And if you are buying your computers from a standard manufacturer, they cost the same as the TB drives. Might as well get the bigger drives.
As a bonus, a really enterprising sysadmin will use the (aggregate) empty desktop disk space as a de-centralized near-term backup solution. Mind you, it should never replace tapes, snapshots, etc, but...
If you can park encrypted copies of critical data around redundantly on every desktop, deny the use of that space to the desktop user, and do it in a way that's automated? Sweet. Why do it? Because you could possibly recover lost data much faster than calling your offsite provider and waiting for a tape to arrive. It also serves as a last-ditch, everything-else-has-failed means of recovering whatever data it is that you deposited there. You;d have to set up some sort of RAID-like redundancy, and a means to automatically update that data on a semi-regular basis, but damn if it wouldn't work. As a bonus, you can put that disk space to legitimate use, instead of watching it get filled up with cat pictures and web cached files from facebook. If each desktop has a TB of drive, you could slash it to 300GB for the desktop user, and take 600GB+ (mind the overhead) from each desktop for company use. Even with only, say, 40 desktops? You could get up an easy 12 TB of aggregate storage with a RAID1-like redundancy - maybe 6 TB if you had 4 copies of each chunk of data, which is still nothing to sneeze at (especially if you've priced SAN shelving as a near-line backup depot...)
(...though if you were a true BOFH, you could do the same thing, say it's for company data, then use it for your own personal stash or whatever...)
Good question - but if the game were heavily graphics-intensive, yet required few if any controls (e.g. flight/dogfight games and whatnot) I could see the arrangement as useful.
IMHO though, where it would really shine is in 3D/CG hobbyist markets, if tablet controls could be slaved to common functions, and a stylus could take a lot of the rest. This way you could run, say, Poser, DAZ|Studio, Blender, and suchlike to really tear into a 3d view/ You could also perhaps slave the camera to tilt/position sensors so that you could literally move the tablet around your object or scene in order to see it at multiple angles. Once you find a good one, you can take a 'snapshot', then have the thing render it from your snapshotted angle/zoom setting.
Thinking the same thing here.... it all depends on the game, and how it is controlled.
If it used the gravity/tilt sensors as part of the game and some drop-simple controls, okay. If it's a full-on FPS that has a shitload of bindings to it? Hell, not even a console can do such a game true justice.
Problem is, if you need to add an external device or two (be it a controller, mouse, keyboard, whatever), then what would be the point?
I can agree to that, but only to an extent - doing so would show that Microsoft is playing a short game, not a long one.
Win7 will likely hang around enterprises for at least the next 5-7 years (or more) if this is the case, but then what? An "enterprise" version that has the familiar desktop?
I'm not seeing anyone, not even Microsoft, demanding that the workplace convert over to touch-screen UIs, even in a distant future. The reason why is as close as the nearest heavy user of Excel...
Not lost per se, but only because I had to endure a bit of a tour (my last employer was a Microsoft Premier/Platinum/Perpetual/etc partner - they drink the koolaid by the tankerload.)
All I can say is, thanks to a recent layoff and job search, I was able to quickly winnow out the intelligent IT departments from the flaming morons. The ones with intelligence are holding off on W8 until either Microsoft fixes that Metro garbage into usability, or a decent 3rd-party enterprise-ready UI bolt-on comes into play. Their explanations as to why ranged from the standard 'wait-forever-before bothering', to some very reasoned responses that made perfect sense (mostly revolving around training costs, incompatibilities, and etc) The one prospective employer I avoided with haste is busy trialing W8 among their IT folk for a push out to their users starting at the end of this quarter, but with little regard to testing with users outside their IT department.
In-depth grilling into how they think and react as a department is a must if you can do it. It reveals a lot about what you're walking into, but the trick is to blow past the buzzwords and get them to really explain it.
(My views may be a bit biased though - I'm finally going back into Linux administration with a kick-ass new employer...)
If they would have even hinted at bringing back the normal desktop, it would have been big news. Well, at least they didn't mandate ribbon menus on all applications written for Windows. But then, until they ditch Metro, I'm afraid that enterprise adoption will remain a little slow...
Same in Oregon for pretty much anything that isn't tobacco or gasoline, and only one of those are practical for purchasing online.
