Either is fine. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make money. We all need to eat, need to pay the mortgage, and all that shit. However you have to decide with various projects if they are to be free or not. Trying to mix it is never going to work out for you.
So far, Kickstarter has done its job: You got the money to do the project. That's all it really is for. If you deliver the project to your backers, you've fulfilled your obligation and they'll be happy. After that? Well that's up to you.
You can decide to make it free to the world. That's a nice thing to do for the world, but you'll get almost no money. Asking for donations generally doesn't result in much, people tend to donate their money to larger causes/organizations. Reactions from your backers will be mixed, some might be irked about having paid for something that is now free, others will like what you are doing. Either way doesn't matter, you met your obligation to them.
You can also decide you'd like money from it. The backers got their copy due to their backing, now the rest of the world needs to pony up cash if they'd also like a copy. Many KS projects do this. The Kickstarter is to get the shit up and running, then any sales after that are profit.
So figure out what you want more, and then go with it. It is all up to you. Just don't try to do both or it'll work poorly.
There's a big difference between being cheaper and being a fraction of the price. Maybe it means that you are getting screwed by the expensive vendor, but it can mean you are getting screwed by the cheap one instead.
There are big, big differences in the quality of supposedly "high end" network gear. Some of it is crap. It can't handle the big loads it is supposedly designed for, its software is buggy, hardware prone to failure, support sucks, etc.
Not saying this is the case with Lucent stuff, I dunno, just saying that you can really fuck yourself if you just look at price for a feature set, rather than how well the things actually perform.
Also you have to be careful with project bids because lowball bids are often deliberately leaving important shit out to screw you later. They lowball it because they know they'll make it up and more on various "addons" that magically are needed.
Construction companies are famous for that. Their bids are wildly unrealistic and it ends up costing many times the bid price in the end.
People need to look around, notice these things are expensive everywhere, and then maybe think that it isn't the evil US healthcare system causing it.
When there's a massive price disparity between the US and Canada or the EU, like for say prescription drugs, well then you begin to suspect something is afoot. I mean they should be rather similar, most things are (particularly when you adjust for taxes that are in the price).
However hearing aids are expensive everywhere. That indicates the opposite: That they really ARE expensive and that is what it is.
They have to do dynamic range compression and limiting as well, and the good ones are doing it in each frequency band separately. Let's see a parametric multi-band dynamics processor, ya I know of one of those, the Waves Linear Multi-Band is a 5-band unit that meets those spec (http://waves.com/content.aspx?id=209). It is a software plugin that requires a powerful computer, and a DAW to host it. Price is about $150.
Gee, I wonder why if you put something like that in to a small package, add a microphone, speaker, other associated electronics, add more processing like directionality (the good ones lock on to the direction speech is coming from and enhance it), compatibility with other devices like cellphones and so on, it ends up costing more.
Oh, and then there's all the medical regulation, of course.
Price doesn't scale linearly with units because there are fixed costs. If 10,000,000 units cost me $5/unit, that doesn't mean 1,000,000 units still cost me $5/unit.
The big fixed costs are R&D and setting up a production run. This can be substantial. 6-8 figures no problem. Well if this is spread over a hundred million units, no problem, it adds a minimal per unit cost. However if you are selling only 10 units, each until will have a massive cost.
So suppose product X has a marginal cost, as in parts, labour, etc, of $10 per unit. However there was a fixed cost of $5,000,000 in getting to ready to go. If you sell 50,000,000 units, you can sell them for around $40/unit retail (100% markup for the retailer, 100% markup for you, pretty normal). The fixed cost adds so little to the unit cost, $0.10/unit, you can more or less ignore it. However now say you are only selling 500,000 units. You've now doubled your per unit cost, so the final retail price will go up to $80, all because of that fixed cost.
Of course there's even more non-linear scaling due to supply and demand. As the price goes up, demand goes down. As such the price has to go up more to make up for that and you get a limit situation. So a doubling of costs leads to more than a doubling of price.
