Actually the solution to your problem is a console...
Most windows gamers i know are constantly messing with drivers and tuning the performance of their systems... Some games are buggy, some video drivers are buggy (which is ridiculous since there are only 2 suppliers of video cards for gamers), and many games suffer problems or performance loss depending what else you have running in the background... The best way to run a windows system for gaming is to actually not use it for anything else, ie dual boot to linux when you want to do anything other than play games.
Many of those problems are down to using proprietary applications that require binary applications, for instance radmin, you could be using vnc, remotelyanywhere, nx or rdesktop, all of which have clients which can run on linux.
Similarly gotomeeting may be proprietary with a binary client but there are several alternatives which use java based or even totally web based clients.
If more people refuse to use such services on the basis of them requiring a proprietary client, then such services will end up few and far between.... I certainly will always use cross platform options in preference so i can access them from any arbitrary device i might be using.
Silverlight is being dropped, there was a story posted just a couple of days ago about how MS won't be releasing any future versions of it.
Photoshop is a niche product, most people do extremely limited editing of graphics if at all. I certainly have no need for anything beyond the simple cropping capabilities present in most image viewers and most people have the same or less requirements than me... The idea of paying a high price for photoshop to satisfy such limited requirements is ludicrous.
Games perhaps, but then that relegates windows to a toy that shouldn't be used for serious work (too high risk of malware, and too much hassle to combat that risk)... Besides, there are always games consoles which provide for hassle free gaming, vs windows with all kinds of bugs and kludgy workarounds, background garbage slowing down your gaming etc.
If i played games on the computer, i might keep a stripped down windows install solely as a toy (and if used to nothing else than games, is likely to play the games more reliably).
While i don't especially like paypal, their transaction method is far more suited to online use than credit cards.... Infact, the whole card idea is fundamentally flawed. Your effectively walking around with a huge bundle of cash, and every time you want to buy something you hand over the entire bundle and trust the retailer (or any strangers that get close enough) to only take the amount you want them to and give you back the rest. You wouldn't conduct cash transactions in this way because that would be totally stupid and yet thats exactly how credit/debit cards work.
Just because the data was "encrypted", doesn't mean it's secure... The data has to be used somehow, so the keys necessary to decrypt it must be somewhere and if the data needs to be used online then the keys must be online too making it less encryption and more obfuscation... Basically only a matter of time and skill to work out where the keys are stored and how to use them.
You could easily produce a netbook with the same advantages of a tablet, while still having the same form factor including a keyboard.... There were plans afoot to build ARM based laptops, but they seem to have gone nowhere.
It's 8 quid if you happen to live outside london, it costs a lot more in london...
Add to that, the conditions... Of the cinemas i've been to over the years, most are smelly, dirty, poor climate control (either too hot or too cold), uncomfortable seats, seats too close together so you knock elbows etc etc...
I also never understood why they sell the noisiest possible food (crisps and popcorn) at cinemas, people munching away on this stuff is noisy and detracts from the movie!
Contrast that to cinemas in some asian countries, where they have to compete against a much higher level of piracy, the prices are not only much cheaper but the experience much better to boot.
For MS it's not about making money from Android, thats a side benefit... Their actual goal is to drive up the cost of Android and to dissuade companies from using it at all. Their end game is to get users locked into their platform instead.
Microsoft encouraged openness and competition on the hardware front so they could sneak in the back door and obtain lock-in via software instead... It worked largely because at the time software was perceived as a very small cheap component of an expensive hardware bundle, especially when you could pirate the software.
Yes, choice is good for geeks, however non geeks require a sane default (or at least a very simple way of seeing the options available and choosing one)... Many of them will never use anything but the default, and if they don't like the default they won't use the system at all.
