Microsoft themselves have given me the strongest argument I need: "you will never see a pop up window telling you that your software needs to be registered to work".
Click. Done. Fire and forget.
In five years I have never been asked to reactivate XP.
I am on the mailing lists for newsletters from Apple, Microsoft and others. I frequently draw down content from their websites. I am one of a billion users on the Windows desktop . I don't spend much time worrying about the program that "phones home."
The zealot never considers the possibility the proprietary alternative may simply be best-of-breed. He inflates the cost by quoting retail list for the most expensive version on the market.
If your employer has a volume licensing agreement with Microsoft, you may be able to get a full version of Office for the price of S&H. Home Use Program
MS Office Home 2007, with a three seat license, sells retail boxed for around $125.
The price of five replacement inkjet cartridges.
The software is essentially a one-time purchase, it's the price of consumables and services that will eat you alive. It is calculations like these that help programs like Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements to compete against the GIMP.
Microsoft Office Home is a handsome and accessible site that consolidates resources for both amateur and professional users. OpenOffice.org plain text, pure Geek, circa 1992.
This is inexcusable for a marquee open source project backed by powerhouses like IBM and Sun.
It does not invite users to dig any deeper into FOSS. Rather it will have them running - not walking - in the opposite direction.
____
God help you if a problem with a FOSS app leads your potential convert to Slashdot and an encounter with the GNAA.
If there's not enough power to go around, build up the infrastructure. I pay for a service. You provide it.
You say you pay for the service.
How much are you willing to pay for the infrastructure needed to supply it?
Present construction costs [for a coal-fired plant] run to US$ 1,300 per kilowatt, or $650 million for a 500 MW unit.Fossil fuel power plant
This is what means to have a coal-fired plant in your back yard, as we do.
Ours is privately owned but pays next to nothing in local taxes, thanks to a sweetheart deal with our state and county legislatures. The power is for export, not local consumption.
A large coal train called a "unit train" may be two kilometers (over a mile) long, containing 100 cars with 100 tons of coal in each one, for a total load of 10,000 tons. A large plant under full load requires at least one coal delivery this size every day. Plants may get as many as three to five trains a day, especially in "peak season", during the summer months when power consumption is high.
9/11 was a flea bite. It killed fewer people than die every month on the highways
That was pure chance.
The population of the WTC complex at noontime was around 90,000.
We are talking about sixteen acres of prime Manhattan office space, an immense public plaza, world-class restaurants, observation decks, shopping centers, an underground transit center, and so on.
The attack was a coordinated assault on iconic American structures and institutions.
The WTC. The Pentagon. Washington, DC. Stop thinking like a Geek for one minute and imagine the public reaction to the loss of the White House or the Capital Building.
Katrina did not ground U.S. continental air traffic or drive an entire industry towards bankruptcy.
There are few world cities that could have taken the economic shock of 9/11. The WTC alone was insured for $4.1 billion in property damage. World Trade Center Disaster
In addition to infrared device, boy also had stolen access keys, which allowed him to enter both trams and the tram-company warehouse. It turned out that he was actually on board of the trams he was derailing - in front of first cars, to be able to influence the switch with remote.
Currently the boy is in correction institute for young criminals and he will spend there 3 months. Depending on the development of the case and his behavior, court will decide about his future. This boy already had some problems in the past and he had curator/warden(?) assigned to him. He was often missing school.
This is the first post I've seen that describes the boy's actions and character realistically. He sounds like a very troubled and potentially very dangerous kid.
If I was the judge I would let him off on the condition that he goes to a school where his curiosity will be encouraged but given enough direction so he doesn't get into more trouble.
In the old days it was called a "reform school." School + Jail. With all the direction the Geek-In-Training could desire.
I mean how many people really bought that Everex gPC, Oh thats right they sold out.
You haven't told me how many units Walmart had to sell.
Some time back, Walmart had a promotional sale of refurbished ThinkPads for $250 bucks or thereabouts. That was a sell out too. Doesn't mean a damn thing, except that Walmart is a deep discount retailer that now again buys whatever crap is up for sale in carload lots.
My 11 yr old has only ever used Linux. She is quite fond of OpenOffice and Inkscape. She...wouldn't even think of plopping down a dime for application software.
Has you ever given her the chance?
OpenOffice.org - and pretty much like every other marquee FOSS project that is remotely of interest to the mass consumer market has been ported to Windows or began as a native Windows app.
Star Office is a free download from Google.
That hasn't stopped MS Office 2007 from becoming a runaway best seller at retail.
