(Actually, I remembered after making my post that my Atari had the 6502A, not the 6502. Not that it matters...)
After all, a ~1MHz 6510 (not any more POWERFUL than the 6502) can run a multitasking GUI with web browser and TCP/IP stack.
Is that a reference to the Commodore 64? Yeah, I guess that's pretty impressive.
I guess my way (*) of thinking is that normally it's not worth trying to optimise stuff, if it's running on a PC with performance that would have scared national security agencies a couple of decades earlier.
But try to produce some cheap-ass calculator ICs, where every penny counts (I'd guess) and it'd probably be impressive to see what those motivated programmers could do given the constraints. (Not that the $50 calculator mentioned above seems particularly cheap)
I think a 4004 could almost do what this thing does...
Hey, they're all functionally equivalent to a Turing Machine, after all...
(albeit slowly)
Now, that *is* where the snag arises.
(*) Actually, the modern way of thinking, which infected me...
Something which might, or might not be connected (as GM also own Opel/Vauxhall (*)):-
Vauxhall sold a totally different car in the UK called the "Nova". I've seen otherwise identical cars from Europe called the "Opel Corsa". Why didn't they call it "Nova"?
One guess; the Opel-badged version was to be sold in Spanish-speaking countries, and someone got paranoid...
It's academic, anyway; the newer versions now on sale are known as "Corsa" in the UK *and* the rest of Europe.
(*) The company is known as Vauxhall in the UK and Opel elsewhere. Badge (and typical regional issues) aside, there is no difference between the two.
One of my wife's favorite stories is about Chevrolet being puzzled that their Nova wasn't selling in South America, until they realized that in some of the local languages the name means "won't go".
I'm going to be a git and spoil this one; click here to see an analysis of this urban legend.
Look at Rupert Murdoch's empire. His news/entertainment is a complete reflection of the man's political and social desires.
While this is true to some extent, it's worth considering the minor case of the Scottish edition of 'The Sun'.
For years, The Sun supported the British Conservative party. And yet, the Scottish edition was pro-Scottish National Party (moderately left-wing party campaigning for Scottish independence from the UK).
Why? Commentators reckon it was because the Conservatives were unpopular in Scotland, and the SNP stance was less likely to lose them sales (it sure as hell wasn't because their politics matched Murdoch's).
Of course, when The Sun switched alliegance to Labour (gone from moderate left-wing to centre-right), it was safe for the Scottish Sun to support Labour (Labour were popular in Scotland); SNP support vanished overnight.
The switch from Conservative support to Labour is also interesting; although Blair's agenda was much more compatible with Murdoch's than previous leaders', it was also clear that the Conservatives were going to lose the 1997 election. Did Murdoch's papers want to be seen backing the unpopular losers?
Bottom line; the man's political and social desires include a much larger component of simple self-interest than previous generations of newspaper tycoons.
That having been said, I suspect that Fox is closest to the way he'd like things to be.
After all, where would Microsoft be right now if it weren't for IBM letting good 'ol Billy G. use them like a cheap inflatable sheep?
That is a ******* horrible image.
Humour aside, I don't think IBM wanted, or "let" Microsoft do anything.
Compaq saw a niche in the market and a hole in IBM's PC armour (i.e. relying on the BIOS- and their reputation(??) to stop clones). They exploited that to produce their own PC clone.
Bill Gates (who may be many things, but is also a shrewd businessman) then filled the OS gap.
I don't have all the details, but I assume that MS retained rights to MS-DOS. Since MS released versions of DOS for non-PC-compatibles before the clones arrived, I assume that IBM missed the threat because they only considered the possibility of DOS running on non-PC machines (in which they were correct in assuming there was no serious threat).
Obviously, they didn't think hard enough, but to say that they let "good 'ol Billy G. use them like a cheap inflatable sheep" is misleading. If anything, IBM were the behemoth circa 1981, and in dealing with them, Gates was the more likely of the pair to be used as an inflatable sex-toy.
Now, I'm not going to claim that Gates was smart enough to have planned the PC market this way from scratch. But, when the opportunities arose, he was astute enough to exploit them to the full.
