Boy, wouldn't it be great if that problem went. Like if there is some managed solution provider out there who can do data backups, saves money, never have to see them etc.
It smells like a cloud advertisement. Why have data hosted locally if you they are going to steal it anyways... etc.
Great now we can have more terminations on site for anyone looking for another job or having someone call your boss for a reference. The excuse is a bad worker has access to data. Scared employees who can't leave also will work for less too and be willing to put up with more.
I thought only a few companies did this but it is catching on as IT workers are cost centers who bring little value to the bottom line anyway if you ask HR who makes such abusive policies.
They make money by having certain gifts and seeds for sale with small micropayments. This is just greed and if it were not for the kids I would not play. Now I know why people play less for these annoying games.
Actually KIA is doing quite well in that with the Optima series and the Hyundai Genesis. The difference is when the founder of Kia died over 10 years ago his son focuses on quality instead of volume and built for good cars that rivaled the Japanese. Ford is better as well.
Metro sucks even as a Tablet. I installed it on my laptop and gave it a wirl with the latest preview. As an OS it is supperior to Windows and I enjoy the quick start time and features. Just the gui that rivals Windows 1.0 circa 1985.
The Metro version of IE sucks, can't do tabs, can't cut and paste. Even the IOS 1.0 phone that came out in 2007 had more functionality in it. Andriod is buggy as hell but has more features. An IPAD for example has tabs for Safari, can cut and paste, its Itunes music store has great functionality in it, while the Windows 8 media player and store feel like an empty shell with little to no features.
I agree. Unless Metro 2.0 in Windows 9 is much much better I see no point in buying such a device which is a shame as it has great portability and kernel features compared to Windows 7. It is Windows 7 for me.
Gates and Balmer own 60% of the company so they can't be fired.
However, Gates is selling his shares gradually to pay for his foundation. Sooner or later when he and Balmer own 49% of the company you can bet a new board of directors and a CEO will follow.
I really do feel Balmer is a terrible CEO. He has no vision and Gates has to keep advising him on what to do with things like picking METRO. Gates maybe evil in terms of business practices but he knew how to market and get his products to customers and control the whole IT industry.
Vista never would have been delayed and would be more like Windows 7. Corporations would not have learned the 10 year life cycle+ and we would have got rid of XP and IE 6 a long time ago if Gates were at the helm. It is just amazing if you think about how much we feared them 10 years ago to what they are now.
They are not taking any new markets and have just been keeping their head above water and the once dead Apple is eating away at their marketshare. Sharepoint is the only new thing I can think of that has changed since Gates left. That is it.
However, it is still crappy and not appropriate for consumer portable devices that are not stagnant like a desktop PC. AD blows greatly. It is static, not event driven, and assumes all devices are PCs that sit for a lifetime in one location managed by a IT around the clock.
Windows 8 has a cool feature that can upload all your policy including corporate settings by logging in with your exchange corporate email address. Your settings from work and even your corporate apps get automatically uploaded to your device. When you are done you log out and log back in with your hotmail user id and the corporate software is hidden and your regularly policy is uploaded and your consumer apps.
I think this could be part of AD replacement or an AD 2.0. which is much needed. Salespeople and those on the road do not need AD nor do they need to wait for IT to just plug in a stupid printer at the hotel, to get AV updates, or any of the other things that require Administrative access.
If it were not for METRO I would say Windows 8 has more awesome features. Windows 2 go is one of them.
If I recall its the pocket version of Office too which is crippled and not the full thing.
And another action of stupidity is MS is making a port of it to the IPAD so you do not have to buy a Windows 8 device.... insert palm on forehead.
Metro all started with a meeting with Bill Gates into 2 visions of the future. One with MS's discontinued drawing device (forgot name), and the other was a METRO prototype. Bill told Balmer to stop being a wuss and make a decision and stick with METRO as MS can upsell the bundles with Office.
Now that is broken.
However, in truth I think AD really does blow. It is static and assumes all devices are on the lan and are not portable. What if it is a laptop that wakes up in a different office? What if it is a salesmen not on the lan etc?
