Yes that's the only effective way, but it doesn't scale to huge numbers and doesn't fit in with the corporate bean counters who like to see graphs and statistics...
They, like many other "contracts" aimed at end users, are simply there to scare you into compliance... Just because it has no legal weight, doesn't mean that a lot of people who don't know any better will feel compelled to comply with them.
You only have to accept the licence if you want to distribute, it does not apply if you are simply using the software...
Most commercial EULAs prohibit distribution altogether, and place restrictions on use too, and thus demand that you agree to them before you can use the software at all.
Virgin Media is not available everywhere, are not expanding their network, and don't provide their service wholesale so you're stuck with their ISP service which means single dynamic ip, no ipv6 etc.
Yes this is something that so often gets overlooked, connection speeds get faster and faster but the data caps are getting lower... All this means is that you can hit the cap and get disconnected more quickly.
When they offered 512k connections with no data cap, that worked out to around 150GB/month downloaded (not counting upload) if you ran it flat out... They also offered 2mb connections which could pull 600GB. Now they offer a 40mb connection with a 200GB limit, which in actual fact makes it more like "640k connection, burstable to 40mb for limited periods".
What we really need, in combination with fibre, is small community ISPs... That way you can get high speed uncontended connections with those living near you, which is great for gaming and torrent like protocols... Then other common data can be cached locally too.
And yes, the price of backhaul is ridiculous, and that just includes the line from the exchange to the isp, so even downloading from servers hosted by the ISP is costly... That's why most ISPs don't bother with caching anymore, internet transit is cheap, bt backhaul is not.
The government should re-nationalise the infrastructure, and then run it on a break even basis...
Physical infrastructure is a natural monopoly because if the massive up front investment required to actually build it, and the massive inefficiencies of building multiple sets, so it makes sense for this to be government controlled.
But the point is that an open version is available, and thanks to third party mods like cyanogen if you don't like the version shipped with the phone you can replace it...
Yes, highly modified... They took out most of the crap which is unrelated to gaming, and built an appropriate interface over the top, pretty much removed everything that ever made it "windows". Also it was never marketed as "windows".
By contrast:
Windows mobile (for phones and PDAs) - had a desktop windows alike interface complete with tart menu, which works badly on such devices. Windows phone - retains the windows name, which is associated with desktop interfaces, crashing and malware, doesnt help... Windows CE/mobile/phone - advertising implies it is windows, which people assume will therefore be able to run windows applications which is not true. Windows server - comes with a mandatory gui layer, very wasteful in a server environment... the latest versions are taking steps towards improving the cli etc. also the presence of a gui and various client apps encourages sloppy/dangerous behaviour like browsing websites from a server. Windows embedded - somewhat bloated when you want an embedded graphical terminal, extremely bloated for anything that doesnt require a gui...bloat brings with it security problems that are more difficult to fix in an embedded environment.
Without the media you stand no chance of being elected, and since the media is controlled by big business they will never allow an unfavourable candidate to get elected.
They should be split up not because they are performing consistently, but because their legacy products are hampering growth of new products, for instance their online offerings are severely hampered by a strong desire not to harm their existing client markets...
Strong online applications threaten to make the clients that are used to access them totally irrelevant, which would destroy MS's most profitable markets...
Google, Amazon etc on the other hand don't have existing markets to protect and can concentrate fully.
And xbox/kinect are about the only product which they haven't tried to tie to or brand as windows...
As br00tus posted:
He blames their focus on the stylus, and compatibility with the existing Microsoft monopoly, I mean framework, as the drawbacks to it.
Most of their products are tied to windows, and suffer as a result... Even the ones that have been successful, would have been better if not held back by being tied to windows.
That's based on market share of "clients used to browse the web"... So treat the numbers with a pinch of salt.
In particular...
Apple devices are generally only used as client machines, they have virtually no presence in servers or other markets... Some of the stats are taken from third party analytics companies who generally use javascript and cookies to track users, linux users are generally more tech savvy and are more likely to block such things.