If IBM were the inflatable sheep, they were a very arrogant 20m-high inflatable sheep that didn't see the danger signs until it was slightly too late.
Yeah, I remember the 6502; it was the CPU in my first computer (Atari 800XL) and I wrote some simple stuff for it.
However, I'm kind of surprised that they used a chip that simple inside a moderately powerful calculator, if only because of the speed ('course, there's a very good chance that the embedded 6502 is running *way* faster than the traditional ones could).
I guess that most calculators don't have to be all that clever (the scientific ones out 15 years ago weren't much more primitive than the majority being sold today; the price has maybe halved, but in technology terms, they've remained static).
Wonder if anyone will release a (probably unofficial and possibly "illegal") kickass calculator app for the Nintendo DS when that arrives. I can just see all the geeks in maths(*) class using their DSs and getting into trouble from their less techno-friendly teachers.
(*) Dammit... I almost said 'math' there. I've been reading this damn website so much I'm turning into an American. Sigh...
You know what? It wasn't *meant* to be a quote from you.
Note my style carefully. Everything *you* said was in italics. The supposed "quote" was not in italics, because it was *me* paraphrasing a common defence of Windows in anticipation of it coming up anyway.
Guess what? You were right. It came across as a quote from you, and for that reason it should have been presented differently or rewritten.
Frankly, if I'd been trolling, *I* wouldn't have spent time pointing out the various flaws in your response. I didn't feel the need to distort your views in the way that you did mine with the "lawsuit" thing (see grandparent).
You know how much I hate it when you don't answer the question.
Don't be a smartass. Your question ("So you have to be a computer expert to use a Mac?") was blatantly rhetorical.
So Windows is chosen because of benefits from using the most popular OS family? Imagine what would happen if no OS were able to reach that level.
*What*, exactly?
You vaguely hint at nasty things happening, but don't elaborate much.
And who's to say that the cake remains a fixed size? More choice in the OS market *might* result in growth if it opened up new markets.
Regardless, it counters you assertion that large companies like MS avoid lawsuits.
I said no such thing.
Here's the part I believe you are attempting to refer to:- " Of course, MS should have been forcibly split, or at least (genuinely) forced into non-monopolistic behavior a long time ago, but, well..... they're *American* and why would the US government want to kill one of the golden geese that are making Americans rich?"
many people just like having tools bundled with their operating system so they don't have to spend hours installing stuff and configuring it. Believe it or not, not all of the world is full of nerds.
Lazy insult. If you'd read the posts above, you'd have seen that I explicitly omitted Linux from my list of "consumer" OSs for this reason.
But the problem, in case you missed it, is that corporations are not mere tools. There are people invested in them who must be taken as ends in themselves.
People investeD or people investING? I'm not nitpicking here; the first suggest employees, the second shareholders.
I did not say that corporations are "mere tools"; I said that they sometimes acted like that when it suited them, and that if they wished to use that as justification for whatever behavior, then they can't turn round and expect to be treated at a higher level when it suited them.
I consider employees as separate from the company in the sense that they do not (necessarily) control how it is run; they are, however, part of the country's economy. Looking after the ox pays dividends here.
Please, it is clear to anyone with half a brain that I used 'grandma' to represent someone who is not familiar with computers
Whoever... your argument assumes that Windows *with* bundling is somehow good for many inexperienced users.
I've thought for a number of years that Windows was a poor fit for inexperienced users.
"But everyone knows how to use Windows".
No; many people know how to do a small number of simple tasks by rote, and get stuck if the smallest thing changes. They do not "know" Windows.
You want it both ways. You want the advantages of having a popular OS and having one customized for you. Guess what? You can't have that.
You hit the nail on the head there.
You're right; you can't have that. You can have Windows XP Home or Professional.
You know, it depends what you mean by "OS". Personally, I have no problem with having a standard OS; Grandma gets a version set up for home use (no developer's tools, gory details hidden behind simple interface), power users get a version with more stuff (e.g. services) included; more confusion possibly, but also more flexibility (which Grandma doesn't need anyway).
