The budget for voice actors for the english version is going to be a lot higher then say for the dutch or german language version. This then leads to extremely poor voice acting leading to consumers like me to stay well clear of localized versions and hunting instead for imports.
This has become big enough that disney movies are now shown in two versions in holland. During matinee the dubbed version. Later in the day the original version with subtitles.
Movies like Shrek and Fievel are really a lot better with the original voices instead of some dutch halfwits who think funny voices are required for all parts.
Oh come on. This is going to be an awful lot of fun to watch. Take it from an old guy, all this has been tried before and failed. Badly. Barcodes would make checkouts faster. My ass. In fact they became slower since before the checkout woman only had to see the article to type in the price. Now they got pick it up. Turn it around. Bend out that piece of packaging that is over the barcode. Wipe the barcode clean. Pass it over a couple of times type in the discount that is on a sticker but not entered in the system.
But of course since barcodes are "easier" they fired all the old women who knew the entire store by heart and now they got a bunch of kids. Some of them are okay, some of them just plain stupid but all of them are hopelessly inexperienced. I know because I used to live near to a store that had escaped this barcode madness since its checkout area was extremely small so the big things didn't fit. I was always helped faster there then in the big stores by the same chain.
Still its got to be worth it to see people come to terms with a talking trolly. Hell most are still confused by cash dispensers. Now a trolly is talking to them. It is going to be like watching todllers piss themselves at euro-disney when mickey mouse walks up to them.
Can't wait. But like the self-checkout I think it will be just hype.
mmm, nutritional value of my shopping. That thing better be well coded or it is going to crash on buffer overflows for fat and suggars and divide by zeroes for vitamin crap.
Still the veggie vision sounds useful. I do ocassionally buy apples (I once was a baker and still like to make applepies, since noone makes them like me) and almost as a routine the checkout clerk has no idea wich apples I bought. Neither do I, wich is why my applepie is so intresting, and general confusion reigns until some kid is called to go check.
Still I am old enough to remember when barcodes first came in use. I can't prove it but for me checkout time seems to have increased. Of course this might also be staff related as it seems to depends greatly on the age and gender. Old women are excellent. 20+ guys tend to also perform well. The rest. EWH.
Excatly how is this self checkout system going to cope with items without an RFID tag or a broken one? Free shopping?
Yup, when I read this a huge smile just spread across my face. Eliminate piracy? Sure thing. Let us just get rid of your product all together.
100% complaince. Just not exactly what MS had in mind. Will it work? Well who cares. Everytime MS has to kowtow to some tiny little country by lowering the price or reducing restrictions other countries are taking notice. After munich would any decent goverment negioting a new MS contract not mention Linux? Now if the US is leaning on you to combat piracy just mention on going all open source. That should take the pressure off real quick.
This article just made my day. Thanks vietnam. (wonder if I can buy one of their pc's)
Microsoft has gotten very fat indeed on piracy. Remeber MS is big because of the installed base. The more people run MS software the better it is for MS. Sure they would like it even better if everyone actually paid for their copy but that 95% of the the desktop market is nothing to be sneezed at.
It is something unique about software that very few people get.
Hell if everyone actually paid for their copy of ms software I think they might have a huge problem in finding a bank big enough to keep all the money in.
So to answer your question MS is losing here. Just one more corner of the world where that 95% is just getting a tiny bit smaller. Is this going to mean MS is going to go bankrupt? No of course not. Don't be silly. But an MS with say "only" a 80% share is going to mean that you can no longer just assume that every one uses Windows. Oh everyone can read this Office document.
Remember only zealots want MS destroyed, or if they are windows zealots linux destroyed. The rest of us simply want to choose the best for their needs and be reasonably sure that most data can be exchanged freely between systems.
There are still an awfull lot of limitations. If you don't believe me fire up a FPS editor and try to create a truly nice level.
Sure for now the graphics look great. But then they also looked great a couple of years ago. Then new hardware came along and you went wow and promply forgot about how you thought the old games looked great.