Client machines are the area where linux is weakest, linux is very strong in servers and embedded devices and pretty much dominant in hpc but since those machines are generally not used for browsing the web those stats don't show up here.
Even "server" versions of windows include a web browser, which encourages users to use it on occasion even tho doing so on a production server is a bad idea, by contrast linux/unix servers almost never have a browser installed.
Interestingly, if you were to count up every instance of linux in the world they would probably outnumber windows, but most linux installations are hidden from users inside embedded devices or on backend servers.
MS have the problem that they are stuck with windows, and they try to leverage the windows name to break into other markets... However this often fails.
Look at xbox, pretty successful and no mention of windows... On the other hand windows mobile was a failure, and now windows phone is going the same way. Some of the comments i've heard from random non geeks over the years: "windows phone? why would i want a phone thats as unreliable as a pc?" "i bought a phone running windows but it cant run any of my programs and i cant even connect a cdrom to it"
Windows CE also suffers from the above, i've seen people buy small wince based laptops "because they run windows" even when a cheaper linux model is available with the same spec, only to be extremely disappointed that it only looks like windows and doesn't actually run any of the software they have.
Most of their products are also tied to windows, or have crippled functionality when used with anything else... Similarly many of their online products are fairly half assed, because the more people move to standards compliant cross platform applications, the less people will need windows. MS are trying to protect their core market, at the expense of any new markets.
Then you have the old hotmail leaked emails, where they spent a huge amount of time and money migrating hotmail to windows, and concluded that even considering they got the software free, had access to sourcecode and had free access to top tier support, it was still an overall negative compared to bsd.
Personally i think splitting the company up is the way to go, Freed from legacy baggage msn/bing would be far better able to compete with google, and when freed from the requirement to only work with windows many of their server products would be able to become more competitive too. Similarly windows would improve if it became just a core, with OEMs able to supply applications as they wanted (similar to how linux is distributed)...
The trouble with any "print to pdf" program, is that printers cannot represent clickable links (eg indexes) among other things, so what gets sent to the printer is basically a flat document, and depending on the program being used to print may even be a giant graphic rather than text.
Try the native PDF output from LibreOffice or LaTeX and you'll see the difference... PDF files created like this have a nice clickable/searchable index, while those created poorly using a print to pdf function generally just have thumbnails for each page which soon gets unmanageable with lots of pages.
Part of it comes down to the huge amount of development resources that must be wasted by any competitor to MS trying to reverse engineer and implement support for their extremely convoluted file formats...
The problem is twofold... Firstly the formats are so complex that even with the spec, its very hard to implement them... Secondly, the specs are not very good, they are vague, inaccurate and sometimes downright wrong in places. Not to mention the additional differences in format between different versions of ms products (even products of the same vintage, mac version is often different to windows version and service packs can break stuff too)...
When MS can't even properly interoperate between themselves, what hope has anyone else got? If you want a good laugh, try a few things: Use ms publisher to open and save word files, not sure if it has improved lately but last time i tried this the results were garbage... Setup different versions of word, and configure them with different printers, then try interchanging complex documents between them...
The only thing MS has going for them is lock-in, their office suite is extremely buggy and has poor interoperability even with itself while intentionally not trying to interoperate with anything else. For the vast majority of users, something heavyweight like msoffice or libreoffice is a poor choice, and one of the lighter options would suit their needs much better. Those who claim that ms is the best suite have generally not used anything else extensively or have niche specialised requirements.
Having used wordperfect years ago, and a mix of msoffice and libreoffice at work i can say that i definitely prefer the latter. Unlike word it doesn't choke on very large documents, it lets me write macros in several languages and i can save the files out and parse them outside of the application quite easily.
One thing that does annoy me however, is that libreoffice (and excel, which i assume its copying) truncates very large numbers, i end up having to use gnumeric instead if i want accurate results.