Games, yeah again you have a point, It's not like she can play World of Warcraft, Eve Online, Halo, UT2004, Splinter Cell and Half Life 1 & 2, Oh yeah, she can and does. Not to Mention the truckload of Open Source Games available.
How many of these games have native Linux clients and how many need WINE or Caldega? When I scan Linspire's CNR library what I do not see is a "truckload" of OS games. When I open SourceForge what I do see topping the charts is DOSBox and ScummVM.
Emulators for fifteen and twenty year old MSDOS and Windows games.
The house of representatives with 10,000 people might actually be unwieldy enough to actually have to do business, rather than listen to speeches all the time.
In such a system, where do you think the real power lies?
a) with the executive and the 24 member New Hampshire Senate b) with the House committees c) the party leadership d) the permanent committee staff and the New Hampshire lobbyist e) the individual members of the House.
Every now and again the Geek proclaims that this bottom-feeder PC will win the masses over to Linux.
It never happens.
Hardware prices fall - suddenly the Dual Core PC is everywhere - bringing the more muscular and versatile Windows or OSX PC well within budget.
The buyer won't know Emacs.
But he will have heard of Print Shop, Quicken, Paint Shop Pro and a hundred other programs that for him will be a damn sight more useful.
The multifunction HP printer with OSX and Vista drivers starts at $50 at Walmart.
Games remain in print forever - and for $10 at the bargain bin you can bring home the A-list titles that would have strained the bleeding-edge tech of three years back.
How many people do you know that only use a computer for myspace and music that had to
shell out $1000+ in order to get the hardware just to run Vista?
I've seen plenty, and it pisses me off. All that hardware and money wasted for an OS
that's overpriced to begin with.
The hardware to run Vista Premium is $650 at Walmart.com.
The Dual-Core Vista Premium desktop with 2B RAM, 320 GB HDD and the 20 inch widescreen monitor is fast becoming the norm at entry level.
The OfficeMax Christmas special was the $800 Dual-Core HP Premium Vista Premium laptop bundled with an HP multifunction printer and a 6.2 megapixel digital camera.
How many of those who are drawn to these social sites own cell phones, digital cameras, photo quality ink jet printers, camcorders, mp3 players, webcams, a video game console?
How many are billed monthly for cable and broadband Internet? How many are subscribers to XBox Live?
The Geek refuses to see what is perfectly obvious to everyone else. The computer, the high tech gadget, sells to the middle class. The family with significant disposable income.
So the Manhattan project, everything NASA has ever built, and the nuclear reactor are all vaporware?
The Manhattan Project ca 1941-1945 had unlimited wartime drawing rights on american money, manpower and material resources.
Oak Ridge alone was drawing down as much electric power as New York City. The Manhattan Project left behind carelessly disposed radioactive wastes that are still being isolated and contained in 2008.
To get from A to B there are two bridges. One is made of steel and concrete and is safe and the other is made from paper and glue. Both are the same shape, which does it choose?
I think the answer here is that car is either dependent on the database linked to the navigation system or the signs and beacons on the bridge: "Limit 10 Tons"
A small child's bouncy ball crosses the street.
This is where it gets nasty. It could be a dog or cat - anything, really, that a human might associate with a child.
The human mind can make significant inferences from very limited or ambiguous information. The underpass is flooded. Is it safe to go on? The elderly woman at the crosswalk. Will she see or hear you coming?
Rules out the weak, the disabled, many of the elderly, many of the young (safety), and the vast throngs of able-bodied people who, whether you think the reason is justified or not, simply don't want to walk a dozen blocks to make all of their connections every day
The complaints I have heard this winter;
Shelters offer ridiculously inadequate protection against the weather.
The poor can't afford survival gear from L.L. Bean - which is what you need here when conditions turn brutal. I gave up the hike to the suburban bus stop when my body began to rebel against the discomfort and danger.
No one, it seems, stays twenty-something forever.
Snowplows bury sidewalks and shelters. You are forced out into traffic with cars that can barely manage the roads themselves.
drunk merely has to be able to say, "God damn I'm wasted. Car, take me home."
When can the car refuse to obey its driver? When can the driver force the car to surrender control?
It is one thing to plot a plausible route home, it is another thing to adapt to changing conditions.
The failure of a beacon. The splash of mud and snow and salt that blinds a sensor. The lone autonomous vehicle in the open desert can simply wait it out.. You can't strand 15,000 commuters on an upstate expressway in mid-winter.
Never mind that they'll end the problem of drunk driving.
It ends the problem of drunk driving only if the automated system is 100% in control portal-to-portal and 100% reliable portal-to-portal. The drunk will be making the initial decision to take to the roads.
