Not if Google, and/or their patent portfolio, gets bought out, and we know that never happens in the tech sector. Especially in publicly-traded companies.
Of course, all it takes is one lawyer to win a case. Contrary to popular belief, they don't need things like "evidence" to win a case, if the judge and jury are gullible enough. I think that's what the rules are based upon.
Personalization is currently under the "settings" charm in Windows 8. If you're on the desktop, Personalization (as in desktop theme) is right there in the charm menu. If you're in Metro, then it's the first item under "Change PC settings" (as in, "Personalize" is the first damned thing you see when you launch it). The only thing they did, if anything, was change the label in the charm to be dumbed down for the casual user who couldn't find Personalize without having it spelled out for them. Probably a result of their usage studies.
If they don't have the legal right now, they will make it legal after the fact, or bury the hacker in a hole so deep even the Great Firewall would be jealous of the media blackout.
This is how governments operate, effectiveness determined by whatever powers we afford them, including sheer size. Good night and good luck.
I doubt this is over SimCity, corporate America doesn't move that fast, but the fact is that it will look like that, the same way Steven Sinofsky looked over Windows 8, and that's good enough for me.
As near as I can divine, Microsoft is no longer going to ship service packs like they did with Vista and prior. Windows 7 is probably only getting service pack 1. Windows 8 basically is SP2. Windows 9 will be SP3. They are on an incremental release cycle, like Apple's OSX, and all those Windows 8 phones might possibly be running Windows Phone 10 by 2015.
Now, they will be nickel-and-diming you for the desktop OS ($40 CHEAP!), but it might not be the case with phones, especially subsidized phones on contract where all the licensing is handled by the carrier. Also something I'm keen to see, Microsoft does not have a great track record with delivering incremental upgrades that don't crater *recent* old hardware, so it'll be interesting to see if they change their ways in that respect.
But the headline and summary is just a FUD encounter of the fourth kind: FUDabduction.
These days, and this is only an unsubstantiated instinct not anything backed by fact, it seems like "clean energy" is more akin to "perpetual motion" than science. That goes for "clean" coal as well, which is truly in unicorn territory.
I'd like to see a detailed offering of what he intends to fund, and what concessions he's willing to make on "actual energy" solutions in the interim, rather than allow a blank check to be written for what amounts to venture capital measures.
EA has instituted a cooling off period, by offering you a free game by March 18. The idea is that you will hang on to your purchase, and must activate it by then to get the reward, and they should have their shit together by that date.
Do not buy into that scam. You paid $60 for this mess, and you deserve better. Demand a return now. Do not activate your game. Get your money back so this fiasco hurts EA in the worst way. The game will be on sale for $15 in a few months. It is a fiasco, and that's what happens to fiascos. At that price, $60 will be more than enough to buy a functioning SimCity game, and the back catalog "freebie," and still have money left over.
Yeah. I used to use EA games as an alignment test. But it was that knocking sound of the head trying to dislodge magnetic particles (due to a 23 or other read error) caused by all the *other* games that put your drive out of alignment, not EA's custom loader. EA's loader was just slow. You noticed misalignment first on the EA stuff, because that loader (and custom drive software) required exact alignment.
The first thing I did with any EA loader software, though, was dump the payload to a blank floppy and use a custom loader. With Fastload, I was playing M.U.L.E. or Archon in about 3 seconds, instead of having to go make a sandwich while the logo changed colors. EA's loader was long and slow, but it didn't knock your drive out. It just demanded your drive be in nearly factory perfect condition, which wasn't common if you were loading a bunch of "woodpecker" DRM games, which was the preferred disk based DRM of just about everyone else.
The C=64 was what made me first look into cracking, and how disk-based DRM worked. I carried that knowledge well into the next millennium, learning how to backup my SafeDisc games, etc. And I purchased my games at retail. Those DRM schemes did more for piracy, by forcing legit owners to pirates (groups of bright kids, really) in order to preserve their $500 disk drives, than any one thing in DRM history. The entire cracking "scene" and culture today owes itself to the crap publishers pulled on a 1541. Fairlight was founded on the C=64. Well into the 2000's, there were still "64" demo competitions. If publishers hadn't done that, we might not even have a "scene" today, and they might not have such a problem with cracking, and with nearly every intelligent computer-savvy person of that generation supporting crackers in some way.