Third party Android devices like the Nook and Fire do benefit google... Sure, they don't pay Google directly or bundle their applications but they raise the profile of Android as a system, increase the user base and therefore encourage application development. Users and Applications are what Android, especially on tablets, requires in order to compete with Apple.
The value of a good is actually whatever a third party is willing to give you in exchange for that good... This value is completely arbitrary, and allows products with no physical value (eg software) to be sold for huge amounts of money or other goods...
Similarly, money itself has no real value, only the value that others are willing to give in exchange for it.
The advantage of bitcoin, is that while its effectively a worthless token system, just like regular cash, it is a finite supply and thus not subject to the whims of a central authority.
Personally i use bitcoin a lot, primarily as an intermediary currency because i can buy bitcoins with money i hold in one currency, and then draw it out again in my local currency without incurring fees levied by existing currency exchange establishments.
You also get instability with fiat currencies, just look at the Zimbabwe Dollar... Currencies which are centrally controlled can trivially be devalued simply by the controller of that currency printing more money... The more they print, the lower value the remaining currency has.
The only disadvantage bitcoin currently has, is being relatively small so it requires considerably less resources to influence the market as a whole.
Blacks are disproportionately represented in pro basketball because they are more likely to play basketball and be interested in it as kids. Whites are disproportionately represented in engineering and technical professions because they are more likely to be interested in the subject as kids.
Since both situations have the same root cause, why then is it considered racist in the latter case and not the former? The post was making the point that if you applied the same standard to both cases then you would have to infer that both were being racist, when in fact neither is.
Why is it considered a problem that blacks are less interested in technical jobs, while its not a problem that whites are less interested in playing basketball?
Talking generally about both cases, those looking to employ people are looking to find the best people for the job regardless of race, and that there are more people applying from some ethnic groups than others. Many people advocate something they call "positive discrimination" whereby employers are required to hire people of a given ethnic group, even if there are people of another ethnic group available who are better qualified.
Should basketball teams be required to hire white players proportional to their numbers within the general population, even if they can find black players who are superior basketball players?
Treating all races equally is a noble and worthwhile goal, however if in doing so you tip the balance too far that will cause anger and resentment, and eventually a push back. Let's not forget the lessons of history where a majority group felt resentment towards a more successful minority group, which resulted in support for the only political party willing to address the issue.
The fact that a given ethnic group is under represented in a given profession is a symptom... The cause is how people in these ethnic groups are generally brought up.
The point hes trying to make however, is that due to the culture they group up with black kids are more likely to spend their time playing basketball, while white kids are more likely to spend their time learning technology...
People who have done something since an early age and has a genuine interest in the field are generally much better at it than someone who has only just picked it up...
There are thousands upon thousands of basketball players, the only difference between basketball and engineering is that only the top 1% of basketball players (and indeed this applies to any sport) will earn anything, while engineering being a larger industry can support many more people on a liveable wage.
Being from a white, non american background we generally played football (or soccer as its known in america)... However most of us very quickly came to the realisation that while playing football was a fun way to spend free time, we simply weren't good enough at it to make it to the very top levels where you can actually earn decent money, and so devoting all of our time to it would have been career suicide.
In any developed country, old computers are regularly thrown out and can be obtained even by poor people for very little money and often for free. Someone who is genuinely interested in technology will be happy to have one or more old computers, especially for free because it means you can experiment with them and not worry about breaking them.
There is no reason for anyone in a developed country to not be able to gain access to a computer if they want one...
Slightly older computers are thrown away all the time, and someone with a technical leaning will be quite happy to learn using old equipment, especially if that's all they have access to and even if they have otherwise superior equipment, a geek will be happy to have more than one machine.
But you have a point, its a cultural thing, if black kids themselves choose to do other activities that's not a racist bias, it's their free will to choose a different path.
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Yes that's the only effective way, but it doesn't scale to huge numbers and doesn't fit in with the corporate bean counters who like to see graphs and statistics...
They, like many other "contracts" aimed at end users, are simply there to scare you into compliance...
