Most netbooks offer Linux as an option and due to no Windows tax they are usually either cheaper or make up with it with better hardware than their Windows counterparts.
Not even nearly true anymore. Microsoft freaked out about the linux netbook phenomenon and slashed the price of XP on netbooks. Combine that with the awfulness of the early netbook distros, and it was an easy decision for netbook manufacturers to go with Microsoft again.
I'm hopeful the netbook wars are starting again in six months or so but we'll have to see. In the meantime we just have to admit that Microsoft owns that market as well.
I used the term 'pretty much' because I knew I'd be corrected otherwise (by several disagreeing posters rooting for StG44, Cei-Rigotti, Mondragon, Fedorov Avtomat or whatever else): with hindsight I agree that my hint was not clear enough.
I wonder if there is something else I failed at conveying since my post is now marked flamebait? That was definitely not the intention.
An AK-47 is semi-auto, not full-auto, so your question is irrelevant.
There may be semi-auto versions available for hobbyists, but as a general statement that is just wrong. The AK-47 is definitely a proper assault rifle capable of emptying the 30 round magazine in 3 seconds if need be. In fact it is pretty much the mother of all assault rifles, copied dozens of times around the world.
Advertising something as "multi-platform" is a joke when one platform is always at least one version ahead of the other platforms: it looks like silverlight 3 support will be available on Windows before Moonlight actually supports silverlight 2.
Now, keeping things that way might not be Microsofts intention in this case but knowing their track record I'm not betting on it.
Why should I, as a Windows Admin, have to write an incredibly long and painfully meticulous netsh command to allow something past my firewall when I can just click my way to network settings?
...
Step back a second, and ask all of those questions with their Linux counterparts. The answer turns into "BECAUSE THERE IS NO OTHER RELIABLE AND UNIFORM WAY TO DO SO."
Reliable and uniform -- not the words I would have have used in context of windows administration. The problem with windows administration (and I mostly mean 3rd party server software, but also Microsoft stuff) is that often the GUI is the only sane way to do things -- the cli interface, if it exists, is an afterthought. So automating anything is impossible or hard and debugging problems becomes a game of guesswork.
Yeah, that may be an unfair extrapolation from my experience that includes some fairly bad software vendors and it might even be outdated (as I haven't touched windows in years). Still, that is one of the reasons I prefer not to have anything to do with Windows, at home or at work.
From the Flash SDK page: "This license does not permit the usage of the specification to create software which supports SWF file playback." This is exactly why Flash is not actually documented or open.
I know what the Pirate party is and I wasn't saying that it can't at some point become an important player one day.
Let me quote again: "surprisingly powerful political force in Europe" -- that implies their political power right now is something else than minuscule. In reality, as the Wikipedia article you linked tells you, the only place where the Pirate party may have had some effect on policy is Sweden. Even in Sweden they would have needed something like six times the number of votes they received to get into parliament.
What's so hilarious? Anyone could do the regression testing bzbarsky is asking for. I'm sure if "ten percent of linux users are going to have firefox fall flat on its face" there should be plenty of people ready to spend a bit of time on that.
The license problems refer to time when initd was not apache licensed. This is a newer comment (from the page you linked to, btw):
it still doesn't meet our requirements, so would be only a base for our own work. We've already implemented enough that it'd be a backwards step to start again based on launchd.
Exactly. If there's something you can count on, it's that corporations will stick with the same business models and ethics forever. Just a random example: I think we can all agree that Caldera Systems will always remain a Desktop Linux company with a good reputation.
Seeing Leisure Suit Larry just brought back memories of how LucasArts handled copy protection since both X-Wing and LSL were out around the same time (mid to late 90s)
Late 90s? Don't kid yourself you old geezer. Larry came out in the eighties and even X-Wing is from -93.
That Microsoft would make an accommodation six years later doesn't strike me as an instance of bad coding- heck, if you present most game developers today with the choice of the "right way" or an expedient that works much better, and caution that the expedient will only work for six years, what do you think they'll pick?
