the norm. This version of Office needs to support that.
If you have no money what do they stand to lose? Low margin, low paying customers?
Its not meant for enterprise desktops. Microsoft is worried about the consumer market and related technologies. For the corporate market they have really compelling enterprise features in their server offerings like Dynamics and most of them haven't completed the migration to 7 yet.
Microsoft's phone strategy has failed and they are rapidly losing market share.
Microsoft's tablet strategy has failed and they are becoming a niche vendor in tablets.
Consumers are starting to replace home PC with tablets and phones
That's what they need to counter.
Why would they want to make it easier for you to distribute files outside of the SharePoint / Skydrive system? If anything distribution is likely to get much more tightly tied to their enterprise offerings in the next decade.
As someone who's been with OSX since 10.1. Generally around 1 year after an OS version comes out you start seeing applications that require that version of the OS. By about 2 years, around the time you would be 2 versions behind most software packages have undergone an upgrade that requires the new system. So I'd say that by July 2013 you'll start seeing lots of 10.8 only software; and by Jan 2015 the vast majority of software vendors will have dropped Lion support except for offering a place to download the old version.
It is a much much faster cycle than the Microsoft cycle.
Or what we've been discussing in the other thread. Balmer wants to change the culture of Microsoft users and get them used to more frequent and more rapid upgrades. With Cloud based Sharepoint (Microsost 365 & Skydrive) they have something truly compelling over the competition.
And they make some good points regarding Google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4EbCkotKPU
http://www.whymicrosoft.com/en-us/pages/google-apps.aspx
There hasn't been any research in about 2 years. But at that point the range was from 5% (india) to 22%(Poland & Czech Republic) with the US at 9%. The market share of Linux may be low; but similar to how Firefox progressed Open Office and derivatives have progressed to large user bases:
http://www.webmasterpro.de/portal/news/2010/02/05/international-openoffice-market-shares.html
If Linux does ever win the desktop it will need first to most people's software stack with open source alternatives so instead of people running
Mostly proprietary software on proprietary OSes they are running
Mostly Free software on proprietary Oses.
Object linking and embedding. I do that all the time between applications.
It catches the error.
Begin{abc}
Begin{def}
stuff
End{abc} throws an error with the line number
Microsoft is in the business of selling software. Of course they do stuff for cashflow reasons like any other business. Microsoft released Vista Jan 2007. They should have stopped supporting any new features on XP no later than Jan 2009.
I think extraordinary generous in allowing people to maintain old OSes with current software and as a result have created end users that actually believe that OS upgrades aren't essentially mandatory. For the alternative I'd present Apple which has trained their users to upgrade, and their developers that once a new OS version hits they better be already prepared with compatible versions of their software. The result has been users get fast progress, developers get upgrade sales and Apple sells new systems at a good clip.
What argument are you taking? If you agree these new technologies exist, even if they are proprietary of in some other ways less than ideal then that explains the additional memory CPU load.
As for complex versioning not paying off, I don't disagree. The implementation is almost good enough to be useful, but you still have to be careful. That's not a good state of affairs and I still think this should used less. That being said though it is heavily used and it is a complex feature.
As for multiple control types office suites have different permissions on who can do what to which aspects. So for example someone can change data but not change the format. They can add sections but not remove. You see this more in Excel where someone can change data but not formulas. That is both a good feature and useful.
In general I think a lot of the complaints really root from (as usual) Microsoft's lack of direction. Were they to tie Office much more closely to SharePoint they could do a much better job on these features but that would require them either having a SharePoint like service for Home/Small-business (i.e. where Skydrive / Micrsoft 365 seem to be going) unless they were willing to abandon those markets which right now they are loath to do. I suspect the next decade will be one where Office start to improve massively.
But regardless of whether it does or doesn't. I think the shoes to airplanes analogy is apt.
Investigated, downplayed, conclusion reached, "nothing to see here."
Not downplayed just not made a big deal of. But if we agree that the media did in fact fully report the facts then we are left with you disagreeing with the mainstream view of how this information should be interpreted. Which is fine but wholly different than the media not reporting them.
Here's the point: He didn't regret setting bombs. He was open to doing it all again. Reformed terrorist, we could agree on. Unrepentant terrorist, should be poison for any politician to associate with.
Except its not. The United States has always been the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. Terrorism was an important part of our pacification of Iraq. All politicians on the intelligence committee regularly associate with unrepentant terrorists. Most of the ones on the defense committee as well. In particular in the context of 2008, John McCain was still friendly with people who had been Contras. Why wasn't it poison for him?
So now you're equating a fugitive terrorist with soldiers?
No I'm saying that your point about him not being captured is the norm in war. As far as the association between terror and soldiers... I'd be happy to go with the UN definition in which case since Ayers targeted military facilities he'd be an insurgent not a terrorist.
