"A paper put out by a government lab is sometimes construed as government policy, with the ensuing political or legal fallout."
I suspect that this concerns the White House only insofar as honest research often undermines bad policy.
"their management struggles to define what opinions do and do not belong in government works"
Unfortunately, they are not struggling to evaluate the merits of research but rather its political convenience. Bush will be making their job easier, though. The USGS is now free to submit material on any topic to the president for review. Should it please him to do so, the president may then permit the material's publication. Note: papers that suggest that the universe is more than 10,000 years old, or that global warming is caused by man, or that man came from monkeys will not please him. However, if you can gin up a rationalle for filling the grand canyon with bleach, including polonium in in school lunches (No Child Left Alive) and building out the nation's klean koal (R) infrastructure, you can publish _and_ perish!
"All he did was collect samples then sequence a simple tune."
Oh, that's all, eh? It must be pretty easy for someone with no musical training to track. And that is what he's doing - IDM with a video channel. It's not trivial; it's not easy, but it is neat to see someone extend the tracking concept. Of course, most tracks have many samples playing simultaneously which makes associating a video sample with each audio sample problematic. You could alpha blend the many video samples, but it would be hard to find the sort of synergy in the multiple video samples that exists in the audio. Star Guitar by the Chemical Brothers happens to an excellent job of exactly this (via matte rather than blending) and it is also non-trivial. Simply dividing the screen so that overlapping samples can be seperately represented is arguably less ambitious - but for someone without musical training to attempt it is certainly not.
I hope I've put what this guy is doing in better context for you. It's actually startling to me that you would compare this guy's effort to commercial music videos without recognizing the various achievements and innovations of both. But, perhaps Rembrants works wouldn't impress you, since he mostly just smathered paint around in a pattern like that other guy, da Vinci.
I think that we actually ought to worry about preventing catastrophic climate change. Yes, even though we will suffer and muddle through the melted permafrost and tropical deserts, even though we will adapt to our ruined climate, we should try hard to prevent what some fatalists see as innevitable.
Increasing oil taxes and using the proceeds to fund mass transit, fission power and other renewable energy production does make sense. Let's do it. Let's not say that losing 10,20,30,40% of the habitable land on the planet to the ocean is really not so very bad. Because it will be awful and it will lead to strife. Let's not say that having the gulf stream's flow cease, making northern Europe's climate identical to Siberia's and the Yukon's would be tolerable. Humanity would suffer immensely. Don't hide behind a myopic utopian view of our history that ignores our faults - we would suffer, fight and perish as habitable land area dwindles.
We would all like to turn out the lights here at Global Warming Conspiracy HQ, but certain highly intelligent crackpots continue to remain skeptical. These guys are really stymieing us... just when we think we have a bow on this box of lies, Certain Individuals find flaws! Their insights are insightful and include the stunning notion that, since sea ice floats, once it melts, its displacement will actually decrease! Ocean levels will fall!
We are running out of scientific sounding ideas. It's become so bad that, no matter the veracity of our predictions, we are disbelieved. It is truly a case of "insert new theory/problem."
So, because humanity has survived many a storied & horrid deprevation, this next repulsive calamity will be more of the same, namely:
ocean levels rising large swaths of the most densely populated land in the world vanishing beneath the waves tropical diseases heading north the desertification of the tropics
Yes, we will deal with it. We'll probably handle it the same way that we handled the wars that you mentioned: by fighting each other and making a bad situation worse.
Would you tell a heroin addict to continue shooting up since the consequences will resemble his previous anguishes? Would you suggest that a diabetic with an amputated foot have a get-well cake, seeing as how losing the leg is sorta like losing the foot?
Nope. Now, I don't want to diminish Microsoft's efforts. Certainly not. They spend billions on their research and it warms the cockles of my heart to know that even one MSR effort has been productized. Wait a tick... XNA wasn't an MSR effort! Still, it's pretty cool that you can make a game in C#... I guess.
They do whatever is needed to get marks? Do you mean to tell me that they do homework, study and learn? Say it aint so!
You aren't better than your peers and they aren't better than you - except in deed. If you slack in school and learn little on your own, what will be your excuses? Well, actually, I don't need to ask. "High school failed me and everyone is so stupid that they should just go kill themselves," sounds like it's in your cards.
Go to LUG meetings, do some science fair, find and befriend motivated people, learn what grabs their interest and why they enjoy their pursuits. Just let go of the cynical "oh, everything costs so much, it's all such an unfair _burden_" view. Learn to find the potential and value in the things all around you that you so obviously ignore.
