This signals the beginning of the end of Java. I will no longer use or support Java that has now become essentially closed source or will be soon. Gates hates Java and this is the start of the death spiral from being one of the most popular languages to being marginalized. Soon that wretched Visual Whatever will be more prominent and that will be that for Java. I'm still sticking to Perl and JavaScript for now for web apps. But as I said... goodbye to Java (Topcat, Websphere and Weblogic too) and Sun can just go fade into the sunset.
This is like buying an iPhone. Why? I've been successfully creating and/or exchanging M$ Office format documents with MS Windows users using OOo for many years. The Redmond Encumbered Ones never know unless I tell them.
These Indians have no UNIX experience for the most part but have lied about it to get the job. I tech'd a couple that told me they had 5 - 6 years experience when they had told another guy on the project a week earlier they had none and asked what books should they buy to give them the information on basic UNIX commands. I guess so they could pass the tech interview I gave them. They answered enough of the basic questions and seemed to know their around vi when in fact they had no experience at all in UNIX and had never written a shell script.
I have a feeling they lie about the advanced degrees they list too. So when is the last time some HR department called the colleges in BF, India and confirmed their degrees? IBM also uses L1 visa holders meaning they are IBM India employees and do not have to be vetted or go through the H1B process. They just show up and go to work - so to speak. Any task given them takes far longer to get done and often has to be redone. I have had to redo a lot of their work on projects. And now IBM has many mid-level managers from India so problems are hidden or passed of to others.
Just as buggy whip and vinyl records and 8" floppy disks have gone so mechanical players and rolls are going away. As a former registered PTG piano tech I worked on my share of these player machines. I never rebuilt one but have made minor pump replacements and glued up the occasional bellows and made adjustments. As musical instruments older pianos are built to last a 100 years or more so these instruments are not going to disappear anytime soon. The rolls on the other hand are paper and can be damaged and just plain deteriorate long before the player part quits working. I hope someone will step up and keep a supply of rolls coming. It'll be a niche market for sure but just like keep ancient planes and autos running it will be worth it for future generations to see how 'The Old Folks'(tm) lived in The Good Old Days.
This may be the way to go. It appears you can get a Masters degree in CS in a few weeks in some places in India without knowing how to do anything more than write simple programs taken from book examples of Visual BASIC. Then you can claim a year's worth of experience on your resume for each program you code.
Meh. It was 80 here in Brandon, Fl yesterday (Christmas). My daughter who is home on break from college complained it was too hot so we had the air conditioning on all day and night. She's going to school in Indiana so this is a big change for her.
Among other things granted to the Chinese during the Clinton administration was the relaxation of having to meet FCC part 15 subpart B for electronics. Some Chinese power supplies put out tremendous amounts of RF all across the spectrum. Might check that too if you are having problems with radio reception. When I can get them I always buy Taiwan made power supplies because #1 they are better engineered and built, and #2 they do not radiate RF. They have to meet the RF emissions requirements.
So far I've had a large failure rate of Chinese power supplies because of being under engineered and the poorly made components. Electronics are like everything else being made in China today. They cut corners and mismanage and put out crap clothes, electronics, baby food, pet food, toys, medicines, and every body just keeps letting them get by with it.
Most of my Chinese made shirts don't come with pockets anymore, the thread count of the cloth is lower, the sewing thread is smaller diameter and of poorer quality. The seams are sewn right up against the edges so they rip out in the washing machine and buttons disappear after a few washings too. And if you take medicines ask your pharmacist what the country of origin is. It might surprise the hell out of you. Almost everything I take now (blood pressure and kidney meds) are made in India. That scares the bejesus out of me too but not nearly as much as Chinese made meds.
It is true there were issues with earlier MS Windows but I stand by my statement that C++ was a key problem with the later version of the platform. Bad design was another. I am not denying early Windows was written in C and ASM. MS should have stayed the course there and kept away from that wretched monolithic 'everything is connected to everything else so it all has to be loaded design so you solve our scalability issues by throwing hardware at it' design.
Gates wanted MS Windows to be as far away from UNIX as it could be made. And he succeeded. UNIX - I've had servers up and runing for years without being rebooted. My laptop running XP has to be completely shut down every couple of days or it becomes nearly unusable due to memory leaks and fragmentation problems with that stupid pagefile.sys instead of using proven paging and swap file technology from UNIX.
