"Government regulation of an industry increases the cost of entry for new competition."
No, the wrong kind of government regulation - the kind we have now, may do that, but the proper kind - anti-trust (against corporations owning corporations, ala conglomerates), anti-monopoly and anti-oligopoly, will do the opposite. It has been the failure of government to maintain competition - i. e., the best and only effective kind of micro-economic regulation, along with government's failure to maintain fair international trade relations, that has devastated U.S. industry, employment, tax revenues etc. and made "stimulating" this broken system (ala Bush & Obama, Rep & Dem) an exercise in futility that only worsens the situation.
"The problem is, at 9 years old, XP won't be supported for very much longer." ---
I rather think that the problem is MS wanting to change for change's sake and, given the number of questionable features and aspects of Windows and apps,, they can keep changing until the end of time - each time creating profits for themselves and headaches for users. As digital devices don't tend to "wear out" like mechanical ones, planned obsolescence and repair parts (one staple of the auto industry along with trend merchandising) are no-goes, so their only way to keep making profits is by changing and forcing that change on all users. Monopoly (or near monopoly) makes this relatively easy from MS's standpoint. ---
Several aspects stand out. 1) MS's human factors design is a mess that can never be truly mastered due to all the different (and redundant) hiding places of (and procedures for) accessing important functions. 2) Its "metaphor", the desktop, exhausts its point-of-sale charm somewhere between the first and second level of operation - and becomes a hindrance in organizing serious work thereafter. 3) It has a default organization that clumps things of all levels of abstraction together as indistinguishable objects. What is intended to make things easy for the novice, only adds a complete overlay of poorly factored idiosyncratic mumbo-jumbo that almost insures that a novice will never learn what's really going on (imaging a car that made you hit "Start" to "Stop" it - and its all downhill from there). ---
Changing for the sake of change - especially of things complex, only amplifies the "negative transfer of learning" wherein mastery is easier for a novice than an experienced user due to the latter's interfering previous associations for the same or similar objects or actions. Along those same lines, that which is learned first is learned and retained best - regardless of your GQ (geek quotient), and that, together with the idiosyncrasies, is the scientific reason why it is so hard for experienced hands to give up XP for W7. It is a reasonable reaction. ---
If it's the end of the road for XP support, I am tempted to take my XP offline as is, with all its stability, its operational legacy software and data (some very old, but important, that was difficult to get running under XP and probably impossible under Vista or W7) and dual-boot a Linux distro like Ubuntu for web work in future. It is, finally, coming up to speed for conventional uses. I can reach back from Linux for office, text and binary files, reboot for older legacy operations when necessary, and be done with the endless security nightmare and updates that are MS. I'll still have an imitation of a not-so-good GUI interface, but those, like our political candidates, are my only choices.
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"Government regulation of an industry increases the cost of entry for new competition."
No, the wrong kind of government regulation - the kind we have now, may do that, but the proper kind - anti-trust (against corporations owning corporations, ala conglomerates), anti-monopoly and anti-oligopoly, will do the opposite. It has been the failure of government to maintain competition - i. e., the best and only effective kind of micro-economic regulation, along with government's failure to maintain fair international trade relations, that has devastated U.S. industry, employment, tax revenues etc. and made "stimulating" this broken system (ala Bush & Obama, Rep & Dem) an exercise in futility that only worsens the situation.
"The problem is, at 9 years old, XP won't be supported for very much longer." --- I rather think that the problem is MS wanting to change for change's sake and, given the number of questionable features and aspects of Windows and apps,, they can keep changing until the end of time - each time creating profits for themselves and headaches for users. As digital devices don't tend to "wear out" like mechanical ones, planned obsolescence and repair parts (one staple of the auto industry along with trend merchandising) are no-goes, so their only way to keep making profits is by changing and forcing that change on all users. Monopoly (or near monopoly) makes this relatively easy from MS's standpoint. --- Several aspects stand out. 1) MS's human factors design is a mess that can never be truly mastered due to all the different (and redundant) hiding places of (and procedures for) accessing important functions. 2) Its "metaphor", the desktop, exhausts its point-of-sale charm somewhere between the first and second level of operation - and becomes a hindrance in organizing serious work thereafter. 3) It has a default organization that clumps things of all levels of abstraction together as indistinguishable objects. What is intended to make things easy for the novice, only adds a complete overlay of poorly factored idiosyncratic mumbo-jumbo that almost insures that a novice will never learn what's really going on (imaging a car that made you hit "Start" to "Stop" it - and its all downhill from there). --- Changing for the sake of change - especially of things complex, only amplifies the "negative transfer of learning" wherein mastery is easier for a novice than an experienced user due to the latter's interfering previous associations for the same or similar objects or actions. Along those same lines, that which is learned first is learned and retained best - regardless of your GQ (geek quotient), and that, together with the idiosyncrasies, is the scientific reason why it is so hard for experienced hands to give up XP for W7. It is a reasonable reaction. --- If it's the end of the road for XP support, I am tempted to take my XP offline as is, with all its stability, its operational legacy software and data (some very old, but important, that was difficult to get running under XP and probably impossible under Vista or W7) and dual-boot a Linux distro like Ubuntu for web work in future. It is, finally, coming up to speed for conventional uses. I can reach back from Linux for office, text and binary files, reboot for older legacy operations when necessary, and be done with the endless security nightmare and updates that are MS. I'll still have an imitation of a not-so-good GUI interface, but those, like our political candidates, are my only choices.