Apparently that whole "not wanting Microsoft products" thing still holds, but the "switching to something else" started two years ago. We're just coming aware of it now because nobody dared report it. Microsoft spends billions a year on blog ads.
It doesn't matter what Megaupload was being used for, any more than you are responsible as a landlord for your cannibal tenant. What matters is: did Megaupload violate the law? It appears they did not.
Let's pause a moment and consider the marketing debacle of name sharing. We have Surface RT, which is ARM based and doesn't run legacy apps, but has a rich app store to draw from. And Sufrace Pro, which is Wintel so can draw from the vast legacy of non-touch centric apps and deliver them poorly. But they have the same NAME, so customers won't be able to tell which is which. That's going to work out great.
Really, you could go insane trying to figure out what the Microsoft marketing people are trying to do.
Long ago I figured that dealing with Microsoft executives was so painful to the artful types that they delivered the least helpful marketing programs possible to get past the E-team, out of spite. I'm sticking with that.
Y'know, I was there and phrased it that way on purpose: "was designed in an era". I knew you would show up, Mr. AC. But Voyager 1 was Launched in 1977. It was designed long before then. They were not still tweaking the design on the launch pad.
Look, I see this comment a lot and I'll agree that professionally configured and lovingly tweaked, Windows 7 or 8 - or even Vista SP2 approaches a usable condition. I figure the people who post this have no idea what IT pros have to go through to give them that usable Windows experience. Or they're IT guys who do this all the time and know the easiest ways - starting from the latest Microsoft official.iso and have the OEM drivers handy, maybe even slipstreamed into their install media. If that's not you, go visit the guys who make your golden image. Bring them some Starbucks cards and chat them up about what it takes. It ain't easy and it ain't quick.
Now buy a Windows 7 or Windows 8 laptop from a major OEM at a department store, or a consumer or business laptop from the major OEM direct. Take it out of the box and try and get it into that usable condition pretending that you're an "average" non-IT person. You've got a couple hours of OOBE before you, and then a couple more of crudware removal. Don't forget to register and activate! Critical early task: get your armor up. You'll want Microsoft Security Essentials for free, probably. But you don't know that, and the laptop came with this antimalware suite that's a 60 day trial that wants your credit card. Remember that you're an IT novice fraught with fear that any wrong click is going to ruin a high-value purchase and cost you insane fees for repair - and many of the necessary steps you not only don't know how to do: there is no clue anywhere about what the right steps are. You literally do not know that having both McAfee and Norton is bad, let alone that you don't need either one. You don't know what is and what isn't an essential system component. You can Google it, but the malware freaks have got that base covered and you don't know who to trust.
If you're on dialup you can forget ever coming current because you've got about a gig of patches to pull - but on broadband figure an hour and three reboots for Windows 7. Some of the Windows patches may break the OEM drivers, so you'll have to go to the vendor's website to get those back. Uninstall Skype, which now comes as an update whether you want it or not. Now de-Bing and un-msn the browser, remove the toolbars, lock down the extensions, and finally unpin all the IE links so you don't accidently run IE and install a real browser as the default and configure that. Now you're finally ready to migrate your old settings, files, data and metadata - if you can. There's an "Easy Transfer" app. Good luck with that. A quick jaunt to the printer manufacturer's website for some printer drivers - and maybe scanner or whatever else too, and you've successfully configured the OS. This would be a good time to back up... Call it a day, because tomorrow's a biggie.
Day two you can attack that stack of disks you've paid thousands of dollars for over the last ten years, and discover which of them no longer run in this fun new world - and how - but only if you've bought the kind of laptop that still has a DVD drive even. And update all of them. And then update Windows again for the app-specific patches. This is not a task for a non-IT person.
Compare that with preparing an iPad or Android tablet for use: Open box. Remove tablet. Push button. Log in. Choose the apps you want in the app store from the ones you've already bought, and maybe some new ones. You're done.