Publishers shot their foot clean off by callously destroying people's $500 equipment. My biggest complaint with DRM is that it is written hastily, with no consideration of the QA needs of the consumer (only the needs of the publisher), leading to hardware destruction, security holes, and rootkit-like files that the user can't delete, generally with modifications to the users command shell (cmdlineext.dll anyone?). The f-ers that write that sort of DRM should be held criminally liable, under the Computer Fraud and Abuse act, when they create problems for end users. Some prosecutor should get right on it, if Aaron Swarz was worth such efforts.
And publishers should be civilly liable for a negligence tort when they knowingly use a product that harms end users.
I'm willing to accept DRM encumberment, but it significantly devalues the sale price of the game for me. I don't pay much more than $15 for a game on Steam, with the knowledge that it has DRM locks on it. Usually, I pay $5 - 7.50/game. A $40 savings off typical retail is completely acceptable compensation for Steam-style DRM, and a lower price point allows for low-risk purchases from innovators as well as AAA publishers. Economically, it's healthy for the industry and advantageous for the consumer. I prefer no DRM, but if the price-points are reasonable, I'll accept DRM as part of the ecosystem.
What's not acceptable is a DRM locked game selling for $60. Bollocks. The DRMed version of a game is worth, at best, $20. No more. That's the price I try to beat. With all the DLCs included, if that's part of the price structure.
So I paid full price for Witcher 2, no-DRM on GOG.com. But that's the only sort of game that I support at that price. The rest had better be under $20, all DLCs included, or no sale. The only time I've broken this model in the past few years is in getting Civ V Gods and Kings, which had me paying $17 for Civ V GOTY, and then another $7.50 for G&K, so it totalled out to ~$25. But that game was totally worth it, and it's still under *half* of the $60 AAA price point.
AAA game companies can absolutely make a huge profit with $20 prices and DRM, so what we have here is arrogance and an old business model leading to a price point problem, and they think killing the used game market will fix that (by essentially eliminating downward price pressure, allowing them to set prices according to their own sense of largesse). The truth is, their prices are absurdly high, and they will have to change or die, because the next generation of consoles is not likely to help them maintain that ridiculous price point. Electronic distribution cheapens the set value of a game, in every e-distribution model I've seen.
What needs to change first, however, is the horde of single youth without commitments, and therefore excessive disposable income, pre-ordering and day 1 ordering crapware for $50-60. That's hurting everyone. They are not rational actors, in an Adam Smith sense, and are propping up this mess of a business model. Get smarter guys, so the wait time for the drop to a $20 price point gets shorter. Hopefully, they won't support the schemes to collapse the used market, because that is a big driver of that price drop, but $20 at a maximum is what any of these games are REALLY worth. Start demanding it, and you'll find a world of gaming at your fingertips.
TL/DR; Only pay "full" price for games without DRM. $20 is what they're really worth. Especially for something that relies upon a third-party maintaining servers for you to play on.
Seriously. What the hell is Nintendo's intended market? What kid has hands big enough for that tablet controller? Who wants to rebuy all their Gamecube games as DLC? Whose grandma got confused this Christmas and bought Jimmy a Wii-U game because she knows he has a Wii, and doesn't know that the "U" signifies an entirely different platform?
Differentiate the product, trademark it sensibly, make sure it is aimed at an intended audience, and stop f**king around with "3DS" crap (Metroid 2 in faux 3D, oh boy!). Iwata f**k!
Oh, it matters. It's just that it is not enough, and it is not the indispensable determining factor for a publication's marketing success. But success+talent beats money making "success" in every meaningful way that I can imagine, just not necessarily in terms of monetary gain.
Actually, the Apple II predates the term "PC." The C-64 was not called a PC, because it was a trademark. We called them "home computers" back then, and we all knew that they were for hobbyists and if we wanted something real done we'd have to time share on a mainframe or mini-computer. The term PC came about when IBM invented it as a brand, for the IBM Personal Computer model 5150, in IIRC 1981.
