Let's make a bet. I bet I can browse through ten sites faster with Opera than you can with Links or Lynx. Why? Because of stuff like opening links in the background, MDI (tab browsing), etc. There's more to speed than page rendering.
Oh, and I can disable images in Opera with a single keypress, and make it even faster.
"I just could not fathom paying for it (or should I say the bloat that comes with it), particularly now with the likes of Mozilla Firefox and such."
Well for one, Opera has the convenience of everything being available immediately, so there's no need to test loads of extensions to get more than basic functionality. If we both did a clean install at the same time, I would be on my way, surfing immediately, while you would be busy installing one and one Firefox extension, and even restarting between each (Opera applies stuff like toolbar customization, skins, etc. on the fly - no need to restart). If Opera does what I need and I'd rather be browsing than playing around with potentially buggy extensions, why shouldn't I be using Opera?
"I think Opera should step back from the bloat, release an updated minimalist version (as it once was back in the day), and sell it online for $5. Will that happen? Probably not. Will alot of people pay for Opera in it's current state? Probably not."
As you can see above, there was no "minimalist version". It's always been more than just a browser. Why would Opera release a browser only version when you can get a plain browser with Windows, or download Firefox for free?
And what do you know about how many people pay for Opera? Check out their revenue reports. They make millions off their desktop products.
Off with the rose-tinted glasses please. Just because not everyone does this kind of integration doesn't mean that Opera can't pull it off. Plenty of money in the bank seem to prove you wrong.
You are irrational in your attack. I'd think that your situation is rather uncommon, actually. Opera does play nice with what most people do: A PC used by several people.
Imagine a small family with one PC. All family members can use Opera with just once license. I am sure you would rather see them paying for both mother, father, brother and sister, but they don't have to do that, because Opera has them covered.
Now enter people like you: A tiny minority. You don't realize that the way things are done now actually benefit more people than if they did it the other way around. Don't you realize that there are more people in this world than yourself?
You also don't realize that Opera for Windows, Linux and Mac are different products done by different devs. Sure, most is cross platform, but they have to do work on each platform too. So why shouldn't they charge?
You are basically complaining about something which is a non issue. What you are complaining about benefits more people than it hurts, and you are forgetting one other thing:
If you buy Opera for another platform, you pay less than half price for that additional license!
That's right. Your Windows license was $40, but your Linux license would have been just $15.
While that might reflect his personal opinion as a member of Mozilla.org, it certainly doesn't mean that he is right in his bias against Opera. After all, Opera offers a heck of a lot more useful stuff when installed than Firefox.
Just because it doesn't behave exactly like your favorite program, doesn't mean that it sucks! He might have something useful to say, but when he gives the impression that unless Opera is exactly like Firefox, it will always suck,
Oh, and the screenshot is totally wrong. That's not what Opera 7.5 looks like by default at all.
And finally, read this comment: "Posted by: sas on May 13, 2004 02:54 AM". It takes the piss, but it's rather spot on and proves a point. Anyone can make anything look bad by posting biased reviews like that.
Why Opera? Small (both footprint and download), fast, works on lower-end systems, real Small Screen Rendering as seen on mobile devices, the M2 email client, which is rather unique, built in... No need to download countless extensions to mimic features that are already there when you install Opera. Integration between those features, instead of some random unrelated extensions doing their own thing and adding clutter to the UI. Then again, with Firefox you can do just about anything by installing extensions, and the interface is a lot cleaner by default. Why Opera? If Opera does what you need, then use Opera. If not, use something else.
"I'm sure its Slashdotly correct to assume that MS and the MSN website issue are the reason for this money but perhaps its something much less sinister."
Yeah, I'm sure any company would be willing to hand out several million dollars just to keep someone quiet and not go to court. And this company is one which is not a customer or partner of Opera, it's got nothing to do with patents or anything like that. So it is probably a competitor. But who has done bad things to Opera anyway? The Mozilla Project surely cannot pay this kind of money. AOL? The ones who took over Netscape when IE had already won the browser war anyway?
