I know this is off-topic, but can we STOP CITING Wikipedia as a reliable authority? Wikipedia has been proven to be riddled with inaccuracies, which is only natural since half of the editors are in middle school.
Well, did you really expect him to say 'Yeah, it's likely that we were successful because a whole bunch of people stole our shows, distributed them and watched them for free. I think, therefore, people should continue to steal our shows, despite the fact that it took a tremendous amount of effort, money, time and individual creativity to make each one. Why stop at downloads? Why not just pilfer them right out of Best Buy or Wal Mart and watch them?'
Did you really think he was goign to tell everyone not to feel bad about stealing? He couldn't just tell everyone it's OK, because that would just spur people on who already want to justify it. I really don't get this vibe from so many Slashdotters that ALL piracy is OK, and to stop any piracy anywhere is a violation of privilige. Just because Microsoft charges too much for it's products doesn't mean Billy West should automatically support the black market.
What about if he came out and took a hard line stand against the downloading of copyrighted Futurama episodes? Would you feel better, or would you blast him for his stance? He took the best possible stance. He wishes people wouldn't steal, but he appreciates that people wanted his work enough that it was worth stealing. Nobody wants to make art that people wouldn't even steal, anyway.
I find it amazing that the man behind Lotus Notes would claim to know something about complexity and simplicity. Lotus is bloated crapware at it's finest. Seems like yet another bad move for Microsoft, but only time will tell.
The next time some idiot mentions 'Web 2.0', turn to them and say 'Yeah, Web 2.0 was great, and we've already started working with some of those great Web 3.0 features like flogging [blogging with Flash] and muse [interactive groups of people who share musical tastes, partnered with new music releases]'
You can insert any stupid name or item, such as instead of 'Web 3.0', you can call it 'WebNext', 'Imagiweb', 'ZeroWeb', 'WebMX' whatever. And instead of flogging and muse, make up any two equally boring and already available technologies.
I think if enough people started doing this, we would either accidentally create the next big thing for talentless marketers or at least get people to shut up about Web 2.0...
Web 2.0 is hype created by people who don't program and don't build web applications. For those of us who do actually build things, nothing in 'Web 2.0' is all that amazing. I recall in the early 90's what many of us thought the internet would become: a virtual world, where people could take classes in virt reality (not just online, but sitting in a virtual classroom), take a walk in Paris in virt reality to plan a trip or study France, attend a meeting in Sri Lanka via some form of 'Star Wars Jedi Council' hologram projection and watch any movie or show we wanted, anytime, from anywhere.
The idea that I would be amazed that kids can post a blog on MySpace and that Wikipedia is interactive is laughable. You want me to be amazed? Invent the teleporter. That, I'll call new technology. Web 2.0? Please. Web 2.0 is what will happen if Net Nuetrality fails. THAT will be a whole new web, where nobody but corporations with deep pockets can create web sites. THAT would be a real 'Web 2.0'. Then if programmers decided to create a new web to subvert the corporate one, THAT would be yet another web. Creating a forum or allowing users to post blogs isn't a new web.
Why is gambling illegal? Why can't I take $10 and bet that the Steelers will win a football game? It's my money, it's my life,and I personally do not think gambling is wrong. If someone is going to ruin their life by gambling, then taking away gambling will just force them to find some other way to ruin their life. A person can gamble on stock options and it's a valued profession, but gambling on sports is illegal. It's exactly the same thing, just one has more government pull.
The United States of America is the land of free will. The ideals of the country are founded on the idea that you should be able to do whatever you want as long as it does not infringe on others' rights. THis bill, and others of it's ilk are extremely unpatriotic.
You are absolutely correct, Microsoft has been trying this for a long time. They want desperately to be able to charge people recurring fees, and have complete control over how users access their software. But it won't work. I use MS Office daily because it's the standard in almost every corporate environment in the United States, but if suddenly Microsoft wants me to A. be connected to the internet to type a word document and B. pay monthly fees for using word processing software, it won't happen. It isn't worth it, and it's too expensive. I'd probably go back to a typewriter or written word before I'd pay a monthly fee. And I'm a programmer.
The problem I have is that most software is just too expensive anyway. I hate to break it to Microsoft or even Linux, but the OS doesn't give me all that much, it's just a method for me storing digital files and connecting to a network. Quite frankly, if it got too expensive, I'd just build my own OS. Obviously I don't have to right now - Linux is available for free already, written by guys who already feel as though the profit threshold has been passed. But the point is, I already feel ripped off my Microsoft prices. I also feel they are making huge mistakes in their licensing structures, trying to charge money that developers and users just don't have and won't pay.