With the advent of the clone market, "PC-compatible" became a term of art, and the term came to mean a much more powerful form of general-purpose computer. I think the crux of that is "general-purpose." You can compile on it. You can compress raw video on it. You can _produce_ anything digital with it, given enough time.
Look at what was done with the Commodore Amiga in Babylon 5, and tell me that the much more powerful iPad, which is more limited in what it can do with its power, is even in the same class.
Canalys offers the reactivity and dynamism of a much smaller company, with the global coverage and local insight gained from offices in America, Europe and Asia. Experts in their fields, our analysts combine market knowledge and approachability to create tailored customer deliverables.
"We are a tiny, opportunistic startup, but that doesn't mean we're 'fly-by-night,' because we have two guys on the payroll that travel internationally every quarter!"
Not knowing any better, I'd guess that's what's that means. Maybe a Canalys PR agent can set me straight with some actual information that doesn't reek of weasel speak.
Our dedicated mobility services span smart phones, pads, notebooks, netbooks, security and app stores. First to incorporate netbooks and pads into PC market tracking, we also offer the most thorough smart phone data – tracking shipments into the channel, not sales or activations.
Within the IT infrastructure sector, our services encompass data centers, networking, security, unified communications, client PC markets and go-to-market strategies. Regardless of the customer segment, we maintain an unrivalled focus on technology distribution channels.
"Our continued success and growth depend on Apple's continued success, among others, and we've got a chunk in 'cloud' data centers. We are leveraged to make a profit when it all takes off."
Consider the source. This is not simply a market analysis firm, they are an infrastructure service provider.
So why does this belong on the front page? Their "analysis" criteria are a self-serving favor to stop the market blood loss in their own business. Apple has gone from $702.10/share to $468.25 in late January and has issued a dismal guidance. The favor's not been called in by Apple, but by someone whose got an unfavorable position and realizes that if the bubble bursts, they lose. Possibly their shirt.
HELLO? IS THIS THING ON?! No, a fscking iPad is not a PC. Sure, it's a computing device, but so is your Blu-ray player and some toasters. You're not going to process audio, video and do professional photo work on it. You can't do a vast subset of general computing on an iPad. Can you even compile something bigger than "hello world" on an iPad? Any PC can be, at the least, upgraded to do these fantastically powerful things and more. Perhaps slowly, but it will do it if you ask.
Please, let's not give up a walk on part in the Wall for a lead role in the Cage. The iPad is a content delivery peripheral, that requires general computation devices someplace else to be anything at all. It's all been compiled and compressed and, in some cases, stored remotely, on a real general-purpose computer. When you can process a two hour movie with special effects on an iPad, like you could with Video Toaster on a freaking Amiga, then we will call it a PC. Geez.
I mostly agree with you (rant included), but how do you suggest we fix it?
Well... Stop using assassination is a start. Stop using excessive force and justifying it by distant geography and the unlikeliness of reprisal is a second. If 9/11 demonstrated anything, it's demonstrated that Admiral Pacific and Atlantic do not protect us from reprisal any longer. So our policy should consider the possibility that geopolitical Machiavellianism is dangerous, like nearly every other first world country has realized because they burned down their own neighborhood a few times. We are not "exceptional" in this matter any longer. We cannot double down and claim that these policies are acceptable if we just implement tight enough domestic security.
1) I intensely wish people would STOP referring to the US as a "democracy". It most certainly is NOT NOT NOT! You seem bright and I'm surprised you're making such a fundamental mistake.
Fair enough. We are a democratic republic, and all the powers of the republic with the exception of executive appointments are derived from the popular democracy. In addition, the authorizing bodies for many of these actions operates on the principle of a democratic quorum. Clearly, the executive does not, nor does the judiciary.
To avoid the above paragraph, I choose to call that which we can change a "democracy," and I hope you'll forgive me for it.
2) We the people established and fought for this Union of States. How do We the People get control back?
