If you want to play anecdotes, my parents bought their first PC a year ago, with Vista, and haven't had any problems. Everyone pulled out anecdotes like yours and suggested I should have persuaded them to spend several hundreds of pounds more for a Mac, but it turns out there was no need.
So why doesn't everyone love Windows 2000 still? Just as good as XP (and none of the fisher-price style interfaces that XP/Vista/OS X have), and runs in much less memory.
I've been running Vista 64-bit for over a year. No bluescreens, no incompatible hardware, no problems with media files of any type - divx, xvid, mp3, wma, etc. I don't have any intention of going back to XP.
But, but... *fingers in ears* la-la-la can't hear you...
I wonder how many of the "Vista sucks" crows are trying to run it on outdated hardware.
Seriously, I wonder how many have tried running it at all.
But Microsoft did do it too - the modern Windows line stems from NT, whilst DOS/Windows 9x ended with Windows Me.
Granted, there seems to be more in common with the two lines than between OS X and Mac OS, but it's not like they haven't already made a switch to a modern stable OS.
I tell folks that if they get a Mac they don't have to buy DVD burning software, picture management software, music tools, backup software, etc. and they say, "Wow - that's hundreds of dollars of software I don't have to buy."
I don't have to buy any of that on Windows.
Plus they hear how stable OS X is and that seals the deal.
Because anecdotes always are easier to convince with than actual evidence. This is always an advantage niche OSs have over the mainstream choice - even though Windows extremely rarely crashes, the occasional anecdote of how one time it crashed, or when it happened for them once, sticks in their mind, or perhaps they confuse Windows with Windows 9x (an entirely different OS which was, like most other OSs of the time, very unstable). So a Mac fan can easily make wild claims that OS X never has any problems.
To an average computer user, computers in general are seen as awkward and unstable - but because they haven't seen OS X, it's easy to claim it's better.
I predicted this about fifteen years ago - when (in the UK home market at least) the Amiga was mainstream, and like other OSs of the time it would crash now and again. The token PC fans would brand the Amiga as unstable, and claim that DOS/Windows never had the same problems. I predicted that when the PC became mainstream in the home, it would have the same stigma of being unstable. It turns out, this is true even with NT/XP/Vista being vastly more stable than the DOS/9x line.
I mean, I've seen RISC OS users doing this too - criticising known flaws in the mainstream OSs, but making claims about their OS that no one can dispute or rebutt, because no one else in existence has ever used RISC OS...
At any rate, Vista's bad image isn't due to perception, I have Vista Ultimate, running on a machine that can definitely handle it, it runs HORRIBLY, this great PC has become my secondary PC which I now rarely use. I'm not the only one like this, I know a couple other people with the exact same "perception" that they got by actually using the operating system.
Every 2-bit nerd thinks he knows what's best for Microsoft, why should Microsoft listen to him? Because he posts on Slashdot and...
How is it different from using the patent system? To me they're both lame people who try to whine to the government to further their end instead of focusing on their product.
There's nothing wrong with using the patent system (unless you're someone who believes patents shouldn't exist at all). A patent troll is a company that abuses the patent system.
And if you are someone who believes patents shouldn't exist, I'd say criticising the system is better than branding every company with a patent (which is most of them, I imagine) as being a troll.
A million and one ways for Commodore to sell the same old chips.
Eh?
(The number of Amiga models released was rather small anyway, unlike the millions of different Macs with the "same old chips" that Apple seemed to release, for example.)
Who is microsoft abusing exactly ? What this shows is that some do a very good browser and some go whining in courts. We have patent-trolls, I suggest to call Opera an anti-trust-troll.
The point is that it's illegal to use a monopolistic position in one market to gain share in another. It doesn't matter how big the share in that other market is.
We can debate whether that should be illegal or not, but Opera is not trolling. Indeed, if Firefox was a commercial product they would still have reason to also bring a case against Microsoft. After all, are people really suggesting that IE is a much better browser than Firefox? Or would they say it's only more popular because it's bundled with Windows?