OTOH, I am curious as to whether or not some neighboring state (*cough* California *cough*) would decide to charge me their sales tax rate for anything that an online retailer would sell to me if it comes out of a warehouse that is sitting within their borders...
It'll change a few dynamics, to say the least.
I do recall only one site online charging any sales tax - DAZ Productions used to charge sales tax to their Utah customers (back when I was one), because they themselves are in Utah. I'm sure there are similar setups out there...
I am pro-defence lawyer. However, if prosecutors are not allowed to bring in the accused backgrounds due to them not being relevant I don't see how it is ok defence lawyers can be able to bring in victims unrelated backgrounds.
Prosecutors are hamstrung for good reason - defense has more latitude for the same good reasons. See also Casey Anthony's trial, where defense was allowed to defend Anthony's alleged child-murder by (among other things) saying point-blank that her father was a pedophile who molested her frequently when she was a child.
You are missing my point, apparently, if this is the environment people are in then your statement of "and women haven't actually felt that way any time in my entire life," is completely false.
Well let's see, how many defense lawyers try to bring in a rap victims background and actions into evidence to justify a rape accusation in the USA?
That's the defense lawyer's job to do that! The idea behind a trial is adversarial - and the lawyer on defense has to do everything in his power (and within the bounds of law) to poke holes in the prosecution's case, and to introduce reasonable doubt into the minds of the jury.
This is no different than a murder defendant claiming that the victim was attacking/abusing/threatening enough to justify the killing, even if in reality that may have never happened (...sound familiar? It should. )
Please stop confusing the defense lawyer's job with some concocted overall assumption that a rape victim 'had it coming', because to anyone with an IQ above room temperature, it's a bullshit assumption.
As a result, a 16-year-old girl was charged today with aggravated menacing for allegedly threatening the life of the victim via Twitter, and a 15-year-old was charged with menacing for allegedly threatening bodily harm via Facebook."
(emphases mine) ....problem, meet solution. The dumbassed kids who made those threats are now themselves facing lock-up for their actions. Hope they enjoy their stints in 'Juvie' and any chances of a college education either reduced or eliminated. Meanwhile, every other kid now has a couple of prime real-life lessons as to why you don't let emotions about the school team override common sense. I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the school is now talking about the two dumbasses who facebooked themselves into a ruined future.
As you may know, if this information is not removed after notice that complies with the DMCA, the Internet Service Provider may also be held liable for the copyright infringement.
Err, they do realize that the ISP (and/or whoever else, e.g. YouTube) can put it right back up as soon as the poster (the reviewer) puts in a counterclaim, and that only an injunction can take it down from that point until the eventual lawsuit is resolved in favor of the plaintiff... right?
Sounds like GoPro's legal department (if they even have one) has their collective head jammed firmly into their collective rectum.
"From here, the sound of the war that began last night is inaudible. As veterans realize and almost every writer on the subject of war has reminded us, the experience of this new, unwanted war will be unknowable except among those who will be there for the fighting. " (emphasis mine)...and here's a whole pile more
Anyone in the corporate media who was against this war were fired or silenced.
Wait - what?
As lovely as it may be to read, I'm afraid it's bullshit.
The NYT editorial page was quite on fire with anti-war sentiment (whether it was because they really opposed it at the time or because they hated Bush that much, I leave the the reader). The Washington Post poured out anti-war opinion. CNN/MSNBC/CNBC were *all* highlighting anti-war angled stories, and going out of their way to give air/face time to those who opposed the idea (anyone else remember the whole "human shield" activist group and the loving attention they had lavished on them by the press? I wonder what happened to them?) Every anti-war protest of almost any size made the headlines - even beforehand.
The only time the press showed any restraint was when the guns actually started firing, and then only because the US Military finally figured out how to keep intel from leaking all to hell and breakfast.
Once in awhile it's nice to get an official record of Microsoft breaking the law and pulling stupid stunts.
That way the MS fanboys and shills can't come along in a later conversation where the subject may come up, and then screech "prove it!" whenever some poor soul mentions that Microsoft is one highly corrupt pack of mofos.
