IBM contributes heavily to open source, and in fact might be the biggest contributor to open source, and they are quite profitable.
Due to their proprietary hardware and software that they sell. Not due to open source.
Actually, that's not true. In 2010, IBM earned $58.7 billion from its business services, technology services, and finance divisions, compared to $40.5 billion for its software and systems and technology divisions. So most of IBM's money comes from consulting and services, in which might involve proprietary products as well as open source software. IBM's policy is to offer its customers solutions that are the best fit for their needs and budgets -- that is, they'll bleed you as much as they can, but if it makes the most sense to use open source software, they'll use that.
Also, even some of IBM's proprietary software is open source. Let me repeat that: Even some of the software that you describe as "proprietary" also comprises open source elements. Not every open source license forbids commercial use. For example, IBM's WebSphere Application Server bundles a modified version of the Apache HTTP server (unless you want to use something else). In reverse, IBM has donated a number of products to the Apache Foundation, and these are usually mature packages that IBM was already deploying for real-world projects (e.g. CloudScape, aka Derby) and continues to use today -- now IBM just gains the benefits of community development. To the extent that Java is also open source, IBM is obviously heavily involved in the Java Specification Process (even if it has its own, proprietary Java products).
So you really can't claim IBM isn't a good open source citizen, and you can't claim IBM isn't profiting from its decision to embrace open source,either (where appropriate). Consider this: In 2010, IBM earned $22.5 billion from its software business. You know what it's gross profit margin from that business was? 86.9 percent. That's right, 86.9 percent. Think open source had nothing to do with that?
The open source part is just leveraged to sell more proprietary hardware and software.
Correction: The open source part is just leveraged -- or, if we can drop the bullshit MBA jargon, it's used to make money. What's wrong with that? I thought that was the whole topic of the thread.
Because they hired the cat to kill the rat - Fiorina - who wasn't giving them what they wanted.
I think you're forgetting Mark Hurd, who came before Apotheker and after Fiorina.The HP board forced Hurd out over a supposed sex scandal, even after admitting that the board's own investigation revealed no evidence of a sex scandal, in what Larry Ellison (!) described as, "the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago." I see no evidence that the HP board has hired or fired a CEO in recent years for reasons that could be described as "the best interests of HP."
Remember, also, that it was HP's board that was implicated in the whole "pretexting" scandal, where the board hired private investigators to spy on journalists. They really must be the worst board in Silicon Valley, if not American business as a whole.
How many people know what version of Chrome they're running?
I have an idea which major version I'm running, partially because some of my Chromes are on the release channel and some are on developer, so I know what's coming down the pipeline.
Unfortunately, although I've loved Firefox and have used it for years, I'm about ready to suggest that my organization no longer support it, because it's becoming impossible to realistically test against.
That rules out Chrome, too, so you're back to IE? Really? That's kinda throwing the baby out, don't you think?
X86 has a place, ARM has a place. When you need to do some heavy number crunching, or want huge detailed 3D worlds, or need to deal with a crapload of data? Then x86 is your guy. Need to be ultra mobile, where every microwatt counts? Need something light and rugged where it doesn't need fans, or a mil spec toughness for harsh conditions? Then ARM is your baby.
You seem to be forgetting Intel's Atom line, which is x86 and is the part series that's going after ARM (albeit even the Atom chips are only slowly catching up where power consumption is concerned). Intel partners are claiming you can expect to see Atom-based phones "real soon now."
I think you highlight the simple fact that a walled-garden store and closed developer model really just formalizes what has always been a defacto situation for a third-party developer on a platform. If you write software for Windows, or Mac OS X, or Android or anything, your business is completely beholden to the maintainers of the platform.
Hmmm. Well, you make interesting points, but I'm confused how you think they have anything to do with what I was trying to say. What I was trying to point out is that "Windows 8 on ARM" isn't going to resemble desktop Windows in any meaningful way; instead, it will resemble the kind of Windows that already runs on ARM today, which is Windows Phone. The fact that Microsoft keeps telling everybody that there will be a version of Windows 8 that runs on ARM is just a marketing ploy designed to generate interest in the Windows Phone platform, which up until now has been all but stillborn.