Windows 8 user accounts are tied to your hotmal account or an exchange server. I think this should replace Active Directory. You can buy your own tablet and log on with your corporate email address and your desktop and apps get uploaded to your device. When you are tired of corporate control and done for the day you log off and log back in with your hotmail account and your consumer settings get uploaded.
I love a lot about Windows 8 with features like I described above, if it were not the that annoying Metro UI. Cheers Windows 9 will fix it with a more thought of GUI.
No respectable business will buy a Windows 8 device.
I hate how some of us who were proponents of new technology turned into the grandma of Luddites as witnesses by the XP loyalists on here. Windows 7 will be a 10 year OS that we will be cursing and praising in 2020. Mark my words. Corporations love being cheap and reduced their lifecycles from 3- 4 years to 5-7 years, and now 10+ years is considered acceptable.
It really sucks making websites that support everything from new to 10 years old browsers, but the corporations are the ones to hold back.
Where does that leave MS? A rock and a hard place. The next CEO after Balmer will have quite a challenging job and I do not know if MS can recover from it. I never would have dreamed Apple would overtake them but they are more powerful and have done so with consumers and by the end of the decade maybe making inroads in corporate America too. No one likes to support 10 year old software. It just is so cheap and risk free to do so.
You haven't seen nothing if you played Farmville on Facebook.
People kept bugging me so I decided after a year and half to log in. The ads pop up and you MUST CLICK ON THEM and there is no mimimize or close button. The whole game freezes up and you have to visit Bubbletown or whatever crap, then exit and go back. The Jaded Chinese ad on is the worse as you must setup a game then click cancel and go back and you can't play at all unless you visit every full page ad. It is INSANE.
Now I know why the adults stopped playing it, and my step kids are the only ones who see no problem doing this if they want to send me gifts etc. Stupid Metrics is actually costing Zangya more money as some jerk probably would be fired if not enough people clicked on the ads. So he made it manditory and now people rare quiting.... ok end of the rant there but this is become the future. I fear within a year or two our internet browsers will stop and a commercial will play just like TV unless you pay them $200 a month for the premium service of course. They are already putting in rogue DNS servers that inject ads. With the death of flash and more people using HTML 5 capable browsers I can see this happening and geeks configuring their own DNS servers to get around this.
Its not immaturity. It is sexual harassment, and yes it is a big deal for children around.
The term lawyers drool over is hostile work environment. A slick lawyer can use this clip in a future lawsuit claiming MS not only condones this type of misogynistic behavior against women but there whole environment breeds it! Look...
The supreme court even went far enough to say the company is liable for what happens outside work hours with employees out of the office which is why they want to monitor your facebook account to see if there is a liability.
You should be shocked at lawyers and liabilities a business or individual has in society rather than using a naughty word.
I used to work at an amusement park and we had real police. You can hire them out from the city at an expensive price.
Now I know where all that money goes when I see the price of a mac. I think its good that there are blue shirts abound compared to everyone else who just focuses on cutting cost and having one entry level guy do the work of 3 people etc.
Microsoft, love them or loathe them used to have great marketing when Bill Gates was CEO in the 1990s and hired the same PR advertising agencies that Nike and others used. There is just no vision in this post XP era at Microsoft.
Micky get back to work getting IE 6 to function on the big bosses IPOD! Get XP on there!!
In a more serious note it still is your fault if you od not have a great IT infrastructure. I had this debate with another slashdotter where he attacked the person as incompetent because his boss did not want to pay $900 for a backup system for 1million dollars worth of data.
His response was, well he agreed it was fine and took the job right? He didn't sell himself, and surely he didn't quit if he was worth his fault so he was just as part of the problem.
If you suggested to management to use the cloud then it is your fault as the I.T. guy to put the risk in one basket so to speak when it fails. If you are not part of the group that makes decisions then Micky I suggest you look elsewhere for work. You are not respected and any IT manager worth his or her salt listens and has meetings with all IT all the way down to helpdesk to gain input before making critical decisions. There are many corporations who still feel IT has no value and is just a cost center. Now is the time prove otherwise and if you have more than 3 years experience you can leave and let some other schmuck out of college deal with this.