I'd bring up security but I need to finish this before Christmas. A UNIX system right out of the box is many times more secure than Windows... although there is some progress there. Virus writers don't pick on Windows because it's so popular. They attack Windows because it's so easy and still has many vulnerabilities. So still, when I have to provide a secure and stable environment for applications I don't even consider MS Windows. It's OK for desk top apps (which I do not get involved with any more) although I get by with work alikes on UNIX and Linux.
And that is not just my opinion but a rather broadly held one. In fact this is why after NT4.0 several architects and myself working at a large telephone company data shop stopped developing any applications on Microsoft OSes. That and for me C 6.0/C++ 1.0. That was shortly after the time Gates decided to stop being an operating system and compiler vendor and started his drive to take over all aspects of the personal computer. The published APIs changed and decent third party apps were bought up and killed off or driven out of business.
I'm not surprised BS is down on Java. It does to OOP what C++ was supposed to have done but instead just crapped up a good problem solving language. To support this I have almost 30 years of programming and architecting on micros, minis, and mainframes running TRSDOS, DRDOS, CPM, MSDOS, UNIX, MVS, AND Linux for large enterprise wide comm servers and client/server apps.
I have done 'at the metal' coding in C and ASM for comm servers. My list of languages include BASIC, C, and yes C++ - but I hated it, FORTRAN, COBOL, ADA (hated it), RPG II (hated it), REXX, Intel-Zilog-and Motorola ASM, PERL, HTML, Java, JavaScript, many UNIX shell variants, SQL, DBII, Pascal, and who knows what else I may be leaving out this early in the day. In other words, been there done that. Unless some damn fool pointy hair boss interferes I chose the OS and language to best solve the problem. And right now if Microsoft is the answer then the question was not phrased properly. I can even code in C# (Microsoft's feeble attempt to undermine Java) but use Mono on UNIX/Linux.
So I feel more than qualified to say to Stroustrup, "Sit down and STFU". You had your shot at language developing and screwed up a lot of things. MS Windows instability over the years is a prime example of using C++ when C was a much better choice to build an OS.
You may have a different opinion. I especially want to hear from Visual Studio coders who can only do VS BASIC or C++ on Microsoft and think they are programmers. When you have earned your Silver Back status and designed and built applications handling millions of dollars in transactions daily running for 6 to 8, and in one case almost 10 years error free, or apps doing 1,000s of transactions hourly without a glitch, then come sit down and we'll do lunch.
I had a 'fever blister' about every month when I was a kid. I had better follow up on this. Although we never had any Alzheimers in the family my oldest cousin and her ex-husband both have it. There was never a case in his family either.
Now they can do this with a shot. Damn! Two years ago I had quintuple (5) bypsss surgery. The surgery went fine, it was the series of post-op infections that nearly done me in.
And BTW, my total cholesterol was under 160 and my triglycerides were at 150, high normal, at the time of the surgery. My cardiac ejection fraction was @ 60% and I had no symptoms of any sort until a bit of arrhythmia showed up during a routine exam when I had been at 60bps for years.
Genetics - the boomerang that catches you from behind.
Any piece of IP should be protected by copy right not by patents. Anything that one person can think of can eventually be thought of by another. A new math formula or maybe sticking parts of two words together to describe a new concept. A new tool or some innovative way of extending a mechanical device should be patented but not IP. Patenting IP is like writing a new lexicon and patenting all the words in it and then suing when anyone writes a story, movie script, or newspaper using any word in it. The body of work, the Lexicon is protected and cannot be taken and used as is under another name by another person.
In the past I have written many custom programs for various industries using techniques I have seen in text books and some I developed myself. I always copyrighted these works and would have never thought to put a patent on any of it since even my new techniques, or at least new to me, could have been discovered by any number of code floggers out to solve a similar problem. But the total program was my work and had some value to the clients I developed it for.
I was in the third ever class of SONAR techs taught transistors by the Navy. It took me years to unlearn/relearn to the point I could do useful stuff with it.
For self paced learning try the Smart Lab Electronics or Snap Electronics kits.
The ARRL has some great basic electronics courses too.
It's not a reenactment. It's just a special events station.
BTW, I would like to have a statue of a naked Natalie Portman, made of grits or any other substance.
It's news because this is the 95th anniversary of the sinking. I only know that because I worked W0S, the Titanic memorial amateur radio station over the weekend.