I didn't start on windows, i started with a C64, later moved to AmigaOS and then migrated on to various unix systems (and at some point have used most unix variants that were around in the 90s). I absolutely cannot stand windows, it is ridiculously arcane compared to the systems i am used to, it does pretty much everything in a different way for no apparent reason and is a source of constant frustration whenever i'm forced to use it. And when things don't go exactly the way they're supposed to, troubleshooting is a horrendous process wether it be poor logging, useless error messages or just the fact that the registry is one big mess with no inline comments and needs specialist tools to edit. I also find that the system gets in your way constantly, patronises you and assumes that the user is a complete idiot...
I actually find configuring wifi by hand on Gentoo linux much easier than trying to get it working on windows,
They may renew licenses but only for servers which are in good condition, not too outdated and for which linux is not feasible. Outdated servers, or those which are not totally locked into microsoft may well get replaced with linux.
Come to think of it, seeing as the EU required microsoft to publish protocol specs a few years back, would they now extend this requirement to cover skype?
I certainly think they should, proprietary unpublished protocols are extremely harmful to everyone else.
Most users would be just as stuck if faced with a windows install which failed to recognise their wifi adapter... Stock out of the box windows often fails to recognise hardware, xp was especially bad because it got so dated but 7 is going that way too now...
Users don't install their computers, they buy them preinstalled... There's no reason why a machine preinstalled with linux wouldn't have everything already configured and working, and come with a recovery disc to return it to the factory state... Same as currently happens with windows.
I connected both an iphone 3gs and an iphone 4 to the usb socket on one of my old nas devices, it charges up perfectly and doesn't complain... It sounds like you are referring to blackberry devices, which will complain if you connect them to a standard usb port and not charge properly unless you have explicitly installed their drivers (which arent made available for old linux nas devices)
The point was that its hidden, not uninstalled at all... The comment about customised settings only serves to detract from that point.
As for leaving settings, this is a particular annoyance of mine even on linux to a lesser extent... If i remove a program, i want the option to remove all its settings too, rather than the current status quo which generally leaves settings incase you ever want to reinstall the program.
On windows this is a huge pain, and makes it even more painful to experiment with different programs...
On linux its usually not quite so bad, most package managers have an option to purge system wide config files and user specific configs are generally held in their own dir within $HOME.
Well, Netscape used to successfully sell a browser and used it to promote sales of their web server software...
Microsoft were pretty desperate to scupper the browser as a platform, because cross platform applications render their monopoly irrelevant and could potentially bankrupt them.
Mozilla, Google and others don't want microsoft to control the browser market because then they can destroy the idea of cross platform applications and keep people tied to windows...
It's not all about monetising browsers, its about the fallout to other areas that the browser market will cause.
There's less competition now... In the early 90s before MS integrated IE, Apple had a larger desktop share, unix workstations were still fairly common in universities and larger businesses and novell still common in smaller ones, commodore/atari were still around too especially in europe and netscape was the dominant web browser.
Tablets are a market that prior to Apple taking over, were totally irrelevant...
And Apple tablets have _always_ had an integrated browser, whereas the first versions of windows (and all versions of dos) shipped without a browser and it was commonplace for users to download a third party browser.
Plus the Apple browser follows published standards, and the source code for the rendering engine is open to everyone. MS on the other hand intentionally changed things to lock people in to their browser. There is no reason why an Android tablet using webkit cannot render sites exactly the same as an iPad...
In short..
MS took away a choice people used to have, Apple never gave people a choice from the start.
MS try to lock people in to their browser and their platform, Apple make you use their browser when using their platform but there's nothing to stop you using a compatible browser (even the same rendering engine) on a competing platform.
Slashdot Mirror
About 1% of entrepreneurs who received venture capital in the first half of last year are black
Ok, so 1% who receive VC funding...
What percentage actually apply for funding, and if they are rejected on what grounds?
This doesn't mean there is a racial bias, if only 1% of those applying are black then stands to reason only 1% of those approved will be black...
Actually the solution to your problem is a console...