Using memory after releasing it is bad coding, however you spin it. It's also bad coding even if "most game developers" would do it. It's pretty much guaranteed that even the DOS version crashed because of this: it just didn't do it everytime. So the "works for six years" excuse is probably bollocks (although if you did QA for that version too, you probably know better:)).
To be fair you can export data from Outlook. Outlook will let you export your address book, mail and calendar, Google will not. Google will let you download all of your mail, but there is nothing for exporting your address book
..except that the Outlook export functions are just smoke and mirrors (or at least were, I've jumped off the MS bandwagon years ago).
I used to write software that tried to read data from Outlook exports. The amount of idiotic design decisions and strange errors in the file formats was so high that it was quite hard to attribute it to just incompetence*. Add to that the fact that the export file formats seemed to change ever so slightly on every Outlook version, and it became pretty obvious that keeping people from actually exporting things is a priority at Microsoft (or at least was, like I said this happened several years ago).
As a more recent anecdote, I tried to help my dad move his addressbook from MS Outlook on one machine to MS Mail on another... After several hours of work we gave up. It just didn't work (and Google tells me it doesn't work for others either, so it wasn't just my ineptitude with Windows).
*) One example: the calendar CSV export
- columns are identified only by column names on the first row
- column names are localized (yes, a localized export file)
- column order is slightly different on every Outlook version so that can't be used to identify columns The result: a machine-unreadable file format.
"tired old argument"? Anyone with half a brain is able see that the "commercial use" clause is very problematic, and has been since CC was introduced. I guess you can call it a tired and old argument then, but I'd say it's still relevant -- or are you claiming that the line between commercial and non-commercial is now easy to draw?
You, sir, are not only anonymous but also a liar (or possibly a moron, I'm sure someone can tell you which if you post some details about your password scheme).
Care to back that up with a link? I thought Android runs a custom version of Java... As far as I can see their implementation is not very near ME, SE or any current Java version.
Heh, it's there when you look for it sure. You can fit several different trends there -- try this claim: "Wikipedia search volume growth was linear up to June 2006, after which it was also linear, just steeper". Draw the trend lines and you'll see they match just as well as the one we're discussing.
The problem is, these "trends" conflict with each other...
Can't explain the Distrowatch popularity figures (never could). I think that you'll find that PCLinuxOS is a fairly small player by any other measure though. Try Google Trends search on "Ubuntu,PCLinuxOS" as an example. The flatline at the bottom is PCLinuxOS (and it doesn't look much different if you compare Debian, Red Hat or others).
Slashdot Mirror
Not even nearly true anymore. Microsoft freaked out about the linux netbook phenomenon and slashed the price of XP on netbooks. Combine that with the awfulness of the early netbook distros, and it was an easy decision for netbook manufacturers to go with Microsoft again.
I'm hopeful the netbook wars are starting again in six months or so but we'll have to see. In the meantime we just have to admit that Microsoft owns that market as well.
I used the term 'pretty much' because I knew I'd be corrected otherwise (by several disagreeing posters rooting for StG44, Cei-Rigotti, Mondragon, Fedorov Avtomat or whatever else): with hindsight I agree that my hint was not clear enough.
I wonder if there is something else I failed at conveying since my post is now marked flamebait? That was definitely not the intention.
There may be semi-auto versions available for hobbyists, but as a general statement that is just wrong. The AK-47 is definitely a proper assault rifle capable of emptying the 30 round magazine in 3 seconds if need be. In fact it is pretty much the mother of all assault rifles, copied dozens of times around the world.
Advertising something as "multi-platform" is a joke when one platform is always at least one version ahead of the other platforms: it looks like silverlight 3 support will be available on Windows before Moonlight actually supports silverlight 2.
Now, keeping things that way might not be Microsofts intention in this case but knowing their track record I'm not betting on it.
