I want that too! But there are more obstacles than processing power - how many designer man months do you need to create those levels. Drawing every single object in 3D? So some sort of way to do that faster will have to be invented before we get there. Maybe "AI artists", software able to make a 3D world of movie footage - don't know but I'm looking forward to that day since I'm sure it will come. And another thing: imagine the terabyte "storage whatever" those will be sold on since DVDs aren't enough for such amounts of data.
UI design costs money but so does coding and that raises a question: Why don't usability experts contribute to open source projects the same way people writing the code do? Is it because they don't want to contribute for free or is it because coders are likely to ignore their recommendations anyway in favor of their own personal preferences and then say "I'm doing this voluntarily so don't tell me what to do!" I'm just asking - not trying to offend anyone.
Not my concern if your manufacturing methods are not optimal. Seems to me the last step in manufacturing a computer is to copy the software on. If it costs you more to not put software on a computer, there is something wrong with your company!
Did you come to think of after-sales issues? You have to take into account support and warranties as well. Laptops are sold as "complete packages" - and thus the warranty and support has to cover all of it. So if somebody returns a laptop with linux pre-installed and complains that something is wrong you need to have personnel that can determine what the problem is, ie. is it possibly a hardware failure or has the customer screwed up the configuration. And more employee skills cost more. Of course I wish that I could by a laptop without any operating system - so that I could put Gentoo on it:)
As far as other languages than English are concerned the possibility to add a wildcard to the end of words would help a lot (eg. "word*") due to the different endings in different forms of the same word. For example in Swedish a noun can have four different endings (singular and plural, and both as definite) and in Finnish 14-15 (replacing prepositions completely).
In case you haven't noticed MS benefits enormously by breaking standards and creating their own. To the average user MS standards are the only standards and since OpenOffice, Mozilla etc. can't implement.doc and their html 100% correct it makes them look bad, ie. "that must be crapp, my homepage looked good in IE"
3. It is easier on foreigners who use other forms of writing (like Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Arabic languages), in other words it is a better way to communicate in an increasingly global society.
Yes, and sometimes that can result in something funny... I remember a girl getting an e-mail in Swedish, written on a keyboard without a "ö" (in German known as o umlaut, in Swedish considered as a separate letter) - instead of being
"...du kan väl höra av dig..." meaning something like "let (us) hear from you", without the dots over the "o" it became "du kan val hora av dig" meaning "please, fuck around (so that you'll stop being so horny)"
This is getting off-topic but your explanation is contradictory - why would the EU request a change to an agreement if the whole agreement is already invalid and thus can be ignored anyway?
the direct translation from Finnish is either something like "stair shelters" or alternatively something like "stair muzzles" or "stair traps" (as in "shut your trap!")...
Not quite. All countries in Europe use the GSM network - digital with encryption, packet switching etc. security features (search "GSM encryption" on google if you want more information). So it's much harder to tap into that than to any POTS. Thus it's the obvious that the police goes through the network operator.
delay is the key, it's not uncommon for various chip manufacturers to choose not to patent anything since they can guard their technology better then - it's more important to have a sligthly longer competitive advantage period than a patent on something that becomes obsolete quickly anyway
i'm repeating myself but this is worth repeating:
European courts could find that Microsoft was engaging in illegal practices and void part, or all, of the EULAs involved.
the EULAs are completely 100% absolutely invalid in the EU already - I've checked a EU consumer rights page (sorry, I don't have the link here right now) which in a FAQ on software purchases explicitly stated that no "click-through" agreement is valid
I've already put this in one comment but I think it's worth repeating:
Thirdly, they can adjudge MS' EULA's illegal under EU human rights laws. This is another remedy which has been discussed.
the EULAs are completely 100% absolutely invalid in the EU already - I've checked a EU consumer rights page (sorry, I don't have the link here right now) which in a FAQ on software purchases explicitly stated that no "click-through" agreement is valid
... as shown here. The European Union was formed to guarantee the freedom of trade.
you mean the EFTA???
the origin of the EU is the "coal and steel union" (I'm too lazy to find the proper English term for that - that's a direct translation from what I learnt in school in Sweden) - basically the idea was to prevent another war by make the economies of germany and france dependent on each other (at the time coal and steel were the most important goods), other countries joined later
If you live in an EU country (like I do) you might remember how long the preparation for the currency switch was... But then again some of the preventions of mergers were done within months, so maybe we'll see something nice coming out of this fairly quickly:)
There are killer apps and then there are Killer Apps like MS Office and Adobe Photoshop.