Sure sadly an awfull lot of games seem to just use the extra power of the hardware for bigger textures and more rounded boobs. Doesn't mean you can't use it for different purposes. Like say populating a city with cars and pedesastrians for you to drive through? Notice how older games of this style didn't have civi cars? Why do think this was?
Yes I agree, it is going to be more about what you are going to do with the extra power of future hardware. No need to increase framerates above the refresh of the display or resolutions bigger then the number of pixels. But you can also use the extra power to create a more believable world. A world in wich when you chance the equipment on your character this is reflected in the graphics. A world in wich charactes properly walk on the floor even if it is a staircase not just hover above it. A world in wich cars propely move on their suspension so you can see if the car in front of you is about to loose control or is increasing his turn to close of the inside for you. Where on closing in on an enemy flight you can spot wether they already dropped their bombs so you can save your bullets for the other flight that has yet to reach their target. A fps where the enemy is carrying an m60 and you can see how many bullets there are left on his belt.
Sure I may be dreaming but I think their is still an awfull long way to go. I have seen the shift from where you needed to consult the manual to see what the hell that red thing on the screen was supposed to be to where it is obvious that you have come across a med pack. Now I want to play a game where I can no longer see that the designer had to restrict himself to an X number of polygons.
Oh and yes I do own a gba. So no I am not totally blinded by pretty graphics. But there is a reason people are excited about the PSP. Can you guess what it is?
LCD's are probably the only piece of hardware you can buy in wich a store clerk will happily tell you that a product does not have to work 100%.
Apparently 2-3 dead pixels is perfectly allright. You can of course buy "insurance" against this but still I find something odd. How come none and I mean none of the showroom models have any death pixels? There is even a megastore that has two walls lined with lcd's. I carefully walked past them and no one death pixel on any of them. Odd. I guess all those people complaining about broken lcd's are just unlucky.
mmm, could work like a charm here in holland. Albert Heijn, a local super market whose parent ahold is one of the larger chains world wide, already has a cheap system for prepaid phones. Just go to the checkout say you want 20 euro's for phone brand X and a code is printed on your receit. All phone brands are supported so I guess it is a really cheap way of selling them.
Well if you are a real geek then you would know that the original enterprise also went into atmosphere at least once. I am not a total geek so I can't name the episode but it was the one in wich the enterprise travels back in time. It for some reason is unable to maintain orbit around earth and is dragged into the atmosphere. It is then intercepted by a jet whose pilot ends up aboard the enterprise.
From what I remember the enterprise wasn't going superfast after all the jet managed to catch up. So this test just showed that that ep was possible.
Well it is just a rumour I once heard and since missed hearing off again. BUT it is possible that Longhorn will be having a 3D desktop. No no not the useless kind. The kind that is rendered by your video card taking the strain of the cpu. What your cpu is currently strained? You bet it is. Dual CPU's never really took off on the desktop so every milisecond it has to spend rendering a button is not spend on your application. Hence the fact that you still have rendering freezes with part of the desktop being left unfinished.
Okay, this is it. The final straw that shows america is nuts. Emergency vehicles coming to a full stop? WTF?
Of course sadly holland is no better. A large fire in a bar at newyears a few years ago. So does the medical helicopter take off? Of course not. Enviromental regulations forbid it to take off because it makes to much noise and people living around the hospital complained.
It is time to shoot the lawyers and the people that hire them.
Simple enough. Put all the reds on and say flash the yellow. Pretty clear that something is going on then. Plus important plus. Clear to all the rest of the drivers as well. So that even those thinking about running a red know that from some direction a bloody big firetruck is moving along.
And good drivers will be checking their rear-view mirrors to see if they should go out of the way. How often have you seen people remaining standing still totally unaware that 20 tons or so of flashing lights and horns is behind them?
mmm, I thought that drug boats survived by being small and extremely fast. Not by going 4 knots an hour. Wich is about walking speed. About since this is water and history is unclear how athletic jesus was.