I don't know. I fear I have to paraphrase and munge Franklin and say that we had a Republic, for as long as we no longer voted money into our pockets, and we now can't keep that money and our Republic. Enough of us need to know that. The recession actually helps us in that manner. Prosperity, among other things, rots and corrupts because it muddles priorities of governance. Especially when it is inherited by the next generation and is therefore unearned, and poverty is no longer understood. There was no answer for Rome, Spain, France or England, and it's going to take someone miraculously more clever than myself to find an answer to a people that would rather have comfort than sense. I have always, historically speaking, believed that such a fall starts with unearned comfort. Success can kill. Exceptionalism can kill. I hope that the inevitable fall teaches us a lesson, and is not our undoing.
Bigger civilizations than us have been washed away before. If we lack the necessary humility, so too will we.
We went wrong when our government got into the business of assassinating its enemies.
3) "We" do not do any of it- Executive Branch hires assassins.
And _we_ elect President Kill every time. We lionize Kennedy and Lincoln and Reagan and Clinton. Murderers all. Bay of Pigs, Gettysburg, Grenada, Waco. Please don't wash your hands like Pilate. We're both better than that. It is within our power to change this, it's only unlikely that we will.
Beyond that is beyond the scope of a Slashdot discussion, but I do believe the Will of the People, whatever that may be, is represented by our broken government. You may not be, and I'm fairly sure I am not, but "We the People" are a bloodthirsty people.
4) I cited the Posse Comitatus act to illustrate: A) How brazenly the Executive Branch is willing to break the law, B) How weak the "justice" system is (not indicting the Executive Branch) and C) How there may be a mechanism for We the People to act and try to stop it.
Okay. That wasn't clear to me. It seemed to me that you thought the mere existence of Posse Comitatus ameliorated the situation. We agree, it doesn't. Justice can do nothing without a plaintiff, btw. Barring that, it's not up to justice, it's up to the legislature. Which brings us to...
We need Congress to move against this, and to halt a
Citation? With the accounting vortex surrounding the RROD replacement problem approaching the reality-warping equations of the Starship Bistromath, we'll never know exactly how profitable, if at all, the XBox division is. Too many fungible parts. There's no way to tell, but reason to suspect that the GP is correct. Or not.
Tell me what benefit such legal protection is to a man who is unmade into a smoking crater because of people who believe they have legal authority to do otherwise? Do we need to have a martyr and a legal determination, or can we simply and justly move as a functional democracy to repeal, ban, and/or repudiate this naked reservation of excessive force and power? Do you really believe that someone reserving the "authority" to murder someone is acceptable because we have laws against murder? How about when it's our President?
But the real (and begged) question is, do we truly believe that an _airstrike_ is an acceptable level of force to deal with the threat posed by a single individual?
We went wrong when our government got into the business of assassinating its enemies. Go back to _at least_ Kennedy (and the Cuban cigar ruse) for that. There is a reason why assassination carries a stigma as the kind of thing that rots and destroys any functioning society. It does, because the targets eventually become fungible and universal. Today's terrorist leader is tomorrow's Public Enemy #1 is today's inconvenient malcontent, and the dishonored dead all have friends who want revenge, and maybe can even get elected. It becomes, when used domestically, a internecine blood war.
In the meantime, if this kind of thing is proffered as acceptable in U.S. airspace, then we need to start assigning air raid precincts, training captains, and holding weekly drills like we did in WW-II. Just to limit the collateral damage. The Posse Comitatus act doesn't begin to put my mind at ease, unless I'm already dead. Then it's one of my last hopes for the future of those that survive me in a world where air strikes against individuals are considered reasonable force.
Slashdot Mirror
"Advance." You keep saying that. I do not think it means what you think it means.
What is needed, before "advancing" anything, is to advance acceptance of the Linux desktop, and IMHO this ain't helping.
Not if Google, and/or their patent portfolio, gets bought out, and we know that never happens in the tech sector. Especially in publicly-traded companies.
Tread carefully.
Garner! The data ANNIHILATOR!
At least that was my first reaction to their marketing copy.
Of course, all it takes is one lawyer to win a case. Contrary to popular belief, they don't need things like "evidence" to win a case, if the judge and jury are gullible enough. I think that's what the rules are based upon.
