... As for productivity that is so far gone I can barely even respond to that...one word. "Openoffice" schools and businesses have been using it for years.
I'm seriously contemplating getting a netbook. I really want to get Linux on it as I'm far more comfortable with Linux than Windows. But, I'll probably get the netbook with Windows because of 1 app: OneNote (which I use extensively at work). There is no OSS equivalent; Basket Note Pads tries and may make it in a couple of years, perhaps about the time my first netbook wears out (if I'm lucky) and then I can move to that app instead.
My point is that "killer apps" can prevent movement, and the "killer app" is different for different people. I should also point out that I believe OneNote to be the only good program that MS makes.
... Give me hardware/software uncoupled from carriers, and your statement holds more weight. Sadly, that's a fantasy world at present.
I don't know where you live, but in the US, you'll be able to buy the N900 directly from Nokia (so no operator subsidies AND no operator removing stuff they dont' like), and assuming you have a working SIM card for ATT or TMobile (whichever works best in your area), you can slap that in and use it. (This is termed "open channel" in the industry.)
Disclaimer: I work for Nokia and I have an N900. It's got a lot of positives and if you're so inclined plus have the skills, you can do development for it.
...If Sprint and T-Mobile want to succeed they need to pony up cash to help pay R&D costs for nice smartphones if they don't want to bottom feed the market anymore. There is a $49 iPhone on sale now because Apple can think ahead further than the next quarter and Sprint and T-Mobile with their crappy phone selections are running to the goverenment
No, you clearly don't understand how the industry works. If T-Mobile has a crappy phone selection, it's because those are the phones they chose from the device manufacturers. Why they have those devices is because they gave the device manufacturers crappy requirements for the phones they want next quarter. I work for a device manufacturers and we offer T-Mobile the nice high-end smartphones, but they don't want them, or take only a small number of them. The operators (e.g. T-Mobile) don't spend a dime on R&D for the phones -- they are carriers. The operators may help pay for marketing, though.
"Exclusivity arrangements... do promote competition and innovation in device development and design, so our take here is that this approach is fair to all sides," Strigl said. "When you think about what Apple has done in bringing the iPhone to the marketplace, it truly has accelerated innovation."
I found this paragraph interesting. As someone who works for a device/phone manufacturer, I'd say that "Exclusivity arrangements" harm the industry as a whole. Sure, Apple has kicked the industry into motion with the iPhone. Sure, their agreement to be able to sell directly (even if tied to AT&T) is much needed in the US. But I really don't think "Exclusivity arrangements" matter at all to phone design and innovation. If anything, they hurt phone design and innovation because it's the carriers/operators who tell us what features you the user can and can't have on the phone. For innovation, we need to cut the ties between being a carrier and forcing phone choice with contracts.
Then palm should have written their own Sync Program.... Palm, if you want to sync DRM free Media to the Pre, write your own application.
I don't understand that, and you're not the only one saying it -- so my apologies for using your comment instead of someone else's. But my question is why should Apple even care that Palm uses iTunes with the Pre? Apple gives it away for *free*! Anyone can download iTunes, you don't even have to have an iPod device. Shouldn't Apple be happy their program is getting used by more people? Maybe some of those extra people will even create an iTunes account and spend money on stuff. I just don't understand what all the hoopla is about.
The USPTO has already stated that they won't be doing real prior art checks themselves. And why would they? They're self-funded, and each patent they grant is more money for them.
... We need a way to give the patent office a financial incentive to do their job, and not just rubber stamp everything that comes their way. I don't know, something like... penalties for patents found to be invalid? Maybe an extra surcharge on the next application from the same party, or some longer-term hysteresis that increases the cost of filing based on how many times you've been rejected in the past. Yeah that idea has lots of problems. It's not easy. But the PTO is never going to work right when it is in their financial interest to not work at all.
Why not hand out small fines ($5000 to companies of > 10 people and $1000 to small companies/individuals?) to the patient applicants for not doing their research well enough, and give half of the fine to the PTO worker who found the prior art as a bonus. Now the applicant and the PTO worker both have an incentive to do the research.
If there is money to be made, then yes, someone will make the players, even if it is a very small number for the archivists. Governments could fund it for the short term while they move their data. When higher capacities come along, the process will be just like it was with floppies->CDs.