The drunk will take his featherweight urban commuter car out in weather that a farmer wouldn't chance cold sober in a full-sized FWD pickup with 500 pounds of sand in the back to give him some traction.
But it seems by assuming control of the car GM would also be assuming responsibility for the occupants of the vehicle and any other involved in a collision.
It isn't just GM that is exposed.
It is everyone who designs, builds, and maintains the infrastructure on which the car depends. The roadside beacon buried by the county snowplow.
The pattern recognition that cannot distinguish between a raccoon and a small child. Does the robot attempt the potentially very risky maneuvers needed to evade this obstacle or not?
The robot can make tactical decisions. It cannot make moral decisions.
We get computers in the shop all the time with XP on them and people wanting them reloaded
This doesn't mean a damn thing without the numbers.
How many Vista PCs have been sold in your market? Through direct sellers like Dell? The big-box retailer like Best Buy and OfficeMax? How many of their customers even know that you exist?
In a year when Linux showed no growth on the desktop whatever. OS Platform Stats
It was January 31st before Vista entered the consumer market.
Late spring or early summer before the first mid-line DX10 cards appeared.
OEM system sales have been strongest for Vista Premium and Ultimate. TouchSmart, the media PC, the high-end laptop. The product doesn't look like the generic XP box and it sure as hell isn't running on generic XP hardware.
Joe's new 17" widescreen laptop has a dual core CPU.
2 GB RAM, 320 GB HDD, a Light-Scribe DVD burner, surround sound, a fingerprint reader, integrated WiFi, EVDO, a webcam and pretty much everything else that be shoehorned into the case - and all of it with working Vista drivers.
Joe isn't coming into your shop to "upgrade" to XP - or Linux. He's checking out of Best Buy with Office 2007 retail boxed. The Year of Office 2007
Besides the cost of software itself, no matter if it's $3 or $300, Linux runs on lower hardware specs than Microsoft products.
"Less demanding" specs doesn't always translate into a significantly cheaper system.
The Windows PC at Walmart that ships with a monitor and printer has never been much more expensive than the bare bones OEM Linux box. There are enormous economies of scale in building for the OS with 90% of the market.
but sorry the government bureaucrat is the purse-holder but not the ultimate customer
The entire structure of OLPC was built on the assumption that government purchases - in enormous numbers - would drive down costs and put their laptop in the hands of every third world child.
But, once the basic engineering problems are solved, anyone with manufacturing and marketing resources can compete in this market.
The keyboard can be sized comfortably for both adult and child. You can install a Windows, Linux, or OSX distro that can run pretty much everything written for the core OS.
The case doesn't have to be lime green to be weatherproof.
Your market suddenly expands beyond far beyond the elementary grades.
You can probably get the two to five watt x86 CPU and hardware accelerated graphics on a chip - if you have Intel's resources to back you up - and still keep the street price below $200.
Slashdot Mirror
Click. Done. Fire and forget.
In five years I have never been asked to reactivate XP.
I am on the mailing lists for newsletters from Apple, Microsoft and others. I frequently draw down content from their websites. I am one of a billion users on the Windows desktop . I don't spend much time worrying about the program that "phones home."
The zealot never considers the possibility the proprietary alternative may simply be best-of-breed. He inflates the cost by quoting retail list for the most expensive version on the market.
If your employer has a volume licensing agreement with Microsoft, you may be able to get a full version of Office for the price of S&H. Home Use Program
MS Office Home 2007, with a three seat license, sells retail boxed for around $125.
The price of five replacement inkjet cartridges.
The software is essentially a one-time purchase, it's the price of consumables and services that will eat you alive. It is calculations like these that help programs like Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop Elements to compete against the GIMP.
Microsoft Office Home is a handsome and accessible site that consolidates resources for both amateur and professional users. OpenOffice.org plain text, pure Geek, circa 1992.
This is inexcusable for a marquee open source project backed by powerhouses like IBM and Sun.
It does not invite users to dig any deeper into FOSS. Rather it will have them running - not walking - in the opposite direction.
____ God help you if a problem with a FOSS app leads your potential convert to Slashdot and an encounter with the GNAA.
I somethings think there is a special place in Hell for the Geek who thinks he is doing someone else a favor!
You say you pay for the service.
How much are you willing to pay for the infrastructure needed to supply it?
Present construction costs [for a coal-fired plant] run to US$ 1,300 per kilowatt, or $650 million for a 500 MW unit. Fossil fuel power plant
This is what means to have a coal-fired plant in your back yard, as we do.