Most windows gamers i know are constantly messing with drivers and tuning the performance of their systems... Some games are buggy, some video drivers are buggy (which is ridiculous since there are only 2 suppliers of video cards for gamers), and many games suffer problems or performance loss depending what else you have running in the background... The best way to run a windows system for gaming is to actually not use it for anything else, ie dual boot to linux when you want to do anything other than play games.
Many of those problems are down to using proprietary applications that require binary applications, for instance radmin, you could be using vnc, remotelyanywhere, nx or rdesktop, all of which have clients which can run on linux.
Similarly gotomeeting may be proprietary with a binary client but there are several alternatives which use java based or even totally web based clients.
If more people refuse to use such services on the basis of them requiring a proprietary client, then such services will end up few and far between.... I certainly will always use cross platform options in preference so i can access them from any arbitrary device i might be using.
Silverlight is being dropped, there was a story posted just a couple of days ago about how MS won't be releasing any future versions of it.
Photoshop is a niche product, most people do extremely limited editing of graphics if at all. I certainly have no need for anything beyond the simple cropping capabilities present in most image viewers and most people have the same or less requirements than me... The idea of paying a high price for photoshop to satisfy such limited requirements is ludicrous.
Games perhaps, but then that relegates windows to a toy that shouldn't be used for serious work (too high risk of malware, and too much hassle to combat that risk)... Besides, there are always games consoles which provide for hassle free gaming, vs windows with all kinds of bugs and kludgy workarounds, background garbage slowing down your gaming etc.
If i played games on the computer, i might keep a stripped down windows install solely as a toy (and if used to nothing else than games, is likely to play the games more reliably).
While i don't especially like paypal, their transaction method is far more suited to online use than credit cards.... Infact, the whole card idea is fundamentally flawed.
Your effectively walking around with a huge bundle of cash, and every time you want to buy something you hand over the entire bundle and trust the retailer (or any strangers that get close enough) to only take the amount you want them to and give you back the rest.
You wouldn't conduct cash transactions in this way because that would be totally stupid and yet thats exactly how credit/debit cards work.
Just because the data was "encrypted", doesn't mean it's secure... The data has to be used somehow, so the keys necessary to decrypt it must be somewhere and if the data needs to be used online then the keys must be online too making it less encryption and more obfuscation... Basically only a matter of time and skill to work out where the keys are stored and how to use them.
You could easily produce a netbook with the same advantages of a tablet, while still having the same form factor including a keyboard.... There were plans afoot to build ARM based laptops, but they seem to have gone nowhere.
It's 8 quid if you happen to live outside london, it costs a lot more in london...
Add to that, the conditions... Of the cinemas i've been to over the years, most are smelly, dirty, poor climate control (either too hot or too cold), uncomfortable seats, seats too close together so you knock elbows etc etc...
I also never understood why they sell the noisiest possible food (crisps and popcorn) at cinemas, people munching away on this stuff is noisy and detracts from the movie!
Contrast that to cinemas in some asian countries, where they have to compete against a much higher level of piracy, the prices are not only much cheaper but the experience much better to boot.
For MS it's not about making money from Android, thats a side benefit... Their actual goal is to drive up the cost of Android and to dissuade companies from using it at all. Their end game is to get users locked into their platform instead.
Microsoft encouraged openness and competition on the hardware front so they could sneak in the back door and obtain lock-in via software instead... It worked largely because at the time software was perceived as a very small cheap component of an expensive hardware bundle, especially when you could pirate the software.
Yes, choice is good for geeks, however non geeks require a sane default (or at least a very simple way of seeing the options available and choosing one)... Many of them will never use anything but the default, and if they don't like the default they won't use the system at all.
To play devil's advocate...
