Yes, that's obviously the case. Anyone who still trots out the old stupid chestnut "Windows is unstable" argument has either never used 2000 or XP, or is just lying in hopes of attracting attention from the gullible to his purely political motives (or both).
Actually, I think this is pretty fortuitous for Microsoft, despite the fact that it calls attention to Vista's lack of popularity. Computer stores around here are using the fact that they "still" sell computers with XP as a sales tool, and the support extension is a pretty nice method of keeping everyone happy and quiet while Microsoft does whatever they do to Vista to make it a reasonable upgrade. Although I've not used Vista beyond a few tries in the store and a minute or two at a friend's house, it seems from popular opinion (beyond the completely unsurprising groupthink here at Slashdot) that Vista was born prematurely, and Microsoft is fortunate to have a historical product like XP they can use as a tool of placation until the new one is what it always should have been.
XP *is* really good, and Microsoft is pretty lucky that Vista didn't come after, say, Windows 98 or ME, because those are not something they'd want to fall back upon in a situation like this. I guess the old saying is true -- business is as much about timing and luck as it is about skill.
OK, I live in the next province, and I have the same provider choices as you. I pay $55 a month for unlimited evenings and weekends after 6:00, voicemail, 300 outgoing SMS per month and 200 peak minutes per month. It took me 35 minutes on the phone with the rep, and she even threw in a $350 phone because I signed a two-year contract (but not the three-year one she wanted. Heh).
So, evidently you suck as a negotiator. You're a pretty good complainer, though. Did you pay sticker-price for your car, too?
The carrier I use, Rogers in Canada, works thusly -- each text I send to another phone user is $0.10. Receiving a text from another human costs me nothing, but costs them. However, if I receive an automatic text from a web site or some other non-human, then I pay the $0.10. I have chosen to pay an additional few bucks for essentially unlimited outgoing texts (thus negating the sending cost), but it still costs me to receive Google calendar SMS reminders, etc (the non-human automated stuff).
So, in other words (and assuming that mine is like most other North American carriers) -- no, you can't "bomb" someone by texting them yourself, but you may be able to do it using one of those "send a text message" web sites or whatever, depending upon the recipient carrier's policy. I have to believe that there's some kind of checks in place for this.
Totally true, but you asked why companies are bothering to evolve their documentation, and that's why -- in an attempt (possibly vain) to avoid having you get information on their product from an unreliable source (the term "unreliable" includes those that the company doesn't like, of course). Sometimes, to be honest, it seems like more of a "cover your ass" strategy than anything else -- "No, there's no warranty on your Flibble. Yes, we know that a Google search tells you to clean it with a blowtorch, but the correct instructions are on our web site. You should have looked there." Sadly, when I wrote for a hardware company, the lawyers were second only to engineers in terms of my frequency of consultation, so never discount their influence in anything you read on a corporate web site.
Why? Seriously, the web is the best possible place for documentation.
Because companies think that the only correct representation of their product comes from within. They just hate, hate, hate it when you read some wrong information about their product on a public forum somewhere, then tie up an expensive Tech Support representative when you screw things up and have to call. And, frankly, they're right. Now, before you trot out the old chestnut about customer objectivity versus corporate policy, just think of how many times you've found publicly-generated information on a piece of technology that was utterly, completely wrong. It happens on the company site too, for sure, but not nearly as often. I have to have everything I write technically reviewed by someone close to the project, so I have to believe that it's pretty reliable (if only that were always the case).
In fact, one of my employers was quite upfront about wanting us to write documentation that specifically tried to answer the questions that people would normally call Support to ask. Support is expensive, because it's one-to-one. I'm cheap, because I'm one-to-millions.
I wonder how somehow making their living as a writer feels knowing that most of us are guilty of relying on a Google search for a quick intro or how-to when the READMEs, man pages, source code, etc. is sitting on their hard drive.