For chrissakes, this is Slashdot. Someone submits an interesting story about a newspaper speculating about Microsoft doing evil again. Big deal. It's not like Microsoft has a good reputation to uphold here on Slashdot anyway.
If it's something much less sinister, why would they be willing to pay this kind of money for it? And not only that, what much less sinister company could afford it?
So yeah, again, this is Slashdot. We like to bash MS. Why? Because, quite frankly, they deserve to be bashed. And they keep proving that again and again. It's an OSS site. It reports on bad things and rumors about Microsoft. It always has. If that bothers you, then perhaps Slashdot is not the site for you?
After all, there are plenty of pro-MS zombies out there running sites that spread FUD on behalf of MS. Why aren't you out there bashing Paul Thurrott's FUD against Apple? SCO's FUD against FOSS? The numerous journalists who are nothing but kiss-asses for Microsoft?
Slashdot is an OSS community site which happens to post about interesting stories and rumors affecting nerds and geeks everywhere. You may not like it, but then perhaps Thurrott's Win SuperSite is more down your alley...
I can both DDoS the scammers and lobby, and help create campaigns.
In my case, I simply do not have the time or resources to deal with lobbying and campaigns, so if I can contribute with a bit of bandwidth to take out spammers, I am happy to do so.
Not quite the same. That story is about replying to scammers and stringing them along. This story is about abusing their bandwidth so their sites go down and it gets more expensive to scam people.
"I'm sorry, but DDoS'ing 419 sites seems really stupid. You might take their site down temporarily but you're also wasting just as much of your own bandwidth and affecting other more important services."
I am not wasting my bandwidth if I think it's a worthwile cause. And it's not like it will suck up all my bandwidth either. All it does is to download images from a web server. I do that all the time anyway.
So we are wasting their bandwidth, but I can decide to stop downloading their images at any time. So it is not a problem at all.
And what more important services does it affect?
"The 419'ers exploit stupid people."
And they spam all kinds of people, including smart ones who will never fall for their scams anyway. And spam is a major problem today.
"While I don't condone the activities of the 419'ers, they don't bother me that much. Turn on the television and it'll take you about ten minutes before you see a commercial from an American company that's basically doing the same thing, misleading people into giving them money for something that is questionable."
Yeah, except these American companies don't kill their victims, which has happened to 419 victims.
"I figure anyone stupid enough to fall for these schemes will do so eventually, so we might as well let them learn from their mistakes sooner rather than later."
So it's OK by you that they send spam? I don't like it, so I'll be happy to use some of my bandwidth to take their sites down. If they can't scam people because their sites keep being taken down, maybe they'll stop spamming me.
" If you're selling something for $3000 and someone sends you a check for $6000 and wants you to wire the difference to another country, you're a fool who needs to be parted from your money."
And the money they make from scamming people will be used for what? Funding wars, for example? Drugs? Getting people tortured and killed?
Sorry, I can't accept that.
Registering several addresses in the beta?
on
Gmail Addresses For Sale
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
How does this beta work? Do beta testers get to register as many addresses as they want, or are they limited to just one or a few?
I can imagine that there will be a rush of registration when it goes out of beta. Unless the beta testers have already taken all the "cool" addresses, and only the "hotstudabc666" ones are left...
Great idea:) A distributed client which uses available bandwidth (user configurable, obviously) to download images from scammer sites. One would need a central list of known sites, and one would have to trust that site. There is some potential for abuse, but it could work.
I've always wished that I could take down a scammer with help from the Slashdot crowd when I've seen an obvious scam, such as the one in my previous post. Now, maybe Slashdot can post a story every now and then about this site to remind people about it, and the next daily "scammer slam"...:)
(By the way, there was an obvious typo in my last Subject. It was supposed to be "community attacks". Oh well.)