Personalization is currently under the "settings" charm in Windows 8. If you're on the desktop, Personalization (as in desktop theme) is right there in the charm menu. If you're in Metro, then it's the first item under "Change PC settings" (as in, "Personalize" is the first damned thing you see when you launch it). The only thing they did, if anything, was change the label in the charm to be dumbed down for the casual user who couldn't find Personalize without having it spelled out for them. Probably a result of their usage studies.
If they don't have the legal right now, they will make it legal after the fact, or bury the hacker in a hole so deep even the Great Firewall would be jealous of the media blackout.
This is how governments operate, effectiveness determined by whatever powers we afford them, including sheer size. Good night and good luck.
I doubt this is over SimCity, corporate America doesn't move that fast, but the fact is that it will look like that, the same way Steven Sinofsky looked over Windows 8, and that's good enough for me.
As near as I can divine, Microsoft is no longer going to ship service packs like they did with Vista and prior. Windows 7 is probably only getting service pack 1. Windows 8 basically is SP2. Windows 9 will be SP3. They are on an incremental release cycle, like Apple's OSX, and all those Windows 8 phones might possibly be running Windows Phone 10 by 2015.
Now, they will be nickel-and-diming you for the desktop OS ($40 CHEAP!), but it might not be the case with phones, especially subsidized phones on contract where all the licensing is handled by the carrier. Also something I'm keen to see, Microsoft does not have a great track record with delivering incremental upgrades that don't crater *recent* old hardware, so it'll be interesting to see if they change their ways in that respect.
But the headline and summary is just a FUD encounter of the fourth kind: FUDabduction.
No. There is no more to be said about this "question headline" than the default.
To Google's competitors: Develop better products, not better spin.
These days, and this is only an unsubstantiated instinct not anything backed by fact, it seems like "clean energy" is more akin to "perpetual motion" than science. That goes for "clean" coal as well, which is truly in unicorn territory.
I'd like to see a detailed offering of what he intends to fund, and what concessions he's willing to make on "actual energy" solutions in the interim, rather than allow a blank check to be written for what amounts to venture capital measures.
If they had just made this the error sound when SimCity couldn't log on, it would have been an epic win.
(*and 10 minutes of "Simcopter one" sounds like it's less annoying than this game*)
EA has instituted a cooling off period, by offering you a free game by March 18. The idea is that you will hang on to your purchase, and must activate it by then to get the reward, and they should have their shit together by that date.
Do not buy into that scam. You paid $60 for this mess, and you deserve better. Demand a return now. Do not activate your game. Get your money back so this fiasco hurts EA in the worst way. The game will be on sale for $15 in a few months. It is a fiasco, and that's what happens to fiascos. At that price, $60 will be more than enough to buy a functioning SimCity game, and the back catalog "freebie," and still have money left over.
Do not let them keep your $60. No way.
Yeah. I used to use EA games as an alignment test. But it was that knocking sound of the head trying to dislodge magnetic particles (due to a 23 or other read error) caused by all the *other* games that put your drive out of alignment, not EA's custom loader. EA's loader was just slow. You noticed misalignment first on the EA stuff, because that loader (and custom drive software) required exact alignment.
The first thing I did with any EA loader software, though, was dump the payload to a blank floppy and use a custom loader. With Fastload, I was playing M.U.L.E. or Archon in about 3 seconds, instead of having to go make a sandwich while the logo changed colors. EA's loader was long and slow, but it didn't knock your drive out. It just demanded your drive be in nearly factory perfect condition, which wasn't common if you were loading a bunch of "woodpecker" DRM games, which was the preferred disk based DRM of just about everyone else.
The C=64 was what made me first look into cracking, and how disk-based DRM worked. I carried that knowledge well into the next millennium, learning how to backup my SafeDisc games, etc. And I purchased my games at retail. Those DRM schemes did more for piracy, by forcing legit owners to pirates (groups of bright kids, really) in order to preserve their $500 disk drives, than any one thing in DRM history. The entire cracking "scene" and culture today owes itself to the crap publishers pulled on a 1541. Fairlight was founded on the C=64. Well into the 2000's, there were still "64" demo competitions. If publishers hadn't done that, we might not even have a "scene" today, and they might not have such a problem with cracking, and with nearly every intelligent computer-savvy person of that generation supporting crackers in some way.