You can rent or purchase 3,000 bots for like $10 on the internet.
If you are a Russian Mobfia guy who can be profitable with just a few hundred credit card numbers this is a no brainer. You can make millions and only hire some russian CS student for a few hundred dollars to use the bot net to launch 300 ip's and viola! Instant millions.
This is pretty serious and the profit potential is too large to ignore.
Putting an authentication server/proxy between the internet and the database is an excellent line of defense. I should say not perfect but unless your a very small mom and pop shop who uses an ISP to host your site on one machine for all databases this is essential and could avoid this kind of attack and you have another machine to check for SQL insertions too.
To avoid having your db serve live web content without an authentication server in between. It costs more money and most companies staring out use an ISP with a single server with everything but that increases your chances of being hacked exponentially.
Sure you can appease them by buying their product.
In the real world people have jobs to do and things that need to get done. Companies are happy to be able to help in exchange for profit. It is those evil companies that make your coffee at Starbucks, the car you drive, and other things. Sure it forces you to work in order to barter with money but that is life. It ensures everyone is responsible so we can all exist as a society and not starve.
I just do not see how this is evil and they are being rewarded for meeting the needs of society by selling proprietary software that people are willing to pay for. Do not like it? Then do not buy it. Write your own or buy a cheap tablet like poor people use to browse the net etc.
If a company makes crap they go out of business as a competitor will do a better job. It all balances out as long as we do nothing to interfere as Milton Friedman a world famous economist argued.
My aunt bought a new mac a week ago and was furious. She used Photoshop CS 4 and a few other Adobe products that were not even compatible in Lion! These were $700 packages too! She bought them in 2008 and were only 3.5 years old.
That is crazy and she was so angry she almost returned them and went with a PC as the new CS 6 ones would be compatible for 10+ years as long as Windows 7 keeps running until 2020 etc.
Today people just wont leave that POS XP. Yes, XP was a great version of Windows in its day in 2001 though had issues. Today it is terrible but it still is running and most IT departments and people on a budget plan to keep running it until 2014. It just works and wont die. Flashback was another issue I became mad at for Apple (even though I am not a mac user). The reason was is that Java was patched with recent versions of MacOSX but Apple left them out in the cold. no updates and of course these users say they do not run anti virus software with a smile.
That is borderline negligent. MS still updates XP for security even if they no longer do active development with it nor port modern browsers to the dying platform anymore.
It may not be the best but MS does tons of R&D to make it easy and generally reliable. Corporations love AD and all the tools that reduced IT costs significantly and reduced IT support from 70 to 10 people. It is not just software that is keeping businesses in and unlike Kerbos it is a full implementation. That is what paid software can buy and yes they love it.
You wont see shit like gnome-shell where you can not even minimize Windows. Metro looks pretty damn bad I do admit so I will make an exception with that if MS does not improve it anymore before Windows 8 does gold. At least the desktop is still there as a Metro app. Maybe even relent my point and opinion on this.
Macs are popular too with anti PC folks who hate Windows and just need Office and non corporate apps. In 10 years we will see what happens and if Citrix and virtualization will run IE 6 and other other win32 apps like rally runs old as/400 and mainframe apps of old. If that takes off then it will give corporate customers a reason to leave Windows. My hunch is they wont go with Linux as it will never be mature enough or ready with well R&D testing for the desktop due to things like AD and device drivers etc. It has to just work. Andriod and MacOSX will be interesting if it gains more of a foothold and can run on desktops.
But think about this? What about a users freedom to use their pc for whatever they want? What if the users boss needs that report done? What if the boss expects it for a marketing presentation in Adobe's.folio format so he can send it be printed out to clients?
What about the freedom of a business to use statistical analysis quickly to find defects in certain manufacturing plants?
They do not care about freedom and think you are a nutcase if you ranted like RMS. Just get it done or they will find someone else who will. That black box to them is not some blackbox once you use the software to get the job done. You are free to use Linux to tinker and learn. However, the market prefers to turn something on and have it work.