Anyway if drug runners wanted a sub they could get a real one. But subs have trouble. Unless you can convince the russians to sell you their latest tech then you are in a noisy vehicle that the US have had decades to learn to track. And track well since the price of not tracking a russian sub well is letting several hundred megatons of nukes get really really close.
Nah I think for now the drug runners have to keep looking. This is a toy.
But really the drugs people that could afford this toy are not intrestted in the perfect solution. Drugs are cheap. People willing to risk their lives smuggling it even cheaper.
Take games like quake, flight simulator and Operation Flashpoint. The best art for them is user created. FS9 is a case in point. While the engine certainly seems capable enough the default art is hideous. Spend some time downloading and you will be able to replace all the aircraft with far better looking versions that also reflect real world airlines not some hopelessy faked ones.
The sims huge appeal (among a certain group) is that you can create your own addons like clothes and furniture. So perhaps games that play online where others can actually see your creation they should allow for user created content as well.
Of course they are not going to want that. First time someone adds a topless piece of clothing all hell is going to break loose.
Guess they are just going to have to find a way to create a larger customer base. Here is a tip. Get rid of credit card only subscription. Large parts of the world don't have the widespread use of credit cards. A company like sony does however have local offices pretty much every in the world. Use them to also accept local bank transfers.
Trees need to shed their leaves come winter in order to prevent this very vulnarable part of tree to become damaged and with it damage the tree itself. However these leaves represent a huge amount of resources for the tree. The energe invested in growing them is not a problem. It will have gained enough energe from them in return to regrow them next year.
The minerals however are another matter. Soil contains only a limited amount of the building blocks for leaves and for that matter the tree itself. Were shedded leaves simply to remain indefinete then two problems would occur. Sooner or later the tree would be unable to find any more nutrients in the soil. Hence no more leaves == no more food and the tree would starve. However it would also starve as any leaves it could grow would be covered under a pile of old leaves.
Fortuanlly shedded leaves decompose and the nutrients in them return to the soil. This prevents the soil from becoming starved and stops the earth being covered in huge piles of leaves.
So how does this apply to us? Well take packaging material like glass. It is cheap to make requiring a few cheap chemicals sand and power. Power is cheap sand is cheaper and as said the chemicals involved are also cheap. So why do we recycle glass? Not because the resource is limited. We are not likely to run out of sand anytime soon. Power is more restricted but recycling glass requires a similar amount of energy.
No the reason is to save us from being buried under a mountain of glass. Unless you want to live next to a garbage dump you better recycle glass. It is either used to make new glass or it will just be around forever and ever. (glass does not decompose ever)
Recycling metal is different. Metal ore is a far more finite resource. Yet old metal does decompose. Left long enough it will rust. So why do we recycle? Because it is cheaper in the long run. Every recycled can means less ore needed to be processed to produce replacement metal. Unlike glass recycling metal cost less energy.
So recycling has two goals.
To reduce the amount of waste we have to get rid off and to reduce the strain on the supply of the resource.
So does most recycling help? Wrong question, does recycling hurt? Yes to some it does. I bet you a small fortune that these are the same people that drive a 2 ton car all alone, who think speed limits are a restriction of their civil rights, that taxes are a way to keep them down, that women who don't date them are lesbians, that people with other religions/politics are stupid.
In short assholes. Do you want to be an asshole? No then buy four waste bins and one basket. 1 for paper. 1 for glass. 1 for food remains and finally one for all the rest. The basket is for all the stuff like old tv's fridges batteries and the like. How much time will it cost you to seperate them? Zero. How much time will it cost you to empty them? 1 hour extra per week max. Small price to pay for not being an asshole.
Hi young one. Let the old and wise tell you about a time before you were born. When home video records, vcr's, were a new technology. Guess what. They wanted to ban those machines. They would destroy hollywood and the tv industry. Some guy called Jack Vallentine or something was very much against them.
