I wish they'd concentrate on creating small amounts of really good stuff instead of masses of bits that are slapped around all over the place.
Except that wouldn't lock in the user base nearly as well as a poorly-aimed shotgun approach does.
Microsoft is about to come out from under antitrust oversight, and they want to make absolutely sure that by the time the next case settles there are a lot of bodies around, not just one. The Netscape thing was a hasty mistake; they never expected to be called on it. Now they know that they have to make the most out of Windows of freedom from oversight.
Actually, Microsoft shared information with Novell to develop Moonlight, which is an up and coming fully open source version of silverlight- so instead of supporting linux in a binary fashion, they have an opensource solution.
Open source, but the patent liability is really ugly.
Plus, as far as I know- they intend to release the binary linux codecs for free (for media play).
No charge as long as you have a Microsoft patent license.
Of course, if you don't mind writing a blank check that Microsoft Legal can cash at any time, go ahead.
Fact #2, MS already has a large following of providers preparing and starting stream and video based web video content sites based on Silverlight. Since it can do things like flip channels as fast a TV, etc companies looking to provide multi-stream content are going with Silverlight as it is the only viable solution - let alone the only multi-platform solution.
Multi-platform: MS Vista Home, MS Vista Home Premium,...
All trolling and MS-hating aside, Silverlight is not meant for the World Wide Web. Rather, it is, like many other Microsoft products (SharePoint, PerformancePoint, BizTalk, etc) for the corporate intranet. The corporate IT department can simply force the software onto everybody's computer, and the developers can easily develop a *real* UI without having to fumble around with trying to make HTML behave like Windows Forms.
And the fact that it absolutely forces everyone on the intranet to use nothing but MS platforms is just gravy.
I work for a company that has a lot of engineers using Linux workstations because that's what semiconductor CAE runs on. Having to have a second system cluttering up the cube just so that I can read MSexchange mail and access SharePoint links is a spectacular PITA. With a lot of pain and aggravation it's possible to work around those two, but moving basic business resources to MSSL will be impossible.
When that happens, I'll just wander over to our support desk and have her look stuff up for me.
TBH though, I am a.Net developer, so I may have a bit of bias. But the power and ease of development that Silver Light gives you is very impressive. It's not the right tool for every job, but for multi-media intensive, widely distributed apps, from the tools I've seen, it definitely has some great advantages.
Which just naturally makes it the perfect tool for someone trying to look up a solution to why their.NET system is b0rk3d, right?
That's 60 million people who won't go to microsoft.com anymore.
Remember, microsoft.com is the default homepage for 80% of the browsers out there. If it tells you that you need to "click here" to continue using it, most users will -- especially since they don't know how to change the homepage.
I just read the wikipedia article on the Takings clause of the Constitution and don't see how it applies, since it seems to be limitted to real property?
I trust you don't mean "real property" in the sense of land.
However, the USSC has held that the takings clause applies to anything of value, such as water rights, income streams, etc. Copyright is, IIRC, one specific example explicitly addressed.
Doing so would only, at most, affect the copyrights on future works since reducing the coverage for existing copyright falls afoul of the Constitution's Takings clause.
In other words, the copyright ratchet is built right into the Constitution.
Reliance on plug ins for office ODF compatibility would be crazy, either they implement it on the 'save as' menu, and allow it to be chosen as default, or they get sidelined by users as being too much work when compared to a simple and quick save operation.
They tried playing chicken in Mass. and it worked. My bet is that they want use of ODF to be as painful and damn-well-useless as possible so that (in their wet dreams) people stage riots in the streets and halls of Parliament demanding MSOffice.
Actually, I'm always surprised the Wikipedia is as reliable as it is, and that so many people are willing to devote their time and effort to make it better.
... which they may stop doing if they can't complain, yes?
The problem I have with that argument is that group 2 is not more important than group 3. If they were, you could say a number of ludicrous things, like... doctors should be forced to treat members of group 2 for free! People with strong potential to be good doctors should be forced to become doctors for group 2's benefit! etc
It's especially ridiculous when you consider fairly benign diseases like chicken pox (mortality rate 6.7/100,000 [emedicine.com]).
How about polio?
As noted elsewhere, part of the reason that you don't have a smallpox vaccination scar (or smallpox scars, or a headstone) is that I do have one. Maybe not a large reason, but part nonetheless. Thanks to literally billions of those scars, smallpox is gone. Not just relatively rare, like measles or polio, gone. By now polio should also have been gone, but thanks in large part to scaremongering there are still populations with it circulating and leaving people crippled or dead.
Meanwhile, measles still kills millions of kids a year in Africa. It's eradicated in the Western Hemisphere thanks to near-universal vaccination.