You could also really tinker with the old school Jaguars when they first came out. Everyone who was not an automobile expert HATED THEM and regarded them as trash! The enthusiasts claim they were so much better and real sport cars etc.
But a user regards this as low quality. Someone like my ex assumed Vista was the best thing ever because she saw me fighting a new installation of Ubuntu all the time tinkering trying to learn php and mysql stuff etc and she shook her head.
But why does Windows meet their needs? It works, users do not need to be retrained, it has a rich development environment that they are willing to pay for etc. That is the point. Why is paid software evil, when it is more evil to deny someone the right to pay for something they need?
Windows just works even if you hate it and doesn't fulfill your needs it does for the average secretary and office worker as well as the average Joe. Some users who hate Windows based PCs are responding by the free market by buying IPads and smartphones to do facebook and browsing the web. So yes Windows not being great is costing customers and that is a good thing if you hate Microsoft right?
This stuff can't all be free and be just as good for everyone. I am not saying this as a troll, but am serious as the needs to have all device drivers and software work for all people of different needs is a daunting task. I constructed a very poorly sentence in that I meant linux has not been made with zero contributions from corporations and paid developers since it was very very tiny in the 1990s and this would not work today. Redhat donates a ton of code as does IBM to get it to even work at all in modern servers. FreeBSD does work too with much less contributions but it is not scaling or supporting the hardware as well as linux because of players like SGI and IBM.
Windows is much better than it was simply because people demanded it. I just do not see the economics of using 100% free software for everything and expect customers both consumer and business to be served.... and before I get modded down or repudded as someone misinterpreting RMS I am just claiming his beliefs and repeating his rants. Yes he thinks paying for software is evil (unless it is support only for GNU) and even free is not good enough if it is not open source. Look up his writings? To me I see good in the other end of the spectrum for the reasons I outlined above. Yes software developers have to make it closed source to prevent piracy and their IP and patent liability etc.
You go on saying how they just work and mention, well they work other than I had to do x, and y.
That is what I do with my aging POS laptop. That means they are no different in quality. HP and Dell typically last longer if you buy the business line. Notice I said typically:-)
Still for the cost of a Macbook air I can get an AMD ultrabook for $400 at Walmart. What if it breaks? Buy another one and I still save money. My time is worth it to go down I guess as I use backups in clouds for My Doc folders.
This was in November of 2010. So it came down to the cheapest iMac 20 inch, 4 gigs of ram, 1 tb hd, and an ATI 5770.
The asus with a 23 inch monitor with high contrast also supported HDMI 1080p, 8 gigs of ram, tb hd, and an ATI 5750. Total with that + powerline Ethernet was $1150 after taxes. I got 4 gigs more ram too. Compared to the $2000 iMac with all the software purchased. I do admit I already had a license for Office but if you are a PC person that is the expense you pay for switching platforms.
So I saved A TON! I do admit I have no Firewire or wifi and a slower version of that same video card. In addition I had to buy an additional gaming keyboard and high res gaming mouse as I wanted top of the line quality. If something breaks I can fix as I am an advanced user and not a neophyte with tons of money who just wants to open it and have it work.
Maybe my time is not worth it to save $1000 like some of you folks? But that is what I am worth as is the vast majority of people. If I were an executive or graphics artist that would be different as I would call Apple Store and pick it up and get back to work and actually use all of that.
There is a big difference in what you get and Apple does not offer value even if I did have the need for high resolution video editing that would justify the firewire support as an example.
Too bad they cost so damn much. I almost purchased a $1699 iMac about a year ago, but couldn't justify the cost with the wife. I got a PC instead as I would need to buy the Mac version of Office and then buy Windows to put on it, etc. I was looking at $2100! Or I could pirate Windows, not get updates as a result and be paying how much for the mac since I would be running Windows so I can edit my resume?
Unless you owe no student loans are are above average income in the top 25% it doesn't make sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Boy, wouldn't it be great if that problem went. Like if there is some managed solution provider out there who can do data backups, saves money, never have to see them etc.