I equate it to this: putting gas in my car is expensive. I have to commute to work, so I pay the higher and higher gas prices. But if gas prices get too high, and then the service station figures out some complex method that means I have to pay even more, at some point, the supply-demand curve breaks. In other words, if I'm paying $50 a week for gas, I won't pay $300 a week for gas no matter how you spin it to me. I'll either quit my commute or figure out some other method to get around paying.And right now, there are no truly viable options for me to use something other than gas.
Microsoft has a few products that many people use, but those products are not gasoline - they are not irreplaceable. So when Microsoft thinks they can simply re-structure their licensing fees to bring in more revenue, it always fails. That's because business isn't about simply figuring out new ways to charge more money for the same product (except the insurance industry), it's about producing a product or service and charging what the market will bear.
That is exactly the point, everyone on Slashdot knows what a ligit URL looks like, but most people don't. To the average person, they all look the same. Even developers on the same team sometimes have to ask what another developer had in mind when creating a url for an app.
Here is another analogy:
Take a clear glass, and fill it with tap water. Now tell me which water molecules have pollutants and which don't.
Some marketing professionals have stated that the reason people in the U.S. don't care about global warming is because of how it's presented: global is good, warming is good, how can 'global warming' be so bad? They should call it what it is: 'atmosphere cancer', 'oxygen rot' or 'Earth decay'.
Standard & Poors 500 - a group of stocks that are chosen to represent the movement of the overall market. It's a better indicator than the Dow Jones index, which is only about 30 stocks.
As for Google joining the S&P, it doesn't mean anything other than a momentary blip on the stock price. It's an inflated stock which doesn't pay a dividend and is traded far over it's revenue. Personally, I wouldn't touch the stock, especially because not only is it overvalued, but the company could very easily be displaced by another company who comes along and does a better job. It's not like a group of college kids can get together and form a competitor to Exxon or Coca Cola, but they sure could threaten Google. It's just that the average, non-technical person wants to get on the next Big Thing Train and they've heard of Google, they probably use the search engine, so they buy the stock.
The only other player that could even make an argument would be Bill Russell. But that's not the point. The point is that NONE of those players were hyped on draft day the way Lebron James, Carmello Anthony or Kwame Brown were. They weren't hyped as much as high schoolers Greg Oden is now. But the kid whose going to be the REAL 'Next Jordan' probably won't be a number one draft pick, won't have led the NCAA in scoring and won't have been to the Final Four. The point is, statements like 'This is the next, sure-fire, can't miss Big Thing' are made all the time, and are wrong. So people make stupid statements like 'There are no more Big Things.'
It's like Michael Jordan - the Chicago Bulls did not know they were drafting the greatest NBA player in history, who would create massive revenue for the business and revolutionize endorsements and salaries for players.
The Next Big Thing will happen in part because nobody really knows it's going to catch lightning in a bottle. If everyone knows about it, speculation and hype erode profitability.
IBM's comment is just ridiculous. There's the famous patent comment from the last century which others have pointed out. Then there's the Web, which both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates thought was a waste of time at one point. Video game consoles were considered a fad, and not a viable big business. So was digital music, broadband, online shopping, mobile phones and small-scale stock brokers.
There are always things which can be gigantic market and economy changers, even if they aren't The Internet or Radio or The Combustion Engine.
I can think of quite a few items that might completely change huge sections of business in the next ten-twenty years:
Wireless everywhere - 'nuff said Hydrogen or other alternative fuel vehicles - no commodity driven marketplace for Middle East interests. Digital Ink (e-Ink) Droids/Automatons (we already have Roomba and Asimo - I am already preparing to be crushed by the first robot rebellion)
I have heard that the erotic fiction market has carved out a niche with e-books, like Ellora's Cave and Sensorotika. Warning! Those links might not be safe for work...
All of our issues were related to customer service and billing. When we could not get real response from customer service, we realized we might not be able to take the service seriously.
We signed up with Skype to test it out - it took WEEKS to get set up, although our payment cleared immediately. We never recieved real response in the way of customer service, so we moved to NetZero's VOIP - it was set up within minutes, has always worked and calls anywhere.