It is just how things go. Those costs have to be paid. You can't say they should just ignore it, real life doesn't work that way.
The Surface was dead before it ever launched. The reason is that there is no tablet market, there's an iPad market.
Most people have no use for tablets. There are niche uses (the in medicine) but by and large there just isn't a real use for tablets. People are not going to be able to get rid of their computers because tablets are lousy for content creation, even basic content like writing an e-mail or forum post. However they aren't portable like a smartphone so you don't take it with you all the time. They try to fill a niche where your smartphone isn't large enough for what you need, but your laptop isn't portable enough. There is almost none of that in a normal person's life. I've yet to meet someone that has dumped their smartphone or computer for their tablet and as such they really don't need it.
However, the iPad is a cool tech toy, and fashion accessory, to have. People want one because it is cool, not because they need it. They want to be seen with it and they want to mess around with it. However that is only the case because it is an iPad. Apple makes the cool consumer electronics currently. MS never will, they are horrible at selling style.
So they are trying to get in to a market that just isn't there. Tablets are going to fade away as the fad passes. People will find that their smartphone is just more convenient for the "small" computing needs and that a laptop or maybe desktop are better when you need to do some work or the like.
Even if they had a stellar app store with tons of apps the surface still wouldn't go anywhere because nobody gives a shit because it isn't an iPad.
Go look it up. Their name is not very good. No they aren't abundant like silicon, aluminium, or iron, but they are not these extremely rare elements that you can't find many of. They are fairly plentiful.
So if China wants to price things up too much there really isn't a good reason not to go after them in other locations.
It is a better OS from a technical standpoint. It is faster (Cakewalk found it sped up Sonar X1 in all heavy load cases) and some of the tools like the task manager are much better. However it isn't major.
On the down side its UI is ugly, and the metro stuff is crap. You don't have to use the metro stuff. Start 8 or Classic Shell will get you a real start menu and you can then ignore the tablet crap.
I'm fine with it, I use it at work since Windows support is my profession and I need to be familiar with it and it works well. However it is not a major update. Internally it calls itself Windows NT 6.2, 7 being NT 6.1. It is improved some, uglied up some, and has tablet bits it tries to shove down your throat.
In general I would say don't worry about it. If you've a reason to get it or a system comes with it, it'll work fine. You'll want to get a start menu replacer but it'll be fine after that. However I wouldn't rush out and upgrade. 7 works fine and 8 really does have an ugly UI.
From Slashdot "his now infamous (and peer reviewed/independently verified) hockey stick graph." They are presenting peer review as something that is a "oh you need to shut up and stop criticizing" situation.
Ya it gets rather annoying when people say "peer reviewed" like it means "proved beyond all debate." No, it means just that: some of your peers reviewed it and say "this is ok for publication."
In addition to the fact that there could be something they missed (happens all the time) the process is also rather political, as with all human endeavors and so some things pass review that probably shouldn't, and other things get rejected should get published.
All in all it is a necessary step but it is just a basic check and only the first in a long line.
New nVidia cards fully support OpenGL 4.2 either in hardware or in their drivers (if there's something they are missing, let me know I've not encountered it). Mesa is only up to 3.1. So what does Mesa get you, over a regular video card driver?
Aero is the desktop composition engine that uses the GPU to do all kinds of rendering shit. This is present in 8 and in fact faster/more capable than ever. Glass (Aero Glass) is the shiny UI in Windows 7, that is gone in Windows 8, replaced with an uglied up flat, square, UI.
So basically there is an even better desktop composition engine, that is used to composite something that looks like Windows 3.1:).
In terms of drivers, yes older drivers seem quite compatible. My pro sound card works no problems with the 7 drivers and pro audio cards have some of the most finicky drivers out there.