The media failed to investigate very much when it came to Obama
And in the 4 years since very little about his past has come out. Which refutes that.
The media's harping about how Romney should release his tax returns further back. Meanwhile, Obama's missing years at Columbia and Harvard are still not investigated.
Actually the media did investigate that and found it to be nothing but right wing BS. Columbia confirmed and has records to verify Obama was there fall 81 - spring 83 as per his books. Conversely with Mitt Romney every time they find new documents, which Romney is working hard to hide, they show additional evidence of him having lied about his resume. Those situations are wholly different. One biography seems to be complete and accurate the other one incomplete and often inaccurate.
Overall, they were very friendly to Obama.
That's true. And they still are friendly to Obama. Reporters are urban voters who often are paid poorly, i.e. people with more education than money. Obama also has the advantage of not having to defend the craziness of the current Republican party, and hence they find him more credible. Which is an entirely different issue than an unwillingness to investigate when information does become available. That was far more true of George Bush in the first term, where credible information was suppressed.
Apple does charge the carriers pretty close to retail actually. That being said their net after manufacturing costs, but before: R&D, warranty, tech support ... is about 2/3rds of the cost on a 4S much less on the 3G at about $275 less (less subsidy and $200 off consumer price). I agree that other vendors don't get quite that much, Apple gets a slightly larger subsidy (about $2/mo) and charges about another $100 but they also get things like advertising support, think about the joint Motorola / Verizon Droid campaign.
The subsidy is mostly published data. It really running the carriers around $15/mo per smartphone.
1) Integrated Business Intelligence
2) Easy user defined functions
3) Scripting
4) User roles and permission for people using the spreadsheet
etc..
640K? That was far too much for just Word Perfect. And WordStar ran well on 32K of RAM.
But then again: WordStar didn't have
Object linking and embedding
Complex versioning
Multiple style sheets (or even any style sheets)
multiple control types
The old word processors have as much in common with the new ones as shoes do with airplanes.
I think the problem is you seem to be under the impression that by hanging some nicer curtains you can turn Mickey D's into Olive garden and it just don't work that way
No I'm saying if you rip the kitchen and chairs out of a Mickey D's and then redecorate you can still use the walls and floor to have an Olive Garden. You don't have to burn the whole building to the ground. But more importantly I don't think of Windows as Mickey D's. I'd consider myself if anything a bit anti-Microsoft and I don't have nearly as low an opinion as you do. Dynamics is not Oracle Financials but it is a terrific package, and I think every company under 10,000 employees has to consider, not necessarily pick but consider, when choosing an ERP. . Sharepoint is not Documentum but it is a terrific package that allows people to setup rather advanced sharing features really cheaply. SQL server is a very compelling product that for going on 15 years has allowed people without DBA skills to not notice they don't have them while running large databases.
Going more towards the home market. Office is far and away the best office suite. The NT Kernel is possible second to the Linux kernel in terms of complexity and features but it is head and shoulders above XNU (the OSX kernel). The Visual Studio compiler is bar none the best compiler on the market. I don't even like Microsoft and I don't think of them down where you are putting them.
I am the Apple customer you are talking about and I consider the better Windows machines. I'd consider Mickey D's to be something like JavaVM-OS (what runs on lots of clock radio type stuff through low end phones), or if you want to focus on systems where people interact with the VM something like Chrome operation system which offers nothing but a browser.
Same with AMD, they make good processors The 16 core AMD Opteron is a really interesting processor that allows you to run a simple simulation of a few thousands agents cheap. And the 8 core are only a little slower than a high end Xeon for much less. Just to show that do sell in higher end boxes like the HP ProBook 6565, the Samsung series 3, and for business HP Proliant D165,
I agree with your sales figures in today's market. The high end of the Windows consumer market is dead, dead as a doornail. Where I disagree is that is something intrinsic. I think that happened when Microsoft decided not to bring out the original vision for Longhorn (later Vista) as a higher end OS with XP owning the low end. Instead they constantly ended up pushing Vista down market first by remove two key features (WinFS and Palladium) and later with their "ready for Vista" approach. In other words I think Microsoft chased the low end of the market in both enterprise and consumer. And that's why they lost much high end.
But the main thing is that its been recent. This is not something that's been true for 10 years. If your negative assessment of Windows were true they wouldn't have been selling high end systems well 5 years ago.
I agree with the hardware upgrades though I don't think it would be quite so bad as the expectations change. Let me just add to the hardware costs you mentioned:
-- high quality touch screens
-- a hinge that allows the touch screen to move relative the keyboard, which is not a cheap part generally about $150
So we agree there. Now the thing is the sales of 30k exist because Windows consumers would rather buy a $500 PC than a $1000 PC even if the $1000 PC is much better. I'm talking about a situation where the $500 PC option (except for Linux or used) doesn't exist. Where Microsoft shifts the market. Those sales figures wouldn't apply.
