I seriously doubt those two laptops were configured with different printers, both belong to employees of the same company who work in the same office and in which there is only one type of printer. I can't imagine any reason why those two machines would have different printer settings.
As for implementing software to respect printer margins, i can kind of understand why word would have been written that way... But powerpoint? 99% of powerpoint users are intending to display their work on screen and will probably never print it.
There is no such thing as "100% office compatibility"... Just 2 days ago i watched someone copy his powerpoint presentation from one dell laptop to a slightly different model because he couldn't get the external monitor port working with a projector. The results, when displayed up on a big screen were quite embarrassing, with various formatting errors cropping up. Both laptops were a similar age, both running windows 7 and msoffice 2010.
It's not wether msoffice is worth $99 as a whole, it's wether it offers $99 of benefit over and above libreoffice or the free version of office starter... Chances are that for most people it does not, making it overpriced.
On their core products MS have much higher margins, they just have a lot more dead weight in other parts of the company than apple do to bring the average down.
The ridiculous thing is, the video decoding portion of the hardware operates on a video stream which is already decrypted, so in order to use it you must have already cracked any drm scheme, or be viewing drm-free video.
Or you could always decode the stream in software using the CPU... Or even using a different part of the GPU through OpenCL...
There is no sensible reason why opening up the specs of the video decoding would make it any easier to crack a drm scheme.
People only have finite funds available, if you have a budget of $1000 for a computer and you decide to spend $400 of it on software then you only have a $600 computer. If you decide to use free software, then you can buy a $1000 computer which will be more powerful.
Not at all, at least not yet... If windows became impossible to pirate, then they would lose millions of users to linux. Many people simply cannot, or will not pay for software. Once linux usage reaches a certain critical mass that third parties can't ignore it, you would end up with a cascade reaction and a fairly rapid death of windows.
In order to create a windows based tablet, OEMs had to use x86 compatible hardware... Even the lowest power x86 chips have been considerably more power hungry than the arm chips used in the ipad, therefore requiring a bigger battery or a serious battery life sacrifice.
And then, the windows interface as well as that of most of its apps is simply not suited to use on a touchscreen device...
The OEMs did what they could, within the limitations of the hardware and software available to them. If anything it's the fault of MS for tying their software to x86 and producing an interface unsuitable for touchscreens, and to a lesser extent intel/amd for not producing competitive low power x86 compatible processors.
They would be grossly negligent if they didn't try to jump on every non-ms bandwagon...
MS has lots of OEMs... Each OEM only has one MS.
You DON'T make a business around a single supplier...
That supplier can seriously damage or even destroy your business at any time, wether through incompetence, malice or simple selfish profit motives and there's nothing you can do about it. Your only sensible course of action is ensure that you are never dependent on a single supplier.
They rely on microsoft more than the other way round, therefore microsoft can treat them however they like with impunity. It just goes to show that you shouldn't build your business in such a way that its dependent on a single supplier. Notice how about the most successful computer manufacturer these days is the only one who doesn't rely on ms and is able to differentiate themselves?
MS have much fatter profit margins then Apple... The vast majority of their products have negligible unit costs, and development costs which were recovered long ago. Apple still has to buy the raw materials and assemble them, a significant cost for every product sold... Comparably specced tablets/phones/laptops from competing manufacturers aren't massively cheaper than Apple.
And you cannot use the customer data for the same purposes as the company who originally compiled it, you have no prior business arrangement with these people while the company clearly does. Your point?
People are not normally expected to take things from a car, open or not. People ARE normally expected to take things from a web server, and web servers usually have facilities to state when you are not authorised to request particular content (the 403 error code).
If you come across a stand full of brochures, with a sign inviting you to take one for free... are you authorised to take one?
What if one of the compartments on the stand is full of $20 bills?
A better analogy, is a company unintentionally publishing confidential information in a sales brochure...
They want you to have the sales brochure, but they don't want you to have the confidential information. It's their own fault that in the process of distributing information they wanted you to have, they slipped in some that shouldn't have been distributed.
I have not explicitly authorised you to take the content of my previous post or this one from the slashdot servers. Please hand yourself in.