Just because it has no legal weight, doesn't mean that a lot of people who don't know any better will feel compelled to comply with them.
You only have to accept the licence if you want to distribute, it does not apply if you are simply using the software...
Most commercial EULAs prohibit distribution altogether, and place restrictions on use too, and thus demand that you agree to them before you can use the software at all.
Virgin Media is not available everywhere, are not expanding their network, and don't provide their service wholesale so you're stuck with their ISP service which means single dynamic ip, no ipv6 etc.
Yes this is something that so often gets overlooked, connection speeds get faster and faster but the data caps are getting lower... All this means is that you can hit the cap and get disconnected more quickly.
When they offered 512k connections with no data cap, that worked out to around 150GB/month downloaded (not counting upload) if you ran it flat out... They also offered 2mb connections which could pull 600GB.
Now they offer a 40mb connection with a 200GB limit, which in actual fact makes it more like "640k connection, burstable to 40mb for limited periods".
What we really need, in combination with fibre, is small community ISPs... That way you can get high speed uncontended connections with those living near you, which is great for gaming and torrent like protocols... Then other common data can be cached locally too.
And yes, the price of backhaul is ridiculous, and that just includes the line from the exchange to the isp, so even downloading from servers hosted by the ISP is costly... That's why most ISPs don't bother with caching anymore, internet transit is cheap, bt backhaul is not.
The government should re-nationalise the infrastructure, and then run it on a break even basis...
Physical infrastructure is a natural monopoly because if the massive up front investment required to actually build it, and the massive inefficiencies of building multiple sets, so it makes sense for this to be government controlled.
But the point is that an open version is available, and thanks to third party mods like cyanogen if you don't like the version shipped with the phone you can replace it...
Yes, highly modified... They took out most of the crap which is unrelated to gaming, and built an appropriate interface over the top, pretty much removed everything that ever made it "windows". Also it was never marketed as "windows".
By contrast:
Windows mobile (for phones and PDAs) - had a desktop windows alike interface complete with tart menu, which works badly on such devices.
Windows phone - retains the windows name, which is associated with desktop interfaces, crashing and malware, doesnt help...
Windows CE/mobile/phone - advertising implies it is windows, which people assume will therefore be able to run windows applications which is not true.
Windows server - comes with a mandatory gui layer, very wasteful in a server environment... the latest versions are taking steps towards improving the cli etc. also the presence of a gui and various client apps encourages sloppy/dangerous behaviour like browsing websites from a server.
Windows embedded - somewhat bloated when you want an embedded graphical terminal, extremely bloated for anything that doesnt require a gui...bloat brings with it security problems that are more difficult to fix in an embedded environment.
WP9 ran on linux, but it will be a pain making it run on a modern distro...
WP10 ran on linux, but used wine...
Earlier versions ran on SCO unix among other things, and linux was capable of running the SCO binaries.
Without the media you stand no chance of being elected, and since the media is controlled by big business they will never allow an unfavourable candidate to get elected.
They should be split up not because they are performing consistently, but because their legacy products are hampering growth of new products, for instance their online offerings are severely hampered by a strong desire not to harm their existing client markets...
Strong online applications threaten to make the clients that are used to access them totally irrelevant, which would destroy MS's most profitable markets...
Google, Amazon etc on the other hand don't have existing markets to protect and can concentrate fully.
And xbox/kinect are about the only product which they haven't tried to tie to or brand as windows...
As br00tus posted:
He blames their focus on the stylus, and compatibility with the existing Microsoft monopoly, I mean framework, as the drawbacks to it.
Most of their products are tied to windows, and suffer as a result... Even the ones that have been successful, would have been better if not held back by being tied to windows.
That's based on market share of "clients used to browse the web"... So treat the numbers with a pinch of salt.
In particular...
Apple devices are generally only used as client machines, they have virtually no presence in servers or other markets...