Ya my co-worker hit that problem. I don't remember the details as to why, but he was looking at iPhone app development. Someone asked him to do something or the like (he's a Linux sysadmin by trade). However a stumbling block to this is lacking a Mac. They aren't precisely cheap devices to get your hands on. Cheapest you can find is $600 for a Mac Mini, which does not feature $600 worth of hardware.
A former co-worker actually ran in to the same thing, and ended up getting a Mac as part of a contract. A guy had hired him to do various web development as a side job, that paid reasonably well. He then wanted an iOS app developed. My co-worker tried OS-X in VMWare but it didn't work well, so he told the guy "Fine I'll do it, but part of the contract is you have to buy me a Mac Mini up front, and I get to keep it." Guy went for it and all was well.
Does provide a bit more of a cost/barrier for entry though, if you aren't already a Mac person.
If an app hits big on the app store, you can make a ton of money. iPhone users have the well earned reputation of being a spendy bunch. The reason Rovio are billionaires is because of the app store, because people decided they liked Angry Birds on it.
Combine that with the fact that Apple is generally very hip and trendy now. They are a fashion company, as much as a consumer electronics company. The in thing is to own and be seen with the newest Apple toy.
So tons of people rush in. They believe it is the way to make money. For a few of them, that ends up being right.
It's not open in the OSS-speak sense but it is in the sense you can install any software you want on it, write code for it with no license to anyone and so on. You can even run other OSes along side it as a dual boot, or in it with an emulator. Has all kinds of the games.
I do all my gaming (and I do a ton of gaming) on the PC not for any idealistic reasons, but because I like it better. There are very, very few games I don't get to have that consoles do, and a number I get to have that consoles don't. It is a very valid gaming platform, and is open if that matters to you.
The PS3 isn't interesting processing power wise anymore. It has been so far eclipsed by newer hardware. No matter how good it was when it launched (ended up being not as impressive as people hoped) it is 6 years out of date. 6 years ago the Core 2 and GeForce 8800 were the top of cheap consumer computing. Compare those to the Sandy/Ivy Bridge and GTX 680 and there is no comparison.
It isn't magic, it won't happen if people just wish or complain hard enough. We'd need to amend the Constitution. It prescribes how presidential elections will be done. That would most likely start with congress. The states can start an amendment process directly but it has never happened.
So if you want it, it is the kind of thing to start working on. Get on your congress people, start making others aware. It'll be a long time in coming, since it takes 66% of both houses of congress and 75% of the states. So what it'll take is a lot of demand from people. If it is something that matters to you don't dream, start working. The Constitution has been amended before and it didn't happen quickly. It took some work.
No problem. Classic Shell is a free alternative, but I wasn't as happy with it. It more wants to do an older school start menu. Start 8 goes for a 7 type menu (they also have one designed to be like the 8 start screen but it is crap) but to integrate with the 8 look and feel.
Low end would be fine but it would need to be low power there too. Ivy Bridge CPUs are great at sipping power, particularly the dual core variety. So if what I'm doing is just real light usage like web surfing and so on, I'm better off with that.
For heavier usage, well the Intel CPUs are better particularly at floating point calculations which is what most heavy performance is these days, at least on desktops. All the programs I can think of that I have which hit the CPU real heavy, are doing FP stuff, not so much integer.
I just don't see what this is better for, unfortunately.
My issue with the start screen has never been that I can't use it. Of course I can use it, it is easy to use. Just scroll through a massive list of icons until i find the one I want. My issue is that it is worse than what it replaces. The start menu is faster to navigate, and it doesn't occupy my entire screen when I'm looking to launch a program.
I am always willing to try a new way of doing things, but if that way is not superior I will not be interested in switching to it. For example I was skeptical about the Windows 7 task bar with the way it changed from a quick launch to pinning icons and mandatory grouping of windows. However, I tried it and sure enough, it is better to use.
My objection to Windows 8 isn't that it is new, it is that it is worse. I've tried the start screen, it is worse than what it replaces.