Such a law, if followed literally would make the internet totally useless since you would need to explicitly request authorisation for any website you want to access, and you'd need to get that authorisation offline (eg via paper mail or phone) because merely requesting authorisation online would be a breach of that law. Even doing it by phone would potentially be illegal if a computer system answered as you would not be explicitly authorised to hear the recorded message.
As such, judges would hopefully take a common sense approach that if content is published on a public webserver without any additional access controls then it is assumed that the general public is authorised to access it.
The fact is, none of this parental control software is foolproof... It will always let the odd thing through, and if its purely software based rather than running on a separate network device then it's not exactly hard for someone with physical access to the machine to bypass it. Kids have a natural desire to do new things, especially things which are forbidden.
Instead you want to educate the kids. If it's not a forbidden subject then younger kids will have no interest in things like porn... They will encounter questionable content themselves sooner or later, better that they be prepared for it under an environment controlled by their parents than stumble into it unprepared and on their own.
That kids will see things like porn and violence isn't the biggest concern, it generally won't interest them and they will just move on unless you make a big deal about it... The biggest concern is grooming pedophiles, and these won't be found on the porn sites targeted by software filters, they will be found on the online forums and chat services which are actually aimed at kids.
It's not stealing, since they didn't delete the original file...
By putting a file on a public webserver, they were PUBLISHING that data. Wether they did so intentionally or not is irrelevant, they did publish it.
Anyone who accessed it did nothing wrong, they were simply using the website for the function it was intended, to access data made available to the public on it. They did not have to exploit any vulnerable services, nor did they bypass any form of access control.
The fault lies purely with the company for publishing such information.
The only thing the "hacking" group have done wrong is the attempted blackmail, they got the actual information fair and square.
iOS does indeed use a fully fledged OSX kernel, just like Android uses a fully fledged Linux kernel.
CLI based apps can run just fine with little more than a recompile, anything gui based obviously needs code changes not because the mobiles are not "fully fledged" but because a desktop ui would be really unusable on a mobile phone... That said, there is an implementation of X11 for android and even for iOS, not that you'd want to use it for anything.
Apple don't provide the same proprietary gui libs for phones as desktops because they would be unsuitable and result in unusable interfaces.
Existing windows apps will not work, at the very least you would need to recompile them (which for the majority of windows apps you cannot do due to not having sourcecode) or hope they were written atop a hardware neutral runtime...
Control... Vendors don't want a standard they can all be compatible with and compete on a level playing field, they want a monopoly with a locked in proprietary product that makes competing against them more difficult.
Skype integration will make the devices unpopular with mobile carriers... And unpopular with consumers if they ever realise they've traded the relatively competitive mobile carriers for a 60s style monopoly telco.
There are a bunch of free offline mapping tools for other phones, and several paid ones too, not to mention the included online mapping tool
Plenty of people are willing to perform hardware mods, just look at games consoles.
If MS are making money on the tablets, then they will be a similar price if not more expensive than android tablets so there would be no compelling reason to buy and mod one. On the other hand, if they subsidise the price (which was the premise mentioned in the previous posts) then it may well be attractive for that reason.
I have an XP box that would beg to differ, if i install the nvidia drivers on it the box won't boot anymore unless i go into safe mode and remove the drivers.
NVIDIA assures us that 'at the end of the day, providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms
What's good enough for windows users, isn't good enough for linux users...
Linux users enjoy a host of benefits which windows users lack, and the nvidia binary drivers remove or restrict some of those.
Access to source code, to learn from or build upon. Ability to debug problems with the os. Ability to use a completely modular system, even so far as using a different type of processor architecture. Ability to advance the os without being saddled with backwards compatibility baggage that plagues other systems (hence no driver abi as it would soon become limiting and start holding things back, even ms dropped their previous driver abi with vista). Ability to use old hardware, long after the hardware manufacturer has given up supporting it. A GUI system which is optional.
Many people choose to use linux specifically because it offers things that windows or macos don't, we don't want a "consistent" experience.
Just because you publish details, doesn't mean its legal to copy them into your own work... In fact, if the details are out in the public it becomes much easier to prove that someone has created a derivative work without complying with the distribution terms.
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I seriously doubt those two laptops were configured with different printers, both belong to employees of the same company who work in the same office and in which there is only one type of printer. I can't imagine any reason why those two machines would have different printer settings.
