You have a point about XP32 being limited there, but what about the applications?
If those are 32 bit, they will still be limited to 2 GB per app even if they run on a 64 bit OS. So more RAM won't help much on legacy apps (if they need that much in the first place). So if you switch to 64 bit, you might end up buying new application licenses anyway.
At this point, re-evaluating if it really needs to be Windows seems worth a try. You still may find out that Linux does not match your needs, but the switch to 64 bit seems an opportunity to look at the alternatives.
Ernie Ball was pissed because he had not only to pay massive license fees for half a dozen PCs (according to TFA) that were non-compliant, but the BSA also humiliated him in the news.
So this is mostly a case of "I won't do business anymore with those assholes" and less of a desire for open (or even free) software. Of course, once he discovered the savings in license fees he was happy about it. But if the BSA had been less aggressive, Ernie might still be a Microsoft customer.
...you get a decent midrange gaming PC for $500 these days, with dual core, 4 GB RAM and one of the better 128 bit GPUs. The PS3 still has more CPU power, but I think the PC wins in all other things.
While this is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, it shows the PS3 is not THAT much cheaper than a PC with decent gaming performance. Which is also useful for your home office. So I tend to agree about "too little too late for Sony".
My point is that the USA might get a state bankruptcy or hyperinflation, depending on future monetary policy. Several European states are not safe either. For a first taste of that, check out the situation in California. For what could happen later on, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic. Might be just as much fun as your global depression...
I agree in principle, and maybe Microsoft should sue their law firm for damages.
But then again, that misconduct might be Microsoft's idea in the first place. In the last antitrust ligitation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft) they were caught submitting faked videos as evidence. So this could just be another instance of Microsoft playing games with the courts.
That a financial meltdown would follow is frequently claimed, but I wonder if it is really true. Especially if you use the bailout money to cushion the crash for the people who have money in the bank (instead of saving the banks themselves).
As things have played out now, a mass bankruptcy among banks is avoided for now, but with two bad side effects: 1) Massively increased national debts, in the USA as well as in Europe. 2) A possible moral hazard in the sense that banks might undertake similar risks again, relying on being bailed out again if necessary.
I wonder if it would not have been the lesser evil to let the crash happen.
Yes, in low sec you need a group. Preferably with at least one ship that is hard to catch (Interceptor or Covert Ops) as scout. But with 3-4 people it starts to get interesting;-)
0.0 sec is really hard BTW, there you get the empire building stuff with massive fleets and (some) almost permanently camped gates. If gates were not such obvious ganking points, the game might be more fun for solo players but the conquest & territory control game play might suffer.
The world seemed a bit too small for a MMO, especially after getting used to EvE;-)
The flying was fun, but in PvP I promptly got spanked. Partly due to lag, me in Europe and the server in the USA does not mix with twitch based gaming (for the same reason, I don't join overseas Day Of Defeat servers anymore). But with a European server, it would still be worth a second try.
Every MMO has been the same old shit, including before WoW. I'd attribute it's success more to being contagious and being able to attract a large crowd at the start due to known IP that I would nearly anything else. The contagious factor can be brought into any game, and so can the crowd. It's just a matter of marketing, and getting word out to every last person possible about the awesomeness of the game before launch.
If "the same old shit" is all a game has, it is not surprising if it fails in competing against WOW. Because in terms of large crowds and buddies already playing the game, nothing beats WOW.
IMHO a new MMO should have something that makes it different. It could -have strategic components to gameplay -require more and different player skills in combat (twitch based?). Mere button mashing gets boring fast. Tactically clever use of skill combos is better but also done to death by now. -be focused on empire building, with players controlling territory in game or something else NOT found in dozens of existing MMOs.
EVE Online, for instance, has some of the first and last in the above list, and that gives it a depth most other MMOs cannot match. Subscriber numbers have constantly grown over the years and are over 300k now according to CCP. While not at WOW size, that is a nice success.