Reliable and uniform -- not the words I would have have used in context of windows administration. The problem with windows administration (and I mostly mean 3rd party server software, but also Microsoft stuff) is that often the GUI is the only sane way to do things -- the cli interface, if it exists, is an afterthought. So automating anything is impossible or hard and debugging problems becomes a game of guesswork.
Yeah, that may be an unfair extrapolation from my experience that includes some fairly bad software vendors and it might even be outdated (as I haven't touched windows in years). Still, that is one of the reasons I prefer not to have anything to do with Windows, at home or at work.
From the Flash SDK page: "This license does not permit the usage of the specification to create software which supports SWF file playback." This is exactly why Flash is not actually documented or open.
Look, matey, I know a dead brand when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
I know what the Pirate party is and I wasn't saying that it can't at some point become an important player one day. Let me quote again: "surprisingly powerful political force in Europe" -- that implies their political power right now is something else than minuscule. In reality, as the Wikipedia article you linked tells you, the only place where the Pirate party may have had some effect on policy is Sweden. Even in Sweden they would have needed something like six times the number of votes they received to get into parliament.
Pirate Party, which is a surprisingly powerful political force in Europe at this stage [Reference needed]
What's so hilarious? Anyone could do the regression testing bzbarsky is asking for. I'm sure if "ten percent of linux users are going to have firefox fall flat on its face" there should be plenty of people ready to spend a bit of time on that.
Exactly. If there's something you can count on, it's that corporations will stick with the same business models and ethics forever. Just a random example: I think we can all agree that Caldera Systems will always remain a Desktop Linux company with a good reputation.
http://www.randi.org/research/challenge.html You should definitely go and claim the cash. I mean, pockets full of dimes must be annoying.
Somebody give the man a +1 for me.
I used to write software that tried to read data from Outlook exports. The amount of idiotic design decisions and strange errors in the file formats was so high that it was quite hard to attribute it to just incompetence*. Add to that the fact that the export file formats seemed to change ever so slightly on every Outlook version, and it became pretty obvious that keeping people from actually exporting things is a priority at Microsoft (or at least was, like I said this happened several years ago).
As a more recent anecdote, I tried to help my dad move his addressbook from MS Outlook on one machine to MS Mail on another... After several hours of work we gave up. It just didn't work (and Google tells me it doesn't work for others either, so it wasn't just my ineptitude with Windows).
*) One example: the calendar CSV export
- columns are identified only by column names on the first row
- column names are localized (yes, a localized export file)
- column order is slightly different on every Outlook version so that can't be used to identify columns
The result: a machine-unreadable file format.
"tired old argument"? Anyone with half a brain is able see that the "commercial use" clause is very problematic, and has been since CC was introduced. I guess you can call it a tired and old argument then, but I'd say it's still relevant -- or are you claiming that the line between commercial and non-commercial is now easy to draw?
Guide to posting:
1. Read the post, also read linked material
2. Post informative response
You forgot number one this time. I know this is slashdot, but just try it. It's not that difficult.
You, sir, are not only anonymous but also a liar (or possibly a moron, I'm sure someone can tell you which if you post some details about your password scheme).
Heh, it's there when you look for it sure. You can fit several different trends there -- try this claim: "Wikipedia search volume growth was linear up to June 2006, after which it was also linear, just steeper". Draw the trend lines and you'll see they match just as well as the one we're discussing. The problem is, these "trends" conflict with each other...
Yeah, well... It's easy to spot "trends" when you draw the trend lines yourself, by hand.
Take a look at the actual Google Trends graphic for wikipedia. Look at the Alexa data and the blogpulse data.
Now, honestly tell me if you can find an "inflection point" in them... I tried and I can't.
Can't explain the Distrowatch popularity figures (never could). I think that you'll find that PCLinuxOS is a fairly small player by any other measure though. Try Google Trends search on "Ubuntu,PCLinuxOS" as an example. The flatline at the bottom is PCLinuxOS (and it doesn't look much different if you compare Debian, Red Hat or others).