This is a very good idea, and seems to work to a certain extent.
Organizing communities to attack hostiles is a good idea, and lately I've seen a lot of mails pretending to be from Citibank, apparently linking to citibank.com, but instead hiding the URL by using HTML, and sending the user to a different page instead.
These new phishing scams have been covered by the media, and basically it opens a popup with the address field hidden, and it uses HTML/JS to recreate a fake one, giving the impression that one is actually at citibank.com.
This page gathers credit card info. Maybe if there was a site to gather these addresses, hundreds or thousands of people could cooperate and submit so much nonsense - either random crap or seemingly real, but fake, CC info. That way, the scammers would have to wade through thousands of fake entries.
Maybe someone could even write a script to spam the scammers into oblivion:)
The quote saying that the supposed switching cost was the only reason why people didn't switch is nearly ten years old! It may have been true at the time, but the competition is not the only ones that have improved. Windows 2000 is a very solid operating system, and XP is nice, as long as you disable all the "eye candy".
My reason for still using Windows isn't switching cost as such, but simply that I am used to Windows, and I've found 2000 and XP to be stable and convenient to use. Convenient, simply because I'm used to it. Of course, there are numerous security holes, and that is worrying. I would have felt better using an alternative operating system, but I am simply too used to Windows, and it is convenient enough that I can't be bothered to switch. Apart from Windows, I don't really run any MS software, apart from perhaps Notepad. My browsing, e-mailing, newsgroup browsing, image editing, document editing, etc. is all done in non-MS software. Windows is just a convenient way for me to launch this software, and then there's games of course.
But I digress. Back to the point, which is that these quotes are seriously outdated, and Microsoft has actually come a long way with their products since then.
That said, you have a good point when you call it lies that the switching cost is huge. I agree with you on that. When it comes to money, I think switching cost isn't a major obstacle, as long as you can be bothered to learn something new. I do use Linux every day for work related things, but to work efficiently, I still use Windows as my primary OS.
A company would probably save a lot of money by moving away from Windows. Training cost shouldn't be too much either, as long as the employees get systems that are set up and ready to go, with all necessary software available.
Maybe the claims from MS that the switching cost was huge nearly ten years ago was what saved them, since their products were really terrible. Today, Windows is actually rather decent, and people tend to stay with what they are used to. Internet Explorer is a really bad browser, though, so Windows is the only thing I really use which is created by Microsoft.
I, too, have noticed a trend lately (well, it's been going on for a while), and that is that obvious flamebaits from pro-MS posters are modded up. Ignorant comments praising MS and bashing Linux will frequently get modded up, whether there is merit to it or not.
It looks like there's a kind of backlash from pro-MS people who are sick and tired of hearing about how bad and evil Microsoft is. So they post comments about "why should Apple be allowed to bundle a browser, but MS not" (answer: Apple is not a convicted monopolist), and these get modded up.
Opera is known to care about accessibility. This technology probably has many uses, and it will be especially welcome to people with certain disabilities.
To you, it might be a gimmick. To someone with a disability, this could make life a lot easier.
I read the headline and thought "wow, they discovered a virus which can infect all (Windows) e-mail client? Surely not", and it turns out that this is indeed another virus which exploits security holes in Outlook.
Shouldn't the headline have been "virus exploiting known Outlook vulnerability" or similar?
So while the headline gives a different impressions, everyone using Opera, Mozilla, The Bat or others are still not affected.
" go back a few versions. Opera was just a browser"
That is incorrect. Even Opera 3 had a newsreader and a send-only e-mail client. Opera hasn't been "just a browser" for a very, very long time. If ever.
The bottom line is that the SCO comment was a troll. SCO's lawsuit obviously has no merit. On the other hand, Nintendo seems to have used a patent against a commercial entity who tried to make money from Nintendo's work. That's right, this was a commercial emulator.
Whether that is good or bad is not up to me to decide, but comparing this to SCO is simply ridiculous.