I am a technical writer, and I assure you that it's absolutely no secret that this is the case, and we're OK with it. I can't deny that there are times where I feel a little down after sweating blood over a documentation project that I know 16% of our customer base will ever read (that's an actual statistic, incidentally, from a firm I once worked for), but, in the end, my paycheck still arrives. I will say, though, that both companies for which I've worked as a writer are constantly working to improve documentation content and style in hopes that you'll use it instead of Google. Tech writing, despite how it probably appears, evolves like anything else. Whether its an effective evolution is up to you, I guess. I have my own opinions in that area.
A much, much bigger frustration is the lack of respect given to tech writers by developers and hardware engineers. I couldn't count the number of times I've been handed a pile of "documentation" written by an barely literate ESL developer somewhere with the expectation that I can magically turn it into a public doc in "what, a day or two?" In their eyes, we're typists, and in the two years I've been doing this, one of my greatest professional joys has become the look on the face of some snarky developer when I say, "No, this is more like three weeks. Will that hold up your release?" As joyful as I am, though, there are times where I simply have to produce something in a quarter of the time it actually needs, and that invariably results in garbage. In my opinion, many of the problems with technological documentation could be solved by just keeping me in the loop throughout the project, but that seems to be too much to ask. On the rare occasion where this happens, I've produced award-winning manuals (yes, there really are awards for this) that receive a surprising amount of kudos from customers.
But, most of the time, I'm handed junk information at the last minute and nobody's willing to answer the phone as I try to distill anything meaningful from the whole thing. Then, I either unapologetically delay the project or produce crap. The sun goes up, the sun goes down.
Wow, this is amazing. They ordered computers, which were never used... shouldn't that be an outcry?
Man, relax! This was the late-80s... $5M probably bought about a dozen computers (EGA monitors, 20MB hard drives and 2400bps modems not included). Besides, the "unavailable" hardware and proofs of purchase are probably just cover-ups for someone having lost one or both while on a three-week cocaine bender.
You may tell us of course that we do not have that right but that is against the law (and so are 90% of everything Microsoft does wich may be the reason for why we hate them).
Now THAT's a big old load of baloney right there. I'm willing to bet that the reason you hate Microsoft has a lot more to do with this: they're big enough and successful enough to make their own rules, and you're not.
But, since you seem to like percentages, let me put it this way: 90% of Linux fanboys would pull 90% of the same tricks as Microsoft does if they had the ability. And then, the same tactics would be justifiable.
I guess I'd have to stop idly browsing for meaningless garbage from time to time. Jaysus, the tone of this article makes it sound like bandwidth is the new water.
What is it that you do on the Internet that's SO valuable that it just couldn't stand the test of rationing? Aside from online businesses, I believe that the importance of the Internet is wildly overstated in today's office. I'm a tech writer and our ISP shit the bed the other day -- we were without any Internet service whatsoever for two days (but still had company internal e-mail, sadly). We're still in business! Can you believe it?
I'm willing to bet that 99.7% of the world would get along just fine without this Internet-thing, or if they had to severely decrease consumption. Maybe, just maybe, they'd even get a tan.
OK, Microsoft products are most certainly not without their problems; anyone who has ever spent any meaningful time working on computers has certainly cursed the corporate name on numerous occasions.
But, objectively speaking, Microsoft products have all improved dramatically in the last, say, ten to twelve years. I've run Windows 2000 and XP systems for months without any crashes, and any Windows computers with which I've dealt in recent years have generally just done what they were supposed to do. The products aren't perfect to any degree, but they're no less so than any other platform.
The hatred, I believe, comes from Microsoft's sheer size. Hatred of the biggest and baddest has endless precedent over the years, and this is just the most recent example. IBM, GM, AT&T, Motorola... even legendary sports teams like the New York Yankees, the Edmonton Eskimos, the Dallas Cowboys, the USC Trojans, etc, etc.
And, in most of those cases, it's the same core collection of arguments -- "bought their success," "unfairly crushing the opposition," "biases in governing bodies." The fact is that nobody really LIKES a dynasty because they're boring. Sports are boring when it's the same team in the championship game every year, politics are boring when the same party wins every election, and computers are boring when they all run Windows.