It won't be long given the pricing structure of Microsoft products that someone will step in to fill the orders for cheap knock offs. High quality or otherwise. I've been in the high tech shopping district in Taiwan and the prices for these pirated items are (usually) far below the price of legitimate copies.
Also been in Mexico City where street vendors sell about any software title on the planet - some slick copies, some shoddy.
And I doubt the 90% figure. Looks and smells like some marketing drone pulled it out of his @ss.
I've seen so many startups fail because management will turn programmers loose with out having gone through a full cyle of design first - requirements->sign off->high level design->sign off->detail design->review and sign off->testing plan->sign off - before turning the code monkeys loose on the coding phase. They think it takes too much time and costs more money. I've been through the whole life cycle and now mostly architect but it's hard to get management to do the proper cycle, they just want results. The more time you spend designing and testing means less time devoted to fixing and adding features later, and most likely removing stuff the kiddies without an architect to ride herd thought were 'neat' addons. Even when I was coding for some startups I always did the design phase first. At more than one shop it didn't take any longer to get to market with a production ready product then a 'code - run - fix - now make it do this or take this out' iterative style without design docs would. In a couple of shops the first release was the final release and would run error free for several years because of up front design and testing.
You'd think that an MA of anything would recognize a marketing ploy when you see one. Guess it's hard to when you have the blinders on. And if you think Apple hardware is competitive in price - I've got some swamp land here to sell.
What I'm trying to do is educate people to not settle for just 'good enough for most people' even if the marketing hype is deafening.
Yes I would. I will never run Apple hardware - it will never be the best bet for the buck. And they are not ever going to give away free beer. The only thing Jobs did in the early days was to give away Apples to schools so kids would run home and tell their parents they had to do their home work on a computer compatible with the one at school. And so Apple Fanboys were created.
I have run FreeBSD since it was a 1.8 or there abouts. I have run Linux since kernel 1.2 or so. Before that I ran CPM and MPM, DRDOS, SCO UNIX and Zenix, and my share of MSDOS boxes, pre-Windows, and had a TRSDOS Model I, a Model II, and a Model 4 portable. For thirty years I've watched and been a part of the micro/mini/mainframe computer industry, building a couple of Z80 and 8080 machines at the wire wrap/soldered/component level, hacking the BIOS by hand, and owning many 'store bought' ones too. I've developed in dozens of languages starting with ASM and BASIC on micros, many languages on minis, and mainframes in COBOL, REXX, and FORTRAN. I even had to use Apples in a couple of jobs so I can speak to just about any hardware - software you can mention. I am currently involved with IBM AIX pSeries minis and zLinix on the zSeries mainframes. I repeat - among other rejected technologies, no Apple now - no Apple ever.
I might run OS X if I could buy a boxed set and run it on the hardware of my choice. Otherwise I'll just continue to run FreeBSD from which Apple derived their OS, and Linux - all on hardware of my choosing.
Buying Microsoft products is like having an ex-wife you are obligated to pay all expenses for. When she gets a new dress you have to buy her a new house and abandon the old one. Then the new dress needs all new accessories and even unrelated kitchen appliances and a car.
But then buying Apple products is the same except it starts with a new house and works it's way back to the dress, car, and kitchen appliances which can only come from the same company that built the house.
I am constantly amazed with the people who flock to Apple when they do the same thing at the hardware level that Microsoft does at the software level and that is product line lock in.
The major reason Apple lost the numbers war to Microsoft is that Windows and it's related products were allowed to run on any IBM PC clone while Jobs wanted to control every aspect of the Apple and sued out of existence the very people who were trying to clone an Apple and extend the user base of Apple and Apple-like products. Microsoft doesn't really care about pirated software in third world countries as long as the computers are running Microsoft products. They have a foot hold on future sales when the dust clears from law suits and the users are socialized into thinking that Microsoft is the only product they can use. As long as it's not Linux/x386BSD/Apple they are willing to tolerate pirating because it extends the base of users of MS technologies.
While Apple may make a better product overall (remember Mac OS is FreeBSD under the covers) they will always be only a niche market because Jobs is a worse control freak than Gates.
--
I was near Detroit on a business trip when the grid went down in 2003. In under 8 hours the cell phone towers went dark and my 2 meter hand held made it possible for me to talk to local hams and get information.
Another example of the use of amateur radio use in disasters is during the tsunami in 2004. Amateur radio was used to carry messages using low power battery operated equipment using morse code. Morse code uses far less power to put out a useful signal then voice and other modes. A lot of information was passed using 5 watts of power and code.