It was only 2 years ago that I threw out my last 5.25" floppy drive. The last thing I did with it was transfer ~45 floppies of data to my archive HD and then I burned 2 CDs of that data. I may never use the data, but I have it. Large archives will do the same, transferring data from old media to new media as needed. This is not rocket science.
The carriers exert a LOT of influence over the manufacturers. Carrier says "give us that phone but remove the WiFi chip and disable the GPS please". Manufacturer has to say "yes" else carrier says "OK, then, we wont sell your phones"
As someone who works for a handset manufacturer, I can tell you that is far more true than most people thing. The "operators" tells us what to put in a phone. The general public is really losing out on innovation.
I don't know that it's government's job to step into this, but the only real solution is to split sales of handsets and service; or in reality, split the tying of handsets and service together. It's useful to consumers to get the service and handsets at the same time, but when they are tied together in a contract is when everyone loses.
Your point is well made, and I generally agree with it. In fact, I'd like to see DRM get so strong it goes overboard, because that's what I think it will take to wake the [ignorant] masses up to see the problem. Hopefully then they would realize what's been done to them and just stopping buying all this stuff, the media companies would all go under, and then we could fix the laws and start over at some sane place.
Yes, it's a dream, probably won't happen, but I can dream...
On that note, does anyone know if cracking region encoding has ever been brought up as a DMCA violation, and did it pass? I'm wondering if the defense that "Regions aren't copy protection, so no copy protection was circumvented" has ever been brought up.
I know of no such cases, but I have not looked either.:-)
But I can not imagine that legal case happening. All you need to "defeat" region encoding is a bit of money. Go buy 1 DVD player for every region. It is not illegal to buy a DVD of another region than the one you live in, so it is really a matter of economics (can you afford it and do you care).
Offers whom?. To MS, it's customers are in a version pipeline. Well before Win2K's EOL in 2010, people at the Win2K end of the pipeline will be sucked along by hardware obsolescence and the strain of supporting three different platforms, even if they are pretty similar. It's like cheating Death -- you can do it for a while -- but you can't keep it up.
Actually you can fight off the death for Win2K if you really want to. I run Linux for my main OS and work, but for those last few apps I have yet to find a Linux replacement for I run Win2K in a VMware environment. In there, all devices are virtual, no new device drivers needed. I can move the virtual disks to anywhere VMware runs, so that "machine" will always be usable.
The only obsolescence I face is if some new killer app comes out that I feel I must have and it doesn't support Win2K, but only the newer MS OSs. Then I'll have a choice to make, and odds are, I'll decide it's really not that killer after all and I'll ignore it.
BTW, the rest of your comment about MS be "just good enough" to keep business people staying with the status quo is quite insightful. I'd give you +1 for that if I had the points.
I agree in so many ways. I run Win2K in VMware on my Linux machine for that last couple of apps I haven't managed to wean myself away from.
But I just found MS's OneNote which looks to be a really cool and very useful app. I really don't want to buy it, but it looks so useful. If anyone knows an app that run on Linux that does the same thing (OSS or commercial), please point it out!
That's a very refreshing view to see, especially as I've watched all the turf battling over DSL, Cable, and municipal WiFi. WiFi can be a very good thing. Of course I should probably point out that WiFi type access is the only way those of us "out in the boonies" will get DSL. I have 802.11b now off of the local water tower, while Verizon will probably never have it here.
I say that Mr. Puzey should be put in charge of the FCC.
However, I don't see it working well for purely commercial or in-house proprietary software. In my experience, those commercial developers who insist on working remotely are disinterested mercenaries that only see their employer as a means to their preferred remote lifestyle. I admire folks who know what they want, in terms of where they live, but I don't think it's in the best interests of a business to fund the lifestyle of someone who want to live in a rural resort community rather than being a full participant who comes to the office each day.
Oh, this is the "if I don't see them in the office, they must not be doing any work" viewpoint. That is total rubbish! (at least if handled correctly:-)
If employers can allow their employees extra comfort and still get the job done, why shouldn't they? Besides that, there are at least 2 extremely valid reasons to want to allow telecommuting:
The offsite person may have very useful and hard to find skills or business knowledge, and they don't want to live in the area where their employer is.