Wait - why? There are no laws in the physical realm that require shopkeepers or suchlike to treat any child wandering in with kid gloves, and there is no real-world equivalent of COPPA out here. Instead, parents watch what their kids do when outside the home, and there are laws in place which either prevent or punish any dumbass trying to prey on a child. The Internet can use those same laws, since it isn't some alternate universe, but the same world we live in now - but 'with a computer' (to draw parallels with the patent world).
We don't need dumbassed 'cyber-bullying' laws when anti-harassment laws already exist, and a court can get ISP records with a warrant. There are a plethora of laws and punishments in place to deal with pedophiles and wannabes.
I may get modded into oblivion for this, but... society-wise, maybe it's better for the occasional Darwin moment to happen, even if it involves a kid.
Seriously - when you have government becoming more and more imposing on societal rights and freedoms "for the children", maybe it's time to stop and let parents find out (even if, sadly, it's the hard way) that maybe they should stop treating the Internet like a toy. Long ago, I was asked to teach my local church group about the Internet. The analogy I drew worked pretty well in my own estimation:
The Internet is like New York City. It's fun, exciting, you can buy stuff there, and it can educate as well as entertain. However! Just like the Big Apple, you do not let your kid wander around the place alone.
Thing is, no parent would be stupid enough to let their under-aged kid wander around Times Square at night. So why do they let their kids play unfettered on the Internet? Maybe it's because the dangers of the big city are obvious and apparent, whereas they aren't online? Well, if enough news stories come out about kids harmed by doing something dumb online, and happens often enough, maybe the parents will get the hint? As shitty as it is to say this, maybe we need enough of this to happen before the clue sinks in?
I don't think that it matters much what their motivations are, but rather, the stated rationale they give towards reaching their end goal (that is, shouting "eBooks are convenient!" when in reality they just want to lock that puppy down and circumvent first-sale doctrine entirely).
I'm sure they are convenient for both publisher (drops the cost of ink and paper to practically nada), and for many consumers (store it on a tablet!)
OTOH, while you may find it convenient and such, there are a lot of us old curmudgeons out here who prefer their books on paper.
The old-school books don't require batteries or eyestrain, no DRM, and the format won't ever become obsolete. Sure, they take up space and weigh a lot in quantity. So what? I've had a going personal library for decades now, and it's not a bother to me. I have this habit of upgrading the pile once in awhile. This means I get rid of the obvious crap (and any books I no longer have a credible use for), keep the good stuff (the awesome books I want to read over and over again over the years, old textbooks, etc) and over time my little personal library has gained in quality. As a bonus, no publisher or author can ever take them away from me - and not a few of them are even autographed. By the way, I can read 'em anytime I want, even when the power goes out.
Long story short - you go right ahead and chain yourself to the publisher's profit motives. I prefer mine on paper, and I prefer them to be mine once I buy them.
Not going to believe it until/unless they stop selling the phones (and w/o a new version being offered).
All said, Microsoft likely makes enough money from the Great Android Extortion, so even if they stopped distributing WP8 tomorrow morning, they'd still make money hand-over-fist.
(OTOH, how would you think Nokia would react if such a thing happened?)
I score it 2 out of five, mostly because you rushed to the meat of your troll in your first sentence - it was like watching some schoolboy getting his first lay, only to ejaculate all over her panty-covered mons. A disappointment, to say the least.
You need to lead up to the troll. You know, like foreplay. Nobody likes a trap rigged with insufficient bait.;)
There was a lot of that (oh, shit was there a lot of it!), but the happy benefit that trolling had was to help slap a few of them upside the head with a good hard dose of reality.;)
There are still a few points of light here and there in the darkness, but instead of being common, it's now a somewhat rare gem. I miss the days when the big boys in IT would pop in and take a turn or four at a given subject. It allowed you to learn shit that no man page, howto, or FAQ would ever tell you. Seriously, it allowed you to see inside their decision-making and vision, which helped this sysadmin learn more about writing good code than most typical codemonkeys today could ever hope to know about the craft.
Good luck in your search for some sort of actual geek site these days, though. The nanosecond it generates anything worth having, you can count on the corporations, ideologues, and the ignorant to come swooping in and work their respective angles, shitting all over the place in the process.