I guess it depends on many factors. Finnish retirement funds owned many hundreds of millions of shares of Nokia. In the last five years the value of that many shares has dropped by about 3.4 billion dollars. Many Finns also invested in the company, a point of national pride. The value of Nokia has fallen by about $100B in the last five years. There are only about 5 million people in Finland.
Nokia promised to deliver their Symbian customers into the Windows Phone camp. They drove them all away instead. Now that they are out of Symbian users they are about to be reminded of the fine print.
They have to have something to complain about. Don't worry about it. Android is taking over the world anyway, so this criticism doesn't matter. We will still get our cool new Android in the future because it moves units. At the end of the argument that is all that matters.
The probe in question is Voyager 1 and was launched in 1977. Let's not call it modern. It was designed in an era when there was no such thing as a personal computer. A high end cellphone probably has more battery-powered computing power in your pocket now than all of the compute resources of NASA back then. Imagine what those engineers could achieve with this. Materials science has progressed also. But the biggest gift of days is in our understanding the rich resources available in the space around us. Water is abundant everywhere from Mercury to the edge of the solar system. We didn't know that back then. Almost all stars have planets in the habitable zone. We didn't know that either.
It's unlikely a mission to Vega would launch any sooner than 2037, or 60 years after the launch of the first Voyager. We have learned a lot of things since Voyager 1 was launched, and will have learned more. That none have gone faster is an artifact of 30 years of neglect of space operations, but not space science. At the moment Vega is too far to a man to reach in his span of years with the science we have, though another star might be. There is no reason to expect that this will always be so.
With VASMR 200KW thrusters entering service on the ISS in a few years, and the development of suitable power plants ongoing, we still would need fuel - LOTS of fuel - on orbit or somewhere near zero-G to make a go of it. Fortunately in 26 months the NASA Dawn mission will arrive at Ceres and find there a practically unlimited supply of Xenon, Argon, Hydrogen and Oxygen ready for mining as well as a surface amenable to easily building human habitats on. You may schedule two years from now for the space Gold Rush to begin.
Ceres is not only the perfect source for interstellar fuels: it's also the perfect launchpad as it should be possible to build a railgun there 1000KM long capable of launching interstellar probes with solar system escape velocity that don't require any fuel at all. It's also the only minor planet so situated within easy reach.
Planetary Resources, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and others are all over this. The people behind these efforts are some of the brightest, most successful minds the world has ever known. Elon Musk. Sergey Brin. Larry Page. Eric Schmidt. Richard Branson. These are but a few. They know something you don't know.
Today in response to a market that recoiled from Windows 8 in horror Microsoft kicked off a new marketing campaign. It's the "Hey, wait! You can still get Windows 7" campaign. Look for it in about 500 syndicated news articles and captured "trade" mouthpieces throughout the next week.
OK fine. You've paid the fee. I'll give you some new stuff.
When David Cutler brought his secrets to Microsoft from DEC after convincing DEC to not invent the PC, he had been mostly an app guy. He didn't know shit about schedulers, memory allocation, drivers or tasking. He trolled you all, and he still is. He's a Fellow now, and wanders about schooling you all on the bad old days. But what little he knew, he forgot. He's reached his dotage now, and is likely mad. And you let him design NT.
The NT kernel in XP or W7 is sufficient to the needs of the user, and has been since introduction. They suck in terms of security but that is a different issue.
Don't pretend these things are secure. The second Tuesday of every month they are patched to fix problems many of us have known about for many years. I'm not going to give you exploits. The proof of this is in the exploits you will be given and have been given. If you want proof there will be more: wait a couple weeks.
Slashdot Mirror
Anybody know how to tell Google News "don't show me paywall sites?" Or to blacklist sites in some way?
Hey, wanna come up with some arguments against geothermal?
That's by design. Crafty devils, those founders.
This is how it comes. It is the reality of the situation. Whose fault it is does not matter.
Apparently that whole "not wanting Microsoft products" thing still holds, but the "switching to something else" started two years ago. We're just coming aware of it now because nobody dared report it. Microsoft spends billions a year on blog ads.