I didn't start on windows, i started with a C64, later moved to AmigaOS and then migrated on to various unix systems (and at some point have used most unix variants that were around in the 90s). I absolutely cannot stand windows, it is ridiculously arcane compared to the systems i am used to, it does pretty much everything in a different way for no apparent reason and is a source of constant frustration whenever i'm forced to use it. And when things don't go exactly the way they're supposed to, troubleshooting is a horrendous process wether it be poor logging, useless error messages or just the fact that the registry is one big mess with no inline comments and needs specialist tools to edit. I also find that the system gets in your way constantly, patronises you and assumes that the user is a complete idiot...
I actually find configuring wifi by hand on Gentoo linux much easier than trying to get it working on windows,
Your 4 year old P4 will pretty soon cost more than the small ARM board in power, assuming you actually turn it on.
They may renew licenses but only for servers which are in good condition, not too outdated and for which linux is not feasible. Outdated servers, or those which are not totally locked into microsoft may well get replaced with linux.
Standard for pretty much any airline, and at least in Europe its a legal requirement tho not sure about other places...
Come to think of it, seeing as the EU required microsoft to publish protocol specs a few years back, would they now extend this requirement to cover skype?
I certainly think they should, proprietary unpublished protocols are extremely harmful to everyone else.
Doesn't the DMCA have exceptions for interoperability purposes? Surely these would come into play for a communications tool...
Most users would be just as stuck if faced with a windows install which failed to recognise their wifi adapter...
Stock out of the box windows often fails to recognise hardware, xp was especially bad because it got so dated but 7 is going that way too now...
Users don't install their computers, they buy them preinstalled... There's no reason why a machine preinstalled with linux wouldn't have everything already configured and working, and come with a recovery disc to return it to the factory state... Same as currently happens with windows.
The same was said about x86 when comparing it to the highend alpha/mips/sparc/ppc of the time.
Never underestimate competition coming from below...
I connected both an iphone 3gs and an iphone 4 to the usb socket on one of my old nas devices, it charges up perfectly and doesn't complain...
It sounds like you are referring to blackberry devices, which will complain if you connect them to a standard usb port and not charge properly unless you have explicitly installed their drivers (which arent made available for old linux nas devices)
The point was that its hidden, not uninstalled at all... The comment about customised settings only serves to detract from that point.
As for leaving settings, this is a particular annoyance of mine even on linux to a lesser extent... If i remove a program, i want the option to remove all its settings too, rather than the current status quo which generally leaves settings incase you ever want to reinstall the program.
On windows this is a huge pain, and makes it even more painful to experiment with different programs...
On linux its usually not quite so bad, most package managers have an option to purge system wide config files and user specific configs are generally held in their own dir within $HOME.
Well, Netscape used to successfully sell a browser and used it to promote sales of their web server software...
Microsoft were pretty desperate to scupper the browser as a platform, because cross platform applications render their monopoly irrelevant and could potentially bankrupt them.
Mozilla, Google and others don't want microsoft to control the browser market because then they can destroy the idea of cross platform applications and keep people tied to windows...
It's not all about monetising browsers, its about the fallout to other areas that the browser market will cause.
There's less competition now... In the early 90s before MS integrated IE, Apple had a larger desktop share, unix workstations were still fairly common in universities and larger businesses and novell still common in smaller ones, commodore/atari were still around too especially in europe and netscape was the dominant web browser.
Tablets are a market that prior to Apple taking over, were totally irrelevant...
And Apple tablets have _always_ had an integrated browser, whereas the first versions of windows (and all versions of dos) shipped without a browser and it was commonplace for users to download a third party browser.
Plus the Apple browser follows published standards, and the source code for the rendering engine is open to everyone. MS on the other hand intentionally changed things to lock people in to their browser.
There is no reason why an Android tablet using webkit cannot render sites exactly the same as an iPad...
In short..
MS took away a choice people used to have, Apple never gave people a choice from the start.
MS try to lock people in to their browser and their platform, Apple make you use their browser when using their platform but there's nothing to stop you using a compatible browser (even the same rendering engine) on a competing platform.
They're never as good as the standalone competition because they don't have to compete for users...