"Microsoft dominates the operating system software market -- does that mean their product is the best? There are better portables than what Nintendo is offering, just not easily available."
That is irrelevant to the fact that Nintendo dominates the handheld market, and therefore has a good source of income.
"Their future is uncertain because it's not clear what business they will be in 5 years from now."
The long term future is uncertain for any company, so your point is moot.
"Only the fanboys were impressed (of which I assume you are one by your fervent defense of the indefensible)."
You mean like your defense of blatant trolling? I don't even own a Nintendo system. I am a PC gamer.
"Rarely do I hear a mac user say "Well, I've had enough of this poor selection of games. I'm buying a PC tommorow." And yet I've heard many times lamentations that "this is not the Nintendo I grew up with" and I've seen increasing disillusionment among even Nintendo's most loyal fans."
You've seen it many times from the same slashdotters. You see, the same people keep predicting Nintendo's death all the time. They have no credibility.
"If you're only standard is that someone is saying something you do not agree with, then you need a better standard. Should I mod you down simply becuase I don't agree with your belief that the original poster was a troll?"
This has got nothing to do with disagreement. This has to do with the fact that Nintendo is a profitable company which makes money from sales, not from litigation. The facts show that Nintendo is not like SCO at all. Claiming that Nintendo can be compared to SCO is trolling, at best.
As for the rest of your posts, you keep posting claims but never back them up. Nintendo barely turns a profit? Losing money? Fell short of their goal? I notice that you refused to back up your claims from the first post.
"It was the "title" of the post which contained the information I felt was "insightful". Comparing Nintendo (in this particular instance) to the SCO struck me as a particularly apt analogy."
That is a ridiculous comparison, and maybe why it was modded as a troll in the first place.
"Yes, but they were once uncontested and now are about to face a flurry of competetion."
They have faced competition for years now, and are still #2 in the home console market, #1 in the handheld market.
"They're only number 2 because of very strong sales in Japan -- in most places of the world they are a distant third (and 3rd out of 3 isn't exactly hot stuff)."
Where did you find your numbers? Distant third? Didn't the GameCube outsell the X-Box in the US around Christmas? Before you can claim that they are a "distant third in most places of the world", you should back up that claim with hard numbers.
"as for portables, Nintendo isn't as great as everyone seems to think"
They still dominate the handheld market.
"Remember how uncertain its future was just a year ago? Would they ever make another console again, or would they follow segas lead and give up on hardware."
Nintendo's future uncertain? When? I know that some journalists have tried to spin it that way, but when did a profitable company with billions of dollars available start having an "uncertain future"?
It has always been crystal clear to me that Nintendo is in this for the long run. They have a niche market, and as long as the other console makers continue to spew out "adult" games with more graphics than gameplay, Nintendo will have secured their income.
"The point is, Nintendo's long-term future is unsure, and it appears that they intend to try to secure it via the SCO's infamous "litigate instead of innovate" approach."
You don't get it do you? Nintendo is turning a profit - in both markets. And it dominates the handheld market. It is number two in the home console market. Nintendo's "long-term future" is no unsure at all. It is profitable, it has billions to spare, and it has a niche market which it holds onto like nothing else.
"Once again, for the record: the definition of a troll is not "someone who says things I don't agree with. ..""
The way I see it, comparing Nintendo to SCO is a troll, so the troll mod was completely justified.
There are spam solutions that work, for certain values of "works":)
It doesn't have to be perfect to make spam less intrusive. It would be great to have a device which detected the location of the spammer and sent in a gang of hired goons to off him, but until someone develops such a solution, there are things that are available today that more than takes the load off your mailbox, and reduces the annoyance somewhat.
Now, this is not a troll, but I thought that it might be interesting to carry out a thought experiment. I support the little guy as much as everyone else, but at the same time, sometimes, there may be more beneath the surface, and it could be interesting to speculate a bit about that.