Back to Aion, the TenTonHammer article mentions a system for conquering villages that brings the "empire" aspect into game, and there seems to be an unregulated area as PvP free fire zone. Sounds like Aion has a chance to find its own crowd, but it would need to be more innovative to draw me away from EVE;-)
It is also insightful because it points out which things need fixing most. If the bank bailout was handled efficiently and with a minimum amount of waste, a mere 18 million elsewhere would be easily forgiven.
For the record, I don't think it was handled well. In hindsight, I'd rather let a lot more of those badly managed banks go bankrupt and use the bailout money to (partially) refund people's savings.
Visual Studio is quite OK, but at the moment pretty much Windows only. If Windows suffers a serious loss of market share, Microsoft might have to create Mac or Linux versions;-)
This said, I think many people overestimate how fast this might happen. Windows is pretty entrenched on the desktop (and laptop) and won't be displaced there easily.
Some of those major car makers already had electric cars of their own, but only manufactured them in small numbers. In one case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1) even scrapped them after the lease period without giving happy customers the option of buying them.
From that I get the impression that the management of major car makers happily ignores the mere proof something is possible. Only when it starts eating into their sales because someone else takes measurable market share, they react. Arguably, even then some persist in ignoring the facts. See the current problems of GM, Ford and Chrysler.
So far, they sell one nice electric sports car. And they announced to make a sedan for a somewhat wider audience. But Tesla does not have the market share yet to put real pressure on the major car makers.
I think Toyota played a bigger role there: While only partially electric, their Prius demonstrated that a hybrid can actually sell serious numbers. AFAIK one million worldwide so far.
Tell them about what could happen, and that the risk may be low but not zero. Because data have been exposed through sloppiness before, not only through malice. Then make sure YOU are not liable if they violate HIPPA or something similar. Either don't support their Google stuff or make sure you have documented that they use Google SAS against your advice.
OK, but that is a pretty extreme case. On the Windows side, we're talking about systems that are over 8 years old (assuming that machines from 2001 onwards came with XP). I don't know many people who still use one of these. For Mac OS X, version 10.3 came out on October 24, 2003 which is a bit more recent. But still almost 6 years.
The problem with Word file formats is a lot more present: Office Open XML (DOCX) was introduced with Word 2007. Obviously older versions have a problem with that.
Jeremy Reimers' article is about systems that make collaboration easier.
Considering only that aspect, PDFs would need to die even faster than MS Word, because the installed base of PDF editors is not even close to that of Word. So you cannot realistically expect that the guy who receives you document can edit it and send it back with annotations.
MS Word actually does a halfway decent job there. Except for the occasional format change that spells trouble for owners of old Word versions, and the change tracking that cannot compete with a real version control system (over multiple versions it becomes a real mess).
But Open Office wins on the format change topic, because upgrades are free. So you can always upgrade without much hassle if you get stuff in a new ODF version. It might eventually win on change tracking too, if things like http://sourceforge.net/projects/odfsvn/ are successful. (Disclaimer: I haven't actually tried that one)
But the real question is if we shouldn't drop the "document to send back and forth" paradigm. Jeremy Reimers reports that his company had good results from moving to a wiki.
Personally, I think something Wiki-like with more WYSIWYG and GUI editing might offer the easiest migration path. Jeremy Reimers reports that he didn't have much luck with that, but I guess that was a case of weak implementation. The technology exists, and I don't see why it would be impossible to make it work smoothly in a wiki.
Security people are often the black-and-white kind of people that I can't stand. I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them.
These days, my favorite IT mailorder shop (alternate.de) has a large selection of 22" models, typically in 16:10 screen format with 1680x1050 pixels resolution. The cheaper models are around 150 euros, and I guess most people who buy a new screen get something this size.
...the game console in question will suffer from lack of attractiveness. There is still the PC, with no such restrictions - anyone can program for it without paying huge license fees.