What wouldn't have been justified? If the police had said "Get up and walk or we'll shoot!", would they have been justified in blowing his brains out? Would they have been justified in tasering people who didn't put their cameras away when asked?
On behalf of djidiotboy, yes and yes.
Thank you for playing another round of stupid questions for stupid people.
What? It was OK to electroshock an innocent person because he advocated his rights, was actually a student and objected to Stalinist 'papers, please' intimidation? Then, because other innocents objected to his plight, it was OK to tase him.... four more times?
Nice canard. Why are there too few Americans in IT, from the point of view of industry lobbyists? Because American IT workers cost too much? Paying more would not immediately increase the pool of available workers, unless pay is not competitive with other industries harboring qualified talent. Perhaps increased pay would never ever increase worker availability. Why would this be? There can be only three answers: Americans dispise IT and will not accept generous compensation for working in the field, or the educational system simply can not produce qualified employees, or lobbyist's definition of 'qualified' is synonymous with 'endentured but capable'.
Remember the energy crisis? While the US went on to become even more dependant on middle eastern oil, Europe realized that the mid east had them by the short and curlies. France replaced their fossile fuel power plants with nuclear systems and Norway tapped into its undersea oil and natural gas fields.
I posit that word documents are less addictive than midddle eastern petroleum and that, should Microsoft force the EU's hand, Microsoft software shipments to Europe would be as common as crude shipments to scandinavia.
Ah, well. Here goes nothing, Maccers, start modding me down....
Since you are already on the cross, let me get on the record saying that you, sir, are truly a martyr. The way you offer yourself up to be modded down... it's truly unselfless.
Alas, it is proper to harbor spite for "me too" copycat assholes. Macs, running PC programs! WITH THEIR PROCESSORS!!!!! My God, where will it all end? Probably with my flaming.
Ah well. Here goes nothing! Self loathing hypocrits, start modding me down...
As the plaintiff has only provided screenshots of webmail sites displaying the spams in question, and as the judge feels that these are insufficient and that further discovery by the defendant is warranted, attempts by the plaintiff to stand behind the ALA would likely result in the dismissal of his case.
And when you do something that someone somewhere has done sometime before, it should come as no surprise. There are billions of people in this world and everything has been done before. Including suing Borat.
It's what they should have done in the first place. Rather than just slimming down their binaries for an environment with less RAM, MS originally envisioned CE as some sort of bizarre AMIGA-esque environment where processes go in 'slots'. Additionally, they looked at palm and decided to give the slots an extremely small max memory limitation, because, THEY REINVENTED SEGMENTED MEMORY! Yay! On platforms that universally natively have flat 32-bit memory. Oh wait, WTF? Yeah, Microsoft sure slotted something. Their developers.
It sounds like they finally realized that was the dumbest idea since Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
But they're still not going to give you a Windows Mobile a close button, I'm sure (See, the X in the upper right hand corner _minimizes_ [not closes, minimizes] because on Windows, users never close applications. They minimize them and let the OS decide when it's best to close applications! Developers are used to overriding the c++ new operator exception handler so that when you are out of RAM, you make the system call to request Windows to please go and close some random other program that the user didn't even realize is still running. Developers of course universally realize that if they fail to implement this, their application will just roll over dead during the course of normal, expected operation. Yeah, Microsoft sure minimized something. The number of WinCE users.)
I wonder if SmartPhone 6.0 will still be slower than normal Windows Mobile. Seriously, the "heavily optimized" WM Smartphone OS runs about 1/3 to 1/5 the speed of normal Windows Mobile on the same hardware. It's AWESOME. Hmm, perhaps that has something to do with why it's an abject failure...
As any WinCE developer should be able to tell you, Windows Mobile has a lot of stuff that plain WinCE does not. Windows Mobile = WinCE + a different shell + piles and piles of other stuff. With WinCE 6, at least the mobile version will be based off the same underlying CE kernel - Windows Mobile 5 is actually based on WinCE 5.01 and while WinCE 5.00 is available, for no good reason WinCE 5.01 is not to anyone, anywhere, for any reason, at all, in any way shape or form and never, ever ever ever ever will be (unless you move a couple hundred thousand units minimum and are willing to sign your life away). And that.01 makes a big bloody difference.... (I'm ranting because this fact is majorly horking a porting effort for which I am responsible)
Some salient info: in its screenshots, the Zune very much appears to be running Windows Mobile. Thus, you will ------>>>>>NOT------ be able to use what Microsoft is willing to give you to build an image that in any way resembles the OS running on the Zune. What you _will_ be able to build is something that looks like NT4, except more primitive and without all that glitzy cool stuff, such as minimize buttons, window resizing, the softkey bar, the status/menu bar at the top of the screen and hey also, BTW, while I'm listing stuff, numerous essential APIs.