Have a look at Start 8. I find that it gives me everything I am accustomed to in a start menu, except for the ability to drag shortcuts from the start menu to the desktop. Otherwise it works just like the Windows 7 start menu, but can be set up to look and feel like Windows 8 (or can be set to look and feel like Windows 7).
For me, it has made 8 fine to use. In my case, doing Windows support at work I need to be running 8 so I can test software compatibly and the like with it.
At any rate, I feel it is worth the $5, it really does a good job of solving the stupid Metro start screen problem as you just don't deal with it anymore.
For all the crowing about network transparency, it is not the killer feature to most. In terms of network management MS's RDP easily wins out. Reason is that it works well and supports low bandwidth situations very well since it isn't just a pixel-based protocol. However for ease of use and cross platform goodness, nothing beats VNC. That's what our Linux guru uses, in the situations where a command line isn't enough, not remote X.
Frankly, given the difference between local interconnects and network speed, I don't think network transparency is the kind of thing to worry about. Rather, make a good local display system, and then add the ability to serve it out over the network through whatever means are appropriate, much like Windows does with RDP. The focus should be on good local display, as that is really what matters.
Then maybe I wouldn't spend an inordinate amount of time fighting with programs that can't understand how to run as a deprivileged user, that can't properly set up their own environment variables and so on.
So I'll promise to learn to program if they'll learn to sysadmin. Since I already know how to program then they'd better get on it.
It is the same deal with any OS. Ubutnu supports a LTS release for 5 years from the date it comes out, not the date you install it, not the date you get a system with it.
MS makes no secret of their support cycle. They promise 10 years of support from the date of release. Sometimes they extend it, as they did with XP, and they then make the new date known. So when you bought a system in 2010 with XP, you bought it knowing that there was only 3 years left on support for that OS.
Support lifecycles really aren't a hard concept, and MS is actually really good with them. Whining about it is rather silly.
Slashdot Mirror
Either is fine. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make money. We all need to eat, need to pay the mortgage, and all that shit. However you have to decide with various projects if they are to be free or not. Trying to mix it is never going to work out for you.
So far, Kickstarter has done its job: You got the money to do the project. That's all it really is for. If you deliver the project to your backers, you've fulfilled your obligation and they'll be happy. After that? Well that's up to you.
You can decide to make it free to the world. That's a nice thing to do for the world, but you'll get almost no money. Asking for donations generally doesn't result in much, people tend to donate their money to larger causes/organizations. Reactions from your backers will be mixed, some might be irked about having paid for something that is now free, others will like what you are doing. Either way doesn't matter, you met your obligation to them.
You can also decide you'd like money from it. The backers got their copy due to their backing, now the rest of the world needs to pony up cash if they'd also like a copy. Many KS projects do this. The Kickstarter is to get the shit up and running, then any sales after that are profit.
So figure out what you want more, and then go with it. It is all up to you. Just don't try to do both or it'll work poorly.
There's a big difference between being cheaper and being a fraction of the price. Maybe it means that you are getting screwed by the expensive vendor, but it can mean you are getting screwed by the cheap one instead.
There are big, big differences in the quality of supposedly "high end" network gear. Some of it is crap. It can't handle the big loads it is supposedly designed for, its software is buggy, hardware prone to failure, support sucks, etc.
Not saying this is the case with Lucent stuff, I dunno, just saying that you can really fuck yourself if you just look at price for a feature set, rather than how well the things actually perform.
Also you have to be careful with project bids because lowball bids are often deliberately leaving important shit out to screw you later. They lowball it because they know they'll make it up and more on various "addons" that magically are needed.
Construction companies are famous for that. Their bids are wildly unrealistic and it ends up costing many times the bid price in the end.
People need to look around, notice these things are expensive everywhere, and then maybe think that it isn't the evil US healthcare system causing it.