I see that the flames have already begun, and that is not an unexpected reaction when a big company threatens a tiny company for alleged infringement on some obscure patent (obscure to most of us normal people anyway).
But please, take a few minutes to follow the links in the story, and you will notice a couple of things:
First, notice how Nintendo is cracking down on a commercial product - this emulator is actually being sold. The company selling this emulator is making money by emulating Nintendo, and while I'm not quite decided on whether this is actually bad or not, I can actually understand where Nintendo is coming from here. He's making money instead of Nintendo - some people will buy the emulator instead of the GBA itself. It makes sense for Nintendo to do something about that. So they are cracking down on a commercial entity competing directly with them by offering something which emulates their product, not some hobbyist who doesn't make a dime from it. Good or bad? That's not up to me to decide.
But wait, there's more!
Very few comments here seem to mention the fact that this emulator isn't even available yet! That's right, the sales are actually pre-sales. People have been paying for promises of a delivery, and it seems that it is delayed already:
"Sorry Kyle, but I think you have an obligation to refund money now and look into it later. Without a product to release, you've essentially stolen everyone who preordered (like myself)'s money. I'm not trying to hammer you and I'm sure that you're pissed too, but I did pay $15.99 to have Firstorm gbaZ on March 12, 2004 and not any other time. Those were the terms of the sale. Hopefully this will all blow over." (source)
Now, we should probably give the author the benefit of the doubt, and I must admit that I do not know how well known or respected he is, but this seems to be a rather convenient time for the author of the emulator to have an excuse for delaying the product.
I'm not saying that something fishy is going on here, but there's always that tiny possibility. If you had sold a product which you promised to deliver on a certain date and failed, wouldn't it be convenient to have something to blame, to be able to postpone the release and continue work on it until it is actually finished?
It would of course be silly of this guy to falsely accuse Nintendo of this, as Nintendo would probably be all over him, but people have done stupid things before, out of sheer desperation... Instead of losing face, people have been known to do rather silly things. And I don't have to mention SCO, do I? Not that they have any face left to lose...
But please people, take the time to have a quick look at the links in this story and make up your own minds. Maybe Nintendo is doing something really bad here, or maybe they aren't. Maybe there's more to this story than meets the eye.
"I don't know why someone would moderate something so insightful as "troll""
Well, it most certainly is not "insightful" or "interesting":
Nintendo still dominates the handheld market completely
Nintendo is still #2 in home systems, beating Microsoft, and unlike Microsoft, turning a profit from their home systems
Sony and Microsoft have done equally bad things in the past, so it's not like ditching Nintendo to go for one of the others is a noble thing
The simple fact is that you may hate Nintendo for doing this, but if you choose to buy Sony or Microsoft instead, then you are just a hypocrite, because they are equally bad, and have done equally bad things in the past. Bleem, anyone?
If you are going to let Nintendo know that we will not support this (this which is an idea that I personally support, but that's besides the point), then boycotting them in favor of Sony or Microsoft just shows a serious lack of judgement on your part.
That, Cyberllama, is why the grandparent might as well be modded as "troll" when it's gotten both "insightful" and "interesting" already, without justification.
And the "lagging behind" comment is beyond silly. You cannot say that someone who dominates a market and is #2 in another "lags behind". That, too, shows a serious lack of judgement.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and I can disable images in Opera with a single keypress, and make it even faster.
Why? Because Opera shares resources and reuses a lot of code. That's why the program is so damn small.
Even Opera 2 had a newsreader and could send mail!
Well for one, Opera has the convenience of everything being available immediately, so there's no need to test loads of extensions to get more than basic functionality. If we both did a clean install at the same time, I would be on my way, surfing immediately, while you would be busy installing one and one Firefox extension, and even restarting between each (Opera applies stuff like toolbar customization, skins, etc. on the fly - no need to restart). If Opera does what I need and I'd rather be browsing than playing around with potentially buggy extensions, why shouldn't I be using Opera? As you can see above, there was no "minimalist version". It's always been more than just a browser. Why would Opera release a browser only version when you can get a plain browser with Windows, or download Firefox for free?And what do you know about how many people pay for Opera? Check out their revenue reports. They make millions off their desktop products.