"The browser is uniquely positioned among all applications as the desktop gateway to every existing web application. It's so obvious it seems trivial."
A tautology: the thing you use to browse the web is what you use to use the web! Knock me over with a feather.
"But first the web browser needs a feature. And in the spirit of open source I'm happy to dispense my advice freely: data recognition. Right now the browser excels at data caching, which is how your email pops up on different web pages in any edit box named 'EMail'. It's time for the next step. The browser should start recognizing the concept of email and be able to offer suggestions for fields of similar ilk. It wouldn't even be that hard... And what if Mozilla started defining some common field groups, like 'User Information,' as rich data types?"
Errr, well, Safari already does the last bit. It's kind of cute but I turn it off so that when other folks use my laptop, it doesn't cache their info or fill in fields with mine. But he wants caching of email subject and body fields? Why, in God's name?? I can't imagine wanting that in a dedicated email application! But when you wrap it up in buzzwords it sounds advanced and futuristic.
"With its popular browser, penchant for innovation and willingness to extend what the user experience can be, Mozilla has a chance to solidify itself among the giants and lay the groundwork for a real semantic web."
Semantic ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Everyone is already doing this. Notice Google's context-relevant advertisements? And their substring search service? Have you used wikipedia? Those are real. Have you ever made an html link? Congradulations! You helped build out the semantic WWW.
"The days of purely desktop-based applications are clearly numbered, but so are the days of exclusively web-based apps."
So, essentially, what? All pure desktop apps, even ones that chunk through massive amounts of data and need large amounts of low-latency processing power and a highly complex UI will transition to using javascript and XML? Why? So that they can be slower and less functional? Is it hard to dress everything under the sun in the latest trends? Does putting every somewhat-related thing in the context of the latest fluffword inform? No.
"IP addresses are not useful for determening identity!" "Logs are easily falsifiable and can not be trusted under any circumstances!"
If what you say is true, dubious though it may be, I wish you the best of luck. May your pair of tassled loafers find their way into the nether reaches of the RIAA's rectum.
The favorite meme of Bill Gates: "software piracy gobbles up the majority of the industry's theoretical income!"
But from Microsoft's behavior, you wouldn't have thought he believed it. In fact, MS seemed aware of piracy and how to take Advantage of it. Office has always been overpriced and massively pirated by consumers. However, the specter of grueling, embarrassing license audits kept businesses honest. So, while employees pirated and grew familiar with Office at home, their employers were wedged into buying it.
Office Genuine Annoyance obliterates this dynamic; few have $799 to spend on intangible bloatware for their home PC. So, was Microsoft even aware that the piracy dynamic worked strongly to their advantage? Perhaps they were ignorant of it. Perhaps they were but eventually fell for their own line. Or perhaps they were aware of it but now see an alternative - knowing that consumers will not pony up for the full retail Office, do they hope to push everyone into paying ever higher monthly fees instead? IBM would have an easier time returning to a rental-only hardware sales model. After the cable bill, the phone bill, the electric bill, the mortgage and the car payment, who has $15 a month for Microsoft?
So, you have $15 a month for Microsoft, eh? That's good, because the features you want are only available in the full retail version! Oh, snap. Better start saving.
"You want to play hardball...? You want to try to throw me in jail? You have no idea what you are unleashing in doing this. You're at the brink..."
That's pretty contemptible remark there, bully boy. You know, the judge didn't even make his last ruling with prejudice. I think that the next time you are struck down, you won't even be appealing to him anymore. Sure, you'll be able make all the noise you want, but he won't hear you!
One really shouldn't be playing brinksmanship when he has so many holes in case. But really, on the hole, I think this judge is feeling pretty good. Eh hole? Hahahah. Yeah Jack, I'm flaming you. Burn in hell.
Slashdot Mirror
Terrorists.
And Muslims.
Also, the Mexicans.
Think of the children.
It's for your own good.
The universe is 8,000 years old, and soon the prestigious USGS will agree.
And ah don't know the president, but ah know that he'll agree with that.
Make the pie higher!
"A paper put out by a government lab is sometimes construed as government policy, with the ensuing political or legal fallout."
