First, the car costs more now because of inflation. Adjusted for inflation, your $10,000 car was actually more expensive then the $22,000 one.
Second, Microsoft can't use inflation to explain their ever increasing prices. Except for the cost of ever more programmers to create ever bigger bloatware (but nobody to check those buffer overflows or fix those bugs^H^H^H^Hfeatures), they don't have an explanation for their pricing. Except of course for the real reason: Monopoly.
First:OS X is the best desktop choice. Easy intuitive GUI, underlying BSD power.
Second: MS instability is not FUD. You do not describe the average user. The majority of users use Outlook and IE and have Office installed. Outlook and IE both intrinsically leave users vulnerable to all sorts of malicious forms of attack (the list keeps expanding). And because of their tight integration with Office and Windows, their initial potential harm is multiplied.
Also, because you seem to primarily limit your x86 efforts to a small group of non-MS products (games, Mozilla), your exposure to bad MS code (beyond the OS) is more limited then most.
You'll find that there are very feature rich *NIX based programs that can replace the Windows programs you are used to. Most do not suffer from the feature glut that is a Microsoft trademark, however. And they do not feature the large number of highly suspect "features" that have made Windows boxes such easy targets of virii/worms/trojans/etc.
As for productivity, there will be significantly less time spent on Blue Screens of death, software updates that break most of the functioning, software virii commandeering programs and wiping your hard drive clean and the like.
Your KIA/BMW comparison is highly inaccurate. Linux to Windows is comparing a Honda and a Ford Pinto with a full tank of gas and a bunch of near-sighted rage drivers right behind you rushing home to find their glasses.
Have to agree. If you actually just want it to work (and get away from Windows), use your x86 architecture as a server/firewall/router and go out and buy a Mac. Short term investment in long term functionality, ease of use and underlying power.
While I realize that rocket science is... rocket science, I still wonder if anyone else finds the raft of unsuccessful launches by the non-majors to be suspicious. That perhaps one or more of the successful launchers, wanting to protect their market, defend the upper atmosphere, hide something or all of the above, would take some direct action to ensure failure.
Let's see. I want to get the tone of my response right....
HA!
XP is easier and "just as stable"? By that logic, you should be using a Mac, because Jaguar is 10 times as easy to use as XP, and has a core BSD *NIX underpinning for stability. And it doesn't feature draconian licensing (it has no activation numbers, no shutting you down if you alter the hardware, nada).
IE is the best browser today, if you enjoy being hacked. It and Outlook and Office are interconnected open doors to the big bad world with screaming neon signs saying "Steal my data. Own my machine."
Office personally has enough bloat to float the Titanic, and yet it still finds ways of screwing up fairly basic activities.
Can't comment on Visual Studios IDE.
Finally, the time/money one spends on training for open source is half the time/money one spends on crash recovery, hacker recovery, data recovery, machine administration and security fix installs with Windows. Sounds like a bargain to me.
The lead in to this story, and the title of the story itself are misleading, a bit.
We have one quote on MySQL from IBM, from Jeff Jones. In the end, he's saying the MySQL isn't an enterprise level product because of some missing functionality, and scalability and performance.
Considering that I've seen much harsher comments on MySQL here at/. during the database wars, this doesn't seem that off base.
It's the Microsoftie, Sheryl Tullis, who describes MySQL as a niche player and then disses open-source in general with her "you're not going to get a platform that's as reliable or scalable or as secure as what you're going to get with a leading vendor".
This is typical MS FUD, and should be dismissed as worthless. Since the "leading vendor" is MS, and since their products are NOT reliable, scalable or secure, her commentary is laughable.
CmdrTaco writes that he's still getting multiple Klez viruses after all this time. That begs the question: what has been the most long-lived virus/worm/trojan so far?
That question should probably be broken down into two parts:a) What virus/worm/trojan, as originally written, has been present in the wild for the longest? b) What virus/worm/trojan, through slight adjustment, has been able to keep coming back infecting and reinfecting for the longest?
Morpheus also asked for summary judgement, but they wanted all of the charges dismissed. Their argument is that there are too many uses for the service for it to be shut down because of the illegal users. This was reported on Monday on news.com.
The RIAA continues to blame P2P file sharing for the decline in sales last year. This is simply not the case. The causes are twofold:
1) Content - Most of the mainstream material put out right now is not compelling. The music is trite and uninteresting. Let's face it: what was the last musician/group you were driven to purchase their CD?
2) Cost - Right now, the average cost of a CD in NYC not on sale is $18.99. What are you getting for this price? A bunch of songs, one or two of which you are familiar with. A front booklet which may or may not have lyrics to the songs. That's it. At the same time, for ~ $19.99, you can DVDs for movies that not only feature the movie, but have extras like commentary tracks, alternative scenes, scripts, videos, commercials, trailers, video games, screensavers. And in most cases, this is a movie you are strongly familiar with so you are not "risking your money".