I'm surprised that/.ers are allowing Microsoft's marketing to confuse them on this issue. Windows 8 for ARM will have all the characteristics of a smartphone ecosystem simply because that's what it's going to be. It will offer no desktop; no ability to run traditional applications; a very limited subset of Win32 and.Net ; and a walled-garden, network-centric model that favors "apps" over applications. The fact that it will share some APIs with desktop Windows hardly seems important when its UI and capabilities won't otherwise resemble desktop Windows in any meaningful way (and any shared APIs seem to be ones ported from ARM to x86, not the other way around). From what I'm hearing, Windows Phone 7 already offers most of what Microsoft is saying "Windows 8 on ARM" will have when it ships. So I'm a little surprised that Slashdotters, of all people, seem unwilling to call a spade a spade.
it's always just a few years from evicting the RISC and mainframe architectures from their niches, no matter when you ask.
I think it's pretty damn close to evicting RISC today -- or at least, putting it into a niche, when I'd hardly have called RISC/Unix a "niche market" ten or more years ago. Mainframes are definitely a niche, but where they exist they are well entrenched.
Ehhh? The summary seems a little cockeyed. Does anyone on/. really believe this is the first time Intel is using "the R-word'? Intel has been positioning its chips against RISC for ages. Yes, in the past it was using Itanium as its "high end" chip, because it was more directly competitive with IBM's and Sun's offerings (and it probably had bigger margins). But here's an article from 2004 which claims "Intel markets the [Itanium] chip as a replacement for RISC processors from companies like Sun and IBM" -- pretty much exactly what the summary is claiming is "a first" here.
If anything, Intel has chosen not to throw around a lot of rhetoric about x86/x64 as a replacement for RISC servers out of deference to its partners. Back in 2007, you will recall, Sun started marketing x86 servers in addition to its RISC product line. How would it look if Intel went around claiming x86 was a replacement for Sparc servers? Intel left it to Sun's marketing to clarify where it saw its x86-based products in comparison to Sparc. Similarly, around the same time HP was putting out x86 and Itanium servers -- Intel wasn't going to muddy the waters there, certainly.
On the other hand, Red Hat and Dell would certainly talk about Linux servers (read: x86) as replacements for proprietary Unix servers (read: RISC). So it's certainly not like this is the first time anyone floated the idea, and it's certainly not like Intel has backed off from competing with RISC at any point in the past, no matter which component gets positioned against RISC chips.
While I agree with most of what you're saying, I just want to remind everyone that MS hasn't shown off the next office release yet. We don't know what the metro interface will look like
But we do know what the Metro UI guidelines and its API description are. The UI should be "touch first." How does that make sense for a professional word processor, which will always be 90 percent about keyboard input? The APIs allow no direct access to system resources. The apps run in "suspended" mode when they're not fullscreen. How do these limitations improve the performance of a word processor, let alone a graphics application? Why would Microsoft rewrite an entire suite of applications so that they use only "a small subset of Win32 and.Net"? The answer is it wouldn't. "Metro-style" Office will ship as an adjunct to "real" Office, and possibly separately as a marketing ploy to make sure Windows users stick with Office file formats. Nobody who uses the Office apps for a living will be using the Metro-style versions.
This is possible only in x86 version, not in ARM version. Unlike the other-architecture versions of Windows NT 3 and 4, the ARM version of Windows 8 will not include an ARM port of the classic desktop.
Everybody keeps talking about this as if it's some kind of massive blow. Are you really surprised? This is typical Microsoft marketing:
1.) Announce that there will be an ARM version of Windows. Everyone rejoices! 2.) Remind everyone that the ARM version will not run x86 software. Everyone admits this is true and mumbles. 3.) Announce that the ARM version won't even include a Windows desktop. Everyone starts wondering what makes it Windows. 4.) Ship "the ARM version of Windows" only on tablets and phones and on nothing that resembles a PC, without a desktop, using a special UI and a walled-garden store to distribute apps. Surprise! Didn't we mention that the ARM version of Windows was going to be called Windows Phone? Only we're dropping the Phone part because we're all about tablets now. But it's still Windows! 100 percent Windows, people, getcher Windows right here...