I suspect that this concerns the White House only insofar as honest research often undermines bad policy.
"their management struggles to define what opinions do and do not belong in government works"
Unfortunately, they are not struggling to evaluate the merits of research but rather its political convenience. Bush will be making their job easier, though. The USGS is now free to submit material on any topic to the president for review. Should it please him to do so, the president may then permit the material's publication. Note: papers that suggest that the universe is more than 10,000 years old, or that global warming is caused by man, or that man came from monkeys will not please him. However, if you can gin up a rationalle for filling the grand canyon with bleach, including polonium in in school lunches (No Child Left Alive) and building out the nation's klean koal (R) infrastructure, you can publish _and_ perish!
He does play chords on the piano in sync with his percussion, however.
"All he did was collect samples then sequence a simple tune."
Oh, that's all, eh? It must be pretty easy for someone with no musical training to track. And that is what he's doing - IDM with a video channel. It's not trivial; it's not easy, but it is neat to see someone extend the tracking concept. Of course, most tracks have many samples playing simultaneously which makes associating a video sample with each audio sample problematic. You could alpha blend the many video samples, but it would be hard to find the sort of synergy in the multiple video samples that exists in the audio. Star Guitar by the Chemical Brothers happens to an excellent job of exactly this (via matte rather than blending) and it is also non-trivial. Simply dividing the screen so that overlapping samples can be seperately represented is arguably less ambitious - but for someone without musical training to attempt it is certainly not.
I hope I've put what this guy is doing in better context for you. It's actually startling to me that you would compare this guy's effort to commercial music videos without recognizing the various achievements and innovations of both. But, perhaps Rembrants works wouldn't impress you, since he mostly just smathered paint around in a pattern like that other guy, da Vinci.
I think that we actually ought to worry about preventing catastrophic climate change. Yes, even though we will suffer and muddle through the melted permafrost and tropical deserts, even though we will adapt to our ruined climate, we should try hard to prevent what some fatalists see as innevitable.
Increasing oil taxes and using the proceeds to fund mass transit, fission power and other renewable energy production does make sense. Let's do it. Let's not say that losing 10,20,30,40% of the habitable land on the planet to the ocean is really not so very bad. Because it will be awful and it will lead to strife. Let's not say that having the gulf stream's flow cease, making northern Europe's climate identical to Siberia's and the Yukon's would be tolerable. Humanity would suffer immensely. Don't hide behind a myopic utopian view of our history that ignores our faults - we would suffer, fight and perish as habitable land area dwindles.
We would all like to turn out the lights here at Global Warming Conspiracy HQ, but certain highly intelligent crackpots continue to remain skeptical. These guys are really stymieing us... just when we think we have a bow on this box of lies, Certain Individuals find flaws! Their insights are insightful and include the stunning notion that, since sea ice floats, once it melts, its displacement will actually decrease! Ocean levels will fall!
We are running out of scientific sounding ideas. It's become so bad that, no matter the veracity of our predictions, we are disbelieved. It is truly a case of "insert new theory/problem."
So, because humanity has survived many a storied & horrid deprevation, this next repulsive calamity will be more of the same, namely:
ocean levels rising
large swaths of the most densely populated land in the world vanishing beneath the waves
tropical diseases heading north
the desertification of the tropics
Yes, we will deal with it. We'll probably handle it the same way that we handled the wars that you mentioned: by fighting each other and making a bad situation worse.
Would you tell a heroin addict to continue shooting up since the consequences will resemble his previous anguishes? Would you suggest that a diabetic with an amputated foot have a get-well cake, seeing as how losing the leg is sorta like losing the foot?
Beyond anything you'd see from apple or google?
Nope. Now, I don't want to diminish Microsoft's efforts. Certainly not. They spend billions on their research and it warms the cockles of my heart to know that even one MSR effort has been productized. Wait a tick... XNA wasn't an MSR effort! Still, it's pretty cool that you can make a game in C#... I guess.
They do whatever is needed to get marks? Do you mean to tell me that they do homework, study and learn? Say it aint so!
You aren't better than your peers and they aren't better than you - except in deed. If you slack in school and learn little on your own, what will be your excuses? Well, actually, I don't need to ask. "High school failed me and everyone is so stupid that they should just go kill themselves," sounds like it's in your cards.
Go to LUG meetings, do some science fair, find and befriend motivated people, learn what grabs their interest and why they enjoy their pursuits. Just let go of the cynical "oh, everything costs so much, it's all such an unfair _burden_" view. Learn to find the potential and value in the things all around you that you so obviously ignore.