If chicken pox isn't in the same league, that's a good thing. Saying that varicella zoster isn't as bad as variola vera doesn't make varicella benign. A case mortality of 6.7E-5 still means about 270 dead kids a year in the USA, with a larger number neurologically damaged for life -- plus the long-term issue of shingles, which may be a bit more immediate to me than to you. Maybe you consider 270 dead kids a year unimportant; I don't. I still think total eradication of varicella is worthwhile -- but it's not going to happen as long as there's a sufficient susceptible population.
As for the public policy aspects, I remain silent. The above is simply an enumeration of the well-established consequences of certain actions. One might hope that we can agree on the mathematics if nothing else.
All I can say is that both my grandmother and my sister were sick for about two weeks; fever, chills, etc, after getting the flu vaccine this year. Coincidence? Who knows -- I wasn't vaccinated and I trust my immune system to beat the flu by itself. That which won't kill it will only make it stronger...
Hate to break the news to you, Bucky, but "That which won't kill it will only make it stronger" is exactly how vaccination works. And, yes, influenza actually can kill -- especially for those, like your grandmother, whose immune systems are not what they once were and might need a head start on dealing with an infection.
As for the chills and fever, the flu vaccine isn't a live virus vaccine. No infectious agents involved.
We now have an object lesson. Most of the comments up to this point appear to be from people with limited personal experience of the phenomenon under discussion.
I'm not one to support eugenics, but... this might be nature's way of working out its own kinks.
Just because you don't harbor rats in your house, don't expect to be safe if your neighbor comes down with the plague.
If the only casualties were the idiots, I might agree. The problem is, they're screwing with our chance to flat-out eliminate some pretty scary diseases. The vaccines don't always work, there are people who really can't tolerate them, etc. -- which makes herd immunity all the more important.
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Microsoft is about to come out from under antitrust oversight, and they want to make absolutely sure that by the time the next case settles there are a lot of bodies around, not just one. The Netscape thing was a hasty mistake; they never expected to be called on it. Now they know that they have to make the most out of Windows of freedom from oversight.
Of course, if you don't mind writing a blank check that Microsoft Legal can cash at any time, go ahead.
I work for a company that has a lot of engineers using Linux workstations because that's what semiconductor CAE runs on. Having to have a second system cluttering up the cube just so that I can read MSexchange mail and access SharePoint links is a spectacular PITA. With a lot of pain and aggravation it's possible to work around those two, but moving basic business resources to MSSL will be impossible.
When that happens, I'll just wander over to our support desk and have her look stuff up for me.
However, the USSC has held that the takings clause applies to anything of value, such as water rights, income streams, etc. Copyright is, IIRC, one specific example explicitly addressed.
In other words, the copyright ratchet is built right into the Constitution.
After all, no telling what global warming will do to this thing.
... that all cats are black at midnight!
Answer those, and you have the answer to your question.
That's good to know -- I don't need to write up that material I was going to submit since Wiki is a "love it (as is) or leave it" regime.
... please hold up your hands.
Come to think of it, same goes for the .jpg files, too. Hmmmm....
As noted elsewhere, part of the reason that you don't have a smallpox vaccination scar (or smallpox scars, or a headstone) is that I do have one. Maybe not a large reason, but part nonetheless. Thanks to literally billions of those scars, smallpox is gone. Not just relatively rare, like measles or polio, gone. By now polio should also have been gone, but thanks in large part to scaremongering there are still populations with it circulating and leaving people crippled or dead.
Meanwhile, measles still kills millions of kids a year in Africa. It's eradicated in the Western Hemisphere thanks to near-universal vaccination.
If chicken pox isn't in the same league, that's a good thing. Saying that varicella zoster isn't as bad as variola vera doesn't make varicella benign. A case mortality of 6.7E-5 still means about 270 dead kids a year in the USA, with a larger number neurologically damaged for life -- plus the long-term issue of shingles, which may be a bit more immediate to me than to you. Maybe you consider 270 dead kids a year unimportant; I don't. I still think total eradication of varicella is worthwhile -- but it's not going to happen as long as there's a sufficient susceptible population.
As for the public policy aspects, I remain silent. The above is simply an enumeration of the well-established consequences of certain actions. One might hope that we can agree on the mathematics if nothing else.
As for the chills and fever, the flu vaccine isn't a live virus vaccine. No infectious agents involved.
We now have an object lesson. Most of the comments up to this point appear to be from people with limited personal experience of the phenomenon under discussion.
If the only casualties were the idiots, I might agree. The problem is, they're screwing with our chance to flat-out eliminate some pretty scary diseases. The vaccines don't always work, there are people who really can't tolerate them, etc. -- which makes herd immunity all the more important.