I wouldn't be surprised if RMS has been making regular trips out to the family plot, just to get a head start. He's going to be doing a lot of grave-spinning one day (hopefully, in the far future).
It'll be interesting to see how Windows Power Users deal with this. They'll have to look to IT to be set up as a user who can "side-load" an application. Like that will happen.
No. Microsoft is totally confusing everybody by referring to all software now as "apps." They talk about "Metro-style apps" and "desktop apps." Get that out of your head. Think of it as "Metro apps" and "desktop applications."
Nothing is changing about any of your traditional Windows applications. Nothing. Microsoft is adding some new APIs and tweaking others, but it's up to you whether you want to use them or not. Office 2003 will still run on Windows 8. There is not going to be any Metro version of Photoshop.
Metro apps are just that: apps. They are not replacements for applications, no matter what Microsoft makes it sound like. A few days ago, Ars and others reported that Microsoft was working on a Metro-style version of Office. This is nothing more than marketing speak. The Metro version of Office will not resemble the professional version of Office any more than Office for Windows Phone resembles it today.
All Metro really is is a strategy for Microsoft to kickstart the Windows Phone (and tablet, if that doesn't blow over) ecosystem. They want to make sure everybody who runs Windows is familiar with the Windows Phone UI, and they want developers to write apps to run on Windows which will then, coincidentally, run on Windows Phone. Microsoft recognizes that smartphones and similar devices are increasingly where it's at for many computer users, and it recognizes that Google and Apple have been absolutely leaving Microsoft in the fucking dust in that market. Microsoft is attempting to use its Windows market share as an end run around Apple and Google's dominance.
I'm sure there will be lots of Metro apps, but most of them will be games and gizmos, like what shipped with the Windows Developer Preview. Personally, I can't see wanting to use anything as complicated as an FTP client with the Metro UI. I'll be doing 90 percent of my work on the desktop, like always. I just hope Microsoft finds a way to make the Metro environment less obtrusive when Windows 8 ships, because I tried using it for day-to-day work and reverted to Windows 7 pretty quickly. Right now, it's just too ugly and clumsy to integrate seamlessly with my daily routine (and the Metro Start screen is far less efficient than the classic Start menu).
Well OK, fine, you give a real-world example, and so we can examine exactly how this attempt to control the desktop hardware turned out: Pretty poorly, if you ask me. Most laptops you get at Best Buy right now do not have a Trusted Platform Module (TPM). Business laptops do, where it's generally considered a fairly desirable feature (for reasons having nothing to do with DRM). If anything, though, the idea of "a TPM for every desktop" seems to mostly have been abandoned. I don't really see Microsoft making another push for it.
Shattering may be an exaggeration, but I've seen a definite increase in the number of discs that look as if someone's 2-year-old went at them for an hour. And the thing about that is, when a disc won't play, you have to send it back for a replacement. That takes a few days while the original disc and the replacement are in the mail. If this happens often enough, the net effect is that even if your Netflix plan says you can have three discs out at once, effectively you can only have two. It's as if you got a downgrade on your plan, even though you're still paying the same amount.
I actually disagree on this score. I thought the CG was pretty tastefully done. Where it was weak was in that it was occasionally inconsistent (they changed some of their models halfway through the project). A little nostalgia value was lost, but having watched video releases of Star Trek for a while now, a lot of the original masters were in pretty bad shape. Particularly on FX shots such as shots of the Enterprise, colors were faded out and the tapes were showing their age. The CG wasn't designed to change the look of the original show but to restore it. That said, the important part is that you can still get the original versions if you prefer (unlike Star Wars).
Warren Buffett is free to make out a cheque to the US government and send it in at any time if he feels he isn't paying enough tax.
Of course he can. And what does this completely fatuous statement have to do with fixing the tax structure in the U.S.? Or do you think Warren Buffett has been personally sitting on all the money?