When an entity is so pervasive in a field that fuels one's passions, it's just a matter of time before one gets sick of seeing the same products/figureheads/athletes in the viewing frame day after day after day. Maybe it's jealousy, maybe not, but I can't think of any examples of entities that are perennially at the top of their heap AND are loved. Google? Give it time... the effect is beginning already if you look closely.
So, as far as I'm concerned, it's no secret at all why people hate Microsoft... because they're very, very good, and they've been good for a long time.
As a company, they should be doing everything they can to port their profitable apps to the major platforms out there.
They are. Let's count:
1) Windows
Wait, I'm not sure if I got that right; let's count again.
1) Windows
"But wait," you mewl, "Linux is much, much, much, much better than Windows! Can't it play too?" Linux is popular to three groups of people:
1) Those with a political ax to grind
2) Those with no money to run with professionally developed and supported alternatives
3) Those who wish to create an identity solely by being different for the sake of being different
And that does not a "major platform" make. Slashdot ain't the real world, Buddyroo.
How about this -- it's the current best option for the x86 platform? Pound your fists all you like, but nothing has come around that offers more upsides than downsides.
If Apple sold a version of OS X that ran on generic x86 hardware, then you might see some software Darwinism at work, but that ain't gonna happen.
For me, as a fairly recent Mac convert (about four or five months), these are the applications I've not been able to recreate well on the Mac:
1. FrameMaker
2. PIC programming software
3. Winamp (yes, I know that there are countless a/v players for Mac, but none seem to be as simple and intuitive to me)
Other than those, I've often found it easier to find tools to "do things" for OS X than it was for Windows.
Most people who murder someone will probably spend the rest of their life fucked up in the head. They have created their own punishment, living every day with the guilt.
Jesus H. Christ, can we PUH-LEASE leave this damned stupid argument behind once and for freaking all. SOME murderers, I am sure, feel guilty, but to state that MOST killers are wracked by guilt goes way, way, way beyond what evidence has repeatedly shown. Prisons are full of unrepentent murderers, as are the streets.
In other words, a healthy percentage of killers don't care for one second what they've done. There are various reasons for this, but look around before assuming that "most" murderers are just good people who have done something bad. The world is full of assholes who are assholes just for the sake of being assholes, and there are countless examples of this extending into the realm of murder.
Which is what we have in Canada, and yes, it's a problem.
The NDP, perennially the "swing" party in Canadian federal politics in the last few decades, is also notoriously loaded with dewey-eyed, left-wing "hand up, not hand out" proponents. Unsurprisingly, they'll reject anything that even suggests otherwise.
As a result, despite the top two parties being either central or right-leaning, Canada as a whole grows socially weepier with every passing day. If you're a single mother of four who can't walk to the grocery store without getting pregnant, or if you're saddled with the "disease" of drug addiction, you're more important than someone who can actually hold a job around here.
So, despite the fact that the NDP garners roughly or less than 10% in every federal election, minority governments have ruled over the last several years, and the hobo-kissers have been granted power they haven't earned.
Damned near everything is dead, and it's sending back only the most basic scientific information to conserve energy levels that are already well beyond their expected date of exhaustion. I read an article not long ago (that I can't be bothered to find again) stating that only a small percentage of its original devices of science have worked at all since the 80s.
Long story short -- at this point, she's basically running flat out to see how far she can go while running on fumes. The same article stated that the new projection of its fuel exhaustion is roughly 2020.
In all honesty, it just appears to be a platform from which one can boast about things that may never have happened, and feel important despite never having done anything to justify having a massive ego.
In this world where one becomes a hero for dying incidentally in an explosion, is it any wonder that a public forum for ego masturbation is the fastest-growing site on the Internet?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, that's obviously the case. Anyone who still trots out the old stupid chestnut "Windows is unstable" argument has either never used 2000 or XP, or is just lying in hopes of attracting attention from the gullible to his purely political motives (or both).
