Only on price though. Android runs terribly on low end smartphones and don't even have the full feature set of a top of the line android phone. Further, they're likely to be abandonded, perpetually running an outdated version of android until you ditch it. With the iPhone, even buying last gen you're getting most of the features of the top of the line. The WP7 Samsung Flash costs.99 on AT&T and offers the same exact user experince as a top of the line WP7 phone. So why is anyone ever choosing low end android phones? Because 1) the carriers are pushing them since they know they don't have to provide expensive upgradde support and will rope customers in for another contract since the phone will never be updated and 2) there's a lot of buzz around "Android" and people think even the low end phones will deliver the same experience, when what they get is a slow, feature-barren, "smart phone" that was abandonded by the manufacturer the second it shipped.
It might not be different, but it is a bad thing and consumers do suffer. Consumers go into a cellphone store and they buy an android phone, thinking they're buying into a certain level of quality or experience. But Android runs on some pretty craptacular phones and tablets these days. It's a complete crap shoot as to what kind of specifications and capabilities any given android phone has. Contrast this with the iPhone. As a consumer you know exactly what you're getting even if it's a last gen phone. Contrast this with Windows Phone. Even if you buy the lowest end windows phone or a last gen phone, it's going to have the same exact capabilities as the top of the line.
While it should be illegal for any patent licensing agreement to be covered by a NDA
Why do patent licence deals have to be public knowledge? I might not want my competitors to know what technology I'm using in my product.
seeing as we already know that the patents are bogus
No you don't. All you know know is what are in the B&N case. They may not be all patents. But in the end even those are in fact patents legally granted to MS, and no matter how "bogus" you consider them you can't just violate them outright and not expect to be sued.
Let me guess, YANAL, right? Save the legal conjecture for qualified individuals. I'm talking pure logic here. You're trying to tell me that at least 6 multi billion dollar corporations, some of which are much larger than Microsoft, have signed patent deals worth hundreds of millions over completely flimsy ridiculous patents that could easy be overturned by any court?
Tell you what, even, IF Microsoft "stole" research from every single one of those organizations, how exactly did they put it together? You think all the work from 6 disparate labs just fits together like a puzzle? And without doing a shred R&D work, Microsoft managed to become the biggest software company in the world? And despite publishing thousands of papers in peer reviewed journals, absolutely none of this research is coming back into the company?
Sounds to me like you're suffering from an acute case of cognitive dissonance. "I hate microsoft products. But microsoft does tons of original, publishable research that that computer science community at large finds valuable. Therefore that research couldn't possibly be used in the products I hate!"
I'm big on the Linux. Like it a lot. Yes, another linux nut.
Maybe it would help if Microsoft ever actually said which patents were being violated, and how. Have they?
They've been disclosed to any relevant parties. You think all the companies signing deals with MS have no clue what the patents are? No, they signed an NDA, saw the patents, and every one of them has decided to license the technologies rather than fight in court. MS certainly doesn't have to disclose them to the public just to appease some forum trolls.
Huh? This is exactly what the patent system is for. Microsoft developed some technology and filed a patent. They were granted that patent. They sell devices in the mobile sector that ostensibly use these patents. A competing product is taking advantage of these technologies without licensing them. Microsoft has entered into agreements with these companies to allow them to continue making money while paying their fair share for technology they are not otherwise supposed to use
I'm betting a good deal of those patents are likely stupid things that had been in other operating systems before MS copied and patented them.
Pure conjecture based on personal bias. Let's ask some multinational mega corporations who've actually seen the patents whether they think they're baseless and flimsy: Huawei, Wistron, General Dynamics, Itronix,Velocity Micro, Onkyo, Acer, Viewsonic, Quanta, Samsung, and now LG all have seen the patents and they all have come to the conclusion that the deal Microsoft is offering is fair. I suppose we'll take your uninformed opinion instead, though.
No, statistics is a very powerful tool that can provide deep insights and solutions to some otherwise impossible problems. Just because you (and most people) don't understand how to properly use them doesn't mean they're bullshit.
I think you're being pretty disengenuous... a clean install of Windows hardly takes 3 hours. The mean time I experience on a range of hardware is 45 minutes. After that it's installing any updates and transferring over the user profile from the old install. And I wouldn't absolve Ubuntu of error message issue during install. I had a laptop that would load the installer and then just dump me to a command prompt with no explaination. Turns out the installer didn't support the video card so I had to download a text based installer.