Yes, ultimately, the more customised you want your OS, the more work you're going to have to put in to run it. However, much of this "customisation" would be at the UI level, restricting (or not) what the user can do. There is no reason that most stuff (drivers, general apps, etc) should cause a problem.
BTW, if I can't imagine this being done with Windows, it has more to do with business politics than anything technical- I couldn't see MS releasing many versions of Windows with different versions of the interface.
TV- Now it's REALLY harmful to your health!
on
RGB to become RGBCMY
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· Score: 1
Ha ha... very perceptive; wish I had some mod points.
How far should we take the "full spectrum" above the visible range?
"Coming soon on the Discovery Channel! It's... Radiation Week!"
Trailer shows clips of an atomic explosion, inside a nuclear reactor, someone getting an X-ray, and so on.
Discovery Channel sued into oblivion after several thousand "SuperSpectrum" TV owners die from fatal overdoses of gamma radiation whilst watching this.
The Mac has a small niche and nothing like the support of Windows.
No, it indicates that the majority of those needing consumer OSs have chosen to purchase a computer running MS Windows.
There are many reasons why someone would choose Windows as their operating system, just as there are many reasons to choose an alternative.
Yes; and one good reason to use Windows is that it receives the bulk of mainstream support, with the niche Mac a poor second. Linux is still not a consumer OS IMHO.
Yeah, people have a "choice". Realistically, if they don't want to be marginalised, they'll use Windows XP.
I seem to remember some sort of massive lawsuit filed against MS in recent years...
Can't say I remember anything worthwhile being done as a result of the MS cases.(By 'worthwhile', I mean actually likely to force MS to change its behavior).
they made an operating system that the average customer prefers over Mac OS or Linux
'Prefer'? Bullshit.
Yes, they 'prefer' to choose the OS that receives the vast bulk of mainstream (end-user) support. Why? Is it because Windows is better, or because it has a monopoly position? Everyone uses Windows, therefore it gets more support, therefore everyone uses Windows...
'Prefers' because it comes with all the useful stuff that plays (e.g.) Windows Media nicely integrated? Oh, hang on... people like WM built-in because so many websites use it because.... MS bundled it with the OS! It's a circular argument until you accept that MS's integration of the features came *before* people were "wanted" that sort of stuff.
And here's another thing. The fact that people 'prefer' it points to the lack of real choice, not Windows' inherent brilliance. MS's monopoly position means, inevitably, that alternate OSs which might otherwise have done quite well (i.e. where people genuinely would have 'preferred' them on their own merits) did not stand a chance. Which OSs? BeOS? Perhaps.
Or, more importantly, we'll never know, because they were never even conceived, let alone born, in an environment where they would not have stood a fair chance.
The ox analogy, IMHO, was decent, but not perfect. In particular, it *did* treat the ox as a tool, as the ox represented faceless, dehumanised business.
Of course you treat it well and keep it happy, within reason; otherwise it will die or underperform. But make no mistake, if business wish to justify their actions as entities whose job it is to maximise profit, then there is no reason that anyone else should feel obliged to treat them as anything more than productivity machines. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Employees? We all know that businesses would justify layoffs by saying they have to maximise profit, or cut losses ("our job is to make money"). We're back to those soulless productivity machines again.
Yeah, you and I may like it more if certain tools were less integrated within the OS. But grandma may prefer an easy to use consistent operating system
This is a "Somone think of the children!" defence (grandma fills the same niche here). Anything that makes something Harder For Grandma To Use is A Bad Thing. Right?
Guess what? If Windows is the only choice available, then, yeah, it's a problem trying to get it to fit Grandma *and* more advanced end-users. But Windows is The One Choice here, so it has to suit everyone. Wouldn't it be great if there was more choice, so grandma could buy a pre-configged OS *and* we could buy something more flexible; without either of us being marginalised?
But that's not the problem; the problem is that MS have put themselves in a monopoly position; partly, they exploit this to foist proprietery technologies on people, and partly, they use it simply to get people to use their (integrated) software rather than someone else's (non-integrated) software. And it's not "free" if ever
If you are a computer expert (relatively speaking) *and* you do not realistically have to do business with all the MS-using people, that's true. Unfortunately, support for "consumer" OSs is totally skewed towards Windows, which I do not believe indicates that everyone prefers Windows. Nor do I believe that MS's dominance in a large number of IT business markets (not all, but many) is the result of free choice.