The logic only falls apart if Firefox overtakes IE in share.
If we're talking trolls, it sounds more to me like people having an automatic anti-Opera reaction, which seems to always happen here on Slashdot for some unknown reason.
As an aside, I find it interesting that these days, "Demo" coding has seemingly become synonymous with writing things in small amounts of memory, whether it's 256 byte demos, or the 100K in TFS. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I remember back in the Amiga days, as well as those sorts of demos, there were demos that tried to show as good effects as possible without these limitations (several megabytes in size which was of course a lot back then).
Does this still exist, I wonder? It would be nice to show off modern hardware without limitations such as tiny file size or being written in assembler. Of course some people do do this (e.g., there are various modern 3D engines), but maybe they just don't associate with the demo scene anymore?
Floppies went because they were replaced by CDs and later DVDs, and in some cases things like thumb drives. What replaces the DVD?
And the floppy drive didn't go because it took up space - after all, it's just been replaced by those other drives. I'm sure at some point there will be a successor to DVD, but that'll still mean having a blu-ray drive or whatever in place, just like DVD is in place of the floppy drive.
I don't know about the US, but there was a famous case in the UK where newsreader Julia Somerville was arrested (although not prosecuted AFAIK) for images of her child in the bath: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19951105/ai_n14016171 . Thank heavens for digital cameras.
I see that article refers to the possibility of her being fined. It's interesting how the law has changed - first possession was only illegal if you intended to distribute it (1978), then possession alone was illegal with a fine (1989), then illegal with a 6 month sentence (1994), then extended to five years in 2000. Then in 2003 the age of a "child" was raised from 16 to 18, so people who can legally have consenting sex can be pedophiles too.
The intent of the laws should be to target images of abuse.
Plenty of laws only apply to things done to other people. Someone can grope themselves, but do it to somebody else and you might be charged with sexual assault. Indeed, consider applying the child porn logic to sexual acts - do you think it makes sense that a minor who masturbates should be charged with sexually abusing a child?
The problem is also a double standard here with respect to ages - we say the child is not old enough to consent to appear in a photo, but we say they are old enough to understand and accept the legal ramifications of taking a photo. Some places have sensible underage sex laws that only prosecute the partner who is over the age of consent where there is some significant age difference (and so two underage people is okay). This idea of prosecuting minors for child porn is just an extension of the madness of locking up teenagers for 10 years for consensual sexual acts.
Just to add to this - this Government agency is the same agency that have tried to get the media to always refer to 'child porn' as 'child abuse'. So I guess, Jim Gamble really thinks that a 17 year old taking a naughty photo of him or herself is "child abuse".
I don't know if this has happened in the UK yet (unlike the US), but the Government agency have threated to prosecute teens: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6757827.stm .
The particularly wierd thing is that the age of consent is 16 here, but a 17 year old who takes a picture of herself faces being locked up as a pedophile for making and possessing child porn.
I have no opinion on whether the OP is right or wrong - but the commonly heard argument of "Hey, it's not as bad as [insert very corrupt nation]" is not exactly a ringing endorsement. You should be showing how the US is no more corrupt than a nation not usually seen as corrupt. Saying that the US is less corrupt than the most corrupt nations on the planet tells us nothing.
Most companies don't sell the same thing for the same client over and over again, unless the good gets consumed or roten.
It's true of most hardware companies - whether it's TVs or computers or cars. Yes most people only upgrade every few years, and a lot only do so when the old one breaks. But Microsoft realise this (which is why they are concerned more about sales of Vista on new PCs, and not people upgrading the OS alone), and all companies try to tell you why the new model of TV or whatever is so great.
It's true of any company selling a service. So yes, I disagree, and stand by my statement. The main exception is media companies, where instead they can come up with new things, but even there they are still selling things to the same customer, it's just that people want several different movies, songs etc, whilst they don't want several different OSs, TVs etc.