As for implementing software to respect printer margins, i can kind of understand why word would have been written that way... But powerpoint? 99% of powerpoint users are intending to display their work on screen and will probably never print it.
There is no such thing as "100% office compatibility"... Just 2 days ago i watched someone copy his powerpoint presentation from one dell laptop to a slightly different model because he couldn't get the external monitor port working with a projector. The results, when displayed up on a big screen were quite embarrassing, with various formatting errors cropping up. Both laptops were a similar age, both running windows 7 and msoffice 2010.
It's not wether msoffice is worth $99 as a whole, it's wether it offers $99 of benefit over and above libreoffice or the free version of office starter... Chances are that for most people it does not, making it overpriced.
On their core products MS have much higher margins, they just have a lot more dead weight in other parts of the company than apple do to bring the average down.
The ridiculous thing is, the video decoding portion of the hardware operates on a video stream which is already decrypted, so in order to use it you must have already cracked any drm scheme, or be viewing drm-free video.
Or you could always decode the stream in software using the CPU... Or even using a different part of the GPU through OpenCL...
There is no sensible reason why opening up the specs of the video decoding would make it any easier to crack a drm scheme.
People only have finite funds available, if you have a budget of $1000 for a computer and you decide to spend $400 of it on software then you only have a $600 computer.
If you decide to use free software, then you can buy a $1000 computer which will be more powerful.
AMD sell hardware...
Not at all, at least not yet...
If windows became impossible to pirate, then they would lose millions of users to linux. Many people simply cannot, or will not pay for software. Once linux usage reaches a certain critical mass that third parties can't ignore it, you would end up with a cascade reaction and a fairly rapid death of windows.
And who's fault is that?
In order to create a windows based tablet, OEMs had to use x86 compatible hardware... Even the lowest power x86 chips have been considerably more power hungry than the arm chips used in the ipad, therefore requiring a bigger battery or a serious battery life sacrifice.
And then, the windows interface as well as that of most of its apps is simply not suited to use on a touchscreen device...
The OEMs did what they could, within the limitations of the hardware and software available to them. If anything it's the fault of MS for tying their software to x86 and producing an interface unsuitable for touchscreens, and to a lesser extent intel/amd for not producing competitive low power x86 compatible processors.
They would be grossly negligent if they didn't try to jump on every non-ms bandwagon...
MS has lots of OEMs...
Each OEM only has one MS.
You DON'T make a business around a single supplier...
That supplier can seriously damage or even destroy your business at any time, wether through incompetence, malice or simple selfish profit motives and there's nothing you can do about it. Your only sensible course of action is ensure that you are never dependent on a single supplier.
They rely on microsoft more than the other way round, therefore microsoft can treat them however they like with impunity.
It just goes to show that you shouldn't build your business in such a way that its dependent on a single supplier.
Notice how about the most successful computer manufacturer these days is the only one who doesn't rely on ms and is able to differentiate themselves?
MS have much fatter profit margins then Apple... The vast majority of their products have negligible unit costs, and development costs which were recovered long ago.
Apple still has to buy the raw materials and assemble them, a significant cost for every product sold... Comparably specced tablets/phones/laptops from competing manufacturers aren't massively cheaper than Apple.
And you cannot use the customer data for the same purposes as the company who originally compiled it, you have no prior business arrangement with these people while the company clearly does. Your point?
People are not normally expected to take things from a car, open or not.
People ARE normally expected to take things from a web server, and web servers usually have facilities to state when you are not authorised to request particular content (the 403 error code).
If you come across a stand full of brochures, with a sign inviting you to take one for free... are you authorised to take one?
What if one of the compartments on the stand is full of $20 bills?
A better analogy, is a company unintentionally publishing confidential information in a sales brochure...
They want you to have the sales brochure, but they don't want you to have the confidential information. It's their own fault that in the process of distributing information they wanted you to have, they slipped in some that shouldn't have been distributed.
I have not explicitly authorised you to take the content of my previous post or this one from the slashdot servers. Please hand yourself in.