You did it wrong; you're not supposed to wipe your drive before the installation. You're supposed to start the installation in Windows, then follow along the install and choose a custom install. Never had a problem activating this way.
Why is that the worst part of it? I'd say a fanatical zealotry and an unwillingness to engage dissenting opinion is much worse. At least the shills provide rational, well thought out aruments and rebuttals.
No... that was a contribution. It was on topic and relevent, contained information someone interested in this flight simulator might find interesting (a link to the beta signup) and an opinion about the quality of the game. The only problem you have with this post is that it is positive toward a company you don't like.
You are the one getting argumentative, you are the one derailing the conversation, you are the one who is adding exactly 0 value to this discussion, and your stance boils down to an ad hominem attack. You look absolutely petty. So even if this person is being paid to say what he's saying, what you're doing is much much worse.
Actually the people crying shill in anonymous accounts about anyone with a dissenting opinion are becoming a regular pain in the ass. Why aren't you posting on your account?
You keep using this word "objectively" and I'm not sure you know what it means. We're talking about sound here.. something which is completely determined by the listener's personal preference. The opposite of "objectively". The only reason I'm arguing that older wood sounds better is because to my ear it sounds better, and the majority of violinists agree with me. There's a reason that most good violins, both hundreds of years old or made yesterday, are made from wood that has already been dead for hundreds of years. The $25 violins that sound like tin cans are made from cheap wood and cheap varnishes. But either way you can't possibly tell me there's any objectivity in this.
As wood ages it decomposes, warps, etc., and the "tonal qualities" of a violin would do the same.
A well kept violin will not decompose or warp. As wood ages, it also hardens, which allows it to resonate more when played. Further, the type of varnish applied to the wood plays an integral role in its sound, and that too can improve with age. In fact many new instruments are made from wood that's hundreds of years old.
Furthermore, I'd take a factory machined and produced violin over a hand-made one from a master any day.
So... how long have you been playing violin exactly? I've been playing violin 15 years and have studied with plenty of people who've been playing for life-times longer. I've never met anyone who would choose to play a cheap factory made violin. Constructing a violin is an art, not a science. You can program a computer to create a violin, but in my experience I have never played a violin that came from a factory that was even comparable to a hand made instrument. And I threw in China because all the terrible factory machined violins I've ever played happen to be from that country.
There's no reason a violin should be "worth" millions of dollars simply due to age/brand/rarity.
Age/brand/rarity are the reasons why almost everything has worth in the first place. Worth is all about perception. If I had millions of dollars, you bet I'd give it to play the violin I saw Jascha Heifetz play in black and white when I was a child. Of course that experience would be worth $0 to you, but that doesn't mean I'm somehow "wrong" for wanting to pay that much.
That would be a de facto standard, something IE6 imposed, and something I would imagine you had a problem with, since it went against the de jure standard other browsers tried to follow.
I don't really see why anything old has an excessive value beyond its use.
Oddly, the type of people who appreciate and create music and art are also the type of people who might value form over function.
For violins in particular, as wood ages its tonal qualities change. Therefore, older violins are more valuable than new violins because they sound better. Well... not necessarily better but they have a more desirable sound and warm.
More importantly, a violin made in a factory in china is going to sound like crap compared to a hand made violin by a skilled luthier, even if it is brand new. An old violin was most likely made with great skill and care, and taken care of through the ages. To play something that is centuries old with a rich history is an amazing experience. This is why, while the Stradivari violins might not necessarily sound better than a modern violin from a master luthier, it's worth millions of dollars more.
Um... you're one to talk about cherry picking arguments. Your argument started as "Microsoft is strong-arming all software developers to new platforms!" and after showing you that far and wide, current software supports Windows XP, your argument has transformed to "A small minority of recently released games do not support a particular version of Windows XP that was never well supported in the first place and has a minuscule install base." Yeah, I agree with this. But it's a far cry from your original argument and hardly evidence of nefarious doings on Microsoft's part.