If companies had to sell to different clients all the time, the markets would quickly become saturated.
(I assume by "same" you mean "same type of thing" - if you are saying that Windows Vista specifically is identical to previous versions, then I'll ignore that as flamebait.)
No - it doesn't run AmigaOS either. I'm not sure that running or not being able to run another platform's OS affects how much publicity it should get or how good it is. (And I find it ironic if being able to run Windows is now touted as an advantage for Macs...)
Uh... What are you talking about? That seems totally infeasible to me. Did you just make that up, or can you site a serious proposal to do such a thing?
Um, I remember seeing a picture of it in an Usborne Children's Book about the future when I was a kid, if that counts?
Because Apple are better at selling than LG and Asus?
I think it's the other way round - much of the coverage comes before or just as the product is announced. And with all the free advertising, they ought to sell more.
Also I didn't think their phone was outselling other companies' products, but the iphone still gets covered way more.
I though there was already a union for bloggers, it is called being a citizen.
Well maybe, but that argument applies to all unions.
As for comment that blogs are the new soap box, that is completely false, as people who stand on soap boxes generally force themselves into public places and you have to visit a bloggers site.
Where did I or TFA mention soap boxes? I'd say "columnist" is more appropriate older comparison to describe "bloggers" in this context.
Bloggers are just more expressive versions of regular people (excluding of course the marketdroid ass hats who are in it only for the money), either their writing is of interest and a lot of people read it or it doesn't draw much attention beyond their particular local and remote group of friends.
I don't see that is a criticism though - this applies to "writers" too, or "columnists". Everyone could be defined as "just a more X version of a regular person". We're all people after all, with "just" some qualities that separate us from being "regular".
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If you want to play anecdotes, my parents bought their first PC a year ago, with Vista, and haven't had any problems. Everyone pulled out anecdotes like yours and suggested I should have persuaded them to spend several hundreds of pounds more for a Mac, but it turns out there was no need.
So why doesn't everyone love Windows 2000 still? Just as good as XP (and none of the fisher-price style interfaces that XP/Vista/OS X have), and runs in much less memory.
I've been running Vista 64-bit for over a year. No bluescreens, no incompatible hardware, no problems with media files of any type - divx, xvid, mp3, wma, etc. I don't have any intention of going back to XP.
... *fingers in ears* la-la-la can't hear you...
But, but
I wonder how many of the "Vista sucks" crows are trying to run it on outdated hardware.
Seriously, I wonder how many have tried running it at all.
But Microsoft did do it too - the modern Windows line stems from NT, whilst DOS/Windows 9x ended with Windows Me.
Granted, there seems to be more in common with the two lines than between OS X and Mac OS, but it's not like they haven't already made a switch to a modern stable OS.
I tell folks that if they get a Mac they don't have to buy DVD burning software, picture management software, music tools, backup software, etc. and they say, "Wow - that's hundreds of dollars of software I don't have to buy."
I don't have to buy any of that on Windows.
Plus they hear how stable OS X is and that seals the deal.
Because anecdotes always are easier to convince with than actual evidence. This is always an advantage niche OSs have over the mainstream choice - even though Windows extremely rarely crashes, the occasional anecdote of how one time it crashed, or when it happened for them once, sticks in their mind, or perhaps they confuse Windows with Windows 9x (an entirely different OS which was, like most other OSs of the time, very unstable). So a Mac fan can easily make wild claims that OS X never has any problems.
To an average computer user, computers in general are seen as awkward and unstable - but because they haven't seen OS X, it's easy to claim it's better.
I predicted this about fifteen years ago - when (in the UK home market at least) the Amiga was mainstream, and like other OSs of the time it would crash now and again. The token PC fans would brand the Amiga as unstable, and claim that DOS/Windows never had the same problems. I predicted that when the PC became mainstream in the home, it would have the same stigma of being unstable. It turns out, this is true even with NT/XP/Vista being vastly more stable than the DOS/9x line.