The employee may live in a cheaper place than were then employer is, so the employer can save money; we might call this "on-shoring".:-)
Case in point, I contracted to a company who had their home office on the east coast, but their IT center was in the mid-west (where I live). They decided to close their IT office and move it to the home office. That's life, layoffs happen. But I was their lead developer (only developer actually) for the back-end of the system, and I wasn't going to move 1500 miles. They had the choice of letting me telecommute with the occassional trip to the office about once a quarter, or lose their only developer and all the system and bussiness knowledge I'd acquired (probably worth many 10's of thousands of dollars). Letting me telecommute was an easy decision for them.
This sort of thing is pretty easy to handle assuming both parties want it to work. My boss understood the situation and was willing to work with me; which caused me to really want to make it work; we had a good level of trust (trust is extremely important to making it work BTW). Setting hard deliverables and dates was the key; if I told her that feature X would be in the system by next Friday, it was very easy to know if I was working, because it was either there or not.
I guess you don't believe in off-shoring either do you? I certainly applaud that; let's keep it "in the country" (for whatever country you live in).
802.11b is a very poor means of delivering bandwidth to anybody....
I don't know about that, it works pretty good for me. Living in a rural area, it's either that for DSL or ISDN like I used to have. I'll take the wireless DSL pointed at a local water tower anyday.:-) Besides, one day we have higher speeds yet. In the meantime, I'm quite happy with the service (though I do wish it cost a little less).
I agree with the rest of your post. This is no place for the state government to be sticking their nose into. If an area (city/whatever) wants to do that, it's their business and no one else's. And yes, I *do* live in Texas.:-)
It has been working OK, except for some thrid-party software. One example, Kodak's EasyShare. Everytime a user logs into their account, EasyShare puts up a modal dialog box stating that some features may not be available unless the user account is raised to admin privilege.
This causes two problems: I get questions about the presence of the dialog box, and I get questions about the missing features.
Yeah, I've experienced that one. After several emails back and forth with Kodak, they finally told me it was OK to run as non-admin (how my wife & kids are set up). The only missing feature you get is the ability to upgrade.
But that's OK with me because them running as a standard user has saved me so much time not having to clean up after spyware/adware. When there is the rare update, it does tell you and it's easy to log in as the administrator and do the update manually.
Don't get me started on how stupid it is that PowerDVD requires admin privs to run. While I like its interface, it's been ripped of the disk. The MSI DVD player functions just fine as a standard user.
What is more interesting here is the derrivative. The perception of Windows is improving rapidly, the perception of Linux is pretty static. I don't see a heck of a lot of new security action going on in the Linux world. There is a heck of a lot going on in the Windows world.
It's not hard to improve faster when you've got soooo much further to go is it?:-)
Yeah, well, the problem being that XP has a huge market share of Windows users. Windows 2000 is not an OS for average users, we can agree on that, right?
No, we can't. It all depends on how you look at the masses. Ask any pollster, not all polls are equal.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp
Windows XP + Win2k = 82% of all PCs browsing the web in this sample. That's not uncommon!
Nope sorry, bad example. Who goes to w3schools? High tech people like you and me, but people like my parents, all my non-tech friends and family? I don't think so. What do they use? Whatever was on the computer when they bought it 5 years ago. Surprise! That's mostly '98. Heck, I just recently upgraded my children's computer from '98 to 2k. Why? For admin purposes not because '98 stopped working.
And personally, I have no plans to ever advance past 2k -- at least at home where I can control everything (work is different and is forced on me). I don't like phone home software, especially OS's. Most of my "home" work is done on Linux anyway with 2k for those last few apps and games I don't want to give up just yet. But I could give those up and be totally MS free if I really had to. My children will soon leave the house, so that won't be my problem anymore. My wife's computer will either stay 2k or I'll *upgrade* her to Linux (she's the classic surf/email/OOo/solitaire type user).
There are a very small number of "average joes" still running 95, 98 or ME. If you are an average joe who has purchased a new computer in the last 4 years, you're running XP with a very high degree of certainity.