What wouldn't have been justified? If the police had said "Get up and walk or we'll shoot!", would they have been justified in blowing his brains out? Would they have been justified in tasering people who didn't put their cameras away when asked?
On behalf of djidiotboy, yes and yes.
Thank you for playing another round of stupid questions for stupid people.
What? It was OK to electroshock an innocent person because he advocated his rights, was actually a student and objected to Stalinist 'papers, please' intimidation? Then, because other innocents objected to his plight, it was OK to tase him.... four more times?
NO.
Nice canard. Why are there too few Americans in IT, from the point of view of industry lobbyists? Because American IT workers cost too much? Paying more would not immediately increase the pool of available workers, unless pay is not competitive with other industries harboring qualified talent. Perhaps increased pay would never ever increase worker availability. Why would this be? There can be only three answers: Americans dispise IT and will not accept generous compensation for working in the field, or the educational system simply can not produce qualified employees, or lobbyist's definition of 'qualified' is synonymous with 'endentured but capable'.
*hint: it's the last two
Remember the energy crisis? While the US went on to become even more dependant on middle eastern oil, Europe realized that the mid east had them by the short and curlies. France replaced their fossile fuel power plants with nuclear systems and Norway tapped into its undersea oil and natural gas fields.
I posit that word documents are less addictive than midddle eastern petroleum and that, should Microsoft force the EU's hand, Microsoft software shipments to Europe would be as common as crude shipments to scandinavia.
Ah, well. Here goes nothing, Maccers, start modding me down....
Since you are already on the cross, let me get on the record saying that you, sir, are truly a martyr. The way you offer yourself up to be modded down... it's truly unselfless.
Alas, it is proper to harbor spite for "me too" copycat assholes. Macs, running PC programs! WITH THEIR PROCESSORS!!!!! My God, where will it all end? Probably with my flaming.
Ah well. Here goes nothing! Self loathing hypocrits, start modding me down...
As the plaintiff has only provided screenshots of webmail sites displaying the spams in question, and as the judge feels that these are insufficient and that further discovery by the defendant is warranted, attempts by the plaintiff to stand behind the ALA would likely result in the dismissal of his case.
Haha, except where there has been voting fraud.
This has been another round of clear responses to sly innuendos; thanks for tuning in.
And when you do something that someone somewhere has done sometime before, it should come as no surprise. There are billions of people in this world and everything has been done before. Including suing Borat.
It's what they should have done in the first place. Rather than just slimming down their binaries for an environment with less RAM, MS originally envisioned CE as some sort of bizarre AMIGA-esque environment where processes go in 'slots'. Additionally, they looked at palm and decided to give the slots an extremely small max memory limitation, because, THEY REINVENTED SEGMENTED MEMORY! Yay! On platforms that universally natively have flat 32-bit memory. Oh wait, WTF? Yeah, Microsoft sure slotted something. Their developers.
It sounds like they finally realized that was the dumbest idea since Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
But they're still not going to give you a Windows Mobile a close button, I'm sure (See, the X in the upper right hand corner _minimizes_ [not closes, minimizes] because on Windows, users never close applications. They minimize them and let the OS decide when it's best to close applications! Developers are used to overriding the c++ new operator exception handler so that when you are out of RAM, you make the system call to request Windows to please go and close some random other program that the user didn't even realize is still running. Developers of course universally realize that if they fail to implement this, their application will just roll over dead during the course of normal, expected operation. Yeah, Microsoft sure minimized something. The number of WinCE users.)
I wonder if SmartPhone 6.0 will still be slower than normal Windows Mobile. Seriously, the "heavily optimized" WM Smartphone OS runs about 1/3 to 1/5 the speed of normal Windows Mobile on the same hardware. It's AWESOME. Hmm, perhaps that has something to do with why it's an abject failure...
As any WinCE developer should be able to tell you, Windows Mobile has a lot of stuff that plain WinCE does not. Windows Mobile = WinCE + a different shell + piles and piles of other stuff. With WinCE 6, at least the mobile version will be based off the same underlying CE kernel - Windows Mobile 5 is actually based on WinCE 5.01 and while WinCE 5.00 is available, for no good reason WinCE 5.01 is not to anyone, anywhere, for any reason, at all, in any way shape or form and never, ever ever ever ever will be (unless you move a couple hundred thousand units minimum and are willing to sign your life away). And that .01 makes a big bloody difference.... (I'm ranting because this fact is majorly horking a porting effort for which I am responsible)
Some salient info: in its screenshots, the Zune very much appears to be running Windows Mobile. Thus, you will ------>>>>>NOT------ be able to use what Microsoft is willing to give you to build an image that in any way resembles the OS running on the Zune. What you _will_ be able to build is something that looks like NT4, except more primitive and without all that glitzy cool stuff, such as minimize buttons, window resizing, the softkey bar, the status/menu bar at the top of the screen and hey also, BTW, while I'm listing stuff, numerous essential APIs.
