Oooh. You scare me. How old are you? 12? And nah, I'm not a shill. At least not a paid one -- just volunteerin' today, guv;-)
So from what I see, at least the OOXML spec is honest enough to document that some of its mandates are based on legacy behavior. Whereas ODF does so anyway, with the added disadvantage of a) keeping it hidden b) bragging how clean the spec is and c) basing it on legacy behavior of an Office suite a tiny fraction uses and that hasn't seen any of the broad deployment in the real world.
And you call OOXML useless. That's a matter of opinion. A good case could be made that a spec like ODF that ignores the massive installed base of documents out there is the one that's actually useless.
>> >Microsoft Office MSRP prices have been declining in even nominal terms (and of course in real terms) over the past 10+ years.
> So, you just point to some magical list and ignore inflation. Nice.
What part of 'nominal' and 'real' prices don't you understand? 'Nominal' prices do not correct for inflation and even those have been reducing -- a little -- with every release. If inflation is taken into account (i.e., 'real' prices) , Office prices have gone down quite a bit. Of course, this may not make GNU-types happy because they'd say hey, the price isn't zero yet. And Office prices haven't fallen as much as, say, chip or PC prices. But that doesn't change the fact that prices are falling, not rising.
No real OS (i.e., not a research OS) will have one feature to the complete exclusion of the other because running different environments in production is a pain in the neck, e.g., Solaris in addition to great security (Trusted Solaris) provides good perf tuning. By a similar process all OSes in a given market reach feature parity (in other words, no mature realtime OS is much better than its peers) over time, at which point they compete on the interesting apps available for the platform, which is of course influenced by the developer environment for that OS, market share, etc.
Because of this, users in mature OS segments tend to look at apps (including legacy apps, if any) more than the OS features (unless they are a tiny minority that need cool_feature_X *now*).
> where we pay ever increasing prices for buggy bloatware.
Microsoft Office MSRP prices have been declining in even nominal terms (and of course in real terms) over the past 10+ years. Google News Archive search is your friend -- you can find old MSRP data quite easily with it. And re 'buggy bloatware' - while WordPerfect the word-processor is good (don't know about apps WP Office comes with), I *have* used IBM's SmartSuite, OpenOffice and Microsoft's Office, and give me MS Office anyday. And please don't tell me about LaTeX -- if I have to force naive users to generate well-structured docs, LaTeX isn't an option... I'd rather give them something like Word 2003+ (which can enforce schemas) or come up with my own web-based word processor (I hope Google Docs adds this feature quickly).
> Ideally, a consumer should buy a new computer and have several choices as to which OS(es) will run on it
Do you think a consumer even gives a shit? Or - forget consumers. Do you think folk who purchase IBM big iron give a shit about which OS it runs (apart for needing to know what skills to check when filling HR forms for system administrators), as long as their payroll and inventory get done?
> For documents, the standard should be completely non-proprietary. The specs should be simple and brief, not 6000+ pages of M$ dreck.
The "simple and brief" attitude doesn't work so well for any sort of legacy system. There are two sorts of standards: blue-sky (TCP, IP, HTTP, etc) and those that build on what's already on the market. So unless you have any bright ideas for dealing with docs that *already* exist, be prepared to deal with messy specs (and it's not like the ODF spec is that brief... a famous problem is the ambiguity in the formulas, which effectively makes reverse-engineering StarCalc's formula engine a must to parse ODF properly, effectively making it a hidden part of the spec.)
Since Microsoft charges for anything after installation support anyway, there is no additional cost to them if they provide you with the full functionality of the operating system. It's simply a scam.
What you're arguing for is basically a costs-plus model. What Microsoft is doing is pricing according to perceived market value. Now that is _definitely_ not a scam (neither is Sony's or Apple's or Bose's premium markup on their wares).
> ot including it is no different than limiting the number of connections via a registry value
Some of the restriction mechanisms are definitely stupid, but again, if you have enough technical skills to perceive the stupidity and/or it bothers you, you're probably a potential Linux user anyway. Then again, I remember Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Workstation, which were fairly identical -- to the point that many developers with licenses for both ran Server on their workstations. If you compare Windows XP and 2003 today, you'll find there are quite a few differences and it's nontrivial to set 2003 up for workstation use (although it can be done). I'd say Microsoft has improved their ability to differentiate Windows versions over time and they do have a right to do so.
PS. IIRC the Vista DVD does contain all the versions. If you upgrade with the proper key you can 'unlock' what you want.