Let me put it THIS way friend...if someone said they would sell the ultimate laptop for you
What is any possible alternative to one set of laws?
So you think Obama would have had to associate with Ayers during his Weather Underground days in order for the claim of association with an unrepentant terrorist to be true?
No. You were originally claiming there was some big scandal the media hadn't investigated. If it is just that Barack Obama and Bill Ayers are friends, that was investigated and verified.
. That association shouldn't reflect on my character, right?
No it should reflect on his character. And the Bill Ayers that Obama knew, the one he actually had anything to do with, was the Bill Ayers who won citizen of the year from the city of Chicago for his work in helping to rebuild and reform Chicago schools. A guy who is putting his talents to good use on the ground helping the poor of Chicago and making the world a better place. I think what it reflects is that Obama unlike a Sarah Palin tries to work with people not against. A trait he has demonstrated repeatedly as president.
Conversely for the people who make this attack it also reflects on their character. It shows that for all pretensions to be Christian they don't believe in forgiveness. They don't look for opportunities to build bridges but for opportunities to build walls. Bill Ayers retired from being a terrorist in 1972 and the organization he was involved in dissolved in 1975. When Sarah Palin raised this issue a 1/3 of a century had passed.
There is nothing there.
Had he been immediately arrested, he'd probably be in prison.
Probably not. You mentioned Charles Manson. The Manson women are all out of prison now. But Ayers might have spent a decade or more behind bars. Not getting caught by the enemy is part of being a soldier and bad things happen when you get caught by the enemy. Every soldier who returns from Afghanistan did so because they didn't get caught by the Taliban.
Riiiiight. If we knew after a couple reports, he must have known over 20 years of actually being there. Is our President really that dumb, dense and inattentive to what is going on around him? Was he that bad a judge of character? Again, I don't know about you, but I prefer that my elected officials not have long-standing close voluntary relationships with racists and anti-semites.
OK good. Well Mitt Romney was a Bishop in the Mormon church which was institutionally racist. So sorry, you don't get your wish both candidates have relationships with racists, even if one wanted to call Wright a racist which is a push and anti-Semite entirely inaccurate.
Of course, that also describes a type of person I definitely don't want as an elected official.
Understood. I don't want most Republicans as elected officials. But originally the claim was that the media had failed to uncover some secret truth. Not your personal preferences.
$99 pretty much represents the security vendor's (remember it isn't actually Microsoft running these keys) costs.
I think you are overestimating your difficulties you can just disable the protection or point to another signing authority which doesn't charge. There is no reason the FSF couldn't become a signing authority. Or just install any of the 1/2 dozen or so distributions that will have valid keys. Anyone who can't do that can't self support on Linux.
The question is should they have to? Personally, the answer is "NO". Microsoft should compete, and if they win it should be because they provide the better product.
This really has nothing to do with competing. It has to do with root kits. If it was about competing Microsoft would just embed copyright code right into the EFI designed only to work with the NT kernel and be done with it.
I think there is 2 issues which are very distinct:
a) Does a standing powerful bureaucracy lead to regulations being written by qualified individuals i.e. intelligent regulation in the grandparent post's words
b) Does a standing powerful bureaucracy lead to the best possible outcomes.
(a) is easy to answer, yes. (b) is much more complex. I agree with you that a standing powerful bureaucracy forms a triangle and that triangle becomes very hard to move or replace. This used to the norm prior to the 1980s in most industries, and still is the norm in heavily regulated utilities and the defense industry. It is absolutely the case that the bureaucracy begins to develop their own opinions separate from the voters, the legislature or industry; they in effect become an interest group within the Democracy. Teachers are an example where we have a standing bureaucracy that has an ideology of education often at odds with the majority population but has been semi-succesful in forcing their agenda as the actual implemented education policies in the USA.
Where I would disagree is thinking of it as "the problem" rather than one setup that leads to one set of positive and negative outcomes. I think on balance the positives outweigh the negatives. Particularly at a time like now where we have idealogical politicians balance can be very useful.
Dems outsource American jobs via giving them to illegals making 3 dollars an hour
Repubs - oursource American jobs via NAFTA giving them to dirrectly to people working in other countries making 3 dollars an hour
Since when? Agrabusines are a Redstate concern. The failure to crackdown on agrabusiness' use of illegals is Republicans not Democrats. Democrats would love to crack down hard on these jobs and give all Agrabusiness workers UFWA protection and higher wages. If there were only Democrats do you think any states would be right to work states? If there were only Democrats don't you think government unions would have the rights to have a union only rule for government contracting?
Both favor strong social controls, just so long as they are not aimed at their core constiuency
Agree. Though there is a key difference between using the tax system to discourage use and the criminal justice system.