Maybe we couldn't get the "killer MS apps" but if Linux' market share in the EU all of a sudden increases enormously don't you think Adobe (and others) would be porting their apps to Linux damn quickly!
It's not about excluding customers, business practices or common sense!!! It's about whether a society feels that it should have compassion for the disabled and thus rules and regulations that make life easier for them. In general the special needs of disabled people make it more costly to serve them - not only in this case but eg. somebody in a wheel chair requiring assistance at the airport/cinema/whatever. And they are too small a minority of customers to ever make it worth the extra costs. However, with regulation in place all companies face the same additional costs and thus the playing field is even for all companies and then to serve or not to serve the disabled is not a business decision.
Don't explain it to the CEO yourself! Simply state that you're not at fault (and actually not involved at all) and that anybody who's somewhat computer literate can explain the forged header. That way you get two benefits: 1. You point out that you don't want to waste your time on that crap. 2. The CEO can be sure that his source of information is independent.
The Mars Odyssey had one. I saw it live on BBC and it was awesome but they were stupid enough to most of the time fill 2/3 of the screen with pictures from the studio where they iterviewed some expert at the same time. I did find it on the web later as well but can't remember where but try google now that you know the name of the mission.
Well, probably not movie footage. But I'd really love to see something more than just still images - the rover moving a little, maybe some dust moving in the wind etc. - and that would probably be more interesting for the vast majority of people (who don't understand much of the science mumbo jumbo and thus don't care). Unfortunately downloading the data is too slow and still images offer more scientific value (higher resolution and so on). A divx shot by a rover would be really nice though:)
I was actually asked to name five operating systems my very first computer-related job interview. I did exceed that number but I wish I could have said that I'd installed 37 on my computer...
Why on earth would they choose 4.7 for such a reason? Not a single customer gives a damn about how fast their first one ran when they're buying one now.
Slashdot Mirror
I want that too! But there are more obstacles than processing power - how many designer man months do you need to create those levels. Drawing every single object in 3D? So some sort of way to do that faster will have to be invented before we get there. Maybe "AI artists", software able to make a 3D world of movie footage - don't know but I'm looking forward to that day since I'm sure it will come. And another thing: imagine the terabyte "storage whatever" those will be sold on since DVDs aren't enough for such amounts of data.
UI design costs money but so does coding and that raises a question: Why don't usability experts contribute to open source projects the same way people writing the code do? Is it because they don't want to contribute for free or is it because coders are likely to ignore their recommendations anyway in favor of their own personal preferences and then say "I'm doing this voluntarily so don't tell me what to do!" I'm just asking - not trying to offend anyone.
Not my concern if your manufacturing methods are not optimal. Seems to me the last step in manufacturing a computer is to copy the software on. If it costs you more to not put software on a computer, there is something wrong with your company! :)
Did you come to think of after-sales issues? You have to take into account support and warranties as well. Laptops are sold as "complete packages" - and thus the warranty and support has to cover all of it. So if somebody returns a laptop with linux pre-installed and complains that something is wrong you need to have personnel that can determine what the problem is, ie. is it possibly a hardware failure or has the customer screwed up the configuration. And more employee skills cost more. Of course I wish that I could by a laptop without any operating system - so that I could put Gentoo on it
As far as other languages than English are concerned the possibility to add a wildcard to the end of words would help a lot (eg. "word*") due to the different endings in different forms of the same word. For example in Swedish a noun can have four different endings (singular and plural, and both as definite) and in Finnish 14-15 (replacing prepositions completely).
In case you haven't noticed MS benefits enormously by breaking standards and creating their own. To the average user MS standards are the only standards and since OpenOffice, Mozilla etc. can't implement .doc and their html 100% correct it makes them look bad, ie. "that must be crapp, my homepage looked good in IE"
Yes, and it was still received by NASA's Deep Space Network without anybody figuring that out.
the shit will hit the fan!
3. It is easier on foreigners who use other forms of writing (like Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Arabic languages), in other words it is a better way to communicate in an increasingly global society.