Oh, geez, are we supposed to be writing our business apps in Assembly and C++? I'm amazed the way people compare tools for different jobs like this. VB is for fast business apps, not writing new device drivers. As if the vast majority of business apps even needed things like integer packing or multi proc access.
You want to write a new white box platform? Great, go write game platforms or databases. You want to work in almost any other corporate environment, especially those that are NOT technology companies? Guess what? Better learn some RAD languages, kid.
The number of votes cast on election day totaled a bit over 100,000,000. That's roughly equal to the number of ATM transactions that occur daily.
Before anybody rolls their eyes when they hear about these stories and hide behind the mask of partisianship, ask yourself how big a deal it would be if ATM's experienced even a fraction of the errors that were experienced by these voting machines. Just take one case - 4000 votes in North Carolina - and imagine if 4000 ATM transactions in one state suddenly withdrew money from customers' accounts instead of depositing.
Just imagine the chaos for the offending bank. It would be a nightmare. Now imagine the scale of error with the voting machines, which has software that is far less complex. The errors are massively significant. It should be the #1 topic on every newscast until it is resolved. BUT - people just don't care about it because:
- They don't see it as important as if their ATM transaction choked - they don't see it as their 'money' disappearing
- They don't care about the outcome or are happy with the result. If the ATM suddenly deposited an extra $100 in people's accounts, how many people would speak up? Some, but not everybody. And if it doesn't happen to you, it's not YOUR problem, right?
- They are lazy and don't care.
- People in the US today give famous people or politicians more hell over who they sleep with than what they do or say. People will read every last bit of Jessica Simpson coverage but couldn't care less what the deficit is or why it even would matter.
- People believe the hype, or only listen to what they want to hear. Too many people listen to EITHER Rush Limbaugh OR Michael Moore, so they only get 50% of the story. If the party in power is the one doing the crime, then those supporters ignore it. And vice versa.
when I read this, I first wondered if you were shilling for IBM - having used almost every laptop available at one time or another, I would say the absolute WORST was always ThinkPads. They are horrible. Give me a Dell any day for actual work. I'm sure everyone will get their shorts in a bunch over this comment, but I can say that every developer and business user I've personally ever worked with HATED ThinkPads - the cases break easily, their flimsy installs cause massive OS problems - it's just hype when people talk them up. Don 't even get me started on that nonsense Access IBM crap that comes installed all over the stupid thing. At least Dell's bloatware - and there is a lot of it- can just be removed without removing access to important networking or system functions.
In regards to locking down the laptops - if a corporation pays for a computer, it's the property of the corporation, and therefore they have every right to lock them down to prevent damage, at least from non-IT users. But if the students pay for the laptop, that piece of hardware belongs to them - the university has no right to control those laptops. I would be furious to pay $2000 or more for a computer and then be told I didn't have admin rights to it.
There are some contextual issues with the wording of this story's attention-getting headline.
The sample of patients in the study was 312 people over 65, who had previously been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Of those 312 patients, those who had an extra year of education developed Alzheimer's later in life but when it did appear, it progressed more rapidly.
So how many patients out of the 312 had that extra year? One? Six? Fifty? The article doesn't say. That matters, especially with such a tiny sample.
It also doesn't say if people with more education are any more or less likely to contract the disease, or if it makes any difference. The current working theory is that people with more active neural stimulation ( i.e., people who remain mentally active and stimulated even into old age) are less likely to suffer the disease. So even if an individual had more education, it shouldn't matter, it's how much that person uses their mind as they get older.
"The only difference is, lots of old software expects to be run with administrative privileges, so if you want to run those things, you need to run as admin"
I would agree with your statement, just adding that software written to run only as admin is considered poor programming practice on Windows, even if it is often the norm.
"But think how many calls they will get from people complaining about web pages that don't work - because of lack of ActiveX, or just simply that the page doesn't work with anything but IE (like my stupid bank)."
After using Firefox almost exclusively for over two years, I rarely have run into approxiamtely a dozen pages (out of tens of thousands) that didn't work because they were in Firefox.
It happens, but it is unlikely to create a call to Dell. If a bank's web application doesn't work, users usually call the bank, not Dell.
As for ActiveX, I don't think there aren't enough pages using ActiveX for Microsoft to even support it anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
I know this is off-topic, but can we STOP CITING Wikipedia as a reliable authority? Wikipedia has been proven to be riddled with inaccuracies, which is only natural since half of the editors are in middle school.