Of course, you could argue that, criminality aside, any company's dominance is the result of "free" business decisions by consumers; this assumes that you think that (eg) monopolies are acceptable if they have been acquired by "legitimate" means. I don't buy this.
One reason for large companies' dominance is the misuse and exploitation of legal systems (i.e. they do something that should go against them in court, but they rely on the fact that it would be ruinously expensive for their smaller competitors). This is a flaw with various legal systems. It might be argued that a businesses exist to make money any way they can, and exploiting the flaw is what business "will do".
My argument is that, if business wish to justify their actions in such amoral light, then they should not expect sympathy for their plight when governments 'fix' the system that lets them get away with this.
Either business gets human privileges, and is expected to have human responsibilities, or it is treated as a mindless money-making entity, and the human consequences of action against it are not considered.
Thus, if a company with your pension funds invested acts in an unacceptable manner, you can either ensure that it acts responsibly, or you can vote for it to be run as a faceless business, and tough shit if it is sued out of existence by a hostile community.
I like to think of business as an ox. It would not be constructive to tether the ox to a post with a yard-long rope and leave it there. But it is equally stupid to let the ox run where it likes, when it likes, kicking over fences and goring people. In such cases, the ox should be shot; but the best solution is to keep it under control and use it to plough your field.
It only runs in 800x600. No other resolutions. Brilliant for those LCD monitors which has a native resolution higher than that.
I have to play Devil's advocate here.
My guess is that if you can justify having an LCD instead of a dirt-cheap CRT, then this product isn't aimed at you.
That argument relies on assuming that MS are trying to fill a genuine niche, rather than the (more plausible) alternative; that XP-SE is a political tool, which MS don't expect anyone to seriously use.
What the hell do you mean by "Asian" anyway? Where I come from, it often (misleadingly) refers to racial groups from the Indian subcontinent, which is pretty silly (Chinese aren't Asian??!).
Anyway, I have news for you. "Brown" is one of the few colours where you could genuinely find a human being that *was* that colour.
"Yellow" people don't really look yellow.
"Black" people don't look black (no, not even very dark-skinned people from Central Africa), and "White" people don't look white.
And I know some smartass out there is thinking of Albinos. Well, let's get some bleached copier paper and an albino and do the comparison...
The difference between the latter two is analagous to English English and American English.
If that's true, it would barely merit inclusion as being separate. The difference between standardised British English and American English isn't (AFAIK) anything like (say) the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin.
Basically rich Americans are paying for the software everyone else is using.
Hey, if you don't like it, don't use it.
Unless, of course, the company making it has a virtual monopoly in a large number of areas, leaving you with no real choice.
Of course, MS should have been forcibly split, or at least (genuinely) forced into non-monopolistic behavior a long time ago, but, well..... they're *American* and why would the US government want to kill one of the golden geese that are making Americans rich?
So, if you don't like it, get your government to kick MS's ass. Easy!
Slashdot Mirror
Subatomic particles are extremely non-obvious in day-to-day life, let alone having a practical application in a primitive society.
The fact that many animals can distinguish 7 or so items suggests that our reaction to this news item is *not* mere snobbery.
BTW; you replied to my post, and put the copied material in quotes (as per normal Slashdot quoting).
Just one problem.... doing it that way made it look like I said it (I didn't); in fact, it had already been quoted from the grandparent.
It would have been more appropriate to reply to the post where the comment was originally made.
An 8502 is a 2MHz 6502, plain and simple.
(Actually, I remembered after making my post that my Atari had the 6502A, not the 6502. Not that it matters...)
After all, a ~1MHz 6510 (not any more POWERFUL than the 6502) can run a multitasking GUI with web browser and TCP/IP stack.
Is that a reference to the Commodore 64? Yeah, I guess that's pretty impressive.
I guess my way (*) of thinking is that normally it's not worth trying to optimise stuff, if it's running on a PC with performance that would have scared national security agencies a couple of decades earlier.