When there's a massive price disparity between the US and Canada or the EU, like for say prescription drugs, well then you begin to suspect something is afoot. I mean they should be rather similar, most things are (particularly when you adjust for taxes that are in the price).
However hearing aids are expensive everywhere. That indicates the opposite: That they really ARE expensive and that is what it is.
They have to do dynamic range compression and limiting as well, and the good ones are doing it in each frequency band separately. Let's see a parametric multi-band dynamics processor, ya I know of one of those, the Waves Linear Multi-Band is a 5-band unit that meets those spec (http://waves.com/content.aspx?id=209). It is a software plugin that requires a powerful computer, and a DAW to host it. Price is about $150.
Gee, I wonder why if you put something like that in to a small package, add a microphone, speaker, other associated electronics, add more processing like directionality (the good ones lock on to the direction speech is coming from and enhance it), compatibility with other devices like cellphones and so on, it ends up costing more.
Oh, and then there's all the medical regulation, of course.
Price doesn't scale linearly with units because there are fixed costs. If 10,000,000 units cost me $5/unit, that doesn't mean 1,000,000 units still cost me $5/unit.
The big fixed costs are R&D and setting up a production run. This can be substantial. 6-8 figures no problem. Well if this is spread over a hundred million units, no problem, it adds a minimal per unit cost. However if you are selling only 10 units, each until will have a massive cost.
So suppose product X has a marginal cost, as in parts, labour, etc, of $10 per unit. However there was a fixed cost of $5,000,000 in getting to ready to go. If you sell 50,000,000 units, you can sell them for around $40/unit retail (100% markup for the retailer, 100% markup for you, pretty normal). The fixed cost adds so little to the unit cost, $0.10/unit, you can more or less ignore it. However now say you are only selling 500,000 units. You've now doubled your per unit cost, so the final retail price will go up to $80, all because of that fixed cost.
Of course there's even more non-linear scaling due to supply and demand. As the price goes up, demand goes down. As such the price has to go up more to make up for that and you get a limit situation. So a doubling of costs leads to more than a doubling of price.
It is just how things go. Those costs have to be paid. You can't say they should just ignore it, real life doesn't work that way.
Canada.
Check on hearing aid costs in Canada. You will discover they are very high there as well.
The Surface was dead before it ever launched. The reason is that there is no tablet market, there's an iPad market.
Most people have no use for tablets. There are niche uses (the in medicine) but by and large there just isn't a real use for tablets. People are not going to be able to get rid of their computers because tablets are lousy for content creation, even basic content like writing an e-mail or forum post. However they aren't portable like a smartphone so you don't take it with you all the time. They try to fill a niche where your smartphone isn't large enough for what you need, but your laptop isn't portable enough. There is almost none of that in a normal person's life. I've yet to meet someone that has dumped their smartphone or computer for their tablet and as such they really don't need it.
However, the iPad is a cool tech toy, and fashion accessory, to have. People want one because it is cool, not because they need it. They want to be seen with it and they want to mess around with it. However that is only the case because it is an iPad. Apple makes the cool consumer electronics currently. MS never will, they are horrible at selling style.
So they are trying to get in to a market that just isn't there. Tablets are going to fade away as the fad passes. People will find that their smartphone is just more convenient for the "small" computing needs and that a laptop or maybe desktop are better when you need to do some work or the like.
Even if they had a stellar app store with tons of apps the surface still wouldn't go anywhere because nobody gives a shit because it isn't an iPad.
Go look it up. Their name is not very good. No they aren't abundant like silicon, aluminium, or iron, but they are not these extremely rare elements that you can't find many of. They are fairly plentiful.
So if China wants to price things up too much there really isn't a good reason not to go after them in other locations.
It is a better OS from a technical standpoint. It is faster (Cakewalk found it sped up Sonar X1 in all heavy load cases) and some of the tools like the task manager are much better. However it isn't major.
On the down side its UI is ugly, and the metro stuff is crap. You don't have to use the metro stuff. Start 8 or Classic Shell will get you a real start menu and you can then ignore the tablet crap.