I mean, I've seen RISC OS users doing this too - criticising known flaws in the mainstream OSs, but making claims about their OS that no one can dispute or rebutt, because no one else in existence has ever used RISC OS...
At any rate, Vista's bad image isn't due to perception, I have Vista Ultimate, running on a machine that can definitely handle it, it runs HORRIBLY, this great PC has become my secondary PC which I now rarely use. I'm not the only one like this, I know a couple other people with the exact same "perception" that they got by actually using the operating system.
Every 2-bit nerd thinks he knows what's best for Microsoft, why should Microsoft listen to him? Because he posts on Slashdot and...
So ?
So what?
How is it different from using the patent system? To me they're both lame people who try to whine to the government to further their end instead of focusing on their product.
There's nothing wrong with using the patent system (unless you're someone who believes patents shouldn't exist at all). A patent troll is a company that abuses the patent system.
And if you are someone who believes patents shouldn't exist, I'd say criticising the system is better than branding every company with a patent (which is most of them, I imagine) as being a troll.
A million and one ways for Commodore to sell the same old chips.
Eh?
(The number of Amiga models released was rather small anyway, unlike the millions of different Macs with the "same old chips" that Apple seemed to release, for example.)
yes.. just what i want, all browsers to not just be adware infected, but adware themselves!
Who said anything about adware?
Who is microsoft abusing exactly ? What this shows is that some do a very good browser and some go whining in courts. We have patent-trolls, I suggest to call Opera an anti-trust-troll.
The point is that it's illegal to use a monopolistic position in one market to gain share in another. It doesn't matter how big the share in that other market is.
We can debate whether that should be illegal or not, but Opera is not trolling. Indeed, if Firefox was a commercial product they would still have reason to also bring a case against Microsoft. After all, are people really suggesting that IE is a much better browser than Firefox? Or would they say it's only more popular because it's bundled with Windows?
The logic only falls apart if Firefox overtakes IE in share.
If we're talking trolls, it sounds more to me like people having an automatic anti-Opera reaction, which seems to always happen here on Slashdot for some unknown reason.
As an aside, I find it interesting that these days, "Demo" coding has seemingly become synonymous with writing things in small amounts of memory, whether it's 256 byte demos, or the 100K in TFS. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I remember back in the Amiga days, as well as those sorts of demos, there were demos that tried to show as good effects as possible without these limitations (several megabytes in size which was of course a lot back then).
Does this still exist, I wonder? It would be nice to show off modern hardware without limitations such as tiny file size or being written in assembler. Of course some people do do this (e.g., there are various modern 3D engines), but maybe they just don't associate with the demo scene anymore?
Floppies went because they were replaced by CDs and later DVDs, and in some cases things like thumb drives. What replaces the DVD?
And the floppy drive didn't go because it took up space - after all, it's just been replaced by those other drives. I'm sure at some point there will be a successor to DVD, but that'll still mean having a blu-ray drive or whatever in place, just like DVD is in place of the floppy drive.
I don't know about the US, but there was a famous case in the UK where newsreader Julia Somerville was arrested (although not prosecuted AFAIK) for images of her child in the bath: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19951105/ai_n14016171 . Thank heavens for digital cameras.
I see that article refers to the possibility of her being fined. It's interesting how the law has changed - first possession was only illegal if you intended to distribute it (1978), then possession alone was illegal with a fine (1989), then illegal with a 6 month sentence (1994), then extended to five years in 2000. Then in 2003 the age of a "child" was raised from 16 to 18, so people who can legally have consenting sex can be pedophiles too.
The intent of the laws should be to target images of abuse.
Plenty of laws only apply to things done to other people. Someone can grope themselves, but do it to somebody else and you might be charged with sexual assault. Indeed, consider applying the child porn logic to sexual acts - do you think it makes sense that a minor who masturbates should be charged with sexually abusing a child?