Actually, I think this is pretty fortuitous for Microsoft, despite the fact that it calls attention to Vista's lack of popularity. Computer stores around here are using the fact that they "still" sell computers with XP as a sales tool, and the support extension is a pretty nice method of keeping everyone happy and quiet while Microsoft does whatever they do to Vista to make it a reasonable upgrade. Although I've not used Vista beyond a few tries in the store and a minute or two at a friend's house, it seems from popular opinion (beyond the completely unsurprising groupthink here at Slashdot) that Vista was born prematurely, and Microsoft is fortunate to have a historical product like XP they can use as a tool of placation until the new one is what it always should have been.
XP *is* really good, and Microsoft is pretty lucky that Vista didn't come after, say, Windows 98 or ME, because those are not something they'd want to fall back upon in a situation like this. I guess the old saying is true -- business is as much about timing and luck as it is about skill.
OK, I live in the next province, and I have the same provider choices as you. I pay $55 a month for unlimited evenings and weekends after 6:00, voicemail, 300 outgoing SMS per month and 200 peak minutes per month. It took me 35 minutes on the phone with the rep, and she even threw in a $350 phone because I signed a two-year contract (but not the three-year one she wanted. Heh).
So, evidently you suck as a negotiator. You're a pretty good complainer, though. Did you pay sticker-price for your car, too?
The carrier I use, Rogers in Canada, works thusly -- each text I send to another phone user is $0.10. Receiving a text from another human costs me nothing, but costs them. However, if I receive an automatic text from a web site or some other non-human, then I pay the $0.10. I have chosen to pay an additional few bucks for essentially unlimited outgoing texts (thus negating the sending cost), but it still costs me to receive Google calendar SMS reminders, etc (the non-human automated stuff).
So, in other words (and assuming that mine is like most other North American carriers) -- no, you can't "bomb" someone by texting them yourself, but you may be able to do it using one of those "send a text message" web sites or whatever, depending upon the recipient carrier's policy. I have to believe that there's some kind of checks in place for this.
Totally true, but you asked why companies are bothering to evolve their documentation, and that's why -- in an attempt (possibly vain) to avoid having you get information on their product from an unreliable source (the term "unreliable" includes those that the company doesn't like, of course). Sometimes, to be honest, it seems like more of a "cover your ass" strategy than anything else -- "No, there's no warranty on your Flibble. Yes, we know that a Google search tells you to clean it with a blowtorch, but the correct instructions are on our web site. You should have looked there." Sadly, when I wrote for a hardware company, the lawyers were second only to engineers in terms of my frequency of consultation, so never discount their influence in anything you read on a corporate web site.
Why? Seriously, the web is the best possible place for documentation.
Because companies think that the only correct representation of their product comes from within. They just hate, hate, hate it when you read some wrong information about their product on a public forum somewhere, then tie up an expensive Tech Support representative when you screw things up and have to call. And, frankly, they're right. Now, before you trot out the old chestnut about customer objectivity versus corporate policy, just think of how many times you've found publicly-generated information on a piece of technology that was utterly, completely wrong. It happens on the company site too, for sure, but not nearly as often. I have to have everything I write technically reviewed by someone close to the project, so I have to believe that it's pretty reliable (if only that were always the case).
In fact, one of my employers was quite upfront about wanting us to write documentation that specifically tried to answer the questions that people would normally call Support to ask. Support is expensive, because it's one-to-one. I'm cheap, because I'm one-to-millions.
I wonder how somehow making their living as a writer feels knowing that most of us are guilty of relying on a Google search for a quick intro or how-to when the READMEs, man pages, source code, etc. is sitting on their hard drive.
I am a technical writer, and I assure you that it's absolutely no secret that this is the case, and we're OK with it. I can't deny that there are times where I feel a little down after sweating blood over a documentation project that I know 16% of our customer base will ever read (that's an actual statistic, incidentally, from a firm I once worked for), but, in the end, my paycheck still arrives. I will say, though, that both companies for which I've worked as a writer are constantly working to improve documentation content and style in hopes that you'll use it instead of Google. Tech writing, despite how it probably appears, evolves like anything else. Whether its an effective evolution is up to you, I guess. I have my own opinions in that area.