I'm fine with it, I use it at work since Windows support is my profession and I need to be familiar with it and it works well. However it is not a major update. Internally it calls itself Windows NT 6.2, 7 being NT 6.1. It is improved some, uglied up some, and has tablet bits it tries to shove down your throat.
In general I would say don't worry about it. If you've a reason to get it or a system comes with it, it'll work fine. You'll want to get a start menu replacer but it'll be fine after that. However I wouldn't rush out and upgrade. 7 works fine and 8 really does have an ugly UI.
From Slashdot "his now infamous (and peer reviewed/independently verified) hockey stick graph." They are presenting peer review as something that is a "oh you need to shut up and stop criticizing" situation.
Ya it gets rather annoying when people say "peer reviewed" like it means "proved beyond all debate." No, it means just that: some of your peers reviewed it and say "this is ok for publication."
In addition to the fact that there could be something they missed (happens all the time) the process is also rather political, as with all human endeavors and so some things pass review that probably shouldn't, and other things get rejected should get published.
All in all it is a necessary step but it is just a basic check and only the first in a long line.
New nVidia cards fully support OpenGL 4.2 either in hardware or in their drivers (if there's something they are missing, let me know I've not encountered it). Mesa is only up to 3.1. So what does Mesa get you, over a regular video card driver?
Glass is gone, not Aero.
Aero is the desktop composition engine that uses the GPU to do all kinds of rendering shit. This is present in 8 and in fact faster/more capable than ever. Glass (Aero Glass) is the shiny UI in Windows 7, that is gone in Windows 8, replaced with an uglied up flat, square, UI.
So basically there is an even better desktop composition engine, that is used to composite something that looks like Windows 3.1 :).
In terms of drivers, yes older drivers seem quite compatible. My pro sound card works no problems with the 7 drivers and pro audio cards have some of the most finicky drivers out there.
Ya my co-worker hit that problem. I don't remember the details as to why, but he was looking at iPhone app development. Someone asked him to do something or the like (he's a Linux sysadmin by trade). However a stumbling block to this is lacking a Mac. They aren't precisely cheap devices to get your hands on. Cheapest you can find is $600 for a Mac Mini, which does not feature $600 worth of hardware.
A former co-worker actually ran in to the same thing, and ended up getting a Mac as part of a contract. A guy had hired him to do various web development as a side job, that paid reasonably well. He then wanted an iOS app developed. My co-worker tried OS-X in VMWare but it didn't work well, so he told the guy "Fine I'll do it, but part of the contract is you have to buy me a Mac Mini up front, and I get to keep it." Guy went for it and all was well.
Does provide a bit more of a cost/barrier for entry though, if you aren't already a Mac person.
If an app hits big on the app store, you can make a ton of money. iPhone users have the well earned reputation of being a spendy bunch. The reason Rovio are billionaires is because of the app store, because people decided they liked Angry Birds on it.
Combine that with the fact that Apple is generally very hip and trendy now. They are a fashion company, as much as a consumer electronics company. The in thing is to own and be seen with the newest Apple toy.
So tons of people rush in. They believe it is the way to make money. For a few of them, that ends up being right.
It's not open in the OSS-speak sense but it is in the sense you can install any software you want on it, write code for it with no license to anyone and so on. You can even run other OSes along side it as a dual boot, or in it with an emulator. Has all kinds of the games.
I do all my gaming (and I do a ton of gaming) on the PC not for any idealistic reasons, but because I like it better. There are very, very few games I don't get to have that consoles do, and a number I get to have that consoles don't. It is a very valid gaming platform, and is open if that matters to you.
The PS3 isn't interesting processing power wise anymore. It has been so far eclipsed by newer hardware. No matter how good it was when it launched (ended up being not as impressive as people hoped) it is 6 years out of date. 6 years ago the Core 2 and GeForce 8800 were the top of cheap consumer computing. Compare those to the Sandy/Ivy Bridge and GTX 680 and there is no comparison.