A family of 4 earning $1M EARNED A FUCKING MILLION DOLLARS THAT YEAR and there's no reason they should have $750k of it taken from them just because they did well.
But nobody is suggesting that, and to claim that they are is disingenuous.
We have a tiered tax system. If I make $100,000 and you make $1,000,000, you will pay the exact same amount of tax as me -- on your first $100,000. The only part where you pay a higher tax rate is the part where you make significantly more than me (or the vast majority of Americans). And this new tax that's being proposed wouldn't affect you at all. It would only raise the amount of taxes owed on income in excess of $1,000,000. How you can seriously imagine that this is unreasonable is beyond me.
Your example of taxes discouraging people from starting businesses is bogus, too. Business expenses are tax deductible, even for sole proprietorships.
my biggest complaint is that never, not once have I read one of their articles and gotten what the headline promised. Isn't Zenmap just a GUI for nmap? Yet both of them are there. Is there a reason to prefer the third-party PowerGUI over the Microsoft Powershell ISE [microsoft.com] other than the former being open source?
Au contraire. It sounds like you got exactly what the headline promised, but you wanted to throw a bunch of closed-source, proprietary tools into the mix.
Ask instead whether lumping software into an "open source" category makes any sense in 2011, from a practical, get-work-done perspective. I've been asking for years -- and I work for InfoWorld. For example, I don't know why anyone would install ClamAV when there are free alternatives like Avast and Microsoft Security Essentials, each of which is way more effective than ClamAV, which requires you to scan individual files manually. So you don't really care about viruses, you just want to use open source? It seems to me, if that's the case, Windows is not the right OS for you.
I don't have a need to run a lot of servers, but I do really like the VMware Workstation product for software testing and Linux-based development on a Windows workstation. I'm aware that VMware provides a lot of tools that are practically essential for datacenter virtualization. That said, when the Windows 8 Developer Preview shipped, I was surprised to learn that it wouldn't run on VMware -- only VirtualBox. For all VMware's strengths, VirtualBox seems to do a better job of its core function: virtualization. I'd hardly compare that to the difference between GIMP and Photoshop.
They both take up valuable screen real-estate, and in the case of the Ribbon, I don't think they are as customizable as the old Toolbars were (I might be wrong on that point, though).
You're wrong on that point. In fact, in Office 2010 you can even export all your Ribbon customizations so you can configure multiple copies of Office exactly the way you like it.
It could and should be and would be and likely will happen after a privatization assuming government doesn't interfere with a regulation.
No it couldn't, wouldn't, and shouldn't. No airport I've ever flown to or from has the space to setup separate screening machinery and personnel for every airline. The smaller ones have screening outside individual groups of gates. The larger ones herd everyone through big, multi-line screening areas before they ever get to the gates.
What's more, private security screening companies would be subject to bribery and corruption just like any other company. You could argue that the TSA is, too -- but right now you have a single, centrally-managed organization running security for an entire airport. Change that to ten separate organizations, and all of a sudden criminals have ten separate opportunities to bribe their way through the gates. When you have competition, inevitably some of the competitors will fall behind, struggle, and then fail. The trick is to approach them when they're in the "struggling" phase.
Embedding cloud services in the OS to such a degree will require a lot of work to restrict, lock down, and disable such features.
Well, what does "to such a degree" really mean? As far as I can tell, it means your Windows Live account just got a lot more significant, because it's now going to be used to preserve things like app purchases and app state, in addition to providing you a home for your files etc. Like how Google accounts work now.
On the other hand, a lot of this does sound somewhat disturbing for enterprise customers, but there is absolutely no chance that Microsoft would piss them all off by not allowing policy control over the whole mess.
The prosumer/business/productivity group will still have the more pro oriented traditional window manager for doing what we do.
With some exceptions. For one, the Start menu is gone; clicking on the Windows icon just boots you back into Metro. As far as I can tell, even business users will be expected to suck it up and love Metro.
Slashdot Mirror
IBM contributes heavily to open source, and in fact might be the biggest contributor to open source, and they are quite profitable.