The problem is also a double standard here with respect to ages - we say the child is not old enough to consent to appear in a photo, but we say they are old enough to understand and accept the legal ramifications of taking a photo. Some places have sensible underage sex laws that only prosecute the partner who is over the age of consent where there is some significant age difference (and so two underage people is okay). This idea of prosecuting minors for child porn is just an extension of the madness of locking up teenagers for 10 years for consensual sexual acts.
Just to add to this - this Government agency is the same agency that have tried to get the media to always refer to 'child porn' as 'child abuse'. So I guess, Jim Gamble really thinks that a 17 year old taking a naughty photo of him or herself is "child abuse".
I don't know if this has happened in the UK yet (unlike the US), but the Government agency have threated to prosecute teens: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6757827.stm .
The particularly wierd thing is that the age of consent is 16 here, but a 17 year old who takes a picture of herself faces being locked up as a pedophile for making and possessing child porn.
As opposed to what nation? North Korea? China?
I have no opinion on whether the OP is right or wrong - but the commonly heard argument of "Hey, it's not as bad as [insert very corrupt nation]" is not exactly a ringing endorsement. You should be showing how the US is no more corrupt than a nation not usually seen as corrupt. Saying that the US is less corrupt than the most corrupt nations on the planet tells us nothing.
Most companies don't sell the same thing for the same client over and over again, unless the good gets consumed or roten.
It's true of most hardware companies - whether it's TVs or computers or cars. Yes most people only upgrade every few years, and a lot only do so when the old one breaks. But Microsoft realise this (which is why they are concerned more about sales of Vista on new PCs, and not people upgrading the OS alone), and all companies try to tell you why the new model of TV or whatever is so great.
It's true of any company selling a service. So yes, I disagree, and stand by my statement. The main exception is media companies, where instead they can come up with new things, but even there they are still selling things to the same customer, it's just that people want several different movies, songs etc, whilst they don't want several different OSs, TVs etc.
If companies had to sell to different clients all the time, the markets would quickly become saturated.
(I assume by "same" you mean "same type of thing" - if you are saying that Windows Vista specifically is identical to previous versions, then I'll ignore that as flamebait.)
This is EXACTLY how they approach sales. They say the previous version sucked in certain aspects and swear that this version is going to be über.
... "Actually, Intel is great".
Isn't that true of most companies?
E.g., "PowerPC is much better than Intel"
Or any company that brings out a new model, and tells you how much better it is over the previous version.
Note that Windows 2000 was version 5 - XP was 5.1 I think.
It's little things like Time Machine and a search facility (Spotlight) which actually works.
Honest question - what do they offer that backup / search facilities on other platforms don't?
No - it doesn't run AmigaOS either. I'm not sure that running or not being able to run another platform's OS affects how much publicity it should get or how good it is. (And I find it ironic if being able to run Windows is now touted as an advantage for Macs...)
Uh... What are you talking about? That seems totally infeasible to me. Did you just make that up, or can you site a serious proposal to do such a thing?
Um, I remember seeing a picture of it in an Usborne Children's Book about the future when I was a kid, if that counts?
Because Apple are better at selling than LG and Asus?
I think it's the other way round - much of the coverage comes before or just as the product is announced. And with all the free advertising, they ought to sell more.
Also I didn't think their phone was outselling other companies' products, but the iphone still gets covered way more.
I though there was already a union for bloggers, it is called being a citizen.
Well maybe, but that argument applies to all unions.
As for comment that blogs are the new soap box, that is completely false, as people who stand on soap boxes generally force themselves into public places and you have to visit a bloggers site.
Where did I or TFA mention soap boxes? I'd say "columnist" is more appropriate older comparison to describe "bloggers" in this context.
Bloggers are just more expressive versions of regular people (excluding of course the marketdroid ass hats who are in it only for the money), either their writing is of interest and a lot of people read it or it doesn't draw much attention beyond their particular local and remote group of friends.
I don't see that is a criticism though - this applies to "writers" too, or "columnists". Everyone could be defined as "just a more X version of a regular person". We're all people after all, with "just" some qualities that separate us from being "regular".