Make publicly funded research a work for hire, with the government getting the copyright (and then releasing it into the public domain), or at least demand Open Access publication.
Problem solved (but you might need some earplugs to shut out the screaming of the traditional publishers;-)
Interlacing means that each line on the screen is only drawn 25x per second. It does not mean you have only half as many lines. The result is that thin horizontal lines tend to flicker, but it does not diminish the resolution.
What DOES diminish the resolution is the rather coarse dot pitch and low video bandwidth of old TVs. Especially if you connect to the antenna port on the TV. So you get an image that is maybe as sharp as 640x480 standard VGA on a decent computer monitor.
Like beguyld (post above mine), I'm not so convinced that the infringement was accidental. Maybe Microsoft management deliberately avoided checking for patents and managed to convince the jury it was purely accidental.
And even without the patents, Microsoft's behavior smacks of cheating. First they asked to see the code, then they built the compression system themselves without paying Stac. While not illegal, it is a lot like the people who get advice from a specialist store and then buy from a discounter.
Their DoubleSpace disk compression utility in MS-Dos 6.0 was found to infringe data compression patents of Stac Electronics. After they negotiated with Stac about licensing. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_lawsuit. Now I'm not a friend of software patents in general, but this still shows how Microsoft is ripping off its business partners. In terms of technology, they have come a long way from the sloppy 90s, but I still think they cannot be trusted.
When seeing this setup, I immediately thought "What about combining this with a digital SLR camera?". Those usually have exchangeable lenses, and the instrument could lock to the camera body instead of the normal lens. That should give much better image quality due to the better sensor and still be affordable. For $400 - $500 you have a wide selection of DSLR cameras at places like Amazon. Assume another $500 for the attached microscope and you get a $1000 camera microscope, which is still cheap for medical equipment.
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You have a point about XP32 being limited there, but what about the applications?
If those are 32 bit, they will still be limited to 2 GB per app even if they run on a 64 bit OS. So more RAM won't help much on legacy apps (if they need that much in the first place). So if you switch to 64 bit, you might end up buying new application licenses anyway.
At this point, re-evaluating if it really needs to be Windows seems worth a try. You still may find out that Linux does not match your needs, but the switch to 64 bit seems an opportunity to look at the alternatives.
Ernie Ball was pissed because he had not only to pay massive license fees for half a dozen PCs (according to TFA) that were non-compliant, but the BSA also humiliated him in the news.
So this is mostly a case of "I won't do business anymore with those assholes" and less of a desire for open (or even free) software.
Of course, once he discovered the savings in license fees he was happy about it. But if the BSA had been less aggressive, Ernie might still be a Microsoft customer.
...you get a decent midrange gaming PC for $500 these days, with dual core, 4 GB RAM and one of the better 128 bit GPUs. The PS3 still has more CPU power, but I think the PC wins in all other things.
While this is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, it shows the PS3 is not THAT much cheaper than a PC with decent gaming performance. Which is also useful for your home office. So I tend to agree about "too little too late for Sony".
My point is that the USA might get a state bankruptcy or hyperinflation, depending on future monetary policy. Several European states are not safe either.
For a first taste of that, check out the situation in California. For what could happen later on, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic.
Might be just as much fun as your global depression...
I agree in principle, and maybe Microsoft should sue their law firm for damages.
But then again, that misconduct might be Microsoft's idea in the first place. In the last antitrust ligitation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft) they were caught submitting faked videos as evidence. So this could just be another instance of Microsoft playing games with the courts.
That a financial meltdown would follow is frequently claimed, but I wonder if it is really true. Especially if you use the bailout money to cushion the crash for the people who have money in the bank (instead of saving the banks themselves).
As things have played out now, a mass bankruptcy among banks is avoided for now, but with two bad side effects:
1) Massively increased national debts, in the USA as well as in Europe.
2) A possible moral hazard in the sense that banks might undertake similar risks again, relying on being bailed out again if necessary.