It smells like a cloud advertisement. Why have data hosted locally if you they are going to steal it anyways ... etc.
Great now we can have more terminations on site for anyone looking for another job or having someone call your boss for a reference. The excuse is a bad worker has access to data. Scared employees who can't leave also will work for less too and be willing to put up with more.
I thought only a few companies did this but it is catching on as IT workers are cost centers who bring little value to the bottom line anyway if you ask HR who makes such abusive policies.
They make money by having certain gifts and seeds for sale with small micropayments. This is just greed and if it were not for the kids I would not play. Now I know why people play less for these annoying games.
Actually KIA is doing quite well in that with the Optima series and the Hyundai Genesis. The difference is when the founder of Kia died over 10 years ago his son focuses on quality instead of volume and built for good cars that rivaled the Japanese. Ford is better as well.
Metro sucks even as a Tablet. I installed it on my laptop and gave it a wirl with the latest preview. As an OS it is supperior to Windows and I enjoy the quick start time and features. Just the gui that rivals Windows 1.0 circa 1985.
The Metro version of IE sucks, can't do tabs, can't cut and paste. Even the IOS 1.0 phone that came out in 2007 had more functionality in it. Andriod is buggy as hell but has more features. An IPAD for example has tabs for Safari, can cut and paste, its Itunes music store has great functionality in it, while the Windows 8 media player and store feel like an empty shell with little to no features.
I agree. Unless Metro 2.0 in Windows 9 is much much better I see no point in buying such a device which is a shame as it has great portability and kernel features compared to Windows 7. It is Windows 7 for me.
Gates and Balmer own 60% of the company so they can't be fired.
However, Gates is selling his shares gradually to pay for his foundation. Sooner or later when he and Balmer own 49% of the company you can bet a new board of directors and a CEO will follow.
I really do feel Balmer is a terrible CEO. He has no vision and Gates has to keep advising him on what to do with things like picking METRO. Gates maybe evil in terms of business practices but he knew how to market and get his products to customers and control the whole IT industry.
Vista never would have been delayed and would be more like Windows 7. Corporations would not have learned the 10 year life cycle+ and we would have got rid of XP and IE 6 a long time ago if Gates were at the helm. It is just amazing if you think about how much we feared them 10 years ago to what they are now.
They are not taking any new markets and have just been keeping their head above water and the once dead Apple is eating away at their marketshare. Sharepoint is the only new thing I can think of that has changed since Gates left. That is it.
Windows 8 tablets that are x86 do support AD.
However, it is still crappy and not appropriate for consumer portable devices that are not stagnant like a desktop PC. AD blows greatly. It is static, not event driven, and assumes all devices are PCs that sit for a lifetime in one location managed by a IT around the clock.
Windows 8 has a cool feature that can upload all your policy including corporate settings by logging in with your exchange corporate email address. Your settings from work and even your corporate apps get automatically uploaded to your device. When you are done you log out and log back in with your hotmail user id and the corporate software is hidden and your regularly policy is uploaded and your consumer apps.
I think this could be part of AD replacement or an AD 2.0. which is much needed. Salespeople and those on the road do not need AD nor do they need to wait for IT to just plug in a stupid printer at the hotel, to get AV updates, or any of the other things that require Administrative access.
If it were not for METRO I would say Windows 8 has more awesome features. Windows 2 go is one of them.
If I recall its the pocket version of Office too which is crippled and not the full thing.
And another action of stupidity is MS is making a port of it to the IPAD so you do not have to buy a Windows 8 device. ... insert palm on forehead.
Metro all started with a meeting with Bill Gates into 2 visions of the future. One with MS's discontinued drawing device (forgot name), and the other was a METRO prototype. Bill told Balmer to stop being a wuss and make a decision and stick with METRO as MS can upsell the bundles with Office.
Now that is broken.
However, in truth I think AD really does blow. It is static and assumes all devices are on the lan and are not portable. What if it is a laptop that wakes up in a different office? What if it is a salesmen not on the lan etc?