I've no more tears to weep for humanity though; it is what it is. It's like being one of the old guys sitting around the crumbling ruins of an era gone by, reminiscing about the old days of prospect, excitement and wonder.
Back in the days of USENET, it was (once) an art form. It served the purpose of getting a good giggle at the expense of blind ideologues (of any subject), and to force the lurking observers to mentally dig deeper - to more thoroughly examine their beliefs and what they thought they knew. It was an excellent way to explore concepts outside of orthodoxy, and challenged the status quo. At its highest expression, a good troll will spark further research into a subject (if only to win an argument), and served the noble purpose of everyone learning something new in the end.
Now? Bah - in most cases, it's become pedestrian at best, and often shows the low intelligence of the troll.
Interestingly enough, it is nowadays employed by corporate and political entities via mechanical turk - like astroturfing, but in reverse. For instance, take politics: Lurker sees a bucket of misspelled repugnant garbage posted in opposition to a particular viewpoint, and thinks that it represents nearly everyone else who opposes said viewpoint. Suddenly, that 'team' is tainted, swaying the lurker towards the troll's real viewpoint. It's an effective way to create discord in the ranks of those whom you want to diminish, and is employed quite often. It also provides "proof" that The Other Side is a bunch of racists/pedophiles/whatever, thus their motives are evil, wrong, etc.
Dishonest as hell, but hard to see through from the casual lurker's eye. And, well, TFA proves that a lot of it works.
So what was once a sport that some of us did long ago for a bit of intellectual fun, has now become either the epitome of lame-assed prose, or has become serious cash-money business to further (or retard) a cause.
Slashdot Mirror
And if you are buying your computers from a standard manufacturer, they cost the same as the TB drives. Might as well get the bigger drives.
As a bonus, a really enterprising sysadmin will use the (aggregate) empty desktop disk space as a de-centralized near-term backup solution. Mind you, it should never replace tapes, snapshots, etc, but...
If you can park encrypted copies of critical data around redundantly on every desktop, deny the use of that space to the desktop user, and do it in a way that's automated? Sweet. Why do it? Because you could possibly recover lost data much faster than calling your offsite provider and waiting for a tape to arrive. It also serves as a last-ditch, everything-else-has-failed means of recovering whatever data it is that you deposited there. You;d have to set up some sort of RAID-like redundancy, and a means to automatically update that data on a semi-regular basis, but damn if it wouldn't work. As a bonus, you can put that disk space to legitimate use, instead of watching it get filled up with cat pictures and web cached files from facebook. If each desktop has a TB of drive, you could slash it to 300GB for the desktop user, and take 600GB+ (mind the overhead) from each desktop for company use. Even with only, say, 40 desktops? You could get up an easy 12 TB of aggregate storage with a RAID1-like redundancy - maybe 6 TB if you had 4 copies of each chunk of data, which is still nothing to sneeze at (especially if you've priced SAN shelving as a near-line backup depot...)
(...though if you were a true BOFH, you could do the same thing, say it's for company data, then use it for your own personal stash or whatever...)
Good question - but if the game were heavily graphics-intensive, yet required few if any controls (e.g. flight/dogfight games and whatnot) I could see the arrangement as useful.
IMHO though, where it would really shine is in 3D/CG hobbyist markets, if tablet controls could be slaved to common functions, and a stylus could take a lot of the rest. This way you could run, say, Poser, DAZ|Studio, Blender, and suchlike to really tear into a 3d view/ You could also perhaps slave the camera to tilt/position sensors so that you could literally move the tablet around your object or scene in order to see it at multiple angles. Once you find a good one, you can take a 'snapshot', then have the thing render it from your snapshotted angle/zoom setting.
Thinking the same thing here.... it all depends on the game, and how it is controlled.
If it used the gravity/tilt sensors as part of the game and some drop-simple controls, okay. If it's a full-on FPS that has a shitload of bindings to it? Hell, not even a console can do such a game true justice.
Problem is, if you need to add an external device or two (be it a controller, mouse, keyboard, whatever), then what would be the point?
I can agree to that, but only to an extent - doing so would show that Microsoft is playing a short game, not a long one.