I will agree with you there, but I think you really underestimate the number of "ave. joes" still using older computers and the original OS. Most people do not upgrade computers, and only buy new ones when there old one "blows chunks". Of course, with all the spy/ad-ware, they may be fooled into doing that earlier than they really need to.:-)
The New Scientist reports possible applications include reminding you not to drink too much the night before an important presentation. Some people might balk as the idea of being monitored - and nagged - by their personal technology. But US scientists reckon they've hit on a winner.
Bzzzz, wrong! This is not a winner. My cell phone is used to call people and for them them to call me. It is not a PDA, that is a separate device. It's also not a web browser, a camera, nor a music player. These devices are separate for a reason: so I can use them all only when I want, so I can upgrade them when I feel like, and if one of them breaks (or gets lost) then they are not all gone. Also, I can buy the individual devices much more easily because I'd buy only 1 a month, rather than having to buy the very expensive all-in-1 device; and who says they'll even have all the right features anyway?
So this causes me to need a little more pocket space or belt space to carry multiple devices. That's OK, I rarely have more than 2 of them with me at once anyway.
gee... why am i not surprised that Internet Explorer once again introduces huge security problems?
I was going to quote the same line with the same summary.:-)
The day MS makes IE a separate product from the file browser with no code shared, is the day most of these security problems will go away -- at least in that version and all future versions. Everyone on the old ms-win platforms will still be screwed, but then there will be some hope.
Now, a virus that spreads epidemically like the recent ones has, and at a given point destroys boot sectors or partition tables, now that would be funny.
I'm surprised we haven't seen this yet; thank goodness for most virus writers being "script kiddies".
The one I'd be fearful of would be a virus that spreads slowly so you don't notice it by your bandwidth being sucked dry; and the payload is it searches out Excel files and changes all "3" into "8" and "7" into "1" and saves the file back. What that would do to the CFO's and managers of America (or the world) is amusing to consider.
Why do you need a centrifuge to test this, though I thought about that too when I first RTA. A small launching inside a cargo plane would allow them to test hitting the atmosphere, the 30Gs, the deceleration back down, and the finally the landing. I would imagine it would have been close enough to be like the real thing they'd have found this problem. And, yeh, the cost of something like that in the overall program would be trivial.
Simulations are great, but real tests are required when it comes to hardware.
Yeh, X is network based, and if you've really used it in a commercial setting, you wouldn't be saying to remove the network part of it. You may not use it at home, or even on your desktop at work, but for the rest of us it's invaluable.
I can't count the number of times I've work with X based apps on a server that was headless, or where the server was in a room I couldn't get to, so displaying back to my desk was the only way to get it to work. Or being amazed the day I was sitting Manhattan when my boss called me from Tokyo and gave me the IP of a machine there for me to set my DISPLAY to and for me to run a demo app that was only on my machine...and it worked! (OK, it was as slow as molassis in January but it allowed him to demo a tool to someone that needed to see it, and they didn't have my hardware there.) And then there's all the times I've had to install some product (like Oracle that uses a Java Swing interface) on a machine in branch offices (saves a lot on trips).
You may take this all as a flame, and I suppose I mean it as a very mild one, but please wake up and smell the coffee--geographically dispersed work is here to stay, and just because you don't use a major feature doesn't mean it should be ripped out. I am so thankful the X team realized this sort of thing was useful and built it in to X-window.
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Bullshit. If the Nokia N900 is so good, why are people buying 10x as many iPhones?
Because the N900 isn't being released until November, so people can't buy it yet. I have one, but then again, I work for Nokia. :)
... As for productivity that is so far gone I can barely even respond to that...one word. "Openoffice" schools and businesses have been using it for years.
I'm seriously contemplating getting a netbook. I really want to get Linux on it as I'm far more comfortable with Linux than Windows. But, I'll probably get the netbook with Windows because of 1 app: OneNote (which I use extensively at work). There is no OSS equivalent; Basket Note Pads tries and may make it in a couple of years, perhaps about the time my first netbook wears out (if I'm lucky) and then I can move to that app instead.
My point is that "killer apps" can prevent movement, and the "killer app" is different for different people. I should also point out that I believe OneNote to be the only good program that MS makes.
... Give me hardware/software uncoupled from carriers, and your statement holds more weight. Sadly, that's a fantasy world at present.