It doesn't matter what Megaupload was being used for, any more than you are responsible as a landlord for your cannibal tenant. What matters is: did Megaupload violate the law? It appears they did not.
Let's pause a moment and consider the marketing debacle of name sharing. We have Surface RT, which is ARM based and doesn't run legacy apps, but has a rich app store to draw from. And Sufrace Pro, which is Wintel so can draw from the vast legacy of non-touch centric apps and deliver them poorly. But they have the same NAME, so customers won't be able to tell which is which. That's going to work out great.
Really, you could go insane trying to figure out what the Microsoft marketing people are trying to do.
Long ago I figured that dealing with Microsoft executives was so painful to the artful types that they delivered the least helpful marketing programs possible to get past the E-team, out of spite. I'm sticking with that.
Just... Wow.
I really doubt they depleted their stock even as repurposed dumb phones. Most of the KIN are in a landfill.
Y'know, I was there and phrased it that way on purpose: "was designed in an era". I knew you would show up, Mr. AC. But Voyager 1 was Launched in 1977. It was designed long before then. They were not still tweaking the design on the launch pad.
Look, I see this comment a lot and I'll agree that professionally configured and lovingly tweaked, Windows 7 or 8 - or even Vista SP2 approaches a usable condition. I figure the people who post this have no idea what IT pros have to go through to give them that usable Windows experience. Or they're IT guys who do this all the time and know the easiest ways - starting from the latest Microsoft official .iso and have the OEM drivers handy, maybe even slipstreamed into their install media. If that's not you, go visit the guys who make your golden image. Bring them some Starbucks cards and chat them up about what it takes. It ain't easy and it ain't quick.
Now buy a Windows 7 or Windows 8 laptop from a major OEM at a department store, or a consumer or business laptop from the major OEM direct. Take it out of the box and try and get it into that usable condition pretending that you're an "average" non-IT person. You've got a couple hours of OOBE before you, and then a couple more of crudware removal. Don't forget to register and activate! Critical early task: get your armor up. You'll want Microsoft Security Essentials for free, probably. But you don't know that, and the laptop came with this antimalware suite that's a 60 day trial that wants your credit card. Remember that you're an IT novice fraught with fear that any wrong click is going to ruin a high-value purchase and cost you insane fees for repair - and many of the necessary steps you not only don't know how to do: there is no clue anywhere about what the right steps are. You literally do not know that having both McAfee and Norton is bad, let alone that you don't need either one. You don't know what is and what isn't an essential system component. You can Google it, but the malware freaks have got that base covered and you don't know who to trust.
If you're on dialup you can forget ever coming current because you've got about a gig of patches to pull - but on broadband figure an hour and three reboots for Windows 7. Some of the Windows patches may break the OEM drivers, so you'll have to go to the vendor's website to get those back. Uninstall Skype, which now comes as an update whether you want it or not. Now de-Bing and un-msn the browser, remove the toolbars, lock down the extensions, and finally unpin all the IE links so you don't accidently run IE and install a real browser as the default and configure that. Now you're finally ready to migrate your old settings, files, data and metadata - if you can. There's an "Easy Transfer" app. Good luck with that. A quick jaunt to the printer manufacturer's website for some printer drivers - and maybe scanner or whatever else too, and you've successfully configured the OS. This would be a good time to back up... Call it a day, because tomorrow's a biggie.
Day two you can attack that stack of disks you've paid thousands of dollars for over the last ten years, and discover which of them no longer run in this fun new world - and how - but only if you've bought the kind of laptop that still has a DVD drive even. And update all of them. And then update Windows again for the app-specific patches. This is not a task for a non-IT person.
Compare that with preparing an iPad or Android tablet for use: Open box. Remove tablet. Push button. Log in. Choose the apps you want in the app store from the ones you've already bought, and maybe some new ones. You're done.
Apparently they have the monopoly on stuff we don't want any more.