> I think comparisons with car manufacturers should be eschewed until the point in time when you can sue Microsoft for damages you incur while using their products.
It's not just cars, *anything* can be sold by charging more for extra 'features'. That applies to salt and breakfast cereal to 747s. It's called product differentiation and it's pretty much Economics 101. How does Microsoft become 'monopolistic' by charging more for certain editions -- they're merely trying to maximize their revenue -- when every other company does the same? It's not like they're hiding the cheaper editions. Hell, given that most home users will buy Vista from their OEMs, they'll probably use Vista Home Premium quite contentedly anyway.
> But that's just the point -- if the iPod is successful as it is now (and it is), what's the point of having it do half again as much as it already does?
That's the point - you don't know. That'd be like a 70s guy asking what's the point of having a general purpose computer when you can have perfectly good word processing machines and tabulating machines? The point is that people do interesting things with your stuff when you open it up.
IBM knew this when it designed the PC. Microsoft knew this when they made MS DOS (and later OSes, including Windows Mobile) available to every OEM. Linus knows this extremely well. The point here isn't that IBM ultimately went out of the PC business or that Microsoft doesn't have a huge share of the smartphone OS market, it is that their ability to spawn platforms has added to their stature in the industry and has materially helped their bottom line.
Apple fans might get excited about the free publicity Apple gets with every launch, but companies like IBM and Microsoft -- and the Open Source community -- get free publicity from a LOT of people every day by creating opportunities for other people to do cool new stuff. And in the long run, the latter kind of publicity is what matters.
It may be leading edge to you, however as someone who's owned an XDA in Europe (and chatted on MSN Messenger when out in the countryside in 2002), it leaves me unimpressed. The Multi-touch screen is impressive, sure, but I didn't have too much trouble with the XDA's stylus and it allowed me to take handwritten notes with decent handwriting recognition.
Apple's stuff may be pretty, but you've got to remember that any cellphone sold in the US is behind the state-of-the-art by 18-24 months at least compared to markets like Europe and Asia. So I'd be careful about bandying about terms like 'leading edge'.
> It does everything I need a phone to do, and third party applications allow me to use if for things I didn't imagine I would need it for when I got it.
Indeed. I wonder if the iPhone will ever run Skype, for example (XDAs sold in the UK do). The article in the submission goes through embarrassing contortions to 'prove' that a walled-garden approach to software is good in the face of all evidence. Even the iPod marketplace is a bit of a joke, given that device does half as much as it could if given a free marketplace.
In many ways, this approach is the anti-thesis of Open Source: valuing spit and polish over flexibility and the freedom to tinker. Now I value polish, I just don't think it should mean as much as it does to Macheads.
Allow me to present my Apple credentials. An original LC owner from around 1993 (I think), then skipped out but back in for a 12" Powerbook when Jaguar was released. Our household has a MacBook Pro, a MacBook, a dual G5 tower, an (Intel) Mac Mini and an SE/30 for nostalgia. Pro-Apple enough perhaps?
I find it disturbing that so many Slashdot posts feel spending thousands of dollars on Apple gear entitles them to criticize Apple. It doesn't work that way in real life, guys. Take women. I've spent thousands of $$$ on women but I still get to sleep on the couch for imagined slights.
Dude, you're killing my hard-on! Can we leave the facts for later? I need the Macworld high to last at least a couple of weeks so I can count the moments until I get my iPhone(tm) in the summer?
There'll be no Flash or Java on the first iteration of these phones, although that's probably because involving too many developers would kill the secrecy around this product. The next revs will probably support them.
Another kicker is: no video support in the current camera (although that'll probably change soon). Lots of people use their cameras to record video.
Jeez, that's meaningful only if you can move your OSX apps to this device and run them unchanged. If they do, then yes, it runs OSX. Otherwise, what Jobs claimed in the keynote was dishonest (gasp!).
Btw, Pocket PCs+Cellphones like the XDA compare very well with this phone. They use a stylus though -- Apple still gets a lot of credit for the multi-touch screen (it seems that the concept is not unique to Apple, although their implementation of is certainly world-class and it will be hard to work around their patents). These Pocket PCs come bundled with a IMAP+POP mail client (Pocket Outlook), Pocket IE and a pocket word processor and spreadsheet. And you can use 3rd party software, like Skype or Opera.