I don't know where you live, but in the US, you'll be able to buy the N900 directly from Nokia (so no operator subsidies AND no operator removing stuff they dont' like), and assuming you have a working SIM card for ATT or TMobile (whichever works best in your area), you can slap that in and use it. (This is termed "open channel" in the industry.)
Disclaimer: I work for Nokia and I have an N900. It's got a lot of positives and if you're so inclined plus have the skills, you can do development for it.
...If Sprint and T-Mobile want to succeed they need to pony up cash to help pay R&D costs for nice smartphones if they don't want to bottom feed the market anymore. There is a $49 iPhone on sale now because Apple can think ahead further than the next quarter and Sprint and T-Mobile with their crappy phone selections are running to the goverenment
No, you clearly don't understand how the industry works. If T-Mobile has a crappy phone selection, it's because those are the phones they chose from the device manufacturers. Why they have those devices is because they gave the device manufacturers crappy requirements for the phones they want next quarter. I work for a device manufacturers and we offer T-Mobile the nice high-end smartphones, but they don't want them, or take only a small number of them. The operators (e.g. T-Mobile) don't spend a dime on R&D for the phones -- they are carriers. The operators may help pay for marketing, though.
"Exclusivity arrangements ... do promote competition and innovation in device development and design, so our take here is that this approach is fair to all sides," Strigl said. "When you think about what Apple has done in bringing the iPhone to the marketplace, it truly has accelerated innovation."
I found this paragraph interesting. As someone who works for a device/phone manufacturer, I'd say that "Exclusivity arrangements" harm the industry as a whole. Sure, Apple has kicked the industry into motion with the iPhone. Sure, their agreement to be able to sell directly (even if tied to AT&T) is much needed in the US. But I really don't think "Exclusivity arrangements" matter at all to phone design and innovation. If anything, they hurt phone design and innovation because it's the carriers/operators who tell us what features you the user can and can't have on the phone. For innovation, we need to cut the ties between being a carrier and forcing phone choice with contracts.
Then palm should have written their own Sync Program. ... Palm, if you want to sync DRM free Media to the Pre, write your own application.
I don't understand that, and you're not the only one saying it -- so my apologies for using your comment instead of someone else's. But my question is why should Apple even care that Palm uses iTunes with the Pre? Apple gives it away for *free*! Anyone can download iTunes, you don't even have to have an iPod device. Shouldn't Apple be happy their program is getting used by more people? Maybe some of those extra people will even create an iTunes account and spend money on stuff. I just don't understand what all the hoopla is about.
The USPTO has already stated that they won't be doing real prior art checks themselves. And why would they? They're self-funded, and each patent they grant is more money for them.
... We need a way to give the patent office a financial incentive to do their job, and not just rubber stamp everything that comes their way. I don't know, something like... penalties for patents found to be invalid? Maybe an extra surcharge on the next application from the same party, or some longer-term hysteresis that increases the cost of filing based on how many times you've been rejected in the past. Yeah that idea has lots of problems. It's not easy. But the PTO is never going to work right when it is in their financial interest to not work at all.
Why not hand out small fines ($5000 to companies of > 10 people and $1000 to small companies/individuals?) to the patient applicants for not doing their research well enough, and give half of the fine to the PTO worker who found the prior art as a bonus. Now the applicant and the PTO worker both have an incentive to do the research.
As if DVD players will be around for 1000 years?
If there is money to be made, then yes, someone will make the players, even if it is a very small number for the archivists. Governments could fund it for the short term while they move their data. When higher capacities come along, the process will be just like it was with floppies->CDs.
It was only 2 years ago that I threw out my last 5.25" floppy drive. The last thing I did with it was transfer ~45 floppies of data to my archive HD and then I burned 2 CDs of that data. I may never use the data, but I have it. Large archives will do the same, transferring data from old media to new media as needed. This is not rocket science.
The carriers exert a LOT of influence over the manufacturers. Carrier says "give us that phone but remove the WiFi chip and disable the GPS please". Manufacturer has to say "yes" else carrier says "OK, then, we wont sell your phones"
As someone who works for a handset manufacturer, I can tell you that is far more true than most people thing. The "operators" tells us what to put in a phone. The general public is really losing out on innovation.