Morse is still useful and Army MARS (Military Amateur Radio System) is going to start using morse again on their nets. I hope Navy MARS does too.
A 'Know Code" HAM (www.fists.com) - Straight Key operator (www.skccgroup.com) - Navy MARS operator.
Ya gotta remember that the folks that this happened to are sitting around and watching Heroes tonight instead of posting comments on Slashdot because their PCs are now door stops.
And this appears to me as the wakeup call to Apple users about how Apple treats its customers - just like Microsoft. In other words you are a cash cow, your machine belongs to them and you are not allowed to do anything that Gates or Jobs doesn't want you to do and that includes experimenting with something that may be better for you but because they didn't sell it to you they will take steps to stop you from getting any use from it. Apple is just as evil as Microsoft only smaller because Jobs the AssClown decided to keep everything proprietary and Gates let his stuff work on any "standard" PC compatible hardware made by hundreds if not thousands of vendors. Apple could have ruled the world if they had licensed their hardware and software out to third party vendors or made it open source. But instead greed ruled and Apple became a niche product.
Slashdot Mirror
This signals the beginning of the end of Java. I will no longer use or support Java that has now become essentially closed source or will be soon. Gates hates Java and this is the start of the death spiral from being one of the most popular languages to being marginalized. Soon that wretched Visual Whatever will be more prominent and that will be that for Java. I'm still sticking to Perl and JavaScript for now for web apps. But as I said... goodbye to Java (Topcat, Websphere and Weblogic too) and Sun can just go fade into the sunset.
This is like buying an iPhone. Why? I've been successfully creating and/or exchanging M$ Office format documents with MS Windows users using OOo for many years. The Redmond Encumbered Ones never know unless I tell them.
I have a feeling they lie about the advanced degrees they list too. So when is the last time some HR department called the colleges in BF, India and confirmed their degrees? IBM also uses L1 visa holders meaning they are IBM India employees and do not have to be vetted or go through the H1B process. They just show up and go to work - so to speak. Any task given them takes far longer to get done and often has to be redone. I have had to redo a lot of their work on projects. And now IBM has many mid-level managers from India so problems are hidden or passed of to others.
Just as buggy whip and vinyl records and 8" floppy disks have gone so mechanical players and rolls are going away. As a former registered PTG piano tech I worked on my share of these player machines. I never rebuilt one but have made minor pump replacements and glued up the occasional bellows and made adjustments. As musical instruments older pianos are built to last a 100 years or more so these instruments are not going to disappear anytime soon. The rolls on the other hand are paper and can be damaged and just plain deteriorate long before the player part quits working. I hope someone will step up and keep a supply of rolls coming. It'll be a niche market for sure but just like keep ancient planes and autos running it will be worth it for future generations to see how 'The Old Folks'(tm) lived in The Good Old Days.
I went abroad to study a broad. Actually I studied many broads while I was abroad.
This may be the way to go. It appears you can get a Masters degree in CS in a few weeks in some places in India without knowing how to do anything more than write simple programs taken from book examples of Visual BASIC. Then you can claim a year's worth of experience on your resume for each program you code.
Meh. It was 80 here in Brandon, Fl yesterday (Christmas). My daughter who is home on break from college complained it was too hot so we had the air conditioning on all day and night. She's going to school in Indiana so this is a big change for her.
Among other things granted to the Chinese during the Clinton administration was the relaxation of having to meet FCC part 15 subpart B for electronics. Some Chinese power supplies put out tremendous amounts of RF all across the spectrum. Might check that too if you are having problems with radio reception. When I can get them I always buy Taiwan made power supplies because #1 they are better engineered and built, and #2 they do not radiate RF. They have to meet the RF emissions requirements. So far I've had a large failure rate of Chinese power supplies because of being under engineered and the poorly made components. Electronics are like everything else being made in China today. They cut corners and mismanage and put out crap clothes, electronics, baby food, pet food, toys, medicines, and every body just keeps letting them get by with it. Most of my Chinese made shirts don't come with pockets anymore, the thread count of the cloth is lower, the sewing thread is smaller diameter and of poorer quality. The seams are sewn right up against the edges so they rip out in the washing machine and buttons disappear after a few washings too. And if you take medicines ask your pharmacist what the country of origin is. It might surprise the hell out of you. Almost everything I take now (blood pressure and kidney meds) are made in India. That scares the bejesus out of me too but not nearly as much as Chinese made meds.