However, the thing with Pocket PCs is that Microsoft has been quite honest about labelling the OS as Windows CE (now Windows Mobile?). Anyone who has the MSDN library will know that CE and desktop Windows are about 85% the same (including support for the.NET framework), but they aren't the same thing. It would have been more honest for Apple to call this OSX Mobile or something. But all that is moot given the current rumors that this won't run 3rd party apps (I do hope those rumors are false and hope to see them debunked soon).
Well, about businesses, as David Pogue pointed out, typing on this thing is hard. It seems it's going to be hard to touch type on this, and if you've sat through 3 hour meetings, you'll know that under-the-table typing is _the_ killer app for Blackberries.
And let's not even get started about IT grumbling about getting music-and-video devices for employees...
> Because a bad service available to everyone is better than no service available to most of them.
Oh I agree. This isn't a diatribe against public education, only the pretence that the education thus provided is of uniformly high quality. People who feel their public schools suck ought to know there are alternatives instead of complaining about 'government monopolies', which is what the GP was complaining about.
I should rant about socialised healthcare next:-). You'll be surprised how many parallels there are with education there.
> Where as the schools are a government monopoly. Public incompetence is forced on you with a gun to your head! Don't like a public school teacher? FUCK OFF!
Schools aren't quite a government monopoly, either in the US or the UK. You *could* go to a private school (if you think the fees are worth it). You'll probably find private school teachers far less willing to take BS from students, though. OTOH they make this up by on average providing better quality. Or if private schools sound too preppish for you, lots of affluent suburbs have great community-run schools staffed by some pretty awesome people -- you could move to one of these places.
The problem in public education is the same as that in publicly provided health services: a quality service is difficult to scale to lots of people. Yet the government cheerfully perpetuates the myth that it's providing a world-class service, and the lemmings^Wvoters swallow it.
He wasn't a sitting PM, true. However, he was campaigning in a general election in which opinion polls predicted a win for his party (of which he was the nominated PM). Indeed his party did win and another person was appointed PM.
Anyway, the bottom line is that these guys assassinated one of India's best-known leaders. If you think that made them many friends in India, think again.
When I said 'you' I meant 'you' as an LTTE symathizer. I don't care if your parents are Indian, Tamil, German or chimp.
I did, however, follow a time in the earlier eighties, that is long before said prime minister was assassinated, when the then Sri Lankan president saw it fit, to stand by when probably a thousand Tamils were slaughtered for being just that, Tamils.
Oh please. Far more Indians and Black South Africans have been slaughtered (by the British and the Apartheid regime), and yet they chose a dignified peaceful path to their emancipation.
Including assassinating an Indian prime minister (though India had tried to interfere, anxious an independent Tamil in Sri Lanka would stir unrest in Tamil Nadu).
I find the 'though India had tried to interfere' very interesting, especially when you say "I don't condone or deny any later atrocity". You are condoning it. Ironically, this assassination was a monumental strategic blunder: it turned Indian Tamils away from the LTTE and made LTTE a very bad smell indeed among Indians sympathetic to it. Indeed LTTE commanders have gone on the record saying it was a mistake (no thoughs or buts in that interview).
> The terrorists in this case are - I don't expect you to believe me, but I used to live there - the Buddhist clergy and their puppets, the Sri Lankan government.
Yeah, but because you took the peaceful step of assassinating an Indian prime minister, you're a bunch of terrorist scumbags for 1.1 billion people. Actions, Consequences.
Because it takes customers away from superior products? Because they have this grandiose page saying things like on no account will they compromise the integrity of search results. And yeah, I'd say putting unmarked ads -- a.k.a Tips -- over standard results does compromise the integrity of the results, especially since they're not clearly marked as the ads they are.
To put this another way: CNN routinely cross-promotes Time-Warner movies as 'news', and gets routinely razzed for doing so (unless they've stopped -- I've stopped watching). So did many other publications, and these days the better ones have taken to labeling such articles with a 'note: we have the same parent' notice. Even Slashdot marks links to OSTG sites. It's basic ethics. But of course, if you see Google's search results as a haven for commercials, you'll fail to see the point -- just like execs at AltaVista and Yahoo Search once failed and gave Google their chance. They might as well put huge blinking banner ads there next.