Windows 8 user accounts are tied to your hotmal account or an exchange server. I think this should replace Active Directory. You can buy your own tablet and log on with your corporate email address and your desktop and apps get uploaded to your device. When you are tired of corporate control and done for the day you log off and log back in with your hotmail account and your consumer settings get uploaded.
I love a lot about Windows 8 with features like I described above, if it were not the that annoying Metro UI. Cheers Windows 9 will fix it with a more thought of GUI.
No respectable business will buy a Windows 8 device.
I hate how some of us who were proponents of new technology turned into the grandma of Luddites as witnesses by the XP loyalists on here. Windows 7 will be a 10 year OS that we will be cursing and praising in 2020. Mark my words. Corporations love being cheap and reduced their lifecycles from 3- 4 years to 5-7 years, and now 10+ years is considered acceptable.
It really sucks making websites that support everything from new to 10 years old browsers, but the corporations are the ones to hold back.
Where does that leave MS? A rock and a hard place. The next CEO after Balmer will have quite a challenging job and I do not know if MS can recover from it. I never would have dreamed Apple would overtake them but they are more powerful and have done so with consumers and by the end of the decade maybe making inroads in corporate America too. No one likes to support 10 year old software. It just is so cheap and risk free to do so.
You haven't seen nothing if you played Farmville on Facebook.
People kept bugging me so I decided after a year and half to log in. The ads pop up and you MUST CLICK ON THEM and there is no mimimize or close button. The whole game freezes up and you have to visit Bubbletown or whatever crap, then exit and go back. The Jaded Chinese ad on is the worse as you must setup a game then click cancel and go back and you can't play at all unless you visit every full page ad. It is INSANE.
Now I know why the adults stopped playing it, and my step kids are the only ones who see no problem doing this if they want to send me gifts etc. Stupid Metrics is actually costing Zangya more money as some jerk probably would be fired if not enough people clicked on the ads. So he made it manditory and now people rare quiting. ... ok end of the rant there but this is become the future. I fear within a year or two our internet browsers will stop and a commercial will play just like TV unless you pay them $200 a month for the premium service of course. They are already putting in rogue DNS servers that inject ads. With the death of flash and more people using HTML 5 capable browsers I can see this happening and geeks configuring their own DNS servers to get around this.
Facebook too will have ads you can't close either
Its not immaturity. It is sexual harassment, and yes it is a big deal for children around.
The term lawyers drool over is hostile work environment. A slick lawyer can use this clip in a future lawsuit claiming MS not only condones this type of misogynistic behavior against women but there whole environment breeds it! Look ...
The supreme court even went far enough to say the company is liable for what happens outside work hours with employees out of the office which is why they want to monitor your facebook account to see if there is a liability.
You should be shocked at lawyers and liabilities a business or individual has in society rather than using a naughty word.
I used to work at an amusement park and we had real police. You can hire them out from the city at an expensive price.
Now I know where all that money goes when I see the price of a mac. I think its good that there are blue shirts abound compared to everyone else who just focuses on cutting cost and having one entry level guy do the work of 3 people etc.
What they hell were they thinking?
Microsoft, love them or loathe them used to have great marketing when Bill Gates was CEO in the 1990s and hired the same PR advertising agencies that Nike and others used. There is just no vision in this post XP era at Microsoft.
Micky get back to work getting IE 6 to function on the big bosses IPOD! Get XP on there!!
In a more serious note it still is your fault if you od not have a great IT infrastructure. I had this debate with another slashdotter where he attacked the person as incompetent because his boss did not want to pay $900 for a backup system for 1million dollars worth of data.
His response was, well he agreed it was fine and took the job right? He didn't sell himself, and surely he didn't quit if he was worth his fault so he was just as part of the problem.
If you suggested to management to use the cloud then it is your fault as the I.T. guy to put the risk in one basket so to speak when it fails. If you are not part of the group that makes decisions then Micky I suggest you look elsewhere for work. You are not respected and any IT manager worth his or her salt listens and has meetings with all IT all the way down to helpdesk to gain input before making critical decisions. There are many corporations who still feel IT has no value and is just a cost center. Now is the time prove otherwise and if you have more than 3 years experience you can leave and let some other schmuck out of college deal with this.