I don't know that it's government's job to step into this, but the only real solution is to split sales of handsets and service; or in reality, split the tying of handsets and service together. It's useful to consumers to get the service and handsets at the same time, but when they are tied together in a contract is when everyone loses.
Yes, it's a dream, probably won't happen, but I can dream...
I know of no such cases, but I have not looked either. :-)
But I can not imagine that legal case happening. All you need to "defeat" region encoding is a bit of money. Go buy 1 DVD player for every region. It is not illegal to buy a DVD of another region than the one you live in, so it is really a matter of economics (can you afford it and do you care).
Actually you can fight off the death for Win2K if you really want to. I run Linux for my main OS and work, but for those last few apps I have yet to find a Linux replacement for I run Win2K in a VMware environment. In there, all devices are virtual, no new device drivers needed. I can move the virtual disks to anywhere VMware runs, so that "machine" will always be usable.
The only obsolescence I face is if some new killer app comes out that I feel I must have and it doesn't support Win2K, but only the newer MS OSs. Then I'll have a choice to make, and odds are, I'll decide it's really not that killer after all and I'll ignore it.
BTW, the rest of your comment about MS be "just good enough" to keep business people staying with the status quo is quite insightful. I'd give you +1 for that if I had the points.
But I just found MS's OneNote which looks to be a really cool and very useful app. I really don't want to buy it, but it looks so useful. If anyone knows an app that run on Linux that does the same thing (OSS or commercial), please point it out!
I say that Mr. Puzey should be put in charge of the FCC.
Oh, this is the "if I don't see them in the office, they must not be doing any work" viewpoint. That is total rubbish! (at least if handled correctly :-)
If employers can allow their employees extra comfort and still get the job done, why shouldn't they? Besides that, there are at least 2 extremely valid reasons to want to allow telecommuting:
- The offsite person may have very useful and hard to find skills or business knowledge, and they don't want to live in the area where their employer is.
- The employee may live in a cheaper place than were then employer is, so the employer can save money; we might call this "on-shoring".
:-)
Case in point, I contracted to a company who had their home office on the east coast, but their IT center was in the mid-west (where I live). They decided to close their IT office and move it to the home office. That's life, layoffs happen. But I was their lead developer (only developer actually) for the back-end of the system, and I wasn't going to move 1500 miles. They had the choice of letting me telecommute with the occassional trip to the office about once a quarter, or lose their only developer and all the system and bussiness knowledge I'd acquired (probably worth many 10's of thousands of dollars). Letting me telecommute was an easy decision for them.This sort of thing is pretty easy to handle assuming both parties want it to work. My boss understood the situation and was willing to work with me; which caused me to really want to make it work; we had a good level of trust (trust is extremely important to making it work BTW). Setting hard deliverables and dates was the key; if I told her that feature X would be in the system by next Friday, it was very easy to know if I was working, because it was either there or not.
I guess you don't believe in off-shoring either do you? I certainly applaud that; let's keep it "in the country" (for whatever country you live in).
I don't know about that, it works pretty good for me. Living in a rural area, it's either that for DSL or ISDN like I used to have. I'll take the wireless DSL pointed at a local water tower anyday. :-) Besides, one day we have higher speeds yet. In the meantime, I'm quite happy with the service (though I do wish it cost a little less).
I agree with the rest of your post. This is no place for the state government to be sticking their nose into. If an area (city/whatever) wants to do that, it's their business and no one else's. And yes, I *do* live in Texas. :-)
This causes two problems: I get questions about the presence of the dialog box, and I get questions about the missing features.
Yeah, I've experienced that one. After several emails back and forth with Kodak, they finally told me it was OK to run as non-admin (how my wife & kids are set up). The only missing feature you get is the ability to upgrade.
But that's OK with me because them running as a standard user has saved me so much time not having to clean up after spyware/adware. When there is the rare update, it does tell you and it's easy to log in as the administrator and do the update manually.
Don't get me started on how stupid it is that PowerDVD requires admin privs to run. While I like its interface, it's been ripped of the disk. The MSI DVD player functions just fine as a standard user.