Due to their proprietary hardware and software that they sell. Not due to open source.
Actually, that's not true. In 2010, IBM earned $58.7 billion from its business services, technology services, and finance divisions, compared to $40.5 billion for its software and systems and technology divisions. So most of IBM's money comes from consulting and services, in which might involve proprietary products as well as open source software. IBM's policy is to offer its customers solutions that are the best fit for their needs and budgets -- that is, they'll bleed you as much as they can, but if it makes the most sense to use open source software, they'll use that.
Also, even some of IBM's proprietary software is open source. Let me repeat that: Even some of the software that you describe as "proprietary" also comprises open source elements. Not every open source license forbids commercial use. For example, IBM's WebSphere Application Server bundles a modified version of the Apache HTTP server (unless you want to use something else). In reverse, IBM has donated a number of products to the Apache Foundation, and these are usually mature packages that IBM was already deploying for real-world projects (e.g. CloudScape, aka Derby) and continues to use today -- now IBM just gains the benefits of community development. To the extent that Java is also open source, IBM is obviously heavily involved in the Java Specification Process (even if it has its own, proprietary Java products).
So you really can't claim IBM isn't a good open source citizen, and you can't claim IBM isn't profiting from its decision to embrace open source,either (where appropriate). Consider this: In 2010, IBM earned $22.5 billion from its software business. You know what it's gross profit margin from that business was? 86.9 percent. That's right, 86.9 percent. Think open source had nothing to do with that?
The open source part is just leveraged to sell more proprietary hardware and software.
Correction: The open source part is just leveraged -- or, if we can drop the bullshit MBA jargon, it's used to make money. What's wrong with that? I thought that was the whole topic of the thread.
Because they hired the cat to kill the rat - Fiorina - who wasn't giving them what they wanted.
I think you're forgetting Mark Hurd, who came before Apotheker and after Fiorina.The HP board forced Hurd out over a supposed sex scandal, even after admitting that the board's own investigation revealed no evidence of a sex scandal, in what Larry Ellison (!) described as, "the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago." I see no evidence that the HP board has hired or fired a CEO in recent years for reasons that could be described as "the best interests of HP."
Remember, also, that it was HP's board that was implicated in the whole "pretexting" scandal, where the board hired private investigators to spy on journalists. They really must be the worst board in Silicon Valley, if not American business as a whole.
The HP board of directors has shown itself, over many years, to be utterly incompetent.
And Meg Whitman was on the board of directors.
How many people know what version of Chrome they're running?
I have an idea which major version I'm running, partially because some of my Chromes are on the release channel and some are on developer, so I know what's coming down the pipeline.
Unfortunately, although I've loved Firefox and have used it for years, I'm about ready to suggest that my organization no longer support it, because it's becoming impossible to realistically test against.
That rules out Chrome, too, so you're back to IE? Really? That's kinda throwing the baby out, don't you think?
Why is it irrelevant? Firefox copies Chrome's UI, it could just as easily copy Chrome's strategy of installing itself in the user's home directory.
X86 has a place, ARM has a place. When you need to do some heavy number crunching, or want huge detailed 3D worlds, or need to deal with a crapload of data? Then x86 is your guy. Need to be ultra mobile, where every microwatt counts? Need something light and rugged where it doesn't need fans, or a mil spec toughness for harsh conditions? Then ARM is your baby.
You seem to be forgetting Intel's Atom line, which is x86 and is the part series that's going after ARM (albeit even the Atom chips are only slowly catching up where power consumption is concerned). Intel partners are claiming you can expect to see Atom-based phones "real soon now."
I think you highlight the simple fact that a walled-garden store and closed developer model really just formalizes what has always been a defacto situation for a third-party developer on a platform. If you write software for Windows, or Mac OS X, or Android or anything, your business is completely beholden to the maintainers of the platform.
Hmmm. Well, you make interesting points, but I'm confused how you think they have anything to do with what I was trying to say. What I was trying to point out is that "Windows 8 on ARM" isn't going to resemble desktop Windows in any meaningful way; instead, it will resemble the kind of Windows that already runs on ARM today, which is Windows Phone. The fact that Microsoft keeps telling everybody that there will be a version of Windows 8 that runs on ARM is just a marketing ploy designed to generate interest in the Windows Phone platform, which up until now has been all but stillborn.