You're acting like Windows XP was released 2 years ago, and we're all getting screwed because Microsoft released a new version so soon and is suddenly cutting support for the old. Windows XP was released 10 years ago. A decade. And it'll be supported for a few more years to come. It's incredible that it's still supported at all, but it's also completely expected that Microsoft will eventually move on from it. This includes not supporting DirectX forever on the platform. In 2001 were you complaining that DirectX 8.1 doesn't work in Windows 3.1 (released in 1992)? Of course not, so why are you complaining now?
Minecraft is a java game, that hardly counts.
What about the other 13 games on there? You said: "Maybe games from 2 years ago supported XP, but most of the games on the shelf now don't." This is clearly false. I give you a list of 14 of the top 15 games released in the last 6 months, and you have a problem with a single game that "doesn't count" in your view? Disingenuous.
Its a free market, as long as lots of people still use XP then software developers will target it, but its a cost/payoff balance.
Now you're getting it. There is no strong arming involved! People are adopting Windows 7 because they like it more. If they didn't, they'd be sticking with XP like they did when Vista was released.
But I don't buy it when they say they "couldn't" make Dx10/11 work on XP
Of course they could but why should they? Why are you acting like they owe you something, when they're providing 14 years of support for an OS they make no money on anymore? And how much did you pay for this again?
You going to back that up? Of course not, like pretty much everything you've said so far, it's completely baseless and unfounded
Of the top 15 PC games according to Gamespot, all of which were released this past 6 months, the following support Windows XP:
Batman: Arkham City
L.A. Noire
Skyrim
FIFA 12
LIMBO
Anno 2070
Trine 2
Saints Row: The Third
Minecraft
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
NBA 2K12
Bastion
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Fallout: New Vegas
The following games do not support Windows XP
Battlefield 3
Funny, that's about the only game I can find that doesn't support Windows XP. Seems to me if MS was strong-arming game devs to only support Windows 7 there would be a lot more.
I think at this point it's pretty clear your little conspiracy theory is a complete fairy tale. Come back with some evidence or an actual sound argument instead of hot air.
Slashdot Mirror
Only on price though. Android runs terribly on low end smartphones and don't even have the full feature set of a top of the line android phone. Further, they're likely to be abandonded, perpetually running an outdated version of android until you ditch it. With the iPhone, even buying last gen you're getting most of the features of the top of the line. The WP7 Samsung Flash costs .99 on AT&T and offers the same exact user experince as a top of the line WP7 phone. So why is anyone ever choosing low end android phones? Because 1) the carriers are pushing them since they know they don't have to provide expensive upgradde support and will rope customers in for another contract since the phone will never be updated and 2) there's a lot of buzz around "Android" and people think even the low end phones will deliver the same experience, when what they get is a slow, feature-barren, "smart phone" that was abandonded by the manufacturer the second it shipped.
It might not be different, but it is a bad thing and consumers do suffer. Consumers go into a cellphone store and they buy an android phone, thinking they're buying into a certain level of quality or experience. But Android runs on some pretty craptacular phones and tablets these days. It's a complete crap shoot as to what kind of specifications and capabilities any given android phone has. Contrast this with the iPhone. As a consumer you know exactly what you're getting even if it's a last gen phone. Contrast this with Windows Phone. Even if you buy the lowest end windows phone or a last gen phone, it's going to have the same exact capabilities as the top of the line.
While it should be illegal for any patent licensing agreement to be covered by a NDA
Why do patent licence deals have to be public knowledge? I might not want my competitors to know what technology I'm using in my product.
seeing as we already know that the patents are bogus
No you don't. All you know know is what are in the B&N case. They may not be all patents. But in the end even those are in fact patents legally granted to MS, and no matter how "bogus" you consider them you can't just violate them outright and not expect to be sued.
consequently there is no legal basis for MS' NDA.
Let me guess, YANAL, right? Save the legal conjecture for qualified individuals. I'm talking pure logic here. You're trying to tell me that at least 6 multi billion dollar corporations, some of which are much larger than Microsoft, have signed patent deals worth hundreds of millions over completely flimsy ridiculous patents that could easy be overturned by any court?
Tell you what, even, IF Microsoft "stole" research from every single one of those organizations, how exactly did they put it together? You think all the work from 6 disparate labs just fits together like a puzzle? And without doing a shred R&D work, Microsoft managed to become the biggest software company in the world? And despite publishing thousands of papers in peer reviewed journals, absolutely none of this research is coming back into the company?