It's not hard to improve faster when you've got soooo much further to go is it? :-)
No, we can't. It all depends on how you look at the masses. Ask any pollster, not all polls are equal.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp
Windows XP + Win2k = 82% of all PCs browsing the web in this sample. That's not uncommon!
Nope sorry, bad example. Who goes to w3schools? High tech people like you and me, but people like my parents, all my non-tech friends and family? I don't think so. What do they use? Whatever was on the computer when they bought it 5 years ago. Surprise! That's mostly '98. Heck, I just recently upgraded my children's computer from '98 to 2k. Why? For admin purposes not because '98 stopped working.
And personally, I have no plans to ever advance past 2k -- at least at home where I can control everything (work is different and is forced on me). I don't like phone home software, especially OS's. Most of my "home" work is done on Linux anyway with 2k for those last few apps and games I don't want to give up just yet. But I could give those up and be totally MS free if I really had to. My children will soon leave the house, so that won't be my problem anymore. My wife's computer will either stay 2k or I'll *upgrade* her to Linux (she's the classic surf/email/OOo/solitaire type user).
There are a very small number of "average joes" still running 95, 98 or ME. If you are an average joe who has purchased a new computer in the last 4 years, you're running XP with a very high degree of certainity.
I will agree with you there, but I think you really underestimate the number of "ave. joes" still using older computers and the original OS. Most people do not upgrade computers, and only buy new ones when there old one "blows chunks". Of course, with all the spy/ad-ware, they may be fooled into doing that earlier than they really need to. :-)
Bzzzz, wrong! This is not a winner. My cell phone is used to call people and for them them to call me. It is not a PDA, that is a separate device. It's also not a web browser, a camera, nor a music player. These devices are separate for a reason: so I can use them all only when I want, so I can upgrade them when I feel like, and if one of them breaks (or gets lost) then they are not all gone. Also, I can buy the individual devices much more easily because I'd buy only 1 a month, rather than having to buy the very expensive all-in-1 device; and who says they'll even have all the right features anyway?
So this causes me to need a little more pocket space or belt space to carry multiple devices. That's OK, I rarely have more than 2 of them with me at once anyway.
I was going to quote the same line with the same summary. :-)
The day MS makes IE a separate product from the file browser with no code shared, is the day most of these security problems will go away -- at least in that version and all future versions. Everyone on the old ms-win platforms will still be screwed, but then there will be some hope.
Me, I have a better solution now.
I'm surprised we haven't seen this yet; thank goodness for most virus writers being "script kiddies".
The one I'd be fearful of would be a virus that spreads slowly so you don't notice it by your bandwidth being sucked dry; and the payload is it searches out Excel files and changes all "3" into "8" and "7" into "1" and saves the file back. What that would do to the CFO's and managers of America (or the world) is amusing to consider.
Why do you need a centrifuge to test this, though I thought about that too when I first RTA. A small launching inside a cargo plane would allow them to test hitting the atmosphere, the 30Gs, the deceleration back down, and the finally the landing. I would imagine it would have been close enough to be like the real thing they'd have found this problem. And, yeh, the cost of something like that in the overall program would be trivial.
Simulations are great, but real tests are required when it comes to hardware.
Check out "mrproject"
http://mrproject.codefactory.se/
Yeh, X is network based, and if you've really used it in a commercial setting, you wouldn't be saying to remove the network part of it. You may not use it at home, or even on your desktop at work, but for the rest of us it's invaluable.
I can't count the number of times I've work with X based apps on a server that was headless, or where the server was in a room I couldn't get to, so displaying back to my desk was the only way to get it to work. Or being amazed the day I was sitting Manhattan when my boss called me from Tokyo and gave me the IP of a machine there for me to set my DISPLAY to and for me to run a demo app that was only on my machine...and it worked! (OK, it was as slow as molassis in January but it allowed him to demo a tool to someone that needed to see it, and they didn't have my hardware there.) And then there's all the times I've had to install some product (like Oracle that uses a Java Swing interface) on a machine in branch offices (saves a lot on trips).
You may take this all as a flame, and I suppose I mean it as a very mild one, but please wake up and smell the coffee--geographically dispersed work is here to stay, and just because you don't use a major feature doesn't mean it should be ripped out. I am so thankful the X team realized this sort of thing was useful and built it in to X-window.