I mean geez, that entire interview is so full of holes I am starting to doubt the sanity of the guy. Or maybe it is one of those totally taken out of context interviews.
I mean we all know that the old "640k should be enough for everyone" quote is not all it seems. Now he makes another memory prediction? Talk about stupid.
MS spends a 100 million on security. Oh whoopie. Anyone else think MS pays more in fines for its "criminal" behaviour? It is a company with profits in the billions. 100 million is peanuts and an excellent showcase of how serious MS is about security.
Upgrading IE? First not until longhorn. Oops that caused some bad press, so of course we are going to upgrade it. Notice no actual examples of what is going to be fixed. Granted they did patch the list of security holes. I just had hoped they would apply the patch to IE, not to the list itself.
Then the whopper. MS releases patches faster then linux. Even the most sincere microsoft apologist can't claim that with a straight face. Not if they ever worked with both operating sytems.
No this is like Magrat Tatcher or Ronald Reagan. Dementia is a cruel thing. Please let Bill Gates live out his remaining live with some dignity no need to show him dribling and soiling himself.
The problem isn't that MS doesn't employ some very smart people. They do. Sadly it doesn't seem to matter. MS certainly has the money and resources to make a very good OS, not like they got to worry about launch dates like say a vivendi/valve.
I think somewhere in the fast machine that is MS software production there is one tiny but important cog that has a radically different view of what a good OS is then some of the people here, read people who do not like windows.
Considering the HUGE success of MS software it may be argued that we are wrong. If the market wants shit then you would do well to deliver shit.
Windows is not about security, bill gates himself has admitted that. It is not about openes, it is not about giving the user control. It is a simple to use, highly flexible enviroment that blows for stability (compared to other OSes and there are others then linux you know) but runs on dirt cheap hardware. It focusses on adding sparkly things over improving stability or security because that is what their customers want.
McD got big selling cheap cheerful hamburgers whil 2/3 star restaurants go under all the time. Of course something changed recently making McD future looking a lot less bright. Peoples tastes have changed and McD no longer delivers to a large enough group.
The only way MS is going to change the way they build an OS is if it makes sense for them to do so. As long as people keep lapping up XP they got absolutly no reason to do so.
About the only thing that MS could do is make another flavor of windows. A windows that focusses on winning the defectors back over by focussing on security and stability over adding more kitch.
Is this going to happen? Only if MS gets really worried over linux. They certainly got the people to do it. But somewhere in the decision tree at MS there is someone who says. I like XP, lets add more sparklies. It sells.
Longhorn will be intresting. MS got the money on making something new, will they deliver? Who knows. If it is up to usual MS form it will contain only a fraction of the promised features, be renamed and all the features will be added to the next release.
One of the reasons some goverments are look at linux is that they don't like to see the money they spend on IT going directly abroad to foreign companies, taking money away from local industry. To the US of course this does not apply. MS is the local industry. Instead by using Linux they would be sending money to foreign companies like ehm IBM. Eh.
Well anyway US goverment has one less incentive then the rest of the world to want to become less dependent on microsoft.
Only 25 patches? I am fairly sure I installed that many and that is on pure servers.
Openssh had what a gazillion alone? (kidding it was 2 but after you just done a dozen different servers on a dozen different distro's then have to do it again you feel a bit cranky)
Slashdot Mirror
This has become big enough that disney movies are now shown in two versions in holland. During matinee the dubbed version. Later in the day the original version with subtitles.
Movies like Shrek and Fievel are really a lot better with the original voices instead of some dutch halfwits who think funny voices are required for all parts.
ehm, unless the newton came with a defective keyboard or a really messed up spellchecker I don't get the joke. Anyone care to enlighten me?
Not sure if it is a complete joke or not but one of the signs the end of the world is near, "tallest player in the nba is japanese".