Slashdot Mirror
> You're a *shill*
;-)
Oooh. You scare me. How old are you? 12? And nah, I'm not a shill. At least not a paid one -- just volunteerin' today, guv
So from what I see, at least the OOXML spec is honest enough to document that some of its mandates are based on legacy behavior. Whereas ODF does so anyway, with the added disadvantage of a) keeping it hidden b) bragging how clean the spec is and c) basing it on legacy behavior of an Office suite a tiny fraction uses and that hasn't seen any of the broad deployment in the real world.
And you call OOXML useless. That's a matter of opinion. A good case could be made that a spec like ODF that ignores the massive installed base of documents out there is the one that's actually useless.
>> >Microsoft Office MSRP prices have been declining in even nominal terms (and of course in real terms) over the past 10+ years.
> So, you just point to some magical list and ignore inflation. Nice.
What part of 'nominal' and 'real' prices don't you understand? 'Nominal' prices do not correct for inflation and even those have been reducing -- a little -- with every release. If inflation is taken into account (i.e., 'real' prices) , Office prices have gone down quite a bit. Of course, this may not make GNU-types happy because they'd say hey, the price isn't zero yet. And Office prices haven't fallen as much as, say, chip or PC prices. But that doesn't change the fact that prices are falling, not rising.
No real OS (i.e., not a research OS) will have one feature to the complete exclusion of the other because running different environments in production is a pain in the neck, e.g., Solaris in addition to great security (Trusted Solaris) provides good perf tuning. By a similar process all OSes in a given market reach feature parity (in other words, no mature realtime OS is much better than its peers) over time, at which point they compete on the interesting apps available for the platform, which is of course influenced by the developer environment for that OS, market share, etc.
Because of this, users in mature OS segments tend to look at apps (including legacy apps, if any) more than the OS features (unless they are a tiny minority that need cool_feature_X *now*).
> where we pay ever increasing prices for buggy bloatware.
... I'd rather give them something like Word 2003+ (which can enforce schemas) or come up with my own web-based word processor (I hope Google Docs adds this feature quickly).
... a famous problem is the ambiguity in the formulas, which effectively makes reverse-engineering StarCalc's formula engine a must to parse ODF properly, effectively making it a hidden part of the spec.)
Microsoft Office MSRP prices have been declining in even nominal terms (and of course in real terms) over the past 10+ years. Google News Archive search is your friend -- you can find old MSRP data quite easily with it. And re 'buggy bloatware' - while WordPerfect the word-processor is good (don't know about apps WP Office comes with), I *have* used IBM's SmartSuite, OpenOffice and Microsoft's Office, and give me MS Office anyday. And please don't tell me about LaTeX -- if I have to force naive users to generate well-structured docs, LaTeX isn't an option
> Ideally, a consumer should buy a new computer and have several choices as to which OS(es) will run on it
Do you think a consumer even gives a shit? Or - forget consumers. Do you think folk who purchase IBM big iron give a shit about which OS it runs (apart for needing to know what skills to check when filling HR forms for system administrators), as long as their payroll and inventory get done?
> For documents, the standard should be completely non-proprietary. The specs should be simple and brief, not 6000+ pages of M$ dreck.
The "simple and brief" attitude doesn't work so well for any sort of legacy system. There are two sorts of standards: blue-sky (TCP, IP, HTTP, etc) and those that build on what's already on the market. So unless you have any bright ideas for dealing with docs that *already* exist, be prepared to deal with messy specs (and it's not like the ODF spec is that brief
But hey
They invented a lot of things, but not zero. There's quite a bit of evidence that the Arabs got that from the Indians.
Since Microsoft charges for anything after installation support anyway, there is no additional cost to them if they provide you with the full functionality of the operating system. It's simply a scam.
What you're arguing for is basically a costs-plus model. What Microsoft is doing is pricing according to perceived market value. Now that is _definitely_ not a scam (neither is Sony's or Apple's or Bose's premium markup on their wares).
> ot including it is no different than limiting the number of connections via a registry value
Some of the restriction mechanisms are definitely stupid, but again, if you have enough technical skills to perceive the stupidity and/or it bothers you, you're probably a potential Linux user anyway. Then again, I remember Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Workstation, which were fairly identical -- to the point that many developers with licenses for both ran Server on their workstations. If you compare Windows XP and 2003 today, you'll find there are quite a few differences and it's nontrivial to set 2003 up for workstation use (although it can be done). I'd say Microsoft has improved their ability to differentiate Windows versions over time and they do have a right to do so.
PS. IIRC the Vista DVD does contain all the versions. If you upgrade with the proper key you can 'unlock' what you want.