Well, did you really expect him to say 'Yeah, it's likely that we were successful because a whole bunch of people stole our shows, distributed them and watched them for free. I think, therefore, people should continue to steal our shows, despite the fact that it took a tremendous amount of effort, money, time and individual creativity to make each one. Why stop at downloads? Why not just pilfer them right out of Best Buy or Wal Mart and watch them?'
Did you really think he was goign to tell everyone not to feel bad about stealing? He couldn't just tell everyone it's OK, because that would just spur people on who already want to justify it. I really don't get this vibe from so many Slashdotters that ALL piracy is OK, and to stop any piracy anywhere is a violation of privilige. Just because Microsoft charges too much for it's products doesn't mean Billy West should automatically support the black market.
What about if he came out and took a hard line stand against the downloading of copyrighted Futurama episodes? Would you feel better, or would you blast him for his stance? He took the best possible stance. He wishes people wouldn't steal, but he appreciates that people wanted his work enough that it was worth stealing. Nobody wants to make art that people wouldn't even steal, anyway.
I find it amazing that the man behind Lotus Notes would claim to know something about complexity and simplicity. Lotus is bloated crapware at it's finest. Seems like yet another bad move for Microsoft, but only time will tell.
The next time some idiot mentions 'Web 2.0', turn to them and say 'Yeah, Web 2.0 was great, and we've already started working with some of those great Web 3.0 features like flogging [blogging with Flash] and muse [interactive groups of people who share musical tastes, partnered with new music releases]'
You can insert any stupid name or item, such as instead of 'Web 3.0', you can call it 'WebNext', 'Imagiweb', 'ZeroWeb', 'WebMX' whatever. And instead of flogging and muse, make up any two equally boring and already available technologies.
I think if enough people started doing this, we would either accidentally create the next big thing for talentless marketers or at least get people to shut up about Web 2.0...
Web 2.0 is hype created by people who don't program and don't build web applications. For those of us who do actually build things, nothing in 'Web 2.0' is all that amazing. I recall in the early 90's what many of us thought the internet would become: a virtual world, where people could take classes in virt reality (not just online, but sitting in a virtual classroom), take a walk in Paris in virt reality to plan a trip or study France, attend a meeting in Sri Lanka via some form of 'Star Wars Jedi Council' hologram projection and watch any movie or show we wanted, anytime, from anywhere.
The idea that I would be amazed that kids can post a blog on MySpace and that Wikipedia is interactive is laughable. You want me to be amazed? Invent the teleporter. That, I'll call new technology. Web 2.0? Please. Web 2.0 is what will happen if Net Nuetrality fails. THAT will be a whole new web, where nobody but corporations with deep pockets can create web sites. THAT would be a real 'Web 2.0'. Then if programmers decided to create a new web to subvert the corporate one, THAT would be yet another web. Creating a forum or allowing users to post blogs isn't a new web.
Why is gambling illegal? Why can't I take $10 and bet that the Steelers will win a football game? It's my money, it's my life,and I personally do not think gambling is wrong. If someone is going to ruin their life by gambling, then taking away gambling will just force them to find some other way to ruin their life. A person can gamble on stock options and it's a valued profession, but gambling on sports is illegal. It's exactly the same thing, just one has more government pull.
The United States of America is the land of free will. The ideals of the country are founded on the idea that you should be able to do whatever you want as long as it does not infringe on others' rights. THis bill, and others of it's ilk are extremely unpatriotic.
You are absolutely correct, Microsoft has been trying this for a long time. They want desperately to be able to charge people recurring fees, and have complete control over how users access their software. But it won't work. I use MS Office daily because it's the standard in almost every corporate environment in the United States, but if suddenly Microsoft wants me to A. be connected to the internet to type a word document and B. pay monthly fees for using word processing software, it won't happen. It isn't worth it, and it's too expensive. I'd probably go back to a typewriter or written word before I'd pay a monthly fee. And I'm a programmer.
The problem I have is that most software is just too expensive anyway. I hate to break it to Microsoft or even Linux, but the OS doesn't give me all that much, it's just a method for me storing digital files and connecting to a network. Quite frankly, if it got too expensive, I'd just build my own OS. Obviously I don't have to right now - Linux is available for free already, written by guys who already feel as though the profit threshold has been passed. But the point is, I already feel ripped off my Microsoft prices. I also feel they are making huge mistakes in their licensing structures, trying to charge money that developers and users just don't have and won't pay.