But of course since barcodes are "easier" they fired all the old women who knew the entire store by heart and now they got a bunch of kids. Some of them are okay, some of them just plain stupid but all of them are hopelessly inexperienced. I know because I used to live near to a store that had escaped this barcode madness since its checkout area was extremely small so the big things didn't fit. I was always helped faster there then in the big stores by the same chain.
Still its got to be worth it to see people come to terms with a talking trolly. Hell most are still confused by cash dispensers. Now a trolly is talking to them. It is going to be like watching todllers piss themselves at euro-disney when mickey mouse walks up to them.
Can't wait. But like the self-checkout I think it will be just hype.
Still the veggie vision sounds useful. I do ocassionally buy apples (I once was a baker and still like to make applepies, since noone makes them like me) and almost as a routine the checkout clerk has no idea wich apples I bought. Neither do I, wich is why my applepie is so intresting, and general confusion reigns until some kid is called to go check.
Still I am old enough to remember when barcodes first came in use. I can't prove it but for me checkout time seems to have increased. Of course this might also be staff related as it seems to depends greatly on the age and gender. Old women are excellent. 20+ guys tend to also perform well. The rest. EWH.
Excatly how is this self checkout system going to cope with items without an RFID tag or a broken one? Free shopping?
100% complaince. Just not exactly what MS had in mind. Will it work? Well who cares. Everytime MS has to kowtow to some tiny little country by lowering the price or reducing restrictions other countries are taking notice. After munich would any decent goverment negioting a new MS contract not mention Linux? Now if the US is leaning on you to combat piracy just mention on going all open source. That should take the pressure off real quick.
This article just made my day. Thanks vietnam. (wonder if I can buy one of their pc's)
It is something unique about software that very few people get.
Hell if everyone actually paid for their copy of ms software I think they might have a huge problem in finding a bank big enough to keep all the money in.
So to answer your question MS is losing here. Just one more corner of the world where that 95% is just getting a tiny bit smaller. Is this going to mean MS is going to go bankrupt? No of course not. Don't be silly. But an MS with say "only" a 80% share is going to mean that you can no longer just assume that every one uses Windows. Oh everyone can read this Office document.
Remember only zealots want MS destroyed, or if they are windows zealots linux destroyed. The rest of us simply want to choose the best for their needs and be reasonably sure that most data can be exchanged freely between systems.
There are still an awfull lot of limitations. If you don't believe me fire up a FPS editor and try to create a truly nice level.
Sure for now the graphics look great. But then they also looked great a couple of years ago. Then new hardware came along and you went wow and promply forgot about how you thought the old games looked great.
Sure sadly an awfull lot of games seem to just use the extra power of the hardware for bigger textures and more rounded boobs. Doesn't mean you can't use it for different purposes. Like say populating a city with cars and pedesastrians for you to drive through? Notice how older games of this style didn't have civi cars? Why do think this was?
Yes I agree, it is going to be more about what you are going to do with the extra power of future hardware. No need to increase framerates above the refresh of the display or resolutions bigger then the number of pixels. But you can also use the extra power to create a more believable world. A world in wich when you chance the equipment on your character this is reflected in the graphics. A world in wich charactes properly walk on the floor even if it is a staircase not just hover above it. A world in wich cars propely move on their suspension so you can see if the car in front of you is about to loose control or is increasing his turn to close of the inside for you. Where on closing in on an enemy flight you can spot wether they already dropped their bombs so you can save your bullets for the other flight that has yet to reach their target. A fps where the enemy is carrying an m60 and you can see how many bullets there are left on his belt.
Sure I may be dreaming but I think their is still an awfull long way to go. I have seen the shift from where you needed to consult the manual to see what the hell that red thing on the screen was supposed to be to where it is obvious that you have come across a med pack. Now I want to play a game where I can no longer see that the designer had to restrict himself to an X number of polygons.
Oh and yes I do own a gba. So no I am not totally blinded by pretty graphics. But there is a reason people are excited about the PSP. Can you guess what it is?