I guess it depends on many factors. Finnish retirement funds owned many hundreds of millions of shares of Nokia. In the last five years the value of that many shares has dropped by about 3.4 billion dollars. Many Finns also invested in the company, a point of national pride. The value of Nokia has fallen by about $100B in the last five years. There are only about 5 million people in Finland.
Nokia promised to deliver their Symbian customers into the Windows Phone camp. They drove them all away instead. Now that they are out of Symbian users they are about to be reminded of the fine print.
They have to have something to complain about. Don't worry about it. Android is taking over the world anyway, so this criticism doesn't matter. We will still get our cool new Android in the future because it moves units. At the end of the argument that is all that matters.
I don't think so. Unless you mean "you and me" and not the greater "we" of all mankind.
It's not as far as you think.
The probe in question is Voyager 1 and was launched in 1977. Let's not call it modern. It was designed in an era when there was no such thing as a personal computer. A high end cellphone probably has more battery-powered computing power in your pocket now than all of the compute resources of NASA back then. Imagine what those engineers could achieve with this. Materials science has progressed also. But the biggest gift of days is in our understanding the rich resources available in the space around us. Water is abundant everywhere from Mercury to the edge of the solar system. We didn't know that back then. Almost all stars have planets in the habitable zone. We didn't know that either.
It's unlikely a mission to Vega would launch any sooner than 2037, or 60 years after the launch of the first Voyager. We have learned a lot of things since Voyager 1 was launched, and will have learned more. That none have gone faster is an artifact of 30 years of neglect of space operations, but not space science. At the moment Vega is too far to a man to reach in his span of years with the science we have, though another star might be. There is no reason to expect that this will always be so.
With VASMR 200KW thrusters entering service on the ISS in a few years, and the development of suitable power plants ongoing, we still would need fuel - LOTS of fuel - on orbit or somewhere near zero-G to make a go of it. Fortunately in 26 months the NASA Dawn mission will arrive at Ceres and find there a practically unlimited supply of Xenon, Argon, Hydrogen and Oxygen ready for mining as well as a surface amenable to easily building human habitats on. You may schedule two years from now for the space Gold Rush to begin.
Ceres is not only the perfect source for interstellar fuels: it's also the perfect launchpad as it should be possible to build a railgun there 1000KM long capable of launching interstellar probes with solar system escape velocity that don't require any fuel at all. It's also the only minor planet so situated within easy reach.
Planetary Resources, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and others are all over this. The people behind these efforts are some of the brightest, most successful minds the world has ever known. Elon Musk. Sergey Brin. Larry Page. Eric Schmidt. Richard Branson. These are but a few. They know something you don't know.
For certain photo opportunities, "not digital" is an advantage.
Today in response to a market that recoiled from Windows 8 in horror Microsoft kicked off a new marketing campaign. It's the "Hey, wait! You can still get Windows 7" campaign. Look for it in about 500 syndicated news articles and captured "trade" mouthpieces throughout the next week.
Corporate America is waking up to the notion that kicking the Windows habit has costs. And that you only have to pay those costs once.
I'm sure the argument was that if they promoted the new technology it would "cannibalize" their traditional revenue base. There is a lesson here.
The time limit was "ever".
OK fine. You've paid the fee. I'll give you some new stuff.
When David Cutler brought his secrets to Microsoft from DEC after convincing DEC to not invent the PC, he had been mostly an app guy. He didn't know shit about schedulers, memory allocation, drivers or tasking. He trolled you all, and he still is. He's a Fellow now, and wanders about schooling you all on the bad old days. But what little he knew, he forgot. He's reached his dotage now, and is likely mad. And you let him design NT.
The NT kernel in XP or W7 is sufficient to the needs of the user, and has been since introduction. They suck in terms of security but that is a different issue.
Don't pretend these things are secure. The second Tuesday of every month they are patched to fix problems many of us have known about for many years. I'm not going to give you exploits. The proof of this is in the exploits you will be given and have been given. If you want proof there will be more: wait a couple weeks.