Off with the rose-tinted glasses please. Just because not everyone does this kind of integration doesn't mean that Opera can't pull it off. Plenty of money in the bank seem to prove you wrong.
This video proves how "smart" spammers are...
Imagine a small family with one PC. All family members can use Opera with just once license. I am sure you would rather see them paying for both mother, father, brother and sister, but they don't have to do that, because Opera has them covered.
Now enter people like you: A tiny minority. You don't realize that the way things are done now actually benefit more people than if they did it the other way around. Don't you realize that there are more people in this world than yourself?
You also don't realize that Opera for Windows, Linux and Mac are different products done by different devs. Sure, most is cross platform, but they have to do work on each platform too. So why shouldn't they charge?
You are basically complaining about something which is a non issue. What you are complaining about benefits more people than it hurts, and you are forgetting one other thing:
If you buy Opera for another platform, you pay less than half price for that additional license!
That's right. Your Windows license was $40, but your Linux license would have been just $15.
While that might reflect his personal opinion as a member of Mozilla.org, it certainly doesn't mean that he is right in his bias against Opera. After all, Opera offers a heck of a lot more useful stuff when installed than Firefox.
Just because it doesn't behave exactly like your favorite program, doesn't mean that it sucks! He might have something useful to say, but when he gives the impression that unless Opera is exactly like Firefox, it will always suck,
Oh, and the screenshot is totally wrong. That's not what Opera 7.5 looks like by default at all.
And finally, read this comment: "Posted by: sas on May 13, 2004 02:54 AM". It takes the piss, but it's rather spot on and proves a point. Anyone can make anything look bad by posting biased reviews like that.
"I'm sure its Slashdotly correct to assume that MS and the MSN website issue are the reason for this money but perhaps its something much less sinister."
Yeah, I'm sure any company would be willing to hand out several million dollars just to keep someone quiet and not go to court. And this company is one which is not a customer or partner of Opera, it's got nothing to do with patents or anything like that. So it is probably a competitor. But who has done bad things to Opera anyway? The Mozilla Project surely cannot pay this kind of money. AOL? The ones who took over Netscape when IE had already won the browser war anyway?
For chrissakes, this is Slashdot. Someone submits an interesting story about a newspaper speculating about Microsoft doing evil again. Big deal. It's not like Microsoft has a good reputation to uphold here on Slashdot anyway.
If it's something much less sinister, why would they be willing to pay this kind of money for it? And not only that, what much less sinister company could afford it?
So yeah, again, this is Slashdot. We like to bash MS. Why? Because, quite frankly, they deserve to be bashed. And they keep proving that again and again. It's an OSS site. It reports on bad things and rumors about Microsoft. It always has. If that bothers you, then perhaps Slashdot is not the site for you?
After all, there are plenty of pro-MS zombies out there running sites that spread FUD on behalf of MS. Why aren't you out there bashing Paul Thurrott's FUD against Apple? SCO's FUD against FOSS? The numerous journalists who are nothing but kiss-asses for Microsoft?
Slashdot is an OSS community site which happens to post about interesting stories and rumors affecting nerds and geeks everywhere. You may not like it, but then perhaps Thurrott's Win SuperSite is more down your alley...
I can both DDoS the scammers and lobby, and help create campaigns.
In my case, I simply do not have the time or resources to deal with lobbying and campaigns, so if I can contribute with a bit of bandwidth to take out spammers, I am happy to do so.
Not quite the same. That story is about replying to scammers and stringing them along. This story is about abusing their bandwidth so their sites go down and it gets more expensive to scam people.
So we are wasting their bandwidth, but I can decide to stop downloading their images at any time. So it is not a problem at all.