I equate it to this: putting gas in my car is expensive. I have to commute to work, so I pay the higher and higher gas prices. But if gas prices get too high, and then the service station figures out some complex method that means I have to pay even more, at some point, the supply-demand curve breaks. In other words, if I'm paying $50 a week for gas, I won't pay $300 a week for gas no matter how you spin it to me. I'll either quit my commute or figure out some other method to get around paying.And right now, there are no truly viable options for me to use something other than gas.
Microsoft has a few products that many people use, but those products are not gasoline - they are not irreplaceable. So when Microsoft thinks they can simply re-structure their licensing fees to bring in more revenue, it always fails. That's because business isn't about simply figuring out new ways to charge more money for the same product (except the insurance industry), it's about producing a product or service and charging what the market will bear.
I thought it would be a given that you should identify the water molecules with pollutants attached, but I overestimated the audience.
That is exactly the point, everyone on Slashdot knows what a ligit URL looks like, but most people don't. To the average person, they all look the same. Even developers on the same team sometimes have to ask what another developer had in mind when creating a url for an app.
Here is another analogy:
Take a clear glass, and fill it with tap water.
Now tell me which water molecules have pollutants and which don't.
Some marketing professionals have stated that the reason people in the U.S. don't care about global warming is because of how it's presented: global is good, warming is good, how can 'global warming' be so bad? They should call it what it is: 'atmosphere cancer', 'oxygen rot' or 'Earth decay'.
Standard & Poors 500 - a group of stocks that are chosen to represent the movement of the overall market. It's a better indicator than the Dow Jones index, which is only about 30 stocks.
As for Google joining the S&P, it doesn't mean anything other than a momentary blip on the stock price. It's an inflated stock which doesn't pay a dividend and is traded far over it's revenue. Personally, I wouldn't touch the stock, especially because not only is it overvalued, but the company could very easily be displaced by another company who comes along and does a better job. It's not like a group of college kids can get together and form a competitor to Exxon or Coca Cola, but they sure could threaten Google. It's just that the average, non-technical person wants to get on the next Big Thing Train and they've heard of Google, they probably use the search engine, so they buy the stock.
The only other player that could even make an argument would be Bill Russell. But that's not the point. The point is that NONE of those players were hyped on draft day the way Lebron James, Carmello Anthony or Kwame Brown were. They weren't hyped as much as high schoolers Greg Oden is now. But the kid whose going to be the REAL 'Next Jordan' probably won't be a number one draft pick, won't have led the NCAA in scoring and won't have been to the Final Four. The point is, statements like 'This is the next, sure-fire, can't miss Big Thing' are made all the time, and are wrong. So people make stupid statements like 'There are no more Big Things.'
It's like Michael Jordan - the Chicago Bulls did not know they were drafting the greatest NBA player in history, who would create massive revenue for the business and revolutionize endorsements and salaries for players.
The Next Big Thing will happen in part because nobody really knows it's going to catch lightning in a bottle. If everyone knows about it, speculation and hype erode profitability.
IBM's comment is just ridiculous. There's the famous patent comment from the last century which others have pointed out. Then there's the Web, which both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates thought was a waste of time at one point. Video game consoles were considered a fad, and not a viable big business. So was digital music, broadband, online shopping, mobile phones and small-scale stock brokers.
There are always things which can be gigantic market and economy changers, even if they aren't The Internet or Radio or The Combustion Engine.
I can think of quite a few items that might completely change huge sections of business in the next ten-twenty years:
Wireless everywhere - 'nuff said
Hydrogen or other alternative fuel vehicles - no commodity driven marketplace for Middle East interests.
Digital Ink (e-Ink)
Droids/Automatons (we already have Roomba and Asimo - I am already preparing to be crushed by the first robot rebellion)
I have heard that the erotic fiction market has carved out a niche with e-books, like Ellora's Cave and Sensorotika. Warning! Those links might not be safe for work...
All of our issues were related to customer service and billing. When we could not get real response from customer service, we realized we might not be able to take the service seriously.
We signed up with Skype to test it out - it took WEEKS to get set up, although our payment cleared immediately. We never recieved real response in the way of customer service, so we moved to NetZero's VOIP - it was set up within minutes, has always worked and calls anywhere.
Skype = Hype.