When the content is compelling, people pay. Proof: Eminem. Weeks before the release of "The Eminem Show" the CD was so pirated that it topped the traded songs on most P2P sites, and bootlegs were being sold on streets across the nation. The official CD (with extras) comes out and what happens? It goes to number one and continues to top the charts weeks later.
A second proof is a bit more obscure: a collegue had bought the Ash album "Free All Angels" from a UK site a few months ago. It was recently released here in the states with a bonus DVD (a bunch of videos and an application to edit the videos as you want). He's going to be buying the album again to get the DVD.
Since IE is "essential" and "fully integrated, you can't keep multiple instances on the same box and you can't really go backwards if you're not happy where you are. And of course every iteration of IE functions significantly differently on each platform (NT, 2000, XP, ME, 98).
And the level of patching makes a difference. An up-to-date patched version of IE will block image from third party sites on pages that are the results of form submissions. Default versions don't always have this problem. The only way around it: iframes.
You can keep 20 boxes lying around just to test IE (or use VPC on your Mac, like I do or VNC). But any way you look at it, it's a major pain.
if you reference an article on another site that references an article on your site?
Is there a danger of temporal flux as visitors whip back and forth between Salon and/., their speed ever increasing as they slip deeper and deeper into the gravity well?
If your comment doesn't get referenced in Salon, does it make any karma?
In the article, Dave Farber, Internet engineering pioneer (?), computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and independent consultant to the TCPA, says "If we're going to get content on the 'Net, somehow we're going to have to reward the people who put it on there".
Ugh, Dave, the majority of people who put content on the 'Net are getting their reward: they're sharing their thougths, dreams, ideas, projects, photos, songs, etc. with the world. And the vast majority of them, virally enough, aren't charging for it. Go figure.
I didn't ask about "interesting possibilities". I just asked whether it would be "functionally different". It didn't seem like it would.
As for having my furniture rat me out for not putting it together strictly following their cryptic instructions, I'm not ready to volunteer for that as of yet. And just imagine the airwaves pollution if all these new devices were phoning willy-nilly.
the "value" of a single chip GSM phone comes from size, cost and/or energy consumption savings? That other then those, nothing as such would be functionally different?
By the way, what are the "passives" shown in the first image? They are not mentioned in the article. The single chip has 25 passives? Do we want that? What does that mean?
I beg to differ that this is off-topic. It's an example of what headlines would be like if all executives finally came clean with the extraordinarily obvious:
Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, Halliburton Top Executives: We Took Advantage Of The Bubble To Make Ourselves Super-Rich
At Your Expense.
Arthur Anderson Heads: We Ignored/Covered Up Every Accounting Fraud That Ever Came Our Way.
Just because they're not in the computer field doesn't mean that they're off-topic.
Slashdot Mirror
Second, Microsoft can't use inflation to explain their ever increasing prices. Except for the cost of ever more programmers to create ever bigger bloatware (but nobody to check those buffer overflows or fix those bugs^H^H^H^Hfeatures), they don't have an explanation for their pricing. Except of course for the real reason: Monopoly.
Second: MS instability is not FUD. You do not describe the average user. The majority of users use Outlook and IE and have Office installed. Outlook and IE both intrinsically leave users vulnerable to all sorts of malicious forms of attack (the list keeps expanding). And because of their tight integration with Office and Windows, their initial potential harm is multiplied.
Also, because you seem to primarily limit your x86 efforts to a small group of non-MS products (games, Mozilla), your exposure to bad MS code (beyond the OS) is more limited then most.
As for productivity, there will be significantly less time spent on Blue Screens of death, software updates that break most of the functioning, software virii commandeering programs and wiping your hard drive clean and the like.
Your KIA/BMW comparison is highly inaccurate. Linux to Windows is comparing a Honda and a Ford Pinto with a full tank of gas and a bunch of near-sighted rage drivers right behind you rushing home to find their glasses.
Have to agree. If you actually just want it to work (and get away from Windows), use your x86 architecture as a server/firewall/router and go out and buy a Mac. Short term investment in long term functionality, ease of use and underlying power.
Or more precisely, it's a likely side effect of using C#.
While I realize that rocket science is ... rocket science, I still wonder if anyone else finds the raft of unsuccessful launches by the non-majors to be suspicious. That perhaps one or more of the successful launchers, wanting to protect their market, defend the upper atmosphere, hide something or all of the above, would take some direct action to ensure failure.
What is the average of new MS bugs discovered per week? My guess would be around 3 a week.
HA!
XP is easier and "just as stable"? By that logic, you should be using a Mac, because Jaguar is 10 times as easy to use as XP, and has a core BSD *NIX underpinning for stability. And it doesn't feature draconian licensing (it has no activation numbers, no shutting you down if you alter the hardware, nada).
IE is the best browser today, if you enjoy being hacked. It and Outlook and Office are interconnected open doors to the big bad world with screaming neon signs saying "Steal my data. Own my machine."