And what more important services does it affect?
And they spam all kinds of people, including smart ones who will never fall for their scams anyway. And spam is a major problem today. Yeah, except these American companies don't kill their victims, which has happened to 419 victims. So it's OK by you that they send spam? I don't like it, so I'll be happy to use some of my bandwidth to take their sites down. If they can't scam people because their sites keep being taken down, maybe they'll stop spamming me. And the money they make from scamming people will be used for what? Funding wars, for example? Drugs? Getting people tortured and killed?Sorry, I can't accept that.
I can imagine that there will be a rush of registration when it goes out of beta. Unless the beta testers have already taken all the "cool" addresses, and only the "hotstudabc666" ones are left...
I've always wished that I could take down a scammer with help from the Slashdot crowd when I've seen an obvious scam, such as the one in my previous post. Now, maybe Slashdot can post a story every now and then about this site to remind people about it, and the next daily "scammer slam"... :)
(By the way, there was an obvious typo in my last Subject. It was supposed to be "community attacks". Oh well.)
Organizing communities to attack hostiles is a good idea, and lately I've seen a lot of mails pretending to be from Citibank, apparently linking to citibank.com, but instead hiding the URL by using HTML, and sending the user to a different page instead.
These new phishing scams have been covered by the media, and basically it opens a popup with the address field hidden, and it uses HTML/JS to recreate a fake one, giving the impression that one is actually at citibank.com.
An example of a received spam, which claims to link to web.da-us.citibank.com, but really links to a page which opens a popup. The address of the popup is:
http://www.strongerinfobase.us/scripts/sys.php
This page gathers credit card info. Maybe if there was a site to gather these addresses, hundreds or thousands of people could cooperate and submit so much nonsense - either random crap or seemingly real, but fake, CC info. That way, the scammers would have to wade through thousands of fake entries.
Maybe someone could even write a script to spam the scammers into oblivion :)
My reason for still using Windows isn't switching cost as such, but simply that I am used to Windows, and I've found 2000 and XP to be stable and convenient to use. Convenient, simply because I'm used to it. Of course, there are numerous security holes, and that is worrying. I would have felt better using an alternative operating system, but I am simply too used to Windows, and it is convenient enough that I can't be bothered to switch. Apart from Windows, I don't really run any MS software, apart from perhaps Notepad. My browsing, e-mailing, newsgroup browsing, image editing, document editing, etc. is all done in non-MS software. Windows is just a convenient way for me to launch this software, and then there's games of course.
But I digress. Back to the point, which is that these quotes are seriously outdated, and Microsoft has actually come a long way with their products since then.
That said, you have a good point when you call it lies that the switching cost is huge. I agree with you on that. When it comes to money, I think switching cost isn't a major obstacle, as long as you can be bothered to learn something new. I do use Linux every day for work related things, but to work efficiently, I still use Windows as my primary OS.
A company would probably save a lot of money by moving away from Windows. Training cost shouldn't be too much either, as long as the employees get systems that are set up and ready to go, with all necessary software available.
Maybe the claims from MS that the switching cost was huge nearly ten years ago was what saved them, since their products were really terrible. Today, Windows is actually rather decent, and people tend to stay with what they are used to. Internet Explorer is a really bad browser, though, so Windows is the only thing I really use which is created by Microsoft.
Use the Preview button, Luke!
It looks like there's a kind of backlash from pro-MS people who are sick and tired of hearing about how bad and evil Microsoft is. So they post comments about "why should Apple be allowed to bundle a browser, but MS not" (answer: Apple is not a convicted monopolist), and these get modded up.
To you, it might be a gimmick. To someone with a disability, this could make life a lot easier.
Shouldn't the headline have been "virus exploiting known Outlook vulnerability" or similar?
So while the headline gives a different impressions, everyone using Opera, Mozilla, The Bat or others are still not affected.