> I think comparisons with car manufacturers should be eschewed until the point in time when you can sue Microsoft for damages you incur while using their products.
It's not just cars, *anything* can be sold by charging more for extra 'features'. That applies to salt and breakfast cereal to 747s. It's called product differentiation and it's pretty much Economics 101. How does Microsoft become 'monopolistic' by charging more for certain editions -- they're merely trying to maximize their revenue -- when every other company does the same? It's not like they're hiding the cheaper editions. Hell, given that most home users will buy Vista from their OEMs, they'll probably use Vista Home Premium quite contentedly anyway.
> As for Microsoft Outlook... who uses it these days anyway? I sure as hell don't.
... but no one goes there any more, it's too crowded.
It's like this club that was cool once
> But that's just the point -- if the iPod is successful as it is now (and it is), what's the point of having it do half again as much as it already does?
That's the point - you don't know. That'd be like a 70s guy asking what's the point of having a general purpose computer when you can have perfectly good word processing machines and tabulating machines? The point is that people do interesting things with your stuff when you open it up.
IBM knew this when it designed the PC. Microsoft knew this when they made MS DOS (and later OSes, including Windows Mobile) available to every OEM. Linus knows this extremely well. The point here isn't that IBM ultimately went out of the PC business or that Microsoft doesn't have a huge share of the smartphone OS market, it is that their ability to spawn platforms has added to their stature in the industry and has materially helped their bottom line.
Apple fans might get excited about the free publicity Apple gets with every launch, but companies like IBM and Microsoft -- and the Open Source community -- get free publicity from a LOT of people every day by creating opportunities for other people to do cool new stuff. And in the long run, the latter kind of publicity is what matters.
It may be leading edge to you, however as someone who's owned an XDA in Europe (and chatted on MSN Messenger when out in the countryside in 2002), it leaves me unimpressed. The Multi-touch screen is impressive, sure, but I didn't have too much trouble with the XDA's stylus and it allowed me to take handwritten notes with decent handwriting recognition.
Apple's stuff may be pretty, but you've got to remember that any cellphone sold in the US is behind the state-of-the-art by 18-24 months at least compared to markets like Europe and Asia. So I'd be careful about bandying about terms like 'leading edge'.
> It does everything I need a phone to do, and third party applications allow me to use if for things I didn't imagine I would need it for when I got it.
Indeed. I wonder if the iPhone will ever run Skype, for example (XDAs sold in the UK do). The article in the submission goes through embarrassing contortions to 'prove' that a walled-garden approach to software is good in the face of all evidence. Even the iPod marketplace is a bit of a joke, given that device does half as much as it could if given a free marketplace.
In many ways, this approach is the anti-thesis of Open Source: valuing spit and polish over flexibility and the freedom to tinker. Now I value polish, I just don't think it should mean as much as it does to Macheads.
I find it disturbing that so many Slashdot posts feel spending thousands of dollars on Apple gear entitles them to criticize Apple. It doesn't work that way in real life, guys. Take women. I've spent thousands of $$$ on women but I still get to sleep on the couch for imagined slights.
> Successful launch of the iPhone? What launch?
Dude, you're killing my hard-on! Can we leave the facts for later? I need the Macworld high to last at least a couple of weeks so I can count the moments until I get my iPhone(tm) in the summer?
> Also, what about web games that use Flash.
There'll be no Flash or Java on the first iteration of these phones, although that's probably because involving too many developers would kill the secrecy around this product. The next revs will probably support them.
Another kicker is: no video support in the current camera (although that'll probably change soon). Lots of people use their cameras to record video.
> Can it run OS X?
.NET framework), but they aren't the same thing. It would have been more honest for Apple to call this OSX Mobile or something. But all that is moot given the current rumors that this won't run 3rd party apps (I do hope those rumors are false and hope to see them debunked soon).
Jeez, that's meaningful only if you can move your OSX apps to this device and run them unchanged. If they do, then yes, it runs OSX. Otherwise, what Jobs claimed in the keynote was dishonest (gasp!).
Btw, Pocket PCs+Cellphones like the XDA compare very well with this phone. They use a stylus though -- Apple still gets a lot of credit for the multi-touch screen (it seems that the concept is not unique to Apple, although their implementation of is certainly world-class and it will be hard to work around their patents). These Pocket PCs come bundled with a IMAP+POP mail client (Pocket Outlook), Pocket IE and a pocket word processor and spreadsheet. And you can use 3rd party software, like Skype or Opera.