I'm surprised that /.ers are allowing Microsoft's marketing to confuse them on this issue. Windows 8 for ARM will have all the characteristics of a smartphone ecosystem simply because that's what it's going to be. It will offer no desktop; no ability to run traditional applications; a very limited subset of Win32 and .Net ; and a walled-garden, network-centric model that favors "apps" over applications. The fact that it will share some APIs with desktop Windows hardly seems important when its UI and capabilities won't otherwise resemble desktop Windows in any meaningful way (and any shared APIs seem to be ones ported from ARM to x86, not the other way around). From what I'm hearing, Windows Phone 7 already offers most of what Microsoft is saying "Windows 8 on ARM" will have when it ships. So I'm a little surprised that Slashdotters, of all people, seem unwilling to call a spade a spade.
it's always just a few years from evicting the RISC and mainframe architectures from their niches, no matter when you ask.
I think it's pretty damn close to evicting RISC today -- or at least, putting it into a niche, when I'd hardly have called RISC/Unix a "niche market" ten or more years ago. Mainframes are definitely a niche, but where they exist they are well entrenched.
Ehhh? The summary seems a little cockeyed. Does anyone on /. really believe this is the first time Intel is using "the R-word'? Intel has been positioning its chips against RISC for ages. Yes, in the past it was using Itanium as its "high end" chip, because it was more directly competitive with IBM's and Sun's offerings (and it probably had bigger margins). But here's an article from 2004 which claims "Intel markets the [Itanium] chip as a replacement for RISC processors from companies like Sun and IBM" -- pretty much exactly what the summary is claiming is "a first" here.
If anything, Intel has chosen not to throw around a lot of rhetoric about x86/x64 as a replacement for RISC servers out of deference to its partners. Back in 2007, you will recall, Sun started marketing x86 servers in addition to its RISC product line. How would it look if Intel went around claiming x86 was a replacement for Sparc servers? Intel left it to Sun's marketing to clarify where it saw its x86-based products in comparison to Sparc. Similarly, around the same time HP was putting out x86 and Itanium servers -- Intel wasn't going to muddy the waters there, certainly.
On the other hand, Red Hat and Dell would certainly talk about Linux servers (read: x86) as replacements for proprietary Unix servers (read: RISC). So it's certainly not like this is the first time anyone floated the idea, and it's certainly not like Intel has backed off from competing with RISC at any point in the past, no matter which component gets positioned against RISC chips.
While I agree with most of what you're saying, I just want to remind everyone that MS hasn't shown off the next office release yet. We don't know what the metro interface will look like
But we do know what the Metro UI guidelines and its API description are. The UI should be "touch first." How does that make sense for a professional word processor, which will always be 90 percent about keyboard input? The APIs allow no direct access to system resources. The apps run in "suspended" mode when they're not fullscreen. How do these limitations improve the performance of a word processor, let alone a graphics application? Why would Microsoft rewrite an entire suite of applications so that they use only "a small subset of Win32 and .Net"? The answer is it wouldn't. "Metro-style" Office will ship as an adjunct to "real" Office, and possibly separately as a marketing ploy to make sure Windows users stick with Office file formats. Nobody who uses the Office apps for a living will be using the Metro-style versions.
This is possible only in x86 version, not in ARM version. Unlike the other-architecture versions of Windows NT 3 and 4, the ARM version of Windows 8 will not include an ARM port of the classic desktop.
Everybody keeps talking about this as if it's some kind of massive blow. Are you really surprised? This is typical Microsoft marketing:
1.) Announce that there will be an ARM version of Windows. Everyone rejoices!
2.) Remind everyone that the ARM version will not run x86 software. Everyone admits this is true and mumbles.
3.) Announce that the ARM version won't even include a Windows desktop. Everyone starts wondering what makes it Windows.