Office personally has enough bloat to float the Titanic, and yet it still finds ways of screwing up fairly basic activities.
Can't comment on Visual Studios IDE.
Finally, the time/money one spends on training for open source is half the time/money one spends on crash recovery, hacker recovery, data recovery, machine administration and security fix installs with Windows. Sounds like a bargain to me.
I
don't
think
so.
We have one quote on MySQL from IBM, from Jeff Jones. In the end, he's saying the MySQL isn't an enterprise level product because of some missing functionality, and scalability and performance.
Considering that I've seen much harsher comments on MySQL here at /. during the database wars, this doesn't seem that off base.
It's the Microsoftie, Sheryl Tullis, who describes MySQL as a niche player and then disses open-source in general with her "you're not going to get a platform that's as reliable or scalable or as secure as what you're going to get with a leading vendor".
This is typical MS FUD, and should be dismissed as worthless. Since the "leading vendor" is MS, and since their products are NOT reliable, scalable or secure, her commentary is laughable.
We know Nimda is a year old. When did the others first appear/get reported?
That question should probably be broken down into two parts:a) What virus/worm/trojan, as originally written, has been present in the wild for the longest? b) What virus/worm/trojan, through slight adjustment, has been able to keep coming back infecting and reinfecting for the longest?
Morpheus also asked for summary judgement, but they wanted all of the charges dismissed. Their argument is that there are too many uses for the service for it to be shut down because of the illegal users. This was reported on Monday on news.com.
need a starship?
Khannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Khannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!
(Protomatter: no ethical scientist would use it, but it solves so many problems)
1) Content - Most of the mainstream material put out right now is not compelling. The music is trite and uninteresting. Let's face it: what was the last musician/group you were driven to purchase their CD?
2) Cost - Right now, the average cost of a CD in NYC not on sale is $18.99. What are you getting for this price? A bunch of songs, one or two of which you are familiar with. A front booklet which may or may not have lyrics to the songs. That's it. At the same time, for ~ $19.99, you can DVDs for movies that not only feature the movie, but have extras like commentary tracks, alternative scenes, scripts, videos, commercials, trailers, video games, screensavers. And in most cases, this is a movie you are strongly familiar with so you are not "risking your money".
When the content is compelling, people pay. Proof: Eminem. Weeks before the release of "The Eminem Show" the CD was so pirated that it topped the traded songs on most P2P sites, and bootlegs were being sold on streets across the nation. The official CD (with extras) comes out and what happens? It goes to number one and continues to top the charts weeks later.
A second proof is a bit more obscure: a collegue had bought the Ash album "Free All Angels" from a UK site a few months ago. It was recently released here in the states with a bonus DVD (a bunch of videos and an application to edit the videos as you want). He's going to be buying the album again to get the DVD.
And the level of patching makes a difference. An up-to-date patched version of IE will block image from third party sites on pages that are the results of form submissions. Default versions don't always have this problem. The only way around it: iframes.
You can keep 20 boxes lying around just to test IE (or use VPC on your Mac, like I do or VNC). But any way you look at it, it's a major pain.
Is there a danger of temporal flux as visitors whip back and forth between Salon and /., their speed ever increasing as they slip deeper and deeper into the gravity well?
If your comment doesn't get referenced in Salon, does it make any karma?
Mmmmmm, powdered frozen methanesicles.
Who said about Microsoft: "It's an amazing machine. I admire these people, who were far sighted enough and bold enough to do what they have done," "Microsoft is not afraid of change. It will cannibalise a weak product to launch a stronger product."
Who said about Windows 2000:"The general trend for client operating environments continues to be consolidation around 32-bit operating systems and applications," "Unfortunately for competitors of Microsoft, this consolidation also means a general movement to Windows platforms."
You mean that Dan Kusnetsky? The "world's most prominent Linux analyst"? Well, that's good enough for me.
Ugh, Dave, the majority of people who put content on the 'Net are getting their reward: they're sharing their thougths, dreams, ideas, projects, photos, songs, etc. with the world. And the vast majority of them, virally enough, aren't charging for it. Go figure.
As for having my furniture rat me out for not putting it together strictly following their cryptic instructions, I'm not ready to volunteer for that as of yet. And just imagine the airwaves pollution if all these new devices were phoning willy-nilly.
By the way, what are the "passives" shown in the first image? They are not mentioned in the article. The single chip has 25 passives? Do we want that? What does that mean?
Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, Halliburton Top Executives: We Took Advantage Of The Bubble To Make Ourselves Super-Rich At Your Expense.
Arthur Anderson Heads: We Ignored/Covered Up Every Accounting Fraud That Ever Came Our Way.
Just because they're not in the computer field doesn't mean that they're off-topic.
Arthur Anderson Heads: We Ignored/Covered Up Every Accounting Fraud That Ever Came Our Way.