A much, much bigger frustration is the lack of respect given to tech writers by developers and hardware engineers. I couldn't count the number of times I've been handed a pile of "documentation" written by an barely literate ESL developer somewhere with the expectation that I can magically turn it into a public doc in "what, a day or two?" In their eyes, we're typists, and in the two years I've been doing this, one of my greatest professional joys has become the look on the face of some snarky developer when I say, "No, this is more like three weeks. Will that hold up your release?" As joyful as I am, though, there are times where I simply have to produce something in a quarter of the time it actually needs, and that invariably results in garbage. In my opinion, many of the problems with technological documentation could be solved by just keeping me in the loop throughout the project, but that seems to be too much to ask. On the rare occasion where this happens, I've produced award-winning manuals (yes, there really are awards for this) that receive a surprising amount of kudos from customers.
But, most of the time, I'm handed junk information at the last minute and nobody's willing to answer the phone as I try to distill anything meaningful from the whole thing. Then, I either unapologetically delay the project or produce crap. The sun goes up, the sun goes down.
Man, relax! This was the late-80s... $5M probably bought about a dozen computers (EGA monitors, 20MB hard drives and 2400bps modems not included). Besides, the "unavailable" hardware and proofs of purchase are probably just cover-ups for someone having lost one or both while on a three-week cocaine bender.
Ah, those halcyon days.
The self-described "Leading Linux Resource in the World" thinks that Linux is good?
Holy sweet Christ... I'm sold. I'll download Linux as soon as I get home from buying a new Chevy... ChevyWorld.com says they're better than ever.
What?
Now THAT's a big old load of baloney right there. I'm willing to bet that the reason you hate Microsoft has a lot more to do with this: they're big enough and successful enough to make their own rules, and you're not.
But, since you seem to like percentages, let me put it this way: 90% of Linux fanboys would pull 90% of the same tricks as Microsoft does if they had the ability. And then, the same tactics would be justifiable.
No, the end of the start.
I guess I'd have to stop idly browsing for meaningless garbage from time to time. Jaysus, the tone of this article makes it sound like bandwidth is the new water.
What is it that you do on the Internet that's SO valuable that it just couldn't stand the test of rationing? Aside from online businesses, I believe that the importance of the Internet is wildly overstated in today's office. I'm a tech writer and our ISP shit the bed the other day -- we were without any Internet service whatsoever for two days (but still had company internal e-mail, sadly). We're still in business! Can you believe it?
I'm willing to bet that 99.7% of the world would get along just fine without this Internet-thing, or if they had to severely decrease consumption. Maybe, just maybe, they'd even get a tan.
And I forgive him, for he know not what he doth.
OK, Microsoft products are most certainly not without their problems; anyone who has ever spent any meaningful time working on computers has certainly cursed the corporate name on numerous occasions.
But, objectively speaking, Microsoft products have all improved dramatically in the last, say, ten to twelve years. I've run Windows 2000 and XP systems for months without any crashes, and any Windows computers with which I've dealt in recent years have generally just done what they were supposed to do. The products aren't perfect to any degree, but they're no less so than any other platform.
The hatred, I believe, comes from Microsoft's sheer size. Hatred of the biggest and baddest has endless precedent over the years, and this is just the most recent example. IBM, GM, AT&T, Motorola... even legendary sports teams like the New York Yankees, the Edmonton Eskimos, the Dallas Cowboys, the USC Trojans, etc, etc.
And, in most of those cases, it's the same core collection of arguments -- "bought their success," "unfairly crushing the opposition," "biases in governing bodies." The fact is that nobody really LIKES a dynasty because they're boring. Sports are boring when it's the same team in the championship game every year, politics are boring when the same party wins every election, and computers are boring when they all run Windows.