But try to produce some cheap-ass calculator ICs, where every penny counts (I'd guess) and it'd probably be impressive to see what those motivated programmers could do given the constraints. (Not that the $50 calculator mentioned above seems particularly cheap)
I think a 4004 could almost do what this thing does...
Hey, they're all functionally equivalent to a Turing Machine, after all...
(albeit slowly)
Now, that *is* where the snag arises.
(*) Actually, the modern way of thinking, which infected me...
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Micro? Soft?
That's as inappropriate a name for a peni-spammer as you're likely to get.
Damn; replying to my own post is tacky.
Something which might, or might not be connected (as GM also own Opel/Vauxhall (*)):-
Vauxhall sold a totally different car in the UK called the "Nova". I've seen otherwise identical cars from Europe called the "Opel Corsa". Why didn't they call it "Nova"?
One guess; the Opel-badged version was to be sold in Spanish-speaking countries, and someone got paranoid...
It's academic, anyway; the newer versions now on sale are known as "Corsa" in the UK *and* the rest of Europe.
(*) The company is known as Vauxhall in the UK and Opel elsewhere. Badge (and typical regional issues) aside, there is no difference between the two.
One of my wife's favorite stories is about Chevrolet being puzzled that their Nova wasn't selling in South America, until they realized that in some of the local languages the name means "won't go".
I'm going to be a git and spoil this one; click here to see an analysis of this urban legend.
At one time, they were the "evil ones", and Microsoft was the "savior" (horrors!).
Were MS ever the "saviors"? What about Gates' 1976 "Open letter to hobbyists"?
Sure, MS were part of IBM's downfall, but that was business.
Look at Rupert Murdoch's empire. His news/entertainment is a complete reflection of the man's political and social desires.
While this is true to some extent, it's worth considering the minor case of the Scottish edition of 'The Sun'.
For years, The Sun supported the British Conservative party. And yet, the Scottish edition was pro-Scottish National Party (moderately left-wing party campaigning for Scottish independence from the UK).
Why? Commentators reckon it was because the Conservatives were unpopular in Scotland, and the SNP stance was less likely to lose them sales (it sure as hell wasn't because their politics matched Murdoch's).
Of course, when The Sun switched alliegance to Labour (gone from moderate left-wing to centre-right), it was safe for the Scottish Sun to support Labour (Labour were popular in Scotland); SNP support vanished overnight.
The switch from Conservative support to Labour is also interesting; although Blair's agenda was much more compatible with Murdoch's than previous leaders', it was also clear that the Conservatives were going to lose the 1997 election. Did Murdoch's papers want to be seen backing the unpopular losers?
Bottom line; the man's political and social desires include a much larger component of simple self-interest than previous generations of newspaper tycoons.
That having been said, I suspect that Fox is closest to the way he'd like things to be.
After all, where would Microsoft be right now if it weren't for IBM letting good 'ol Billy G. use them like a cheap inflatable sheep?
That is a ******* horrible image.
Humour aside, I don't think IBM wanted, or "let" Microsoft do anything.
Compaq saw a niche in the market and a hole in IBM's PC armour (i.e. relying on the BIOS- and their reputation(??) to stop clones). They exploited that to produce their own PC clone.
Bill Gates (who may be many things, but is also a shrewd businessman) then filled the OS gap.
I don't have all the details, but I assume that MS retained rights to MS-DOS. Since MS released versions of DOS for non-PC-compatibles before the clones arrived, I assume that IBM missed the threat because they only considered the possibility of DOS running on non-PC machines (in which they were correct in assuming there was no serious threat).
Obviously, they didn't think hard enough, but to say that they let "good 'ol Billy G. use them like a cheap inflatable sheep" is misleading. If anything, IBM were the behemoth circa 1981, and in dealing with them, Gates was the more likely of the pair to be used as an inflatable sex-toy.
Now, I'm not going to claim that Gates was smart enough to have planned the PC market this way from scratch. But, when the opportunities arose, he was astute enough to exploit them to the full.