I wonder if it would not have been the lesser evil to let the crash happen.
Yes, in low sec you need a group. Preferably with at least one ship that is hard to catch (Interceptor or Covert Ops) as scout. But with 3-4 people it starts to get interesting ;-)
0.0 sec is really hard BTW, there you get the empire building stuff with massive fleets and (some) almost permanently camped gates. If gates were not such obvious ganking points, the game might be more fun for solo players but the conquest & territory control game play might suffer.
Tried that one too.
The world seemed a bit too small for a MMO, especially after getting used to EvE ;-)
The flying was fun, but in PvP I promptly got spanked. Partly due to lag, me in Europe and the server in the USA does not mix with twitch based gaming (for the same reason, I don't join overseas Day Of Defeat servers anymore).
But with a European server, it would still be worth a second try.
Every MMO has been the same old shit, including before WoW. I'd attribute it's success more to being contagious and being able to attract a large crowd at the start due to known IP that I would nearly anything else. The contagious factor can be brought into any game, and so can the crowd. It's just a matter of marketing, and getting word out to every last person possible about the awesomeness of the game before launch.
If "the same old shit" is all a game has, it is not surprising if it fails in competing against WOW. Because in terms of large crowds and buddies already playing the game, nothing beats WOW.
IMHO a new MMO should have something that makes it different. It could
-have strategic components to gameplay
-require more and different player skills in combat (twitch based?). Mere button mashing gets boring fast. Tactically clever use of skill combos is better but also done to death by now.
-be focused on empire building, with players controlling territory in game
or something else NOT found in dozens of existing MMOs.
EVE Online, for instance, has some of the first and last in the above list, and that gives it a depth most other MMOs cannot match. Subscriber numbers have constantly grown over the years and are over 300k now according to CCP. While not at WOW size, that is a nice success.
Back to Aion, the TenTonHammer article mentions a system for conquering villages that brings the "empire" aspect into game, and there seems to be an unregulated area as PvP free fire zone. Sounds like Aion has a chance to find its own crowd, but it would need to be more innovative to draw me away from EVE ;-)
It is also insightful because it points out which things need fixing most. If the bank bailout was handled efficiently and with a minimum amount of waste, a mere 18 million elsewhere would be easily forgiven.
For the record, I don't think it was handled well. In hindsight, I'd rather let a lot more of those badly managed banks go bankrupt and use the bailout money to (partially) refund people's savings.
Visual Studio is quite OK, but at the moment pretty much Windows only. If Windows suffers a serious loss of market share, Microsoft might have to create Mac or Linux versions ;-)
This said, I think many people overestimate how fast this might happen. Windows is pretty entrenched on the desktop (and laptop) and won't be displaced there easily.
Exactly, but "where are former group members now" is a far more innocuous way of asking the same ;-)
Wish I had as much skill as GP in asking things the polite way...
Some of those major car makers already had electric cars of their own, but only manufactured them in small numbers. In one case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1) even scrapped them after the lease period without giving happy customers the option of buying them.
From that I get the impression that the management of major car makers happily ignores the mere proof something is possible. Only when it starts eating into their sales because someone else takes measurable market share, they react. Arguably, even then some persist in ignoring the facts. See the current problems of GM, Ford and Chrysler.
So far, they sell one nice electric sports car. And they announced to make a sedan for a somewhat wider audience. But Tesla does not have the market share yet to put real pressure on the major car makers.
I think Toyota played a bigger role there:
While only partially electric, their Prius demonstrated that a hybrid can actually sell serious numbers. AFAIK one million worldwide so far.
Tell them about what could happen, and that the risk may be low but not zero. Because data have been exposed through sloppiness before, not only through malice.
Then make sure YOU are not liable if they violate HIPPA or something similar. Either don't support their Google stuff or make sure you have documented that they use Google SAS against your advice.
OK, but that is a pretty extreme case.