"The browser is uniquely positioned among all applications as the desktop gateway to every existing web application. It's so obvious it seems trivial."
A tautology: the thing you use to browse the web is what you use to use the web! Knock me over with a feather.
"But first the web browser needs a feature. And in the spirit of open source I'm happy to dispense my advice freely: data recognition. Right now the browser excels at data caching, which is how your email pops up on different web pages in any edit box named 'EMail'. It's time for the next step. The browser should start recognizing the concept of email and be able to offer suggestions for fields of similar ilk. It wouldn't even be that hard... And what if Mozilla started defining some common field groups, like 'User Information,' as rich data types?"
Errr, well, Safari already does the last bit. It's kind of cute but I turn it off so that when other folks use my laptop, it doesn't cache their info or fill in fields with mine. But he wants caching of email subject and body fields? Why, in God's name?? I can't imagine wanting that in a dedicated email application! But when you wrap it up in buzzwords it sounds advanced and futuristic.
"With its popular browser, penchant for innovation and willingness to extend what the user experience can be, Mozilla has a chance to solidify itself among the giants and lay the groundwork for a real semantic web."
Semantic ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Everyone is already doing this. Notice Google's context-relevant advertisements? And their substring search service? Have you used wikipedia? Those are real. Have you ever made an html link? Congradulations! You helped build out the semantic WWW.
"The days of purely desktop-based applications are clearly numbered, but so are the days of exclusively web-based apps."
So, essentially, what? All pure desktop apps, even ones that chunk through massive amounts of data and need large amounts of low-latency processing power and a highly complex UI will transition to using javascript and XML? Why? So that they can be slower and less functional? Is it hard to dress everything under the sun in the latest trends? Does putting every somewhat-related thing in the context of the latest fluffword inform? No.
I can hear the RIAA's defense now:
"IP addresses are not useful for determening identity!"
"Logs are easily falsifiable and can not be trusted under any circumstances!"
If what you say is true, dubious though it may be, I wish you the best of luck. May your pair of tassled loafers find their way into the nether reaches of the RIAA's rectum.
Interesting. Alias|Wavefront, SI, Mathworks, Discreet, Kinetix or Avid, by any chance?
The favorite meme of Bill Gates: "software piracy gobbles up the majority of the industry's theoretical income!"
But from Microsoft's behavior, you wouldn't have thought he believed it. In fact, MS seemed aware of piracy and how to take Advantage of it. Office has always been overpriced and massively pirated by consumers. However, the specter of grueling, embarrassing license audits kept businesses honest. So, while employees pirated and grew familiar with Office at home, their employers were wedged into buying it.
Office Genuine Annoyance obliterates this dynamic; few have $799 to spend on intangible bloatware for their home PC. So, was Microsoft even aware that the piracy dynamic worked strongly to their advantage? Perhaps they were ignorant of it. Perhaps they were but eventually fell for their own line. Or perhaps they were aware of it but now see an alternative - knowing that consumers will not pony up for the full retail Office, do they hope to push everyone into paying ever higher monthly fees instead? IBM would have an easier time returning to a rental-only hardware sales model. After the cable bill, the phone bill, the electric bill, the mortgage and the car payment, who has $15 a month for Microsoft?
So, you have $15 a month for Microsoft, eh? That's good, because the features you want are only available in the full retail version! Oh, snap. Better start saving.
"You want to play hardball...? You want to try to throw me in jail? You have no idea what you are unleashing in doing this. You're at the brink..."
That's pretty contemptible remark there, bully boy. You know, the judge didn't even make his last ruling with prejudice. I think that the next time you are struck down, you won't even be appealing to him anymore. Sure, you'll be able make all the noise you want, but he won't hear you!
One really shouldn't be playing brinksmanship when he has so many holes in case. But really, on the hole, I think this judge is feeling pretty good. Eh hole? Hahahah. Yeah Jack, I'm flaming you. Burn in hell.
Correct. Not for nothing, but a good friend of mine does and assures me that it's not unheard of, after hours, to strike up a conversation.