Publishers shot their foot clean off by callously destroying people's $500 equipment. My biggest complaint with DRM is that it is written hastily, with no consideration of the QA needs of the consumer (only the needs of the publisher), leading to hardware destruction, security holes, and rootkit-like files that the user can't delete, generally with modifications to the users command shell (cmdlineext.dll anyone?). The f-ers that write that sort of DRM should be held criminally liable, under the Computer Fraud and Abuse act, when they create problems for end users. Some prosecutor should get right on it, if Aaron Swarz was worth such efforts.
And publishers should be civilly liable for a negligence tort when they knowingly use a product that harms end users.
I'm willing to accept DRM encumberment, but it significantly devalues the sale price of the game for me. I don't pay much more than $15 for a game on Steam, with the knowledge that it has DRM locks on it. Usually, I pay $5 - 7.50/game. A $40 savings off typical retail is completely acceptable compensation for Steam-style DRM, and a lower price point allows for low-risk purchases from innovators as well as AAA publishers. Economically, it's healthy for the industry and advantageous for the consumer. I prefer no DRM, but if the price-points are reasonable, I'll accept DRM as part of the ecosystem.
What's not acceptable is a DRM locked game selling for $60. Bollocks. The DRMed version of a game is worth, at best, $20. No more. That's the price I try to beat. With all the DLCs included, if that's part of the price structure.
So I paid full price for Witcher 2, no-DRM on GOG.com. But that's the only sort of game that I support at that price. The rest had better be under $20, all DLCs included, or no sale. The only time I've broken this model in the past few years is in getting Civ V Gods and Kings, which had me paying $17 for Civ V GOTY, and then another $7.50 for G&K, so it totalled out to ~$25. But that game was totally worth it, and it's still under *half* of the $60 AAA price point.
AAA game companies can absolutely make a huge profit with $20 prices and DRM, so what we have here is arrogance and an old business model leading to a price point problem, and they think killing the used game market will fix that (by essentially eliminating downward price pressure, allowing them to set prices according to their own sense of largesse). The truth is, their prices are absurdly high, and they will have to change or die, because the next generation of consoles is not likely to help them maintain that ridiculous price point. Electronic distribution cheapens the set value of a game, in every e-distribution model I've seen.
What needs to change first, however, is the horde of single youth without commitments, and therefore excessive disposable income, pre-ordering and day 1 ordering crapware for $50-60. That's hurting everyone. They are not rational actors, in an Adam Smith sense, and are propping up this mess of a business model. Get smarter guys, so the wait time for the drop to a $20 price point gets shorter. Hopefully, they won't support the schemes to collapse the used market, because that is a big driver of that price drop, but $20 at a maximum is what any of these games are REALLY worth. Start demanding it, and you'll find a world of gaming at your fingertips.
TL/DR; Only pay "full" price for games without DRM. $20 is what they're really worth. Especially for something that relies upon a third-party maintaining servers for you to play on.
I imagine we will trust them when they aren't armed with Hellfire missiles. Am I right? I thought so.
AAAWWKWAAAARD!
I'm pretty sure what the Old Ones are known for doing is shaking the sense OUT of people. Roll d100 for SAN loss.
Why is the Wii considered a kids console?
Because you will never see "Duke Nukem Forever" on the Wii. (and I wish this reply had ended at the close quote)
In short: Iwata f**k?
Seriously. What the hell is Nintendo's intended market? What kid has hands big enough for that tablet controller? Who wants to rebuy all their Gamecube games as DLC? Whose grandma got confused this Christmas and bought Jimmy a Wii-U game because she knows he has a Wii, and doesn't know that the "U" signifies an entirely different platform?
Differentiate the product, trademark it sensibly, make sure it is aimed at an intended audience, and stop f**king around with "3DS" crap (Metroid 2 in faux 3D, oh boy!). Iwata f**k!