Sounds to me like you're suffering from an acute case of cognitive dissonance. "I hate microsoft products. But microsoft does tons of original, publishable research that that computer science community at large finds valuable. Therefore that research couldn't possibly be used in the products I hate!"
I'm big on the Linux. Like it a lot. Yes, another linux nut.
Yes... another Linux nut indeed.
Maybe it would help if Microsoft ever actually said which patents were being violated, and how. Have they?
They've been disclosed to any relevant parties. You think all the companies signing deals with MS have no clue what the patents are? No, they signed an NDA, saw the patents, and every one of them has decided to license the technologies rather than fight in court. MS certainly doesn't have to disclose them to the public just to appease some forum trolls.
And people think the patent system isn't broken.
Huh? This is exactly what the patent system is for. Microsoft developed some technology and filed a patent. They were granted that patent. They sell devices in the mobile sector that ostensibly use these patents. A competing product is taking advantage of these technologies without licensing them. Microsoft has entered into agreements with these companies to allow them to continue making money while paying their fair share for technology they are not otherwise supposed to use
I'm betting a good deal of those patents are likely stupid things that had been in other operating systems before MS copied and patented them.
Pure conjecture based on personal bias. Let's ask some multinational mega corporations who've actually seen the patents whether they think they're baseless and flimsy: Huawei, Wistron, General Dynamics, Itronix,Velocity Micro, Onkyo, Acer, Viewsonic, Quanta, Samsung, and now LG all have seen the patents and they all have come to the conclusion that the deal Microsoft is offering is fair. I suppose we'll take your uninformed opinion instead, though.
So all of Microsoft's products just appear out of thin air?
unless you pay first, and sign an NDA.
That's not true at all. The NDA is required, but not paying up front.
No, statistics is a very powerful tool that can provide deep insights and solutions to some otherwise impossible problems. Just because you (and most people) don't understand how to properly use them doesn't mean they're bullshit.
I'm not sure you understand the concept of statistics.
I think you're being pretty disengenuous... a clean install of Windows hardly takes 3 hours. The mean time I experience on a range of hardware is 45 minutes. After that it's installing any updates and transferring over the user profile from the old install. And I wouldn't absolve Ubuntu of error message issue during install. I had a laptop that would load the installer and then just dump me to a command prompt with no explaination. Turns out the installer didn't support the video card so I had to download a text based installer.
You did it wrong; you're not supposed to wipe your drive before the installation. You're supposed to start the installation in Windows, then follow along the install and choose a custom install. Never had a problem activating this way.
Why is that the worst part of it? I'd say a fanatical zealotry and an unwillingness to engage dissenting opinion is much worse. At least the shills provide rational, well thought out aruments and rebuttals.
What? I'm attacking the AC. Not the OP. Did you miss the trail?
No... that was a contribution. It was on topic and relevent, contained information someone interested in this flight simulator might find interesting (a link to the beta signup) and an opinion about the quality of the game. The only problem you have with this post is that it is positive toward a company you don't like.
You are the one getting argumentative, you are the one derailing the conversation, you are the one who is adding exactly 0 value to this discussion, and your stance boils down to an ad hominem attack. You look absolutely petty. So even if this person is being paid to say what he's saying, what you're doing is much much worse.
Actually the people crying shill in anonymous accounts about anyone with a dissenting opinion are becoming a regular pain in the ass. Why aren't you posting on your account?
You keep using this word "objectively" and I'm not sure you know what it means. We're talking about sound here.. something which is completely determined by the listener's personal preference. The opposite of "objectively". The only reason I'm arguing that older wood sounds better is because to my ear it sounds better, and the majority of violinists agree with me. There's a reason that most good violins, both hundreds of years old or made yesterday, are made from wood that has already been dead for hundreds of years. The $25 violins that sound like tin cans are made from cheap wood and cheap varnishes. But either way you can't possibly tell me there's any objectivity in this.
As wood ages it decomposes, warps, etc., and the "tonal qualities" of a violin would do the same.
A well kept violin will not decompose or warp. As wood ages, it also hardens, which allows it to resonate more when played. Further, the type of varnish applied to the wood plays an integral role in its sound, and that too can improve with age. In fact many new instruments are made from wood that's hundreds of years old.
Furthermore, I'd take a factory machined and produced violin over a hand-made one from a master any day.