4.) Ship "the ARM version of Windows" only on tablets and phones and on nothing that resembles a PC, without a desktop, using a special UI and a walled-garden store to distribute apps. Surprise! Didn't we mention that the ARM version of Windows was going to be called Windows Phone? Only we're dropping the Phone part because we're all about tablets now. But it's still Windows! 100 percent Windows, people, getcher Windows right here...
I wouldn't be surprised if RMS has been making regular trips out to the family plot, just to get a head start. He's going to be doing a lot of grave-spinning one day (hopefully, in the far future).
It'll be interesting to see how Windows Power Users deal with this. They'll have to look to IT to be set up as a user who can "side-load" an application. Like that will happen.
No. Microsoft is totally confusing everybody by referring to all software now as "apps." They talk about "Metro-style apps" and "desktop apps." Get that out of your head. Think of it as "Metro apps" and "desktop applications."
Nothing is changing about any of your traditional Windows applications. Nothing. Microsoft is adding some new APIs and tweaking others, but it's up to you whether you want to use them or not. Office 2003 will still run on Windows 8. There is not going to be any Metro version of Photoshop.
Metro apps are just that: apps. They are not replacements for applications, no matter what Microsoft makes it sound like. A few days ago, Ars and others reported that Microsoft was working on a Metro-style version of Office. This is nothing more than marketing speak. The Metro version of Office will not resemble the professional version of Office any more than Office for Windows Phone resembles it today.
All Metro really is is a strategy for Microsoft to kickstart the Windows Phone (and tablet, if that doesn't blow over) ecosystem. They want to make sure everybody who runs Windows is familiar with the Windows Phone UI, and they want developers to write apps to run on Windows which will then, coincidentally, run on Windows Phone. Microsoft recognizes that smartphones and similar devices are increasingly where it's at for many computer users, and it recognizes that Google and Apple have been absolutely leaving Microsoft in the fucking dust in that market. Microsoft is attempting to use its Windows market share as an end run around Apple and Google's dominance.
I'm sure there will be lots of Metro apps, but most of them will be games and gizmos, like what shipped with the Windows Developer Preview. Personally, I can't see wanting to use anything as complicated as an FTP client with the Metro UI. I'll be doing 90 percent of my work on the desktop, like always. I just hope Microsoft finds a way to make the Metro environment less obtrusive when Windows 8 ships, because I tried using it for day-to-day work and reverted to Windows 7 pretty quickly. Right now, it's just too ugly and clumsy to integrate seamlessly with my daily routine (and the Metro Start screen is far less efficient than the classic Start menu).
Well OK, fine, you give a real-world example, and so we can examine exactly how this attempt to control the desktop hardware turned out: Pretty poorly, if you ask me. Most laptops you get at Best Buy right now do not have a Trusted Platform Module (TPM). Business laptops do, where it's generally considered a fairly desirable feature (for reasons having nothing to do with DRM). If anything, though, the idea of "a TPM for every desktop" seems to mostly have been abandoned. I don't really see Microsoft making another push for it.
Shattering may be an exaggeration, but I've seen a definite increase in the number of discs that look as if someone's 2-year-old went at them for an hour. And the thing about that is, when a disc won't play, you have to send it back for a replacement. That takes a few days while the original disc and the replacement are in the mail. If this happens often enough, the net effect is that even if your Netflix plan says you can have three discs out at once, effectively you can only have two. It's as if you got a downgrade on your plan, even though you're still paying the same amount.
I actually disagree on this score. I thought the CG was pretty tastefully done. Where it was weak was in that it was occasionally inconsistent (they changed some of their models halfway through the project). A little nostalgia value was lost, but having watched video releases of Star Trek for a while now, a lot of the original masters were in pretty bad shape. Particularly on FX shots such as shots of the Enterprise, colors were faded out and the tapes were showing their age. The CG wasn't designed to change the look of the original show but to restore it. That said, the important part is that you can still get the original versions if you prefer (unlike Star Wars).
Warren Buffett is free to make out a cheque to the US government and send it in at any time if he feels he isn't paying enough tax.