Win7 will likely hang around enterprises for at least the next 5-7 years (or more) if this is the case, but then what? An "enterprise" version that has the familiar desktop?
I'm not seeing anyone, not even Microsoft, demanding that the workplace convert over to touch-screen UIs, even in a distant future. The reason why is as close as the nearest heavy user of Excel...
The "vast majority of human beings" don't sign massive EA contracts that pay Microsoft's bills.
We'll see how it shakes out when enterprises begin tinkering with OSX and/or Linux on larger scales towards the end of their upgrade cycles.
Not lost per se, but only because I had to endure a bit of a tour (my last employer was a Microsoft Premier/Platinum/Perpetual/etc partner - they drink the koolaid by the tankerload.)
All I can say is, thanks to a recent layoff and job search, I was able to quickly winnow out the intelligent IT departments from the flaming morons. The ones with intelligence are holding off on W8 until either Microsoft fixes that Metro garbage into usability, or a decent 3rd-party enterprise-ready UI bolt-on comes into play. Their explanations as to why ranged from the standard 'wait-forever-before bothering', to some very reasoned responses that made perfect sense (mostly revolving around training costs, incompatibilities, and etc) The one prospective employer I avoided with haste is busy trialing W8 among their IT folk for a push out to their users starting at the end of this quarter, but with little regard to testing with users outside their IT department.
In-depth grilling into how they think and react as a department is a must if you can do it. It reveals a lot about what you're walking into, but the trick is to blow past the buzzwords and get them to really explain it.
(My views may be a bit biased though - I'm finally going back into Linux administration with a kick-ass new employer...)
Unfortunately, I have to agree.
If they would have even hinted at bringing back the normal desktop, it would have been big news. Well, at least they didn't mandate ribbon menus on all applications written for Windows. But then, until they ditch Metro, I'm afraid that enterprise adoption will remain a little slow...
Same in Oregon for pretty much anything that isn't tobacco or gasoline, and only one of those are practical for purchasing online.
OTOH, I am curious as to whether or not some neighboring state (*cough* California *cough*) would decide to charge me their sales tax rate for anything that an online retailer would sell to me if it comes out of a warehouse that is sitting within their borders...
It'll change a few dynamics, to say the least.
I do recall only one site online charging any sales tax - DAZ Productions used to charge sales tax to their Utah customers (back when I was one), because they themselves are in Utah. I'm sure there are similar setups out there...
I am pro-defence lawyer. However, if prosecutors are not allowed to bring in the accused backgrounds due to them not being relevant I don't see how it is ok defence lawyers can be able to bring in victims unrelated backgrounds.
Prosecutors are hamstrung for good reason - defense has more latitude for the same good reasons. See also Casey Anthony's trial, where defense was allowed to defend Anthony's alleged child-murder by (among other things) saying point-blank that her father was a pedophile who molested her frequently when she was a child.
You are missing my point, apparently, if this is the environment people are in then your statement of "and women haven't actually felt that way any time in my entire life," is completely false.
I never wrote that... GGP may have, though. ;)
Well let's see, how many defense lawyers try to bring in a rap victims background and actions into evidence to justify a rape accusation in the USA?
That's the defense lawyer's job to do that! The idea behind a trial is adversarial - and the lawyer on defense has to do everything in his power (and within the bounds of law) to poke holes in the prosecution's case, and to introduce reasonable doubt into the minds of the jury.
This is no different than a murder defendant claiming that the victim was attacking/abusing/threatening enough to justify the killing, even if in reality that may have never happened (...sound familiar? It should. )
Please stop confusing the defense lawyer's job with some concocted overall assumption that a rape victim 'had it coming', because to anyone with an IQ above room temperature, it's a bullshit assumption.
As a result, a 16-year-old girl was charged today with aggravated menacing for allegedly threatening the life of the victim via Twitter, and a 15-year-old was charged with menacing for allegedly threatening bodily harm via Facebook."
(emphases mine) ...problem, meet solution. The dumbassed kids who made those threats are now themselves facing lock-up for their actions. Hope they enjoy their stints in 'Juvie' and any chances of a college education either reduced or eliminated. Meanwhile, every other kid now has a couple of prime real-life lessons as to why you don't let emotions about the school team override common sense. I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the school is now talking about the two dumbasses who facebooked themselves into a ruined future.