When an entity is so pervasive in a field that fuels one's passions, it's just a matter of time before one gets sick of seeing the same products/figureheads/athletes in the viewing frame day after day after day. Maybe it's jealousy, maybe not, but I can't think of any examples of entities that are perennially at the top of their heap AND are loved. Google? Give it time... the effect is beginning already if you look closely.
So, as far as I'm concerned, it's no secret at all why people hate Microsoft... because they're very, very good, and they've been good for a long time.
They're 5 years behind Apple...
... and FOSS
... offerings.
Yes.
No.
The only language Novell understands is the language of money.
Yeah! Those assholes! You'd think they're trying to run a business or something.
As a company, they should be doing everything they can to port their profitable apps to the major platforms out there.
They are. Let's count:
1) Windows
Wait, I'm not sure if I got that right; let's count again.
1) Windows
"But wait," you mewl, "Linux is much, much, much, much better than Windows! Can't it play too?" Linux is popular to three groups of people:
1) Those with a political ax to grind
2) Those with no money to run with professionally developed and supported alternatives
3) Those who wish to create an identity solely by being different for the sake of being different
And that does not a "major platform" make. Slashdot ain't the real world, Buddyroo.
How about this -- it's the current best option for the x86 platform? Pound your fists all you like, but nothing has come around that offers more upsides than downsides.
If Apple sold a version of OS X that ran on generic x86 hardware, then you might see some software Darwinism at work, but that ain't gonna happen.
For me, as a fairly recent Mac convert (about four or five months), these are the applications I've not been able to recreate well on the Mac:
1. FrameMaker
2. PIC programming software
3. Winamp (yes, I know that there are countless a/v players for Mac, but none seem to be as simple and intuitive to me)
Other than those, I've often found it easier to find tools to "do things" for OS X than it was for Windows.
The only list on Earth shorter than the Big Book of Swiss Military Victories.
Now?
You've just described about 98.7% of the Slashdot population.
Most people who murder someone will probably spend the rest of their life fucked up in the head. They have created their own punishment, living every day with the guilt.
Jesus H. Christ, can we PUH-LEASE leave this damned stupid argument behind once and for freaking all. SOME murderers, I am sure, feel guilty, but to state that MOST killers are wracked by guilt goes way, way, way beyond what evidence has repeatedly shown. Prisons are full of unrepentent murderers, as are the streets.
In other words, a healthy percentage of killers don't care for one second what they've done. There are various reasons for this, but look around before assuming that "most" murderers are just good people who have done something bad. The world is full of assholes who are assholes just for the sake of being assholes, and there are countless examples of this extending into the realm of murder.
Which is what we have in Canada, and yes, it's a problem.
The NDP, perennially the "swing" party in Canadian federal politics in the last few decades, is also notoriously loaded with dewey-eyed, left-wing "hand up, not hand out" proponents. Unsurprisingly, they'll reject anything that even suggests otherwise.
As a result, despite the top two parties being either central or right-leaning, Canada as a whole grows socially weepier with every passing day. If you're a single mother of four who can't walk to the grocery store without getting pregnant, or if you're saddled with the "disease" of drug addiction, you're more important than someone who can actually hold a job around here.
So, despite the fact that the NDP garners roughly or less than 10% in every federal election, minority governments have ruled over the last several years, and the hobo-kissers have been granted power they haven't earned.
Damned near everything is dead, and it's sending back only the most basic scientific information to conserve energy levels that are already well beyond their expected date of exhaustion. I read an article not long ago (that I can't be bothered to find again) stating that only a small percentage of its original devices of science have worked at all since the 80s.
Long story short -- at this point, she's basically running flat out to see how far she can go while running on fumes. The same article stated that the new projection of its fuel exhaustion is roughly 2020.
In all honesty, it just appears to be a platform from which one can boast about things that may never have happened, and feel important despite never having done anything to justify having a massive ego.
In this world where one becomes a hero for dying incidentally in an explosion, is it any wonder that a public forum for ego masturbation is the fastest-growing site on the Internet?