It isn't magic, it won't happen if people just wish or complain hard enough. We'd need to amend the Constitution. It prescribes how presidential elections will be done. That would most likely start with congress. The states can start an amendment process directly but it has never happened.
So if you want it, it is the kind of thing to start working on. Get on your congress people, start making others aware. It'll be a long time in coming, since it takes 66% of both houses of congress and 75% of the states. So what it'll take is a lot of demand from people. If it is something that matters to you don't dream, start working. The Constitution has been amended before and it didn't happen quickly. It took some work.
No problem. Classic Shell is a free alternative, but I wasn't as happy with it. It more wants to do an older school start menu. Start 8 goes for a 7 type menu (they also have one designed to be like the 8 start screen but it is crap) but to integrate with the 8 look and feel.
Low end would be fine but it would need to be low power there too. Ivy Bridge CPUs are great at sipping power, particularly the dual core variety. So if what I'm doing is just real light usage like web surfing and so on, I'm better off with that.
For heavier usage, well the Intel CPUs are better particularly at floating point calculations which is what most heavy performance is these days, at least on desktops. All the programs I can think of that I have which hit the CPU real heavy, are doing FP stuff, not so much integer.
I just don't see what this is better for, unfortunately.
My issue with the start screen has never been that I can't use it. Of course I can use it, it is easy to use. Just scroll through a massive list of icons until i find the one I want. My issue is that it is worse than what it replaces. The start menu is faster to navigate, and it doesn't occupy my entire screen when I'm looking to launch a program.
I am always willing to try a new way of doing things, but if that way is not superior I will not be interested in switching to it. For example I was skeptical about the Windows 7 task bar with the way it changed from a quick launch to pinning icons and mandatory grouping of windows. However, I tried it and sure enough, it is better to use.
My objection to Windows 8 isn't that it is new, it is that it is worse. I've tried the start screen, it is worse than what it replaces.
Have a look at Start 8. I find that it gives me everything I am accustomed to in a start menu, except for the ability to drag shortcuts from the start menu to the desktop. Otherwise it works just like the Windows 7 start menu, but can be set up to look and feel like Windows 8 (or can be set to look and feel like Windows 7).
For me, it has made 8 fine to use. In my case, doing Windows support at work I need to be running 8 so I can test software compatibly and the like with it.
At any rate, I feel it is worth the $5, it really does a good job of solving the stupid Metro start screen problem as you just don't deal with it anymore.
For all the crowing about network transparency, it is not the killer feature to most. In terms of network management MS's RDP easily wins out. Reason is that it works well and supports low bandwidth situations very well since it isn't just a pixel-based protocol. However for ease of use and cross platform goodness, nothing beats VNC. That's what our Linux guru uses, in the situations where a command line isn't enough, not remote X.
Frankly, given the difference between local interconnects and network speed, I don't think network transparency is the kind of thing to worry about. Rather, make a good local display system, and then add the ability to serve it out over the network through whatever means are appropriate, much like Windows does with RDP. The focus should be on good local display, as that is really what matters.
Then maybe I wouldn't spend an inordinate amount of time fighting with programs that can't understand how to run as a deprivileged user, that can't properly set up their own environment variables and so on.
So I'll promise to learn to program if they'll learn to sysadmin. Since I already know how to program then they'd better get on it.
It is the same deal with any OS. Ubutnu supports a LTS release for 5 years from the date it comes out, not the date you install it, not the date you get a system with it.
MS makes no secret of their support cycle. They promise 10 years of support from the date of release. Sometimes they extend it, as they did with XP, and they then make the new date known. So when you bought a system in 2010 with XP, you bought it knowing that there was only 3 years left on support for that OS.
Support lifecycles really aren't a hard concept, and MS is actually really good with them. Whining about it is rather silly.