Apparently 2-3 dead pixels is perfectly allright. You can of course buy "insurance" against this but still I find something odd. How come none and I mean none of the showroom models have any death pixels? There is even a megastore that has two walls lined with lcd's. I carefully walked past them and no one death pixel on any of them. Odd. I guess all those people complaining about broken lcd's are just unlucky.
mmm, could work like a charm here in holland. Albert Heijn, a local super market whose parent ahold is one of the larger chains world wide, already has a cheap system for prepaid phones. Just go to the checkout say you want 20 euro's for phone brand X and a code is printed on your receit. All phone brands are supported so I guess it is a really cheap way of selling them.
From what I remember the enterprise wasn't going superfast after all the jet managed to catch up. So this test just showed that that ep was possible.
mmm, funny this since a story just been posted that the US army is switching to linux for its land warrior project.
Well the killing youreselve is easier. Just put a tag near the stairs. When the person is just making the first step down. Fade to black.
So if this is true that would be pretty major.
Of course sadly holland is no better. A large fire in a bar at newyears a few years ago. So does the medical helicopter take off? Of course not. Enviromental regulations forbid it to take off because it makes to much noise and people living around the hospital complained.
It is time to shoot the lawyers and the people that hire them.
And good drivers will be checking their rear-view mirrors to see if they should go out of the way. How often have you seen people remaining standing still totally unaware that 20 tons or so of flashing lights and horns is behind them?
Anyway if drug runners wanted a sub they could get a real one. But subs have trouble. Unless you can convince the russians to sell you their latest tech then you are in a noisy vehicle that the US have had decades to learn to track. And track well since the price of not tracking a russian sub well is letting several hundred megatons of nukes get really really close.
Nah I think for now the drug runners have to keep looking. This is a toy.
But really the drugs people that could afford this toy are not intrestted in the perfect solution. Drugs are cheap. People willing to risk their lives smuggling it even cheaper.
The sims huge appeal (among a certain group) is that you can create your own addons like clothes and furniture. So perhaps games that play online where others can actually see your creation they should allow for user created content as well.
Of course they are not going to want that. First time someone adds a topless piece of clothing all hell is going to break loose.
Guess they are just going to have to find a way to create a larger customer base. Here is a tip. Get rid of credit card only subscription. Large parts of the world don't have the widespread use of credit cards. A company like sony does however have local offices pretty much every in the world. Use them to also accept local bank transfers.
Trees need to shed their leaves come winter in order to prevent this very vulnarable part of tree to become damaged and with it damage the tree itself. However these leaves represent a huge amount of resources for the tree. The energe invested in growing them is not a problem. It will have gained enough energe from them in return to regrow them next year.
The minerals however are another matter. Soil contains only a limited amount of the building blocks for leaves and for that matter the tree itself. Were shedded leaves simply to remain indefinete then two problems would occur. Sooner or later the tree would be unable to find any more nutrients in the soil. Hence no more leaves == no more food and the tree would starve. However it would also starve as any leaves it could grow would be covered under a pile of old leaves.
Fortuanlly shedded leaves decompose and the nutrients in them return to the soil. This prevents the soil from becoming starved and stops the earth being covered in huge piles of leaves.
So how does this apply to us? Well take packaging material like glass. It is cheap to make requiring a few cheap chemicals sand and power. Power is cheap sand is cheaper and as said the chemicals involved are also cheap. So why do we recycle glass? Not because the resource is limited. We are not likely to run out of sand anytime soon. Power is more restricted but recycling glass requires a similar amount of energy.
No the reason is to save us from being buried under a mountain of glass. Unless you want to live next to a garbage dump you better recycle glass. It is either used to make new glass or it will just be around forever and ever. (glass does not decompose ever)
Recycling metal is different. Metal ore is a far more finite resource. Yet old metal does decompose. Left long enough it will rust. So why do we recycle? Because it is cheaper in the long run. Every recycled can means less ore needed to be processed to produce replacement metal. Unlike glass recycling metal cost less energy.