Gates wanted MS Windows to be as far away from UNIX as it could be made. And he succeeded. UNIX - I've had servers up and runing for years without being rebooted. My laptop running XP has to be completely shut down every couple of days or it becomes nearly unusable due to memory leaks and fragmentation problems with that stupid pagefile.sys instead of using proven paging and swap file technology from UNIX.
I'd bring up security but I need to finish this before Christmas. A UNIX system right out of the box is many times more secure than Windows... although there is some progress there. Virus writers don't pick on Windows because it's so popular. They attack Windows because it's so easy and still has many vulnerabilities. So still, when I have to provide a secure and stable environment for applications I don't even consider MS Windows. It's OK for desk top apps (which I do not get involved with any more) although I get by with work alikes on UNIX and Linux.
And that is not just my opinion but a rather broadly held one. In fact this is why after NT4.0 several architects and myself working at a large telephone company data shop stopped developing any applications on Microsoft OSes. That and for me C 6.0/C++ 1.0. That was shortly after the time Gates decided to stop being an operating system and compiler vendor and started his drive to take over all aspects of the personal computer. The published APIs changed and decent third party apps were bought up and killed off or driven out of business.
I'm not surprised BS is down on Java. It does to OOP what C++ was supposed to have done but instead just crapped up a good problem solving language. To support this I have almost 30 years of programming and architecting on micros, minis, and mainframes running TRSDOS, DRDOS, CPM, MSDOS, UNIX, MVS, AND Linux for large enterprise wide comm servers and client/server apps. I have done 'at the metal' coding in C and ASM for comm servers. My list of languages include BASIC, C, and yes C++ - but I hated it, FORTRAN, COBOL, ADA (hated it), RPG II (hated it), REXX, Intel-Zilog-and Motorola ASM, PERL, HTML, Java, JavaScript, many UNIX shell variants, SQL, DBII, Pascal, and who knows what else I may be leaving out this early in the day. In other words, been there done that. Unless some damn fool pointy hair boss interferes I chose the OS and language to best solve the problem. And right now if Microsoft is the answer then the question was not phrased properly. I can even code in C# (Microsoft's feeble attempt to undermine Java) but use Mono on UNIX/Linux. So I feel more than qualified to say to Stroustrup, "Sit down and STFU". You had your shot at language developing and screwed up a lot of things. MS Windows instability over the years is a prime example of using C++ when C was a much better choice to build an OS. You may have a different opinion. I especially want to hear from Visual Studio coders who can only do VS BASIC or C++ on Microsoft and think they are programmers. When you have earned your Silver Back status and designed and built applications handling millions of dollars in transactions daily running for 6 to 8, and in one case almost 10 years error free, or apps doing 1,000s of transactions hourly without a glitch, then come sit down and we'll do lunch.
I had a 'fever blister' about every month when I was a kid. I had better follow up on this. Although we never had any Alzheimers in the family my oldest cousin and her ex-husband both have it. There was never a case in his family either.
And BTW, my total cholesterol was under 160 and my triglycerides were at 150, high normal, at the time of the surgery. My cardiac ejection fraction was @ 60% and I had no symptoms of any sort until a bit of arrhythmia showed up during a routine exam when I had been at 60bps for years. Genetics - the boomerang that catches you from behind.
In the past I have written many custom programs for various industries using techniques I have seen in text books and some I developed myself. I always copyrighted these works and would have never thought to put a patent on any of it since even my new techniques, or at least new to me, could have been discovered by any number of code floggers out to solve a similar problem. But the total program was my work and had some value to the clients I developed it for.
People choose to breath air.
I was in the third ever class of SONAR techs taught transistors by the Navy. It took me years to unlearn/relearn to the point I could do useful stuff with it. For self paced learning try the Smart Lab Electronics or Snap Electronics kits. The ARRL has some great basic electronics courses too.
It's not a reenactment. It's just a special events station. BTW, I would like to have a statue of a naked Natalie Portman, made of grits or any other substance.
It's news because this is the 95th anniversary of the sinking. I only know that because I worked W0S, the Titanic memorial amateur radio station over the weekend.
It won't be long given the pricing structure of Microsoft products that someone will step in to fill the orders for cheap knock offs. High quality or otherwise. I've been in the high tech shopping district in Taiwan and the prices for these pirated items are (usually) far below the price of legitimate copies.