Some of the stats are taken from third party analytics companies who generally use javascript and cookies to track users, linux users are generally more tech savvy and are more likely to block such things.
Client machines are the area where linux is weakest, linux is very strong in servers and embedded devices and pretty much dominant in hpc but since those machines are generally not used for browsing the web those stats don't show up here.
Even "server" versions of windows include a web browser, which encourages users to use it on occasion even tho doing so on a production server is a bad idea, by contrast linux/unix servers almost never have a browser installed.
Interestingly, if you were to count up every instance of linux in the world they would probably outnumber windows, but most linux installations are hidden from users inside embedded devices or on backend servers.
MS have the problem that they are stuck with windows, and they try to leverage the windows name to break into other markets... However this often fails.
Look at xbox, pretty successful and no mention of windows...
On the other hand windows mobile was a failure, and now windows phone is going the same way. Some of the comments i've heard from random non geeks over the years:
"windows phone? why would i want a phone thats as unreliable as a pc?"
"i bought a phone running windows but it cant run any of my programs and i cant even connect a cdrom to it"
Windows CE also suffers from the above, i've seen people buy small wince based laptops "because they run windows" even when a cheaper linux model is available with the same spec, only to be extremely disappointed that it only looks like windows and doesn't actually run any of the software they have.
Most of their products are also tied to windows, or have crippled functionality when used with anything else...
Similarly many of their online products are fairly half assed, because the more people move to standards compliant cross platform applications, the less people will need windows.
MS are trying to protect their core market, at the expense of any new markets.
Then you have the old hotmail leaked emails, where they spent a huge amount of time and money migrating hotmail to windows, and concluded that even considering they got the software free, had access to sourcecode and had free access to top tier support, it was still an overall negative compared to bsd.
Personally i think splitting the company up is the way to go, Freed from legacy baggage msn/bing would be far better able to compete with google, and when freed from the requirement to only work with windows many of their server products would be able to become more competitive too. Similarly windows would improve if it became just a core, with OEMs able to supply applications as they wanted (similar to how linux is distributed)...
The trouble with any "print to pdf" program, is that printers cannot represent clickable links (eg indexes) among other things, so what gets sent to the printer is basically a flat document, and depending on the program being used to print may even be a giant graphic rather than text.
Try the native PDF output from LibreOffice or LaTeX and you'll see the difference... PDF files created like this have a nice clickable/searchable index, while those created poorly using a print to pdf function generally just have thumbnails for each page which soon gets unmanageable with lots of pages.
Part of it comes down to the huge amount of development resources that must be wasted by any competitor to MS trying to reverse engineer and implement support for their extremely convoluted file formats...
The problem is twofold...
Firstly the formats are so complex that even with the spec, its very hard to implement them...
Secondly, the specs are not very good, they are vague, inaccurate and sometimes downright wrong in places. Not to mention the additional differences in format between different versions of ms products (even products of the same vintage, mac version is often different to windows version and service packs can break stuff too)...
When MS can't even properly interoperate between themselves, what hope has anyone else got? If you want a good laugh, try a few things:
Use ms publisher to open and save word files, not sure if it has improved lately but last time i tried this the results were garbage...
Setup different versions of word, and configure them with different printers, then try interchanging complex documents between them...
The only thing MS has going for them is lock-in, their office suite is extremely buggy and has poor interoperability even with itself while intentionally not trying to interoperate with anything else.
For the vast majority of users, something heavyweight like msoffice or libreoffice is a poor choice, and one of the lighter options would suit their needs much better.
Those who claim that ms is the best suite have generally not used anything else extensively or have niche specialised requirements.
Having used wordperfect years ago, and a mix of msoffice and libreoffice at work i can say that i definitely prefer the latter. Unlike word it doesn't choke on very large documents, it lets me write macros in several languages and i can save the files out and parse them outside of the application quite easily.
One thing that does annoy me however, is that libreoffice (and excel, which i assume its copying) truncates very large numbers, i end up having to use gnumeric instead if i want accurate results.