So... how long have you been playing violin exactly? I've been playing violin 15 years and have studied with plenty of people who've been playing for life-times longer. I've never met anyone who would choose to play a cheap factory made violin. Constructing a violin is an art, not a science. You can program a computer to create a violin, but in my experience I have never played a violin that came from a factory that was even comparable to a hand made instrument. And I threw in China because all the terrible factory machined violins I've ever played happen to be from that country.
There's no reason a violin should be "worth" millions of dollars simply due to age/brand/rarity.
Age/brand/rarity are the reasons why almost everything has worth in the first place. Worth is all about perception. If I had millions of dollars, you bet I'd give it to play the violin I saw Jascha Heifetz play in black and white when I was a child. Of course that experience would be worth $0 to you, but that doesn't mean I'm somehow "wrong" for wanting to pay that much.
From that link, second paragraph in BOLD:
IE versions 3, 4, 5.x and 6, along with IE/Mac, were all more standards compliant than the Netscape releases of that era.
You realize that an article consists of more than a title. I know it's hard, but you have to read the whole thing to understand it.
A standard is what the majority think it is
That would be a de facto standard, something IE6 imposed, and something I would imagine you had a problem with, since it went against the de jure standard other browsers tried to follow.
Adoption of the draft is hardly uniform and complete among the other browsers. So there really is not de facto HTML5 standard.
I don't really see why anything old has an excessive value beyond its use.
Oddly, the type of people who appreciate and create music and art are also the type of people who might value form over function.
For violins in particular, as wood ages its tonal qualities change. Therefore, older violins are more valuable than new violins because they sound better. Well... not necessarily better but they have a more desirable sound and warm.
More importantly, a violin made in a factory in china is going to sound like crap compared to a hand made violin by a skilled luthier, even if it is brand new. An old violin was most likely made with great skill and care, and taken care of through the ages. To play something that is centuries old with a rich history is an amazing experience. This is why, while the Stradivari violins might not necessarily sound better than a modern violin from a master luthier, it's worth millions of dollars more.
Nice how you cherry-pick and ignore my arguments.
Um... you're one to talk about cherry picking arguments. Your argument started as "Microsoft is strong-arming all software developers to new platforms!" and after showing you that far and wide, current software supports Windows XP, your argument has transformed to "A small minority of recently released games do not support a particular version of Windows XP that was never well supported in the first place and has a minuscule install base." Yeah, I agree with this. But it's a far cry from your original argument and hardly evidence of nefarious doings on Microsoft's part.
You're acting like Windows XP was released 2 years ago, and we're all getting screwed because Microsoft released a new version so soon and is suddenly cutting support for the old. Windows XP was released 10 years ago. A decade. And it'll be supported for a few more years to come. It's incredible that it's still supported at all, but it's also completely expected that Microsoft will eventually move on from it. This includes not supporting DirectX forever on the platform. In 2001 were you complaining that DirectX 8.1 doesn't work in Windows 3.1 (released in 1992)? Of course not, so why are you complaining now?
Minecraft is a java game, that hardly counts.
What about the other 13 games on there? You said: "Maybe games from 2 years ago supported XP, but most of the games on the shelf now don't." This is clearly false. I give you a list of 14 of the top 15 games released in the last 6 months, and you have a problem with a single game that "doesn't count" in your view? Disingenuous.
Its a free market, as long as lots of people still use XP then software developers will target it, but its a cost/payoff balance.
Now you're getting it. There is no strong arming involved! People are adopting Windows 7 because they like it more. If they didn't, they'd be sticking with XP like they did when Vista was released.
But I don't buy it when they say they "couldn't" make Dx10/11 work on XP
Of course they could but why should they? Why are you acting like they owe you something, when they're providing 14 years of support for an OS they make no money on anymore? And how much did you pay for this again?
most of the games on the shelf now don't.
You going to back that up? Of course not, like pretty much everything you've said so far, it's completely baseless and unfounded
Of the top 15 PC games according to Gamespot, all of which were released this past 6 months, the following support Windows XP:
The following games do not support Windows XP
Funny, that's about the only game I can find that doesn't support Windows XP. Seems to me if MS was strong-arming game devs to only support Windows 7 there would be a lot more.
I think at this point it's pretty clear your little conspiracy theory is a complete fairy tale. Come back with some evidence or an actual sound argument instead of hot air.