Such a law, if followed literally would make the internet totally useless since you would need to explicitly request authorisation for any website you want to access, and you'd need to get that authorisation offline (eg via paper mail or phone) because merely requesting authorisation online would be a breach of that law. Even doing it by phone would potentially be illegal if a computer system answered as you would not be explicitly authorised to hear the recorded message.
As such, judges would hopefully take a common sense approach that if content is published on a public webserver without any additional access controls then it is assumed that the general public is authorised to access it.
No, because the hackers would have done nothing wrong in that case. The information was already published.
The company should be prosecuted for breaching data protection laws.
The fact is, none of this parental control software is foolproof... It will always let the odd thing through, and if its purely software based rather than running on a separate network device then it's not exactly hard for someone with physical access to the machine to bypass it.
Kids have a natural desire to do new things, especially things which are forbidden.
Instead you want to educate the kids.
If it's not a forbidden subject then younger kids will have no interest in things like porn...
They will encounter questionable content themselves sooner or later, better that they be prepared for it under an environment controlled by their parents than stumble into it unprepared and on their own.
That kids will see things like porn and violence isn't the biggest concern, it generally won't interest them and they will just move on unless you make a big deal about it... The biggest concern is grooming pedophiles, and these won't be found on the porn sites targeted by software filters, they will be found on the online forums and chat services which are actually aimed at kids.
It's not stealing, since they didn't delete the original file...
By putting a file on a public webserver, they were PUBLISHING that data. Wether they did so intentionally or not is irrelevant, they did publish it.
Anyone who accessed it did nothing wrong, they were simply using the website for the function it was intended, to access data made available to the public on it. They did not have to exploit any vulnerable services, nor did they bypass any form of access control.
The fault lies purely with the company for publishing such information.
The only thing the "hacking" group have done wrong is the attempted blackmail, they got the actual information fair and square.
iOS does indeed use a fully fledged OSX kernel, just like Android uses a fully fledged Linux kernel.
CLI based apps can run just fine with little more than a recompile, anything gui based obviously needs code changes not because the mobiles are not "fully fledged" but because a desktop ui would be really unusable on a mobile phone... That said, there is an implementation of X11 for android and even for iOS, not that you'd want to use it for anything.
Apple don't provide the same proprietary gui libs for phones as desktops because they would be unsuitable and result in unusable interfaces.
Existing windows apps will not work, at the very least you would need to recompile them (which for the majority of windows apps you cannot do due to not having sourcecode) or hope they were written atop a hardware neutral runtime...
Control... Vendors don't want a standard they can all be compatible with and compete on a level playing field, they want a monopoly with a locked in proprietary product that makes competing against them more difficult.
Skype integration will make the devices unpopular with mobile carriers... And unpopular with consumers if they ever realise they've traded the relatively competitive mobile carriers for a 60s style monopoly telco.
There are a bunch of free offline mapping tools for other phones, and several paid ones too, not to mention the included online mapping tool
Plenty of people are willing to perform hardware mods, just look at games consoles.
If MS are making money on the tablets, then they will be a similar price if not more expensive than android tablets so there would be no compelling reason to buy and mod one. On the other hand, if they subsidise the price (which was the premise mentioned in the previous posts) then it may well be attractive for that reason.
I have an XP box that would beg to differ, if i install the nvidia drivers on it the box won't boot anymore unless i go into safe mode and remove the drivers.
NVIDIA assures us that 'at the end of the day, providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms
What's good enough for windows users, isn't good enough for linux users...
Linux users enjoy a host of benefits which windows users lack, and the nvidia binary drivers remove or restrict some of those.
Access to source code, to learn from or build upon.
Ability to debug problems with the os.
Ability to use a completely modular system, even so far as using a different type of processor architecture.
Ability to advance the os without being saddled with backwards compatibility baggage that plagues other systems (hence no driver abi as it would soon become limiting and start holding things back, even ms dropped their previous driver abi with vista).
Ability to use old hardware, long after the hardware manufacturer has given up supporting it.
A GUI system which is optional.
Many people choose to use linux specifically because it offers things that windows or macos don't, we don't want a "consistent" experience.
Just because you publish details, doesn't mean its legal to copy them into your own work...
In fact, if the details are out in the public it becomes much easier to prove that someone has created a derivative work without complying with the distribution terms.