You can rent or purchase 3,000 bots for like $10 on the internet.
If you are a Russian Mobfia guy who can be profitable with just a few hundred credit card numbers this is a no brainer. You can make millions and only hire some russian CS student for a few hundred dollars to use the bot net to launch 300 ip's and viola! Instant millions.
This is pretty serious and the profit potential is too large to ignore.
Putting an authentication server/proxy between the internet and the database is an excellent line of defense. I should say not perfect but unless your a very small mom and pop shop who uses an ISP to host your site on one machine for all databases this is essential and could avoid this kind of attack and you have another machine to check for SQL insertions too.
To avoid having your db serve live web content without an authentication server in between. It costs more money and most companies staring out use an ISP with a single server with everything but that increases your chances of being hacked exponentially.
It is there fault. Fuck that if you want to throw away money over and over gain for something you already have.
I am sticking with Windows and saving my money for more important things.
I would mod you as funny, bet Metro is proving it doesn't matter who makes it.
Sure you can appease them by buying their product.
In the real world people have jobs to do and things that need to get done. Companies are happy to be able to help in exchange for profit. It is those evil companies that make your coffee at Starbucks, the car you drive, and other things. Sure it forces you to work in order to barter with money but that is life. It ensures everyone is responsible so we can all exist as a society and not starve.
I just do not see how this is evil and they are being rewarded for meeting the needs of society by selling proprietary software that people are willing to pay for. Do not like it? Then do not buy it. Write your own or buy a cheap tablet like poor people use to browse the net etc.
If a company makes crap they go out of business as a competitor will do a better job. It all balances out as long as we do nothing to interfere as Milton Friedman a world famous economist argued.
My aunt bought a new mac a week ago and was furious. She used Photoshop CS 4 and a few other Adobe products that were not even compatible in Lion! These were $700 packages too! She bought them in 2008 and were only 3.5 years old.
That is crazy and she was so angry she almost returned them and went with a PC as the new CS 6 ones would be compatible for 10+ years as long as Windows 7 keeps running until 2020 etc.
Today people just wont leave that POS XP. Yes, XP was a great version of Windows in its day in 2001 though had issues. Today it is terrible but it still is running and most IT departments and people on a budget plan to keep running it until 2014. It just works and wont die. Flashback was another issue I became mad at for Apple (even though I am not a mac user). The reason was is that Java was patched with recent versions of MacOSX but Apple left them out in the cold. no updates and of course these users say they do not run anti virus software with a smile.
That is borderline negligent. MS still updates XP for security even if they no longer do active development with it nor port modern browsers to the dying platform anymore.
It may not be the best but MS does tons of R&D to make it easy and generally reliable. Corporations love AD and all the tools that reduced IT costs significantly and reduced IT support from 70 to 10 people. It is not just software that is keeping businesses in and unlike Kerbos it is a full implementation. That is what paid software can buy and yes they love it.
You wont see shit like gnome-shell where you can not even minimize Windows. Metro looks pretty damn bad I do admit so I will make an exception with that if MS does not improve it anymore before Windows 8 does gold. At least the desktop is still there as a Metro app. Maybe even relent my point and opinion on this.
Macs are popular too with anti PC folks who hate Windows and just need Office and non corporate apps. In 10 years we will see what happens and if Citrix and virtualization will run IE 6 and other other win32 apps like rally runs old as/400 and mainframe apps of old. If that takes off then it will give corporate customers a reason to leave Windows. My hunch is they wont go with Linux as it will never be mature enough or ready with well R&D testing for the desktop due to things like AD and device drivers etc. It has to just work. Andriod and MacOSX will be interesting if it gains more of a foothold and can run on desktops.
I hear you.
But think about this? What about a users freedom to use their pc for whatever they want? What if the users boss needs that report done? What if the boss expects it for a marketing presentation in Adobe's .folio format so he can send it be printed out to clients?
What about the freedom of a business to use statistical analysis quickly to find defects in certain manufacturing plants?