.
As you may know, if this information is not removed after notice that complies with the DMCA, the Internet Service Provider may also be held liable for the copyright infringement.
Err, they do realize that the ISP (and/or whoever else, e.g. YouTube) can put it right back up as soon as the poster (the reviewer) puts in a counterclaim, and that only an injunction can take it down from that point until the eventual lawsuit is resolved in favor of the plaintiff... right?
Sounds like GoPro's legal department (if they even have one) has their collective head jammed firmly into their collective rectum.
On what fucking planet? The NYT treated anonymous, unverified administration claims as fact. Over and over again.
This planet:
"From here, the sound of the war that began last night is inaudible. As veterans realize and almost every writer on the subject of war has reminded us, the experience of this new, unwanted war will be unknowable except among those who will be there for the fighting. " (emphasis mine) ...and here's a whole pile more
But you know, go ahead and pretend otherwise.
That's right mod - if you disagree with it, cowardly claim it's flamebait.
Anyone in the corporate media who was against this war were fired or silenced.
Wait - what?
As lovely as it may be to read, I'm afraid it's bullshit.
The NYT editorial page was quite on fire with anti-war sentiment (whether it was because they really opposed it at the time or because they hated Bush that much, I leave the the reader). The Washington Post poured out anti-war opinion. CNN/MSNBC/CNBC were *all* highlighting anti-war angled stories, and going out of their way to give air/face time to those who opposed the idea (anyone else remember the whole "human shield" activist group and the loving attention they had lavished on them by the press? I wonder what happened to them?) Every anti-war protest of almost any size made the headlines - even beforehand.
The only time the press showed any restraint was when the guns actually started firing, and then only because the US Military finally figured out how to keep intel from leaking all to hell and breakfast.
Executives employed by companies try to make those companies do well.
...unless that executive is named Stephen Elop, Steven Ballmer, or Leo Apotheker. ;)
Once in awhile it's nice to get an official record of Microsoft breaking the law and pulling stupid stunts.
That way the MS fanboys and shills can't come along in a later conversation where the subject may come up, and then screech "prove it!" whenever some poor soul mentions that Microsoft is one highly corrupt pack of mofos.
I agree with most of your post, except...
Children do need to be protected online.
Wait - why? There are no laws in the physical realm that require shopkeepers or suchlike to treat any child wandering in with kid gloves, and there is no real-world equivalent of COPPA out here. Instead, parents watch what their kids do when outside the home, and there are laws in place which either prevent or punish any dumbass trying to prey on a child. The Internet can use those same laws, since it isn't some alternate universe, but the same world we live in now - but 'with a computer' (to draw parallels with the patent world).
We don't need dumbassed 'cyber-bullying' laws when anti-harassment laws already exist, and a court can get ISP records with a warrant. There are a plethora of laws and punishments in place to deal with pedophiles and wannabes.
I may get modded into oblivion for this, but... society-wise, maybe it's better for the occasional Darwin moment to happen, even if it involves a kid.
Seriously - when you have government becoming more and more imposing on societal rights and freedoms "for the children", maybe it's time to stop and let parents find out (even if, sadly, it's the hard way) that maybe they should stop treating the Internet like a toy. Long ago, I was asked to teach my local church group about the Internet. The analogy I drew worked pretty well in my own estimation:
The Internet is like New York City. It's fun, exciting, you can buy stuff there, and it can educate as well as entertain. However! Just like the Big Apple, you do not let your kid wander around the place alone.
Thing is, no parent would be stupid enough to let their under-aged kid wander around Times Square at night. So why do they let their kids play unfettered on the Internet? Maybe it's because the dangers of the big city are obvious and apparent, whereas they aren't online? Well, if enough news stories come out about kids harmed by doing something dumb online, and happens often enough, maybe the parents will get the hint? As shitty as it is to say this, maybe we need enough of this to happen before the clue sinks in?
I don't think that it matters much what their motivations are, but rather, the stated rationale they give towards reaching their end goal (that is, shouting "eBooks are convenient!" when in reality they just want to lock that puppy down and circumvent first-sale doctrine entirely).