On the Windows side, we're talking about systems that are over 8 years old (assuming that machines from 2001 onwards came with XP). I don't know many people who still use one of these.
For Mac OS X, version 10.3 came out on October 24, 2003 which is a bit more recent. But still almost 6 years.
The problem with Word file formats is a lot more present: Office Open XML (DOCX) was introduced with Word 2007. Obviously older versions have a problem with that.
Jeremy Reimers' article is about systems that make collaboration easier.
Considering only that aspect, PDFs would need to die even faster than MS Word, because the installed base of PDF editors is not even close to that of Word. So you cannot realistically expect that the guy who receives you document can edit it and send it back with annotations.
MS Word actually does a halfway decent job there. Except for the occasional format change that spells trouble for owners of old Word versions, and the change tracking that cannot compete with a real version control system (over multiple versions it becomes a real mess).
But Open Office wins on the format change topic, because upgrades are free. So you can always upgrade without much hassle if you get stuff in a new ODF version. It might eventually win on change tracking too, if things like http://sourceforge.net/projects/odfsvn/ are successful. (Disclaimer: I haven't actually tried that one)
But the real question is if we shouldn't drop the "document to send back and forth" paradigm. Jeremy Reimers reports that his company had good results from moving to a wiki.
Personally, I think something Wiki-like with more WYSIWYG and GUI editing might offer the easiest migration path. Jeremy Reimers reports that he didn't have much luck with that, but I guess that was a case of weak implementation.
The technology exists, and I don't see why it would be impossible to make it work smoothly in a wiki.
Yes, he can be pretty abrasive. Consider this: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/701694/focus=706950
Security people are often the black-and-white kind of people that I can't
stand. I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in
that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the
point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them.
(emphasis mine)
These days, my favorite IT mailorder shop (alternate.de) has a large selection of 22" models, typically in 16:10 screen format with 1680x1050 pixels resolution. The cheaper models are around 150 euros, and I guess most people who buy a new screen get something this size.
...the game console in question will suffer from lack of attractiveness.
There is still the PC, with no such restrictions - anyone can program for it without paying huge license fees.
Make publicly funded research a work for hire, with the government getting the copyright (and then releasing it into the public domain), or at least demand Open Access publication.
Problem solved (but you might need some earplugs to shut out the screaming of the traditional publishers ;-)
Actually the effects are more complicated.
Interlacing means that each line on the screen is only drawn 25x per second. It does not mean you have only half as many lines. The result is that thin horizontal lines tend to flicker, but it does not diminish the resolution.
What DOES diminish the resolution is the rather coarse dot pitch and low video bandwidth of old TVs. Especially if you connect to the antenna port on the TV. So you get an image that is maybe as sharp as 640x480 standard VGA on a decent computer monitor.
Like beguyld (post above mine), I'm not so convinced that the infringement was accidental. Maybe Microsoft management deliberately avoided checking for patents and managed to convince the jury it was purely accidental.
And even without the patents, Microsoft's behavior smacks of cheating. First they asked to see the code, then they built the compression system themselves without paying Stac. While not illegal, it is a lot like the people who get advice from a specialist store and then buy from a discounter.
Their DoubleSpace disk compression utility in MS-Dos 6.0 was found to infringe data compression patents of Stac Electronics. After they negotiated with Stac about licensing.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_lawsuit.
Now I'm not a friend of software patents in general, but this still shows how Microsoft is ripping off its business partners. In terms of technology, they have come a long way from the sloppy 90s, but I still think they cannot be trusted.
When seeing this setup, I immediately thought "What about combining this with a digital SLR camera?".
Those usually have exchangeable lenses, and the instrument could lock to the camera body instead of the normal lens. That should give much better image quality due to the better sensor and still be affordable.
For $400 - $500 you have a wide selection of DSLR cameras at places like Amazon. Assume another $500 for the attached microscope and you get a $1000 camera microscope, which is still cheap for medical equipment.