Oh, it matters. It's just that it is not enough, and it is not the indispensable determining factor for a publication's marketing success. But success+talent beats money making "success" in every meaningful way that I can imagine, just not necessarily in terms of monetary gain.
That stands for Leaking Underground Storage Tanks. Welcome to New Jersey, Washington state. Good luck cleaning it up.
Actually, the Apple II predates the term "PC." The C-64 was not called a PC, because it was a trademark. We called them "home computers" back then, and we all knew that they were for hobbyists and if we wanted something real done we'd have to time share on a mainframe or mini-computer. The term PC came about when IBM invented it as a brand, for the IBM Personal Computer model 5150, in IIRC 1981.
With the advent of the clone market, "PC-compatible" became a term of art, and the term came to mean a much more powerful form of general-purpose computer. I think the crux of that is "general-purpose." You can compile on it. You can compress raw video on it. You can _produce_ anything digital with it, given enough time.
Look at what was done with the Commodore Amiga in Babylon 5, and tell me that the much more powerful iPad, which is more limited in what it can do with its power, is even in the same class.
From their own website: Canalys: Who We Are
Canalys offers the reactivity and dynamism of a much smaller company, with the global coverage and local insight gained from offices in America, Europe and Asia. Experts in their fields, our analysts combine market knowledge and approachability to create tailored customer deliverables.
"We are a tiny, opportunistic startup, but that doesn't mean we're 'fly-by-night,' because we have two guys on the payroll that travel internationally every quarter!"
Not knowing any better, I'd guess that's what's that means. Maybe a Canalys PR agent can set me straight with some actual information that doesn't reek of weasel speak.
Our dedicated mobility services span smart phones, pads, notebooks, netbooks, security and app stores. First to incorporate netbooks and pads into PC market tracking, we also offer the most thorough smart phone data – tracking shipments into the channel, not sales or activations.
Within the IT infrastructure sector, our services encompass data centers, networking, security, unified communications, client PC markets and go-to-market strategies. Regardless of the customer segment, we maintain an unrivalled focus on technology distribution channels.
"Our continued success and growth depend on Apple's continued success, among others, and we've got a chunk in 'cloud' data centers. We are leveraged to make a profit when it all takes off."
Consider the source. This is not simply a market analysis firm, they are an infrastructure service provider.
So why does this belong on the front page? Their "analysis" criteria are a self-serving favor to stop the market blood loss in their own business. Apple has gone from $702.10/share to $468.25 in late January and has issued a dismal guidance. The favor's not been called in by Apple, but by someone whose got an unfavorable position and realizes that if the bubble bursts, they lose. Possibly their shirt.
HELLO? IS THIS THING ON?! No, a fscking iPad is not a PC. Sure, it's a computing device, but so is your Blu-ray player and some toasters. You're not going to process audio, video and do professional photo work on it. You can't do a vast subset of general computing on an iPad. Can you even compile something bigger than "hello world" on an iPad? Any PC can be, at the least, upgraded to do these fantastically powerful things and more. Perhaps slowly, but it will do it if you ask.
Please, let's not give up a walk on part in the Wall for a lead role in the Cage. The iPad is a content delivery peripheral, that requires general computation devices someplace else to be anything at all. It's all been compiled and compressed and, in some cases, stored remotely, on a real general-purpose computer. When you can process a two hour movie with special effects on an iPad, like you could with Video Toaster on a freaking Amiga, then we will call it a PC. Geez.
I mostly agree with you (rant included), but how do you suggest we fix it?
Well... Stop using assassination is a start. Stop using excessive force and justifying it by distant geography and the unlikeliness of reprisal is a second. If 9/11 demonstrated anything, it's demonstrated that Admiral Pacific and Atlantic do not protect us from reprisal any longer. So our policy should consider the possibility that geopolitical Machiavellianism is dangerous, like nearly every other first world country has realized because they burned down their own neighborhood a few times. We are not "exceptional" in this matter any longer. We cannot double down and claim that these policies are acceptable if we just implement tight enough domestic security.