If IBM were the inflatable sheep, they were a very arrogant 20m-high inflatable sheep that didn't see the danger signs until it was slightly too late.
Yeah, I remember the 6502; it was the CPU in my first computer (Atari 800XL) and I wrote some simple stuff for it.
However, I'm kind of surprised that they used a chip that simple inside a moderately powerful calculator, if only because of the speed ('course, there's a very good chance that the embedded 6502 is running *way* faster than the traditional ones could).
I guess that most calculators don't have to be all that clever (the scientific ones out 15 years ago weren't much more primitive than the majority being sold today; the price has maybe halved, but in technology terms, they've remained static).
Wonder if anyone will release a (probably unofficial and possibly "illegal") kickass calculator app for the Nintendo DS when that arrives. I can just see all the geeks in maths(*) class using their DSs and getting into trouble from their less techno-friendly teachers.
(*) Dammit... I almost said 'math' there. I've been reading this damn website so much I'm turning into an American. Sigh...
That dwarfs everything except the "small stuff": 8085, MC68K/Dragonball, 6809, etc.
8085? 6809? My God, they're still using those?!
Now I'm curious. Do you have any good examples of their use? (Google turned up a lot of info, but very few applications).
"But everyone knows how to use Windows".
Replying to my own stuff here; this is not a quote from 'nwbvt', which should have been made clearer.
Fuck you. I never said that
You know what? It wasn't *meant* to be a quote from you.
Note my style carefully. Everything *you* said was in italics. The supposed "quote" was not in italics, because it was *me* paraphrasing a common defence of Windows in anticipation of it coming up anyway.
Guess what? You were right. It came across as a quote from you, and for that reason it should have been presented differently or rewritten.
Frankly, if I'd been trolling, *I* wouldn't have spent time pointing out the various flaws in your response. I didn't feel the need to distort your views in the way that you did mine with the "lawsuit" thing (see grandparent).
I'm putting you on my shit list.
Mmmm... okay!
You know how much I hate it when you don't answer the question.
Don't be a smartass. Your question ("So you have to be a computer expert to use a Mac?") was blatantly rhetorical.
So Windows is chosen because of benefits from using the most popular OS family? Imagine what would happen if no OS were able to reach that level.
*What*, exactly?
You vaguely hint at nasty things happening, but don't elaborate much.
And who's to say that the cake remains a fixed size? More choice in the OS market *might* result in growth if it opened up new markets.
Regardless, it counters you assertion that large companies like MS avoid lawsuits.
I said no such thing.
Here's the part I believe you are attempting to refer to:- " Of course, MS should have been forcibly split, or at least (genuinely) forced into non-monopolistic behavior a long time ago, but, well..... they're *American* and why would the US government want to kill one of the golden geese that are making Americans rich?"
many people just like having tools bundled with their operating system so they don't have to spend hours installing stuff and configuring it. Believe it or not, not all of the world is full of nerds.
Lazy insult. If you'd read the posts above, you'd have seen that I explicitly omitted Linux from my list of "consumer" OSs for this reason.
But the problem, in case you missed it, is that corporations are not mere tools. There are people invested in them who must be taken as ends in themselves.
People investeD or people investING? I'm not nitpicking here; the first suggest employees, the second shareholders.
I did not say that corporations are "mere tools"; I said that they sometimes acted like that when it suited them, and that if they wished to use that as justification for whatever behavior, then they can't turn round and expect to be treated at a higher level when it suited them.
I consider employees as separate from the company in the sense that they do not (necessarily) control how it is run; they are, however, part of the country's economy. Looking after the ox pays dividends here.
Please, it is clear to anyone with half a brain that I used 'grandma' to represent someone who is not familiar with computers
Whoever... your argument assumes that Windows *with* bundling is somehow good for many inexperienced users.
I've thought for a number of years that Windows was a poor fit for inexperienced users.
"But everyone knows how to use Windows".
No; many people know how to do a small number of simple tasks by rote, and get stuck if the smallest thing changes. They do not "know" Windows.
You want it both ways. You want the advantages of having a popular OS and having one customized for you. Guess what? You can't have that.
You hit the nail on the head there.
You're right; you can't have that. You can have Windows XP Home or Professional.