So recycling has two goals.
To reduce the amount of waste we have to get rid off and to reduce the strain on the supply of the resource.
So does most recycling help? Wrong question, does recycling hurt? Yes to some it does. I bet you a small fortune that these are the same people that drive a 2 ton car all alone, who think speed limits are a restriction of their civil rights, that taxes are a way to keep them down, that women who don't date them are lesbians, that people with other religions/politics are stupid.
In short assholes. Do you want to be an asshole? No then buy four waste bins and one basket. 1 for paper. 1 for glass. 1 for food remains and finally one for all the rest. The basket is for all the stuff like old tv's fridges batteries and the like. How much time will it cost you to seperate them? Zero. How much time will it cost you to empty them? 1 hour extra per week max. Small price to pay for not being an asshole.
Yup deregulate let private industry handle it. Just look at how well they handle the electricity network. Next.
Hi young one. Let the old and wise tell you about a time before you were born. When home video records, vcr's, were a new technology. Guess what. They wanted to ban those machines. They would destroy hollywood and the tv industry. Some guy called Jack Vallentine or something was very much against them.
I mean geez, that entire interview is so full of holes I am starting to doubt the sanity of the guy. Or maybe it is one of those totally taken out of context interviews.
I mean we all know that the old "640k should be enough for everyone" quote is not all it seems. Now he makes another memory prediction? Talk about stupid.
MS spends a 100 million on security. Oh whoopie. Anyone else think MS pays more in fines for its "criminal" behaviour? It is a company with profits in the billions. 100 million is peanuts and an excellent showcase of how serious MS is about security.
Upgrading IE? First not until longhorn. Oops that caused some bad press, so of course we are going to upgrade it. Notice no actual examples of what is going to be fixed. Granted they did patch the list of security holes. I just had hoped they would apply the patch to IE, not to the list itself.
Then the whopper. MS releases patches faster then linux. Even the most sincere microsoft apologist can't claim that with a straight face. Not if they ever worked with both operating sytems.
No this is like Magrat Tatcher or Ronald Reagan. Dementia is a cruel thing. Please let Bill Gates live out his remaining live with some dignity no need to show him dribling and soiling himself.
I think somewhere in the fast machine that is MS software production there is one tiny but important cog that has a radically different view of what a good OS is then some of the people here, read people who do not like windows.
Considering the HUGE success of MS software it may be argued that we are wrong. If the market wants shit then you would do well to deliver shit.
Windows is not about security, bill gates himself has admitted that. It is not about openes, it is not about giving the user control. It is a simple to use, highly flexible enviroment that blows for stability (compared to other OSes and there are others then linux you know) but runs on dirt cheap hardware. It focusses on adding sparkly things over improving stability or security because that is what their customers want.
McD got big selling cheap cheerful hamburgers whil 2/3 star restaurants go under all the time. Of course something changed recently making McD future looking a lot less bright. Peoples tastes have changed and McD no longer delivers to a large enough group.
The only way MS is going to change the way they build an OS is if it makes sense for them to do so. As long as people keep lapping up XP they got absolutly no reason to do so.
About the only thing that MS could do is make another flavor of windows. A windows that focusses on winning the defectors back over by focussing on security and stability over adding more kitch.
Is this going to happen? Only if MS gets really worried over linux. They certainly got the people to do it. But somewhere in the decision tree at MS there is someone who says. I like XP, lets add more sparklies. It sells.
Longhorn will be intresting. MS got the money on making something new, will they deliver? Who knows. If it is up to usual MS form it will contain only a fraction of the promised features, be renamed and all the features will be added to the next release.
Well anyway US goverment has one less incentive then the rest of the world to want to become less dependent on microsoft.
Openssh had what a gazillion alone? (kidding it was 2 but after you just done a dozen different servers on a dozen different distro's then have to do it again you feel a bit cranky)