Ours is privately owned but pays next to nothing in local taxes, thanks to a sweetheart deal with our state and county legislatures. The power is for export, not local consumption.
A large coal train called a "unit train" may be two kilometers (over a mile) long, containing 100 cars with 100 tons of coal in each one, for a total load of 10,000 tons. A large plant under full load requires at least one coal delivery this size every day. Plants may get as many as three to five trains a day, especially in "peak season", during the summer months when power consumption is high.
He was riding the trains he was derailing.
The remote is short-range. He couldn't work this trick at any distance. He can't pretend innocence about its consequences.
That was pure chance.
The population of the WTC complex at noontime was around 90,000.
We are talking about sixteen acres of prime Manhattan office space, an immense public plaza, world-class restaurants, observation decks, shopping centers, an underground transit center, and so on.
The attack was a coordinated assault on iconic American structures and institutions.
The WTC. The Pentagon. Washington, DC. Stop thinking like a Geek for one minute and imagine the public reaction to the loss of the White House or the Capital Building.
Katrina did not ground U.S. continental air traffic or drive an entire industry towards bankruptcy.
There are few world cities that could have taken the economic shock of 9/11. The WTC alone was insured for $4.1 billion in property damage. World Trade Center Disaster
Currently the boy is in correction institute for young criminals and he will spend there 3 months. Depending on the development of the case and his behavior, court will decide about his future. This boy already had some problems in the past and he had curator/warden(?) assigned to him. He was often missing school.
This is the first post I've seen that describes the boy's actions and character realistically. He sounds like a very troubled and potentially very dangerous kid.
In the old days it was called a "reform school." School + Jail. With all the direction the Geek-In-Training could desire.
You haven't told me how many units Walmart had to sell.
Some time back, Walmart had a promotional sale of refurbished ThinkPads for $250 bucks or thereabouts. That was a sell out too. Doesn't mean a damn thing, except that Walmart is a deep discount retailer that now again buys whatever crap is up for sale in carload lots.
My 11 yr old has only ever used Linux. She is quite fond of OpenOffice and Inkscape.
She...wouldn't even think of plopping down a dime for application software.
Has you ever given her the chance?
OpenOffice.org - and pretty much like every other marquee FOSS project that is remotely of interest to the mass consumer market has been ported to Windows or began as a native Windows app.
Star Office is a free download from Google.
That hasn't stopped MS Office 2007 from becoming a runaway best seller at retail.
Games, yeah again you have a point, It's not like she can play World of Warcraft, Eve Online, Halo, UT2004, Splinter Cell and Half Life 1 & 2, Oh yeah, she can and does. Not to Mention the truckload of Open Source Games available.
How many of these games have native Linux clients and how many need WINE or Caldega? When I scan Linspire's CNR library what I do not see is a "truckload" of OS games. When I open SourceForge what I do see topping the charts is DOSBox and ScummVM.
Emulators for fifteen and twenty year old MSDOS and Windows games.
The New Hampshire House has 375 to 400 members. NH House of Representatives They are each paid $200 a year.
New Hampshire has a population of 1,315,000. New Hampshire Quick Facts
In such a system, where do you think the real power lies?
a) with the executive and the 24 member New Hampshire Senate
b) with the House committees
c) the party leadership
d) the permanent committee staff and the New Hampshire lobbyist
e) the individual members of the House.
It never happens.
Hardware prices fall - suddenly the Dual Core PC is everywhere - bringing the more muscular and versatile Windows or OSX PC well within budget.
The buyer won't know Emacs.
But he will have heard of Print Shop, Quicken, Paint Shop Pro and a hundred other programs that for him will be a damn sight more useful.
The multifunction HP printer with OSX and Vista drivers starts at $50 at Walmart.
Games remain in print forever - and for $10 at the bargain bin you can bring home the A-list titles that would have strained the bleeding-edge tech of three years back.
The hardware to run Vista Premium is $650 at Walmart.com.
The Dual-Core Vista Premium desktop with 2B RAM, 320 GB HDD and the 20 inch widescreen monitor is fast becoming the norm at entry level.
The OfficeMax Christmas special was the $800 Dual-Core HP Premium Vista Premium laptop bundled with an HP multifunction printer and a 6.2 megapixel digital camera.
How many of those who are drawn to these social sites own cell phones, digital cameras, photo quality ink jet printers, camcorders, mp3 players, webcams, a video game console?
How many are billed monthly for cable and broadband Internet? How many are subscribers to XBox Live?
The Geek refuses to see what is perfectly obvious to everyone else. The computer, the high tech gadget, sells to the middle class. The family with significant disposable income.