Whether that is good or bad is not up to me to decide, but comparing this to SCO is simply ridiculous.
As for the rest of your posts, you keep posting claims but never back them up. Nintendo barely turns a profit? Losing money? Fell short of their goal? I notice that you refused to back up your claims from the first post.
Back up your claims, please, or stop making them.
It has always been crystal clear to me that Nintendo is in this for the long run. They have a niche market, and as long as the other console makers continue to spew out "adult" games with more graphics than gameplay, Nintendo will have secured their income.
You don't get it do you? Nintendo is turning a profit - in both markets. And it dominates the handheld market. It is number two in the home console market. Nintendo's "long-term future" is no unsure at all. It is profitable, it has billions to spare, and it has a niche market which it holds onto like nothing else. The way I see it, comparing Nintendo to SCO is a troll, so the troll mod was completely justified.It doesn't have to be perfect to make spam less intrusive. It would be great to have a device which detected the location of the spammer and sent in a gang of hired goons to off him, but until someone develops such a solution, there are things that are available today that more than takes the load off your mailbox, and reduces the annoyance somewhat.
I see that the flames have already begun, and that is not an unexpected reaction when a big company threatens a tiny company for alleged infringement on some obscure patent (obscure to most of us normal people anyway).
But please, take a few minutes to follow the links in the story, and you will notice a couple of things:
First, notice how Nintendo is cracking down on a commercial product - this emulator is actually being sold. The company selling this emulator is making money by emulating Nintendo, and while I'm not quite decided on whether this is actually bad or not, I can actually understand where Nintendo is coming from here. He's making money instead of Nintendo - some people will buy the emulator instead of the GBA itself. It makes sense for Nintendo to do something about that. So they are cracking down on a commercial entity competing directly with them by offering something which emulates their product, not some hobbyist who doesn't make a dime from it. Good or bad? That's not up to me to decide.
But wait, there's more!
Very few comments here seem to mention the fact that this emulator isn't even available yet! That's right, the sales are actually pre-sales. People have been paying for promises of a delivery, and it seems that it is delayed already:
Now, we should probably give the author the benefit of the doubt, and I must admit that I do not know how well known or respected he is, but this seems to be a rather convenient time for the author of the emulator to have an excuse for delaying the product.I'm not saying that something fishy is going on here, but there's always that tiny possibility. If you had sold a product which you promised to deliver on a certain date and failed, wouldn't it be convenient to have something to blame, to be able to postpone the release and continue work on it until it is actually finished?
It would of course be silly of this guy to falsely accuse Nintendo of this, as Nintendo would probably be all over him, but people have done stupid things before, out of sheer desperation... Instead of losing face, people have been known to do rather silly things. And I don't have to mention SCO, do I? Not that they have any face left to lose...
But please people, take the time to have a quick look at the links in this story and make up your own minds. Maybe Nintendo is doing something really bad here, or maybe they aren't. Maybe there's more to this story than meets the eye.
Time will tell.
- Nintendo still dominates the handheld market completely
- Nintendo is still #2 in home systems, beating Microsoft, and unlike Microsoft, turning a profit from their home systems
- Sony and Microsoft have done equally bad things in the past, so it's not like ditching Nintendo to go for one of the others is a noble thing
The simple fact is that you may hate Nintendo for doing this, but if you choose to buy Sony or Microsoft instead, then you are just a hypocrite, because they are equally bad, and have done equally bad things in the past. Bleem, anyone?If you are going to let Nintendo know that we will not support this (this which is an idea that I personally support, but that's besides the point), then boycotting them in favor of Sony or Microsoft just shows a serious lack of judgement on your part.
That, Cyberllama, is why the grandparent might as well be modded as "troll" when it's gotten both "insightful" and "interesting" already, without justification.
And the "lagging behind" comment is beyond silly. You cannot say that someone who dominates a market and is #2 in another "lags behind". That, too, shows a serious lack of judgement.