They do not care about freedom and think you are a nutcase if you ranted like RMS. Just get it done or they will find someone else who will. That black box to them is not some blackbox once you use the software to get the job done. You are free to use Linux to tinker and learn. However, the market prefers to turn something on and have it work.
You could also really tinker with the old school Jaguars when they first came out. Everyone who was not an automobile expert HATED THEM and regarded them as trash! The enthusiasts claim they were so much better and real sport cars etc.
But a user regards this as low quality. Someone like my ex assumed Vista was the best thing ever because she saw me fighting a new installation of Ubuntu all the time tinkering trying to learn php and mysql stuff etc and she shook her head.
But why does Windows meet their needs? It works, users do not need to be retrained, it has a rich development environment that they are willing to pay for etc. That is the point. Why is paid software evil, when it is more evil to deny someone the right to pay for something they need?
Windows just works even if you hate it and doesn't fulfill your needs it does for the average secretary and office worker as well as the average Joe. Some users who hate Windows based PCs are responding by the free market by buying IPads and smartphones to do facebook and browsing the web. So yes Windows not being great is costing customers and that is a good thing if you hate Microsoft right?
This stuff can't all be free and be just as good for everyone. I am not saying this as a troll, but am serious as the needs to have all device drivers and software work for all people of different needs is a daunting task. I constructed a very poorly sentence in that I meant linux has not been made with zero contributions from corporations and paid developers since it was very very tiny in the 1990s and this would not work today. Redhat donates a ton of code as does IBM to get it to even work at all in modern servers. FreeBSD does work too with much less contributions but it is not scaling or supporting the hardware as well as linux because of players like SGI and IBM.
Windows is much better than it was simply because people demanded it. I just do not see the economics of using 100% free software for everything and expect customers both consumer and business to be served. ... and before I get modded down or repudded as someone misinterpreting RMS I am just claiming his beliefs and repeating his rants. Yes he thinks paying for software is evil (unless it is support only for GNU) and even free is not good enough if it is not open source. Look up his writings? To me I see good in the other end of the spectrum for the reasons I outlined above. Yes software developers have to make it closed source to prevent piracy and their IP and patent liability etc.
You go on saying how they just work and mention, well they work other than I had to do x, and y.
That is what I do with my aging POS laptop. That means they are no different in quality. HP and Dell typically last longer if you buy the business line. Notice I said typically :-)
Still for the cost of a Macbook air I can get an AMD ultrabook for $400 at Walmart. What if it breaks? Buy another one and I still save money. My time is worth it to go down I guess as I use backups in clouds for My Doc folders.
This was in November of 2010. So it came down to the cheapest iMac 20 inch, 4 gigs of ram, 1 tb hd, and an ATI 5770.
The asus with a 23 inch monitor with high contrast also supported HDMI 1080p, 8 gigs of ram, tb hd, and an ATI 5750. Total with that + powerline Ethernet was $1150 after taxes. I got 4 gigs more ram too. Compared to the $2000 iMac with all the software purchased. I do admit I already had a license for Office but if you are a PC person that is the expense you pay for switching platforms.
So I saved A TON! I do admit I have no Firewire or wifi and a slower version of that same video card. In addition I had to buy an additional gaming keyboard and high res gaming mouse as I wanted top of the line quality. If something breaks I can fix as I am an advanced user and not a neophyte with tons of money who just wants to open it and have it work.
Maybe my time is not worth it to save $1000 like some of you folks? But that is what I am worth as is the vast majority of people. If I were an executive or graphics artist that would be different as I would call Apple Store and pick it up and get back to work and actually use all of that.
There is a big difference in what you get and Apple does not offer value even if I did have the need for high resolution video editing that would justify the firewire support as an example.
Too bad they cost so damn much. I almost purchased a $1699 iMac about a year ago, but couldn't justify the cost with the wife. I got a PC instead as I would need to buy the Mac version of Office and then buy Windows to put on it, etc. I was looking at $2100! Or I could pirate Windows, not get updates as a result and be paying how much for the mac since I would be running Windows so I can edit my resume?
Unless you owe no student loans are are above average income in the top 25% it doesn't make sense.