The Manhattan Project ca 1941-1945 had unlimited wartime drawing rights on american money, manpower and material resources.
Oak Ridge alone was drawing down as much electric power as New York City. The Manhattan Project left behind carelessly disposed radioactive wastes that are still being isolated and contained in 2008.
I think the answer here is that car is either dependent on the database linked to the navigation system or the signs and beacons on the bridge: "Limit 10 Tons"
A small child's bouncy ball crosses the street.
This is where it gets nasty. It could be a dog or cat - anything, really, that a human might associate with a child.
The human mind can make significant inferences from very limited or ambiguous information. The underpass is flooded. Is it safe to go on? The elderly woman at the crosswalk. Will she see or hear you coming?
The complaints I have heard this winter;
Shelters offer ridiculously inadequate protection against the weather.
The poor can't afford survival gear from L.L. Bean - which is what you need here when conditions turn brutal. I gave up the hike to the suburban bus stop when my body began to rebel against the discomfort and danger.
No one, it seems, stays twenty-something forever.
Snowplows bury sidewalks and shelters. You are forced out into traffic with cars that can barely manage the roads themselves.
When can the car refuse to obey its driver? When can the driver force the car to surrender control? It is one thing to plot a plausible route home, it is another thing to adapt to changing conditions.
The failure of a beacon. The splash of mud and snow and salt that blinds a sensor. The lone autonomous vehicle in the open desert can simply wait it out.. You can't strand 15,000 commuters on an upstate expressway in mid-winter.
You still haven't told me anything that gives your numbers any meaning.
It ends the problem of drunk driving only if the automated system is 100% in control portal-to-portal and 100% reliable portal-to-portal. The drunk will be making the initial decision to take to the roads.
The drunk will take his featherweight urban commuter car out in weather that a farmer wouldn't chance cold sober in a full-sized FWD pickup with 500 pounds of sand in the back to give him some traction.
It isn't just GM that is exposed.
It is everyone who designs, builds, and maintains the infrastructure on which the car depends. The roadside beacon buried by the county snowplow.
The pattern recognition that cannot distinguish between a raccoon and a small child. Does the robot attempt the potentially very risky maneuvers needed to evade this obstacle or not?
The robot can make tactical decisions. It cannot make moral decisions.
Fine by me.
Who needs BT if the legit on-demand video launches and plays at HD resolution as soon as you request it?
This doesn't mean a damn thing without the numbers.
How many Vista PCs have been sold in your market? Through direct sellers like Dell? The big-box retailer like Best Buy and OfficeMax? How many of their customers even know that you exist?
In a year when Linux showed no growth on the desktop whatever. OS Platform Stats
It was January 31st before Vista entered the consumer market.
Late spring or early summer before the first mid-line DX10 cards appeared.
OEM system sales have been strongest for Vista Premium and Ultimate. TouchSmart, the media PC, the high-end laptop. The product doesn't look like the generic XP box and it sure as hell isn't running on generic XP hardware.
Joe's new 17" widescreen laptop has a dual core CPU.
2 GB RAM, 320 GB HDD, a Light-Scribe DVD burner, surround sound, a fingerprint reader, integrated WiFi, EVDO, a webcam and pretty much everything else that be shoehorned into the case - and all of it with working Vista drivers.
Joe isn't coming into your shop to "upgrade" to XP - or Linux. He's checking out of Best Buy with Office 2007 retail boxed. The Year of Office 2007
"Less demanding" specs doesn't always translate into a significantly cheaper system.
The Windows PC at Walmart that ships with a monitor and printer has never been much more expensive than the bare bones OEM Linux box. There are enormous economies of scale in building for the OS with 90% of the market.
The entire structure of OLPC was built on the assumption that government purchases - in enormous numbers - would drive down costs and put their laptop in the hands of every third world child.
But, once the basic engineering problems are solved, anyone with manufacturing and marketing resources can compete in this market.
The keyboard can be sized comfortably for both adult and child. You can install a Windows, Linux, or OSX distro that can run pretty much everything written for the core OS.
The case doesn't have to be lime green to be weatherproof.
Your market suddenly expands beyond far beyond the elementary grades.
You can probably get the two to five watt x86 CPU and hardware accelerated graphics on a chip - if you have Intel's resources to back you up - and still keep the street price below $200.
Think again.
The third world kid shouldn't have to open a terminal window in Linux to install anything.
He shouldn't be asked to jump through hoops that anyone using Windows, OSX, Ubuntu or Linspire will never see.
Cut-and-paste should "just work."
Plug-ins like Flash are in use everywhere. You lose credibility pretending otherwise,