1) I intensely wish people would STOP referring to the US as a "democracy". It most certainly is NOT NOT NOT! You seem bright and I'm surprised you're making such a fundamental mistake.
Fair enough. We are a democratic republic, and all the powers of the republic with the exception of executive appointments are derived from the popular democracy. In addition, the authorizing bodies for many of these actions operates on the principle of a democratic quorum. Clearly, the executive does not, nor does the judiciary.
To avoid the above paragraph, I choose to call that which we can change a "democracy," and I hope you'll forgive me for it.
2) We the people established and fought for this Union of States. How do We the People get control back?
I don't know. I fear I have to paraphrase and munge Franklin and say that we had a Republic, for as long as we no longer voted money into our pockets, and we now can't keep that money and our Republic. Enough of us need to know that. The recession actually helps us in that manner. Prosperity, among other things, rots and corrupts because it muddles priorities of governance. Especially when it is inherited by the next generation and is therefore unearned, and poverty is no longer understood. There was no answer for Rome, Spain, France or England, and it's going to take someone miraculously more clever than myself to find an answer to a people that would rather have comfort than sense. I have always, historically speaking, believed that such a fall starts with unearned comfort. Success can kill. Exceptionalism can kill. I hope that the inevitable fall teaches us a lesson, and is not our undoing.
Bigger civilizations than us have been washed away before. If we lack the necessary humility, so too will we.
And _we_ elect President Kill every time. We lionize Kennedy and Lincoln and Reagan and Clinton. Murderers all. Bay of Pigs, Gettysburg, Grenada, Waco. Please don't wash your hands like Pilate. We're both better than that. It is within our power to change this, it's only unlikely that we will.
Beyond that is beyond the scope of a Slashdot discussion, but I do believe the Will of the People, whatever that may be, is represented by our broken government. You may not be, and I'm fairly sure I am not, but "We the People" are a bloodthirsty people.
4) I cited the Posse Comitatus act to illustrate: A) How brazenly the Executive Branch is willing to break the law, B) How weak the "justice" system is (not indicting the Executive Branch) and C) How there may be a mechanism for We the People to act and try to stop it.
Okay. That wasn't clear to me. It seemed to me that you thought the mere existence of Posse Comitatus ameliorated the situation. We agree, it doesn't. Justice can do nothing without a plaintiff, btw. Barring that, it's not up to justice, it's up to the legislature. Which brings us to...
We need Congress to move against this, and to halt a
Citation? With the accounting vortex surrounding the RROD replacement problem approaching the reality-warping equations of the Starship Bistromath, we'll never know exactly how profitable, if at all, the XBox division is. Too many fungible parts. There's no way to tell, but reason to suspect that the GP is correct. Or not.
Doesn't matter, unless you own stock.
Tell me what benefit such legal protection is to a man who is unmade into a smoking crater because of people who believe they have legal authority to do otherwise? Do we need to have a martyr and a legal determination, or can we simply and justly move as a functional democracy to repeal, ban, and/or repudiate this naked reservation of excessive force and power? Do you really believe that someone reserving the "authority" to murder someone is acceptable because we have laws against murder? How about when it's our President?
But the real (and begged) question is, do we truly believe that an _airstrike_ is an acceptable level of force to deal with the threat posed by a single individual?
We went wrong when our government got into the business of assassinating its enemies. Go back to _at least_ Kennedy (and the Cuban cigar ruse) for that. There is a reason why assassination carries a stigma as the kind of thing that rots and destroys any functioning society. It does, because the targets eventually become fungible and universal. Today's terrorist leader is tomorrow's Public Enemy #1 is today's inconvenient malcontent, and the dishonored dead all have friends who want revenge, and maybe can even get elected. It becomes, when used domestically, a internecine blood war.
In the meantime, if this kind of thing is proffered as acceptable in U.S. airspace, then we need to start assigning air raid precincts, training captains, and holding weekly drills like we did in WW-II. Just to limit the collateral damage. The Posse Comitatus act doesn't begin to put my mind at ease, unless I'm already dead. Then it's one of my last hopes for the future of those that survive me in a world where air strikes against individuals are considered reasonable force.