Also been in Mexico City where street vendors sell about any software title on the planet - some slick copies, some shoddy.
And I doubt the 90% figure. Looks and smells like some marketing drone pulled it out of his @ss.
I've seen so many startups fail because management will turn programmers loose with out having gone through a full cyle of design first - requirements->sign off->high level design->sign off->detail design->review and sign off->testing plan->sign off - before turning the code monkeys loose on the coding phase. They think it takes too much time and costs more money. I've been through the whole life cycle and now mostly architect but it's hard to get management to do the proper cycle, they just want results. The more time you spend designing and testing means less time devoted to fixing and adding features later, and most likely removing stuff the kiddies without an architect to ride herd thought were 'neat' addons. Even when I was coding for some startups I always did the design phase first. At more than one shop it didn't take any longer to get to market with a production ready product then a 'code - run - fix - now make it do this or take this out' iterative style without design docs would. In a couple of shops the first release was the final release and would run error free for several years because of up front design and testing.
What I'm trying to do is educate people to not settle for just 'good enough for most people' even if the marketing hype is deafening.
I have run FreeBSD since it was a 1.8 or there abouts. I have run Linux since kernel 1.2 or so. Before that I ran CPM and MPM, DRDOS, SCO UNIX and Zenix, and my share of MSDOS boxes, pre-Windows, and had a TRSDOS Model I, a Model II, and a Model 4 portable. For thirty years I've watched and been a part of the micro/mini/mainframe computer industry, building a couple of Z80 and 8080 machines at the wire wrap/soldered/component level, hacking the BIOS by hand, and owning many 'store bought' ones too. I've developed in dozens of languages starting with ASM and BASIC on micros, many languages on minis, and mainframes in COBOL, REXX, and FORTRAN. I even had to use Apples in a couple of jobs so I can speak to just about any hardware - software you can mention. I am currently involved with IBM AIX pSeries minis and zLinix on the zSeries mainframes. I repeat - among other rejected technologies, no Apple now - no Apple ever.
I might run OS X if I could buy a boxed set and run it on the hardware of my choice. Otherwise I'll just continue to run FreeBSD from which Apple derived their OS, and Linux - all on hardware of my choosing.
But then buying Apple products is the same except it starts with a new house and works it's way back to the dress, car, and kitchen appliances which can only come from the same company that built the house.
I am constantly amazed with the people who flock to Apple when they do the same thing at the hardware level that Microsoft does at the software level and that is product line lock in.
The major reason Apple lost the numbers war to Microsoft is that Windows and it's related products were allowed to run on any IBM PC clone while Jobs wanted to control every aspect of the Apple and sued out of existence the very people who were trying to clone an Apple and extend the user base of Apple and Apple-like products. Microsoft doesn't really care about pirated software in third world countries as long as the computers are running Microsoft products. They have a foot hold on future sales when the dust clears from law suits and the users are socialized into thinking that Microsoft is the only product they can use. As long as it's not Linux/x386BSD/Apple they are willing to tolerate pirating because it extends the base of users of MS technologies.
While Apple may make a better product overall (remember Mac OS is FreeBSD under the covers) they will always be only a niche market because Jobs is a worse control freak than Gates. --
Another example of the use of amateur radio use in disasters is during the tsunami in 2004. Amateur radio was used to carry messages using low power battery operated equipment using morse code. Morse code uses far less power to put out a useful signal then voice and other modes. A lot of information was passed using 5 watts of power and code.
Morse is still useful and Army MARS (Military Amateur Radio System) is going to start using morse again on their nets. I hope Navy MARS does too.
A 'Know Code" HAM (www.fists.com) - Straight Key operator (www.skccgroup.com) - Navy MARS operator.
And this appears to me as the wakeup call to Apple users about how Apple treats its customers - just like Microsoft. In other words you are a cash cow, your machine belongs to them and you are not allowed to do anything that Gates or Jobs doesn't want you to do and that includes experimenting with something that may be better for you but because they didn't sell it to you they will take steps to stop you from getting any use from it. Apple is just as evil as Microsoft only smaller because Jobs the AssClown decided to keep everything proprietary and Gates let his stuff work on any "standard" PC compatible hardware made by hundreds if not thousands of vendors. Apple could have ruled the world if they had licensed their hardware and software out to third party vendors or made it open source. But instead greed ruled and Apple became a niche product.