I'm sure they are convenient for both publisher (drops the cost of ink and paper to practically nada), and for many consumers (store it on a tablet!)
OTOH, while you may find it convenient and such, there are a lot of us old curmudgeons out here who prefer their books on paper.
The old-school books don't require batteries or eyestrain, no DRM, and the format won't ever become obsolete. Sure, they take up space and weigh a lot in quantity. So what? I've had a going personal library for decades now, and it's not a bother to me. I have this habit of upgrading the pile once in awhile. This means I get rid of the obvious crap (and any books I no longer have a credible use for), keep the good stuff (the awesome books I want to read over and over again over the years, old textbooks, etc) and over time my little personal library has gained in quality. As a bonus, no publisher or author can ever take them away from me - and not a few of them are even autographed. By the way, I can read 'em anytime I want, even when the power goes out.
Long story short - you go right ahead and chain yourself to the publisher's profit motives. I prefer mine on paper, and I prefer them to be mine once I buy them.
Never underestimate the ego... perhaps it isn't the money, but the sting of being fleeced will certainly get them angry.
Nobody likes being treated like a sucker.
Not going to believe it until/unless they stop selling the phones (and w/o a new version being offered).
All said, Microsoft likely makes enough money from the Great Android Extortion, so even if they stopped distributing WP8 tomorrow morning, they'd still make money hand-over-fist.
(OTOH, how would you think Nokia would react if such a thing happened?)
I score it 2 out of five, mostly because you rushed to the meat of your troll in your first sentence - it was like watching some schoolboy getting his first lay, only to ejaculate all over her panty-covered mons. A disappointment, to say the least.
You need to lead up to the troll. You know, like foreplay. Nobody likes a trap rigged with insufficient bait. ;)
There was a lot of that (oh, shit was there a lot of it!), but the happy benefit that trolling had was to help slap a few of them upside the head with a good hard dose of reality. ;)
Sadly, I have to agree with most of your post.
There are still a few points of light here and there in the darkness, but instead of being common, it's now a somewhat rare gem. I miss the days when the big boys in IT would pop in and take a turn or four at a given subject. It allowed you to learn shit that no man page, howto, or FAQ would ever tell you. Seriously, it allowed you to see inside their decision-making and vision, which helped this sysadmin learn more about writing good code than most typical codemonkeys today could ever hope to know about the craft.
Good luck in your search for some sort of actual geek site these days, though. The nanosecond it generates anything worth having, you can count on the corporations, ideologues, and the ignorant to come swooping in and work their respective angles, shitting all over the place in the process.
I've no more tears to weep for humanity though; it is what it is. It's like being one of the old guys sitting around the crumbling ruins of an era gone by, reminiscing about the old days of prospect, excitement and wonder.
Ah, trolling. :)
Back in the days of USENET, it was (once) an art form. It served the purpose of getting a good giggle at the expense of blind ideologues (of any subject), and to force the lurking observers to mentally dig deeper - to more thoroughly examine their beliefs and what they thought they knew. It was an excellent way to explore concepts outside of orthodoxy, and challenged the status quo. At its highest expression, a good troll will spark further research into a subject (if only to win an argument), and served the noble purpose of everyone learning something new in the end.
Now? Bah - in most cases, it's become pedestrian at best, and often shows the low intelligence of the troll.
Interestingly enough, it is nowadays employed by corporate and political entities via mechanical turk - like astroturfing, but in reverse. For instance, take politics: Lurker sees a bucket of misspelled repugnant garbage posted in opposition to a particular viewpoint, and thinks that it represents nearly everyone else who opposes said viewpoint. Suddenly, that 'team' is tainted, swaying the lurker towards the troll's real viewpoint. It's an effective way to create discord in the ranks of those whom you want to diminish, and is employed quite often. It also provides "proof" that The Other Side is a bunch of racists/pedophiles/whatever, thus their motives are evil, wrong, etc.
Dishonest as hell, but hard to see through from the casual lurker's eye. And, well, TFA proves that a lot of it works.
So what was once a sport that some of us did long ago for a bit of intellectual fun, has now become either the epitome of lame-assed prose, or has become serious cash-money business to further (or retard) a cause.