You know, it depends what you mean by "OS". Personally, I have no problem with having a standard OS; Grandma gets a version set up for home use (no developer's tools, gory details hidden behind simple interface), power users get a version with more stuff (e.g. services) included; more confusion possibly, but also more flexibility (which Grandma doesn't need anyway).
Yes, ultimately, the more customised you want your OS, the more work you're going to have to put in to run it. However, much of this "customisation" would be at the UI level, restricting (or not) what the user can do. There is no reason that most stuff (drivers, general apps, etc) should cause a problem.
BTW, if I can't imagine this being done with Windows, it has more to do with business politics than anything technical- I couldn't see MS releasing many versions of Windows with different versions of the interface.
Ha ha... very perceptive; wish I had some mod points.
How far should we take the "full spectrum" above the visible range?
"Coming soon on the Discovery Channel! It's... Radiation Week!"
Trailer shows clips of an atomic explosion, inside a nuclear reactor, someone getting an X-ray, and so on.
Discovery Channel sued into oblivion after several thousand "SuperSpectrum" TV owners die from fatal overdoses of gamma radiation whilst watching this.
So you have to be a computer expert to use a Mac?
The Mac has a small niche and nothing like the support of Windows.
No, it indicates that the majority of those needing consumer OSs have chosen to purchase a computer running MS Windows. There are many reasons why someone would choose Windows as their operating system, just as there are many reasons to choose an alternative.
Yes; and one good reason to use Windows is that it receives the bulk of mainstream support, with the niche Mac a poor second. Linux is still not a consumer OS IMHO.
Yeah, people have a "choice". Realistically, if they don't want to be marginalised, they'll use Windows XP.
I seem to remember some sort of massive lawsuit filed against MS in recent years...
Can't say I remember anything worthwhile being done as a result of the MS cases.(By 'worthwhile', I mean actually likely to force MS to change its behavior).
they made an operating system that the average customer prefers over Mac OS or Linux
'Prefer'? Bullshit.
Yes, they 'prefer' to choose the OS that receives the vast bulk of mainstream (end-user) support. Why? Is it because Windows is better, or because it has a monopoly position? Everyone uses Windows, therefore it gets more support, therefore everyone uses Windows...
'Prefers' because it comes with all the useful stuff that plays (e.g.) Windows Media nicely integrated? Oh, hang on... people like WM built-in because so many websites use it because.... MS bundled it with the OS!
It's a circular argument until you accept that MS's integration of the features came *before* people were "wanted" that sort of stuff.
And here's another thing. The fact that people 'prefer' it points to the lack of real choice, not Windows' inherent brilliance. MS's monopoly position means, inevitably, that alternate OSs which might otherwise have done quite well (i.e. where people genuinely would have 'preferred' them on their own merits) did not stand a chance. Which OSs? BeOS? Perhaps.
Or, more importantly, we'll never know, because they were never even conceived, let alone born, in an environment where they would not have stood a fair chance.
The ox analogy, IMHO, was decent, but not perfect. In particular, it *did* treat the ox as a tool, as the ox represented faceless, dehumanised business.
Of course you treat it well and keep it happy, within reason; otherwise it will die or underperform. But make no mistake, if business wish to justify their actions as entities whose job it is to maximise profit, then there is no reason that anyone else should feel obliged to treat them as anything more than productivity machines. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Employees? We all know that businesses would justify layoffs by saying they have to maximise profit, or cut losses ("our job is to make money"). We're back to those soulless productivity machines again.
Yeah, you and I may like it more if certain tools were less integrated within the OS. But grandma may prefer an easy to use consistent operating system
This is a "Somone think of the children!" defence (grandma fills the same niche here). Anything that makes something Harder For Grandma To Use is A Bad Thing. Right?
Guess what? If Windows is the only choice available, then, yeah, it's a problem trying to get it to fit Grandma *and* more advanced end-users. But Windows is The One Choice here, so it has to suit everyone. Wouldn't it be great if there was more choice, so grandma could buy a pre-configged OS *and* we could buy something more flexible; without either of us being marginalised?