Oh, geez, are we supposed to be writing our business apps in Assembly and C++? I'm amazed the way people compare tools for different jobs like this. VB is for fast business apps, not writing new device drivers. As if the vast majority of business apps even needed things like integer packing or multi proc access.
You want to write a new white box platform? Great, go write game platforms or databases. You want to work in almost any other corporate environment, especially those that are NOT technology companies? Guess what? Better learn some RAD languages, kid.
Now Windows is only 600,000 versions less than Linux.
The number of votes cast on election day totaled a bit over 100,000,000. That's roughly equal to the number of ATM transactions that occur daily.
Before anybody rolls their eyes when they hear about these stories and hide behind the mask of partisianship, ask yourself how big a deal it would be if ATM's experienced even a fraction of the errors that were experienced by these voting machines. Just take one case - 4000 votes in North Carolina - and imagine if 4000 ATM transactions in one state suddenly withdrew money from customers' accounts instead of depositing.
Just imagine the chaos for the offending bank. It would be a nightmare. Now imagine the scale of error with the voting machines, which has software that is far less complex. The errors are massively significant. It should be the #1 topic on every newscast until it is resolved. BUT - people just don't care about it because:
- They don't see it as important as if their ATM transaction choked - they don't see it as their 'money' disappearing
- They don't care about the outcome or are happy with the result. If the ATM suddenly deposited an extra $100 in people's accounts, how many people would speak up? Some, but not everybody. And if it doesn't happen to you, it's not YOUR problem, right?
- They are lazy and don't care.
- People in the US today give famous people or politicians more hell over who they sleep with than what they do or say. People will read every last bit of Jessica Simpson coverage but couldn't care less what the deficit is or why it even would matter.
- People believe the hype, or only listen to what they want to hear. Too many people listen to EITHER Rush Limbaugh OR Michael Moore, so they only get 50% of the story. If the party in power is the one doing the crime, then those supporters ignore it. And vice versa.
If you bought a car, and weren't given the keys - that would be a more accurate analogy.
You can roll over a ThinkPad with a truck, and it still won't work.
when I read this, I first wondered if you were shilling for IBM - having used almost every laptop available at one time or another, I would say the absolute WORST was always ThinkPads. They are horrible. Give me a Dell any day for actual work. I'm sure everyone will get their shorts in a bunch over this comment, but I can say that every developer and business user I've personally ever worked with HATED ThinkPads - the cases break easily, their flimsy installs cause massive OS problems - it's just hype when people talk them up. Don 't even get me started on that nonsense Access IBM crap that comes installed all over the stupid thing. At least Dell's bloatware - and there is a lot of it- can just be removed without removing access to important networking or system functions.
In regards to locking down the laptops - if a corporation pays for a computer, it's the property of the corporation, and therefore they have every right to lock them down to prevent damage, at least from non-IT users. But if the students pay for the laptop, that piece of hardware belongs to them - the university has no right to control those laptops. I would be furious to pay $2000 or more for a computer and then be told I didn't have admin rights to it.
There are some contextual issues with the wording of this story's attention-getting headline. The sample of patients in the study was 312 people over 65, who had previously been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Of those 312 patients, those who had an extra year of education developed Alzheimer's later in life but when it did appear, it progressed more rapidly. So how many patients out of the 312 had that extra year? One? Six? Fifty? The article doesn't say. That matters, especially with such a tiny sample. It also doesn't say if people with more education are any more or less likely to contract the disease, or if it makes any difference. The current working theory is that people with more active neural stimulation ( i.e., people who remain mentally active and stimulated even into old age) are less likely to suffer the disease. So even if an individual had more education, it shouldn't matter, it's how much that person uses their mind as they get older.
"The only difference is, lots of old software expects to be run with administrative privileges, so if you want to run those things, you need to run as admin"
I would agree with your statement, just adding that software written to run only as admin is considered poor programming practice on Windows, even if it is often the norm.
"But think how many calls they will get from people complaining about web pages that don't work - because of lack of ActiveX, or just simply that the page doesn't work with anything but IE (like my stupid bank)."
After using Firefox almost exclusively for over two years, I rarely have run into approxiamtely a dozen pages (out of tens of thousands) that didn't work because they were in Firefox.
It happens, but it is unlikely to create a call to Dell. If a bank's web application doesn't work, users usually call the bank, not Dell.
As for ActiveX, I don't think there aren't enough pages using ActiveX for Microsoft to even support it anymore.