However, the thing with Pocket PCs is that Microsoft has been quite honest about labelling the OS as Windows CE (now Windows Mobile?). Anyone who has the MSDN library will know that CE and desktop Windows are about 85% the same (including support for the
> Businesses do.
Well, about businesses, as David Pogue pointed out, typing on this thing is hard. It seems it's going to be hard to touch type on this, and if you've sat through 3 hour meetings, you'll know that under-the-table typing is _the_ killer app for Blackberries.
And let's not even get started about IT grumbling about getting music-and-video devices for employees...
Seriously, why couldn't this have been network-independent? Surely they don't expect Apple folk to lemming-like move to Cingular?
Surely you jest. Verdana is not evil, merely overused. Comics Sans, now _that_ is the true face of evil.
> Because a bad service available to everyone is better than no service available to most of them.
:-). You'll be surprised how many parallels there are with education there.
Oh I agree. This isn't a diatribe against public education, only the pretence that the education thus provided is of uniformly high quality. People who feel their public schools suck ought to know there are alternatives instead of complaining about 'government monopolies', which is what the GP was complaining about.
I should rant about socialised healthcare next
> Where as the schools are a government monopoly. Public incompetence is forced on you with a gun to your head! Don't like a public school teacher? FUCK OFF!
Schools aren't quite a government monopoly, either in the US or the UK. You *could* go to a private school (if you think the fees are worth it). You'll probably find private school teachers far less willing to take BS from students, though. OTOH they make this up by on average providing better quality. Or if private schools sound too preppish for you, lots of affluent suburbs have great community-run schools staffed by some pretty awesome people -- you could move to one of these places.
The problem in public education is the same as that in publicly provided health services: a quality service is difficult to scale to lots of people. Yet the government cheerfully perpetuates the myth that it's providing a world-class service, and the lemmings^Wvoters swallow it.
He wasn't a sitting PM, true. However, he was campaigning in a general election in which opinion polls predicted a win for his party (of which he was the nominated PM). Indeed his party did win and another person was appointed PM.
Anyway, the bottom line is that these guys assassinated one of India's best-known leaders. If you think that made them many friends in India, think again.
When I said 'you' I meant 'you' as an LTTE symathizer. I don't care if your parents are Indian, Tamil, German or chimp.
I did, however, follow a time in the earlier eighties, that is long before said prime minister was assassinated, when the then Sri Lankan president saw it fit, to stand by when probably a thousand Tamils were slaughtered for being just that, Tamils.
Oh please. Far more Indians and Black South Africans have been slaughtered (by the British and the Apartheid regime), and yet they chose a dignified peaceful path to their emancipation.
Including assassinating an Indian prime minister (though India had tried to interfere, anxious an independent Tamil in Sri Lanka would stir unrest in Tamil Nadu).
I find the 'though India had tried to interfere' very interesting, especially when you say "I don't condone or deny any later atrocity". You are condoning it. Ironically, this assassination was a monumental strategic blunder: it turned Indian Tamils away from the LTTE and made LTTE a very bad smell indeed among Indians sympathetic to it. Indeed LTTE commanders have gone on the record saying it was a mistake (no thoughs or buts in that interview).
> The terrorists in this case are - I don't expect you to believe me, but I used to live there - the Buddhist clergy and their puppets, the Sri Lankan government.
Yeah, but because you took the peaceful step of assassinating an Indian prime minister, you're a bunch of terrorist scumbags for 1.1 billion people. Actions, Consequences.
Because it takes customers away from superior products? Because they have this grandiose page saying things like on no account will they compromise the integrity of search results. And yeah, I'd say putting unmarked ads -- a.k.a Tips -- over standard results does compromise the integrity of the results, especially since they're not clearly marked as the ads they are.
To put this another way: CNN routinely cross-promotes Time-Warner movies as 'news', and gets routinely razzed for doing so (unless they've stopped -- I've stopped watching). So did many other publications, and these days the better ones have taken to labeling such articles with a 'note: we have the same parent' notice. Even Slashdot marks links to OSTG sites. It's basic ethics. But of course, if you see Google's search results as a haven for commercials, you'll fail to see the point -- just like execs at AltaVista and Yahoo Search once failed and gave Google their chance. They might as well put huge blinking banner ads there next.
> Yes you most likely paid a modest 30-40 USD for the OEM license as part of your PC cost.
And you can get that money back.