But that's not the problem; the problem is that MS have put themselves in a monopoly position; partly, they exploit this to foist proprietery technologies on people, and partly, they use it simply to get people to use their (integrated) software rather than someone else's (non-integrated) software. And it's not "free" if ever
If you are a computer expert (relatively speaking) *and* you do not realistically have to do business with all the MS-using people, that's true. Unfortunately, support for "consumer" OSs is totally skewed towards Windows, which I do not believe indicates that everyone prefers Windows. Nor do I believe that MS's dominance in a large number of IT business markets (not all, but many) is the result of free choice.
Of course, you could argue that, criminality aside, any company's dominance is the result of "free" business decisions by consumers; this assumes that you think that (eg) monopolies are acceptable if they have been acquired by "legitimate" means. I don't buy this.
One reason for large companies' dominance is the misuse and exploitation of legal systems (i.e. they do something that should go against them in court, but they rely on the fact that it would be ruinously expensive for their smaller competitors). This is a flaw with various legal systems. It might be argued that a businesses exist to make money any way they can, and exploiting the flaw is what business "will do".
My argument is that, if business wish to justify their actions in such amoral light, then they should not expect sympathy for their plight when governments 'fix' the system that lets them get away with this.
Either business gets human privileges, and is expected to have human responsibilities, or it is treated as a mindless money-making entity, and the human consequences of action against it are not considered.
Thus, if a company with your pension funds invested acts in an unacceptable manner, you can either ensure that it acts responsibly, or you can vote for it to be run as a faceless business, and tough shit if it is sued out of existence by a hostile community.
I like to think of business as an ox. It would not be constructive to tether the ox to a post with a yard-long rope and leave it there. But it is equally stupid to let the ox run where it likes, when it likes, kicking over fences and goring people. In such cases, the ox should be shot; but the best solution is to keep it under control and use it to plough your field.
It only runs in 800x600. No other resolutions. Brilliant for those LCD monitors which has a native resolution higher than that.
I have to play Devil's advocate here.
My guess is that if you can justify having an LCD instead of a dirt-cheap CRT, then this product isn't aimed at you.
That argument relies on assuming that MS are trying to fill a genuine niche, rather than the (more plausible) alternative; that XP-SE is a political tool, which MS don't expect anyone to seriously use.
What the hell do you mean by "Asian" anyway? Where I come from, it often (misleadingly) refers to racial groups from the Indian subcontinent, which is pretty silly (Chinese aren't Asian??!).
Anyway, I have news for you. "Brown" is one of the few colours where you could genuinely find a human being that *was* that colour.
"Yellow" people don't really look yellow.
"Black" people don't look black (no, not even very dark-skinned people from Central Africa), and "White" people don't look white.
And I know some smartass out there is thinking of Albinos. Well, let's get some bleached copier paper and an albino and do the comparison...
The difference between the latter two is analagous to English English and American English.
If that's true, it would barely merit inclusion as being separate. The difference between standardised British English and American English isn't (AFAIK) anything like (say) the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin.
Basically rich Americans are paying for the software everyone else is using.
Hey, if you don't like it, don't use it.
Unless, of course, the company making it has a virtual monopoly in a large number of areas, leaving you with no real choice.
Of course, MS should have been forcibly split, or at least (genuinely) forced into non-monopolistic behavior a long time ago, but, well..... they're *American* and why would the US government want to kill one of the golden geese that are making Americans rich?
So, if you don't like it, get your government to kick MS's ass. Easy!
OEM in countries that might otherwise just start selling Linux or OS-less PCs.
You mean like the US or UK?
trojan horse #1, #2, #3.. thats it! three applications!
Ner ner.... I got there first and have patented this unique DoS attack on Windows 3.1, erm, Starter Edition.
No, I think you'll find that Manpower employees are also "leaSHed and branded", Mish Moneypenny.
As long as they only run all aplications inside Emacs, it is no problem ;-)
:-P
I was going to make a comment about Emacs not coming with a decent text-editor... but then I remembered it has a vi clone built in.
Now I'm going to get modded into oblivion by the rabid masses of Emacs zealots.
Damn, that was stupid.