Of course he can. And what does this completely fatuous statement have to do with fixing the tax structure in the U.S.? Or do you think Warren Buffett has been personally sitting on all the money?
A family of 4 earning $1M EARNED A FUCKING MILLION DOLLARS THAT YEAR and there's no reason they should have $750k of it taken from them just because they did well.
But nobody is suggesting that, and to claim that they are is disingenuous.
We have a tiered tax system. If I make $100,000 and you make $1,000,000, you will pay the exact same amount of tax as me -- on your first $100,000. The only part where you pay a higher tax rate is the part where you make significantly more than me (or the vast majority of Americans). And this new tax that's being proposed wouldn't affect you at all. It would only raise the amount of taxes owed on income in excess of $1,000,000. How you can seriously imagine that this is unreasonable is beyond me.
Your example of taxes discouraging people from starting businesses is bogus, too. Business expenses are tax deductible, even for sole proprietorships.
my biggest complaint is that never, not once have I read one of their articles and gotten what the headline promised. Isn't Zenmap just a GUI for nmap? Yet both of them are there. Is there a reason to prefer the third-party PowerGUI over the Microsoft Powershell ISE [microsoft.com] other than the former being open source?
Au contraire. It sounds like you got exactly what the headline promised, but you wanted to throw a bunch of closed-source, proprietary tools into the mix.
Ask instead whether lumping software into an "open source" category makes any sense in 2011, from a practical, get-work-done perspective. I've been asking for years -- and I work for InfoWorld. For example, I don't know why anyone would install ClamAV when there are free alternatives like Avast and Microsoft Security Essentials, each of which is way more effective than ClamAV, which requires you to scan individual files manually. So you don't really care about viruses, you just want to use open source? It seems to me, if that's the case, Windows is not the right OS for you.
I don't have a need to run a lot of servers, but I do really like the VMware Workstation product for software testing and Linux-based development on a Windows workstation. I'm aware that VMware provides a lot of tools that are practically essential for datacenter virtualization. That said, when the Windows 8 Developer Preview shipped, I was surprised to learn that it wouldn't run on VMware -- only VirtualBox. For all VMware's strengths, VirtualBox seems to do a better job of its core function: virtualization. I'd hardly compare that to the difference between GIMP and Photoshop.
They both take up valuable screen real-estate, and in the case of the Ribbon, I don't think they are as customizable as the old Toolbars were (I might be wrong on that point, though).
You're wrong on that point. In fact, in Office 2010 you can even export all your Ribbon customizations so you can configure multiple copies of Office exactly the way you like it.
It could and should be and would be and likely will happen after a privatization assuming government doesn't interfere with a regulation.
No it couldn't, wouldn't, and shouldn't. No airport I've ever flown to or from has the space to setup separate screening machinery and personnel for every airline. The smaller ones have screening outside individual groups of gates. The larger ones herd everyone through big, multi-line screening areas before they ever get to the gates.
What's more, private security screening companies would be subject to bribery and corruption just like any other company. You could argue that the TSA is, too -- but right now you have a single, centrally-managed organization running security for an entire airport. Change that to ten separate organizations, and all of a sudden criminals have ten separate opportunities to bribe their way through the gates. When you have competition, inevitably some of the competitors will fall behind, struggle, and then fail. The trick is to approach them when they're in the "struggling" phase.
Embedding cloud services in the OS to such a degree will require a lot of work to restrict, lock down, and disable such features.
Well, what does "to such a degree" really mean? As far as I can tell, it means your Windows Live account just got a lot more significant, because it's now going to be used to preserve things like app purchases and app state, in addition to providing you a home for your files etc. Like how Google accounts work now.
On the other hand, a lot of this does sound somewhat disturbing for enterprise customers, but there is absolutely no chance that Microsoft would piss them all off by not allowing policy control over the whole mess.
The prosumer/business/productivity group will still have the more pro oriented traditional window manager for doing what we do.
With some exceptions. For one, the Start menu is gone; clicking on the Windows icon just boots you back into Metro. As far as I can tell, even business users will be expected to suck it up and love Metro.