Yes, and sometimes that can result in something funny... I remember a girl getting an e-mail in Swedish, written on a keyboard without a "ö" (in German known as o umlaut, in Swedish considered as a separate letter) - instead of being
"...du kan väl höra av dig..."
meaning something like "let (us) hear from you", without the dots over the "o" it became
"du kan val hora av dig"
meaning "please, fuck around (so that you'll stop being so horny)"
This is getting off-topic but your explanation is contradictory - why would the EU request a change to an agreement if the whole agreement is already invalid and thus can be ignored anyway?
the direct translation from Finnish is either something like "stair shelters" or alternatively something like "stair muzzles" or "stair traps" (as in "shut your trap!")...
Not quite. All countries in Europe use the GSM network - digital with encryption, packet switching etc. security features (search "GSM encryption" on google if you want more information). So it's much harder to tap into that than to any POTS. Thus it's the obvious that the police goes through the network operator.
delay is the key, it's not uncommon for various chip manufacturers to choose not to patent anything since they can guard their technology better then - it's more important to have a sligthly longer competitive advantage period than a patent on something that becomes obsolete quickly anyway
i'm repeating myself but this is worth repeating: European courts could find that Microsoft was engaging in illegal practices and void part, or all, of the EULAs involved.
the EULAs are completely 100% absolutely invalid in the EU already - I've checked a EU consumer rights page (sorry, I don't have the link here right now) which in a FAQ on software purchases explicitly stated that no "click-through" agreement is valid
I've already put this in one comment but I think it's worth repeating: Thirdly, they can adjudge MS' EULA's illegal under EU human rights laws. This is another remedy which has been discussed. the EULAs are completely 100% absolutely invalid in the EU already - I've checked a EU consumer rights page (sorry, I don't have the link here right now) which in a FAQ on software purchases explicitly stated that no "click-through" agreement is valid
... as shown here. The European Union was formed to guarantee the freedom of trade. you mean the EFTA??? the origin of the EU is the "coal and steel union" (I'm too lazy to find the proper English term for that - that's a direct translation from what I learnt in school in Sweden) - basically the idea was to prevent another war by make the economies of germany and france dependent on each other (at the time coal and steel were the most important goods), other countries joined later
If you live in an EU country (like I do) you might remember how long the preparation for the currency switch was... But then again some of the preventions of mergers were done within months, so maybe we'll see something nice coming out of this fairly quickly :)
There are killer apps and then there are Killer Apps like MS Office and Adobe Photoshop. Maybe we couldn't get the "killer MS apps" but if Linux' market share in the EU all of a sudden increases enormously don't you think Adobe (and others) would be porting their apps to Linux damn quickly!
and the Swedish
It's not about excluding customers, business practices or common sense!!! It's about whether a society feels that it should have compassion for the disabled and thus rules and regulations that make life easier for them. In general the special needs of disabled people make it more costly to serve them - not only in this case but eg. somebody in a wheel chair requiring assistance at the airport/cinema/whatever. And they are too small a minority of customers to ever make it worth the extra costs. However, with regulation in place all companies face the same additional costs and thus the playing field is even for all companies and then to serve or not to serve the disabled is not a business decision.
A comment of mine to another story is relevant here as well so I may just as well repeat it (and since my karma is 0 anyway...). Here.
Don't explain it to the CEO yourself! Simply state that you're not at fault (and actually not involved at all) and that anybody who's somewhat computer literate can explain the forged header. That way you get two benefits: 1. You point out that you don't want to waste your time on that crap. 2. The CEO can be sure that his source of information is independent.
The Mars Odyssey had one. I saw it live on BBC and it was awesome but they were stupid enough to most of the time fill 2/3 of the screen with pictures from the studio where they iterviewed some expert at the same time. I did find it on the web later as well but can't remember where but try google now that you know the name of the mission.
Well, probably not movie footage. But I'd really love to see something more than just still images - the rover moving a little, maybe some dust moving in the wind etc. - and that would probably be more interesting for the vast majority of people (who don't understand much of the science mumbo jumbo and thus don't care). Unfortunately downloading the data is too slow and still images offer more scientific value (higher resolution and so on). A divx shot by a rover would be really nice though :)
I was actually asked to name five operating systems my very first computer-related job interview. I did exceed that number but I wish I could have said that I'd installed 37 on my computer...
Why on earth would they choose 4.7 for such a reason? Not a single customer gives a damn about how fast their first one ran when they're buying one now.