Me too, unfortunately they don't sell outside the US or i'd be buying a Nook.
Third party Android devices like the Nook and Fire do benefit google... Sure, they don't pay Google directly or bundle their applications but they raise the profile of Android as a system, increase the user base and therefore encourage application development.
Users and Applications are what Android, especially on tablets, requires in order to compete with Apple.
The value of a good is actually whatever a third party is willing to give you in exchange for that good... This value is completely arbitrary, and allows products with no physical value (eg software) to be sold for huge amounts of money or other goods...
Similarly, money itself has no real value, only the value that others are willing to give in exchange for it.
The advantage of bitcoin, is that while its effectively a worthless token system, just like regular cash, it is a finite supply and thus not subject to the whims of a central authority.
Personally i use bitcoin a lot, primarily as an intermediary currency because i can buy bitcoins with money i hold in one currency, and then draw it out again in my local currency without incurring fees levied by existing currency exchange establishments.
You also get instability with fiat currencies, just look at the Zimbabwe Dollar...
Currencies which are centrally controlled can trivially be devalued simply by the controller of that currency printing more money... The more they print, the lower value the remaining currency has.
The only disadvantage bitcoin currently has, is being relatively small so it requires considerably less resources to influence the market as a whole.
His point was made in a sarcastic way...
Blacks are disproportionately represented in pro basketball because they are more likely to play basketball and be interested in it as kids.
Whites are disproportionately represented in engineering and technical professions because they are more likely to be interested in the subject as kids.
Since both situations have the same root cause, why then is it considered racist in the latter case and not the former? The post was making the point that if you applied the same standard to both cases then you would have to infer that both were being racist, when in fact neither is.
Why is it considered a problem that blacks are less interested in technical jobs, while its not a problem that whites are less interested in playing basketball?
Talking generally about both cases, those looking to employ people are looking to find the best people for the job regardless of race, and that there are more people applying from some ethnic groups than others. Many people advocate something they call "positive discrimination" whereby employers are required to hire people of a given ethnic group, even if there are people of another ethnic group available who are better qualified.
Should basketball teams be required to hire white players proportional to their numbers within the general population, even if they can find black players who are superior basketball players?
Treating all races equally is a noble and worthwhile goal, however if in doing so you tip the balance too far that will cause anger and resentment, and eventually a push back. Let's not forget the lessons of history where a majority group felt resentment towards a more successful minority group, which resulted in support for the only political party willing to address the issue.
The fact that a given ethnic group is under represented in a given profession is a symptom... The cause is how people in these ethnic groups are generally brought up.
The point hes trying to make however, is that due to the culture they group up with black kids are more likely to spend their time playing basketball, while white kids are more likely to spend their time learning technology...
People who have done something since an early age and has a genuine interest in the field are generally much better at it than someone who has only just picked it up...
There are thousands upon thousands of basketball players, the only difference between basketball and engineering is that only the top 1% of basketball players (and indeed this applies to any sport) will earn anything, while engineering being a larger industry can support many more people on a liveable wage.
Being from a white, non american background we generally played football (or soccer as its known in america)... However most of us very quickly came to the realisation that while playing football was a fun way to spend free time, we simply weren't good enough at it to make it to the very top levels where you can actually earn decent money, and so devoting all of our time to it would have been career suicide.
In any developed country, old computers are regularly thrown out and can be obtained even by poor people for very little money and often for free.
Someone who is genuinely interested in technology will be happy to have one or more old computers, especially for free because it means you can experiment with them and not worry about breaking them.
There is no reason for anyone in a developed country to not be able to gain access to a computer if they want one...
Slightly older computers are thrown away all the time, and someone with a technical leaning will be quite happy to learn using old equipment, especially if that's all they have access to and even if they have otherwise superior equipment, a geek will be happy to have more than one machine.
But you have a point, its a cultural thing, if black kids themselves choose to do other activities that's not a racist bias, it's their free will to choose a different path.